Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program Research Articles

“It’s like We’re Still in Slavery”: Stress as Distress and Discourse among Jamaican Farm Workers in Ontario, Canada

For more than fifty years, Jamaican farm workers have been seasonally employed in Canada under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). In Canada, these workers live and work in conditions that make them vulnerable to various health issues, including poor mental health. This ethnographic study investigated Jamaican SAWP workers’ mental health experiences in Southern Ontario. Several common factors that engender psychological distress among Jamaican workers, ranging from mild to extreme suffering, were uncovered and organised into five themes: (1) family, (2) work environments and SAWP relations, (3) living conditions and isolation, (4) racism and social exclusion, and (5) illness and injury. I found that Jamaican workers predominantly use the term ‘stress’ to articulate distress, and they associate experiences of suffering with historic plantation slavery. Analysis of workers’ stress discourses revealed their experiences of psychological distress are structured by the conditions of the SAWP and their social marginalisation in Ontario. This article presents and discusses these findings in the context of SAWP power dynamics and concludes with policy recommendations aimed at improving the mental health of all SAWP workers. In foregrounding the experiences of Jamaican workers, this study addresses the dearth of research on the health and wellbeing of Caribbean SAWP workers.

The Canadian ‘War of the Two Sugars’: Homegrown Sugar Beets and the Racial Stratification of Labour

Abstract This paper provides a history of more than a century of efforts to establish and maintain a homegrown Canadian sugar supply – a twentieth-century version of what Eric Williams called the ‘war of the two sugars’, or the global competition between sugar beet and cane. To resolve beet sugar’s so-called ‘labour problem’, the industry has collaborated with the Canadian state to produce new classes of temporary workers, mobilising incarcerated Japanese Canadians, migrant Indigenous families, and Mexican and Caribbean workers employed through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. At the same time, the sugar industry has sought to refine itself of the racialised workers upon whom it relies by promoting the figure of the white Canadian worker. The Canadian ‘war of the two sugars’ has been fought through the stratification of the labour force along the lines of citizenship, resulting in the production of unique racial forms.

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<p>The production of fruit, vegetables, and other horticultural crops in Canada relies upon the embodied labour of migrant agricultural workers who plant, prune, and harvest these crops. Using a feminist geopolitical lens, I foreground the bodies of these workers as these bodies are situated at the intersection of everyday lived experiences and systems of capitalist production through, in this case, Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Drawing on workers’ experiences of their bodies in the context of the regulatory provisions of the SAWP, I highlight the contradictory disembodiment of agricultural workers at the same time that their bodies are necessary to provide the physical labour at the heart of fruit and vegetable production. The disembodiment of these workers is possible because of their status as racialized non-citizens: while Canadians can insist upon the recognition of their bodies, migrant agricultural workers cannot. The disjuncture between embodied labour and embodied subjectivities was exacerbated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected on migrant agricultural workers – through their bodies – while in Canada. Given the relative safety afforded to those who held citizenship (and other permanent) status in Canada, I argue that the active disembodiment of migrant agricultural workers in Canada demonstrates the ways that embodiment is a privilege that is tightly bound to citizenship.</p>

The Impact of COVID-19 on Migrant Agricultural Workers in Ontario

Migrant agricultural workers (MAWs) who enter the province through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) were disproportionately affected by COVID-19 due to gaps in the policy that ensure they are treated fairly.

From Migrant to Transnational Families’ Mental Health: An Ethnography of Five Mexican Families Participating in Agricultural Labour in Canada

This focused critical ethnography aimed to deepen our understanding of the impact of participating in a temporary, cyclical, low-wage migration program on the mental and emotional health (MEH) of Mexican women and their non-migrating family members. Except for global care chains research, the field of migrant mental health has paid limited attention to the importance of transnational family dynamics and the MEH of relatives beyond the workers’ children. The current study broadens this framework to examine how family-level changes brought about by migration affect the MEH not only the migrant and her children, but also extended family members. Participants included five women employed in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and an average of five non-migrating members of their families in Mexico. The study combined four data generation methods: participant observation, ‘emojional’ calendars, semi-structured interviews, and sociodemographic questionnaires. Study participants’ MEH was significantly influenced by gendered selection processes and the cyclical pattern of migration. Similar impacts were observed within and across four groups of participants (workers, their children, the children’s caregivers, and extended family members) during their periods apart and together. There were significant effects of their relative’s migration on the MEH of extended family members, a population group commonly overlooked in the literature. Findings from this study suggest that public health research, programs, and policies using a transnational approach are best suited to effectively address the impacts of migration on the MEH of migrants and their non-migrating families.

Canada’s Temporary Labor Migration Policy: The Case of Mexican Seasonal Agricultural Workers

The article analyzes Canadian temporary foreign worker migration policies through the prism of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), one of the largest and oldest seasonal worker programs in Canada’s postwar immigration policies, whose main participants are seasonal farmworker migrants from Mexico. The article outlines the premises of Canadian labor migration policies and presents a brief history of Mexican migrations to Canada. Most importantly, however, it focuses on the functioning of SAWP, presenting the program’s positive impact as well as its shortages and failures through the lens of experiences of its Mexican participants. The summary of this text proposes certain reforms and changes to SAWP that might help eliminate some of the program’s deficiencies.

The ‘contract’ and its discontents: Can it address protection gaps for migrant agricultural workers in Canada?

AbstractCanada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program has often been portrayed as a model for temporary migration programmes. It is largely governed by the Contracts negotiated between Canada and Mexico and Commonwealth Caribbean countries respectively. This article provides a critical analysis of the Contract by examining its structural context and considers the possibilities and limitations for ameliorating it. It outlines formal recommendations that the article co‐authors presented during the annual Contract negotiations between Canada and sending states in 2020. The article then explains why these recommendations were not accepted, situating the negotiation process within the structural context that produces migrant workers' vulnerability, on the one hand, and limits the capacity of representatives of sending and receiving states to expand rights and offer stronger protections to migrant farmworkers, on the other hand. We argue that fundamental changes are required to address the vulnerability of migrant agricultural workers. In the absence of structural changes, it is nevertheless important to seek improvements in the regulation of the programme through any means possible, including strengthening the Contract.

Black Barbadians in Canada: A Growing Migration, 1966–1990

Canada is considered a multiracial nation. An important part of its multiracial composition traces back to the 1960s and early 1970s, with changes to immigration regulations and the implementation of its multicultural policy. Interwoven in this multiracial mosaic called Canada is the Black person, whose presence in Canada dates back to the seventeenth century. Yet Black people in Canada are usually treated as newcomers. Among them were Black Barbadians. They came for various reasons, particularly the restructuring of Canada’s immigration policy in the 1960s. Prior to the 1960s, Canada’s immigration policy was restrictive, especially toward Black and Asian people, with Black people seldom meeting the criteria to gain entry to the country. This paper explores two key reasons that motivated Black Barbadians to migrate to Canada in increased numbers from the mid-1960s to 1990. Specifically, it argues that fundamental changes in the 1960s to Canada’s discriminatory immigration policies and the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program were integral in motivating Black Barbadians to choose to migrate.

MOTIVATIONS OF MEXICAN WORKERS TO PARTICIPATE IN CANADA’S SEASONAL AGRICULTURAL WORKERS PROGRAM

ABSTRACT This study finds three main motivations for Mexican workers to participate in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP): Increasing household livelihood and welfare, investing in farming skills and assets, and improving children’s education and family housing. A factor analysis and a system of equations are used to find out which sociodemographic and economic characteristics of the migrants and their families are associated with each motivation. The most important results show that having more than four children along with being a farmer are positively associated with investing in farming skills and assets but being an agricultural day laborer in Mexico and having less than two children are not associated with any of the motivations.

Re-centering labour in local food: local washing and the growing reliance on permanently temporary migrant farmworkers in Nova Scotia

This article explores the labour behind local food in the Canadian Atlantic province of Nova Scotia. Based on surveys and interviews with farmers, migrant farmworkers, and farmers’ market consumers in the province, we suggest that the celebration of local food by government and industry is a form of “local washing.” Local washing hides key aspects of the social relations of production: in this case, it hides insufficient financial and policy supports for Nova Scotian farms and the increased reliance on migrant farmworkers via the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Our research found that a growing reliance on migrant farmworkers was not just the case for larger, industrial farms, but also for smaller farms participating in local and alternative food initiatives, like farmers’ markets and fresh produce subscription boxes. Additionally, our surveys show that while farmers’ market shoppers expressed an interest in supporting local foods, they reported knowing little about farm workers or working conditions. Our paper contributes to the literature on local and alternative food initiatives by connecting the relations of production to consumption. Rather than focusing solely on the nature of the relationships between farmers and consumers and the values embodied in direct agricultural markets, this research explores the central role of permanently temporary migrant workers in local agriculture.

Allied Interpreters: Exploring the Role Perception and Ethics of Uncertified Interpreters Supporting Migrant Agricultural Workers in British Columbia

Uncertified interpreters enable migrant agricultural workers in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program to access key resources and connect with community. Through providing a range of services, including support work and advocacy, interpreters assist migrant workers at risk of exploitation and injury in Canada. This article explores how uncertified interpreters navigate the power dynamics between migrant workers, interpreters, and other actors. Moreover, this article investigates how uncertified interpreters perceive their role and the ethical values that guide their communicative methods. This study’s research findings show that interpreters may adopt a pro-worker role perception as they gain knowledge of the disempowerment experienced by migrant workers. Arising from this role perception, interpreters may also adopt pro-worker ethical values that renounce interpreter neutrality in favour of accessibility and an explanatory communication style. Ultimately, this article contends that uncertified interpreters may reject some traditional interpretation guidelines to adopt a role perception, ethical framework, and communicative style perceived to be more well-suited to supporting migrant farm workers in British Columbia.

Refusing and Redressing Gestational Labor: A Social Reproduction Account of Abortion

Abstract This article analyzes abortion politics from a Marxist feminist perspective by adapting social reproduction theory (SRT). Despite the urgent threats to abortion access facing feminists worldwide, abortion is largely absent from contemporary SRT. This absence is first addressed from a theoretical perspective through the development of three arguments: that SRT can connect abortion to the biological reproduction of labor power via gestational labor, that abortion can make gestational labor less alienating, and that abortion can function as a refusal of productivism and reproductive sexuality. The article then applies these arguments to a preexisting case study of reproductive justice and women in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. By situating abortion within migrant workers’ struggles over social reproduction processes, this analysis demonstrates that SRT is useful for the study of abortion and can generate insights different from those of the reproductive justice approach alone.

Migration and Dependency: Mexican Countryside Proletarianization and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

This article addresses the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) between Mexico and Canada by examining the forms of disposability and job insecurity of Mexicans employed in Canadian agribusiness. We argue that the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program has exacerbated the precarity and disposability of Mexican workers by restructuring family dynamics and care chains. This article represents a critique of the SAWP as a model of regulated labor migration, serving as a basis for analyzing the consequences of the proletarianization of the Mexican peasantry and its use as disposable labor for export.

Situated Learning and Transnational Labor Migration: The Case of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program.

Grounded in an analysis of interviews with migrant farm workers in Canada, this article explores how learning in the everyday contexts of temporary transnational labor migration is implicated in both migrant identity formation and the social reproduction of an established and growing labor migration regime. The article focuses on thinking through how workers negotiate the intergenerational workplace tensions that permeate life in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. The findings suggest that through their sustained participation in the everyday social practices that develop through dormitory-living, transnational laborers learn to become migrant workers. This formation of migrant worker identities in turn contributes to the reproduction of the social relations that support the ongoing practice of circulatory labor migration in the Canadian agricultural industry.

Food Security of Temporary Foreign Farm Workers under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Canada and the United States: A Scoping Review.

Temporary foreign farm workers (TFWs) are among the most vulnerable and exploitable groups. Recent research shows alarming rates of food insecurity among them. This review explores research focussing on food security of TFWs in Canada and the United States, summarizes findings, and identifies research gaps. Online databases, including MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and government and nongovernment websites, and websites of migrant worker-supporting organizations were searched for peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed papers and reports published between 1966 and 2020 regarding food security of TFWs. Articles reviewed were analyzed to determine publication type, country, year, target population, and main findings. Content analysis was performed to identify major themes. Of 291 sources identified, 11 met the inclusion criteria. Most articles (n=10) were based on studies conducted in the United States. The prevalence of food insecurity among TFWs ranged between 28% and 87%. From the content analysis, we formulated 9 themes, representing a diversity of perspectives, including access to resources, income, housing and related facilities, food access, dietary pattern and healthy food choices, and migrant's legal status. Instruments reported for the measurement of food security include USDA Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM; n = 8, 72.7%), the modified version of the USDA HFSSM (n = 1, 9%), hunger measure (n = 1, 9%), the modified CDC's NHANES (n = 1, 9%), and 24-h recall, diet history, and/or food-frequency questionnaire (n = 3, 27.3%). Factors impacting food security of TFWs working under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programs (SAWPs) in North America are understudied. There is a need to advance research looking particularly at policies and regulatory and administrative aspects of the SAWPs to improve the food security of this cohort. There is also a need for qualitative studies that explore lived experiences and perspectives of TFWs and key informants. Longitudinal studies may be useful to examine various factors, including policy-related, contributing to food insecurity of TFWs over time.

Mexican Migrant Farmworkers in Canada

This essay focuses on Mexican migrant farmworkers employed in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. During this time, Mexican workers became essential yet expendable while their agricultural employers reaped the material rewards as an essential industry. Through the lens of racialization and structural vulnerability, I explicate how the Mexican and Canadian states facilitated the continuation of capital accumulation in agriculture through the subjugation of Mexican workers. I seek to contribute to the nascent literature on the pandemic in relation to temporary-labor migration programs, Mexican migrant workers, and the racialization of workers to produce a tractable and cheap labor force.

Bodies and Documents: The Material Impact of Collaborative Information- Sharing Within the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

This study examines information-sharing practices within the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), focusing on the program as it is administered within Ontario. I analyze 61 documents for their content, codification of stakeholder relationships, and discourse regarding the program. Documents were selected based on their creation, use, or circulation within Ontario, and based on the likelihood that at least one stakeholder group would look to the document for (what they perceive to be) reliable information. Documents include, for example, SAWP contracts, webpages describing program requirements, and e-pamphlets on workplace safety and accessing services. Document analysis was supplemented by interviews with industry and service provider experts, which guided interpretation of documents’ significance. I argue that documents function as material actors, alongside (and sometimes beyond) human actors, and make physical impact on SAWP bodies and realities. Documents construct and uphold neoliberal structures surrounding the program by contributing to the creation and sustaining of incomplete, labour-centric individuals. Through consistent sharing of narrow, “work” information, and the rare inclusion of more well-rounded, “non-work” knowledge, documents subtly discipline the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable communication. In doing so, material actors (alongside other SAWP actors) perpetuate a foreign worker program which does not consider the varied, complex needs of whole persons but, instead, treats them as disposable labouring bodies.

El Programa de Trabajadores Agrícolas Temporales. Una visión desde la antropología del estado

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program ( SAWP ) between Mexico and Canada is part of a global strategy of labor mobility, which aims to mobilize offshore labor from the Global South in order to increase the flexibility of working conditions. The objective of the article is to analyze the power manifestations that states implement to control the SAWP workers, using data collected from a longitudinal ethnographic study conducted in Mexico and Canada. Even though there are several academic studies about the SAWP , the originality of this text resides in its theoretical approach, which is that of the Anthropology of the state. A limitation of the study resides in the general findings of the workers’ reactions in relation to such state domination, a topic which needs further analysis. As a result, we identified three main power mechanisms: the social construction of subjects, disciplining the workers and making them resposible for their conditions and the enforcement of transnational governmentality through mass media.

Sentenced for the season: Jamaican migrant farmworkers on Okanagan orchards

Despite perfunctory characterisation of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) as a ‘triple win’, scholars and activists have long admonished its lack of government oversight, disrespect for migrant rights and indentureship of foreign workers. This article contends that the SAWP is predicated upon naturalised, deeply engrained and degrading beliefs that devalue Black lives and labour. Based on twenty months’ ethnographic fieldwork in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada, it reveals the extent to which anti-Black racism permeates, organises and frustrates workers’ lives on farms and in local communities. It situates such experiences, which workers characterise as ‘prison life’, in the context of anti-Black immigration policy and the workings of racial capitalism. This ethnography of Caribbean migrants not only adds perspective to scholarship hitherto focused on the experiences of Latino workers, but it also reinforces critical work on anti-Black racism in contemporary Canada.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Structural Barriers for Migrant Agricultural Workers in Ontario

COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated many longstanding barriers and shortcomings in labour protections for migrant workers in Canada. This paper focuses on the situation of workers under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) in Ontario, demonstrating how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and greatly aggravated the already precarious conditions of migrant workers. It explores the employment, labour and immigration law frameworks that render SAWP workers particularly vulnerable to exploitation and harm, both during pandemic and non-pandemic times. While some government policy and legislative responses have sought to respond to the increased vulnerability of migrant agricultural workers to the virus, fundamental changes in both the immigration and labour spheres are necessary to fix the structural causes of migrant agricultural workers’ vulnerability. This paper suggest that the pandemic has created not only an unprecedented urgency for systemic change, but also an unprecedented opportunity. Given the current broad shifts in public ideas about employment, health, and vulnerability, as well as mainstream public attention to the plight of migrant farm workers, I suggest that there is now an unprecedented space in Canadian public policy discourse to advance the urgently needed structural changes to protect the rights of migrant farm workers.