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Journal article

Blacklisting as a modality of deportability: Mexico's response to circular migrant agricultural workers' pursuit of collective bargaining rights in British Columbia, Canada

Date

2015

Authors

Andrew Geddes, Andrew Taylor , and Leah Vosko

Abstract

This article illustrates how blacklisting can function as a modality of deportability among temporary migrant workers participating in a programme touted as a model of ordered migration internationally, with attention to sending state action. In 2010, Local 1518 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union applied successfully to British Columbia's Labour Relations Board to represent a group of circular migrants engaged under Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programme. Yet less than a year later, the union complained of unfair labour practices on the part of not only the host state employer and certain employees but sending state officials who select and assign workers to Canadian employers, contending that they blocked the visa reapplications of union members eligible for recall and improperly interfered in a decertification application. On account of the unique empirics available through this case, its analysis offers a window into practices which are routinely obscured but nevertheless central to how deportability operates.

Journal title

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Volume

41

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

File Attachments

Links

Keywords

foreign workers, temporary migration, labour rights, collective bargaining, Deportability, blacklisting, sending states

Economic sectors

Agriculture and horticulture workers and Harvesting labourers

Content types

Systemic/state violation of right/freedom

Target groups

(Im)migrants workers

Geographical focuses

British Columbia

Spheres of activity

Agriculture

Languages

English