Document Details

2004

Kerry Preibisch

Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

29

Introduction

Foreign migrant workers have been employed in Canadian agriculture

under temporary work visas since the 1960s, first from the Caribbean (starting in 1966) and later from Mexico (starting in 1974). Over the last four decades, they have represented a growing share of the agricultural labour supply. While the first cohort of workers employed under the Caribbean and Mexican Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (C/MSAWP) numbered a mere 264, by 2002 over 15,000 foreign workers were employed in the province of Ontario and an additional 3,000 were located in other parts of the country. Although the C/MSAWP is referred to as a seasonal, temporary work program, closer examination yields a different picture. Migrant agricultural workers are present in the country from early January to mid-December and individual contracts may last up to eight months. Not only do some workers spend a large part of the year away from their families, many have spent the better part of their working lives in the C/MSAWP, with employment trajectories in Canada that span decades. Furthermore, although migrant workers initially came to work in fruit orchards and tobacco fields in the southernmost part of Ontario, they are now spatially distributed more extensively and are employed in a greater number of production processes including food processing, floriculture, and ginseng operations. Over the last four decades, foreign agricultural workers have come to assume a greater profile, not only in the production of food and agricultural products but in the social fabric of rural Ontario.

In the last 15 years, a small but growing body of research has emerged that documents the phenomenon of temporary, managed migration to Canadian agriculture and links it to broader debates in migration and development studies. This growing literature, however, has neglected to study the social and economic changes in Canadian rural communities that have accompanied the agricultural sector's growing reliance on foreign workers. The ties between the migrant and settled community--or lack thereof--have not been examined in depth. Apart from Cecil and Ebanks' (1991) research in the late 1980s, questions of social exclusion and the overall relations between migrant workers and rural communities have been raised only tangentially relative to other concerns regarding migrant agricultural workers in Canada. This article begins to fill that gap. Based on extensive qualitative research conducted in 2002, I address the ties that have developed between non-citizen migrant agricultural workers and civil society in rural Canada, specifically in Ontario. The article confirms that the integration of migrant workers as a social group into the broader Canadian community continues to be characterized by social exclusion. I argue, however, that the nature of relationships between the migrant and permanent communities is undergoing small but perceptible transformations through the development of personal ties as well as the emergence of non-state actors who have become increasingly relevant in ensuring that migrant agricultural workers' rights are respected and who pressure the state to extend these rights. Through these discussions, I address a number of issues related to citizenship and other relations of social difference, as well as questions of social exclusion and social inclusion. The empirical findings and analysis presented here also make contributions to the growing literature on globalization, migration, citizenship, civil society, and transnational practices.

Foreign Agricultural Workers in Canada

Temporary workers are granted temporary employment authorization under the C/MSAWP, a migrant farm worker program administered by the Canadian government. The C/MSAWP has been in existence for 38 years, beginning operation in 1966 with an international agreement between Jamaica and Canada. Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados became participants a year later. In 1974, the program was extended to Mexico and in 1976 to the Organization of East Caribbean States. Approximately 85% of workers entering Canada as part of the program are employed in Ontario; the rest are mainly employed in rural Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta, and Nova Scotia. In 2002, Ontario employers--approximately 1,600 in number--employed close to 15,000 workers (Foreign Agricultural Resources Management Services 2003a).

The institutional framework of the C/MSAWP is managed and implemented on three levels (Verma 2004). At the federal level, the C/ MSAWP is carried out within the framework of the Immigration Refugee and Protection Act and Regulations and a labour market policy premised on the "Canadians First Policy," whereby Canadian citizens and permanent residents are to be considered for employment prior to the hiring of foreign workers. At the provincial level, the C/MSAWP is governed by statutes relating to employment standards, labour, and health. Finally, the program is also implemented within bilateral frameworks of agreement between Canada and the labour source countries formalized in Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) and employment contracts between employers, migrant agricultural workers, and the government agents of the supply country (Verma 2004).

The C/MSAWP can be considered as a government-to-government program of managed migration (Aceytuno and Greenhill 1999), involving both public and private actors in Canada and the labour supply countries. In Canada, the principal government agency involved in the C/MSAWP is Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC). Day-to-day administration in Ontario is carried out by a private sector non-profit organization, Foreign Agricultural Resources Management Services (F.A.R.M.S.), which was federally incorporated in 1987 in an attempt to transfer some of the costs associated with the program to the industry. A similar organization, F.E.R.M.E., operates in Quebec. The board of directors of F.A.R.M.S. is composed of employers of migrant agricultural workers and is funded by user fees. Labour supply country governments shoulder a significant share of the administrative burden and contribute in key ways to the effective functioning of the program, including managing the recruitment of all workers. Labour supply countries also have offices in Canada (mainly Toronto) where officials--liaison officers in the case of the Caribbean or consular staff in the case of Mexico--act as worker representatives. A higher level of state involvement in regulating the C/MSAWP distinguishes it from the agricultural guest worker program in the United States (the H2A program), in which private agents control recruitment (Griffith 2004).

Although each MOU is slightly different, the minimum contract offered to workers must be for at least 240 hours in six weeks or less. The average length of stay for Caribbean and Mexican workers in 2001 was 17 and 21 weeks respectively, although some workers are employed for up to eight months (F.A.R.M.S. 2002). Visa restrictions bind workers under the C/MSAWP to a single employer and residential location, but workers can be transferred to another employer with the approval of Canadian government representatives and the worker's consent. While the first foreign workers under the C/MSAWP were employed in the harvesting of tender fruit and tobacco, by 2003 a number of other operations had been approved to request migrant agricultural workers, namely apples, canning/food processing, flowers, fruit, greenhouse, nursery, tobacco, vegetables, and ginseng.

In the last 15 years, a small but growing amount of research has emerged that has made important gains in documenting the phenomenon of temporary, managed migration to Canadian agriculture and linking it to broader debates in migration and development studies. Initial studies analyzed the use of Mexican and Caribbean farm labour in Canada from a critical historical perspective, examining the role of race and ethnicity in immigration policy and labour relations (Satzewich 1991; Wall 1992). More recent studies have concentrated on the limited rights of migrant workers and documented their working and living conditions (Basok 2002; Colby 1997; Preibisch 2000; Smart 1998). Much of the theoretical work has posited the C/MSAWP as illustrative of the "unfree" labour relations extant in modern capitalist economies (Basok 1999, 2002; Bolaria 1992; Satzewich 1991; Wall 1992). These authors, while acknowledging migrant agricultural workers as a low-wage workforce, contend that it is their lack of freedom and powerlessness that make them particularly valuable to capitalist accumulation (Basok 2002; Bolaria 1992; Sharma 2001). In addition to documenting forms of coercion, researchers focusing on both Jamaican (Knowles 1997) and Mexican (Basok 2002) workers have argued that these workers accept their conditions of employment in part because their economic necessity and limited chances of social mobility demands it of them. Some studies within the emergent literature have also focused on conditions in the labour sending countries, providing a richer understanding of the social composition of the migrant workforce and the economic and social motivations that compels its members to seek transnational livelihoods (Basok 2002; Binford 2002; Preibisch 2000). Several scholars have also explored the obstacles to the productive investment of remittances or technology transfer within migrants' home communities (Basok 2000; Colby 1997; Ganaselall 1992).

Questions of social exclusion and the overall relations between migrant workers and rural communities have not been a significant focus of research on the C/MSAWP. The exception to this general trend is Cecil and Ebanks' (1991) research conducted in the late 1980s in Southwestern Ontario. Their research team interviewed 300 workers and used ethnographic data to explore the human condition of migrant workers both on farms and in rural communities. Their research found some hostility toward migrant workers but mostly ignorant indifference towards the migrant community. They claim that the "influx of thousands of black workers into white rural areas has created a new dimension to the human geography of Southwestern Ontario," but contend that migrant workers are socially excluded from the rural communities in which they reside (Cecil and Ebanks 1991, 389).

Basok's (2002) recent research on Mexican workers in Leamington, Ontario, describes the migrant population as a marked presence in the social geography. She writes, "the Mexican invasion of the local supermarket has become a part of the social landscape, as has the image of Mexican men …

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Agriculture and horticulture workers, General farm workers, and Harvesting labourers

Researchers

México, Regional relevance, and National relevance

Sociology

English