Contesting Gender Discrimination in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

Abstract

Temporary agricultural workers have come to Canada from Mexico under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) since 1974. In Canada, temporary migration programs, including the SAWP, are heavily gender segregated and racialized. In this paper we examine the ways in which unions, civil society organizations and workers themselves have engaged at multiple sites and scales to contest SAWP recruitment practices that discriminate on the basis of gender. We document how the United Food and Commercial Workers union has brought challenges against gender discrimination in recruitment practices in domestic forums in both Canada and Mexico, as well as under the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation, the labour side agreement of the North American Free Trade Agreement. We argue that this case demonstrates how the transnational character of temporary migrant labour severely limits the legal frameworks available for addressing the rights of migrant workers, but also opens up some windows for transnational forms of collaboration and contention across nation-state borders to promote workers' rights.