scholarly journals Plus ça Change? – A Comparative Analysis of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program and the Pilot Foreign Worker Program for Farm Workers in Quebec

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia J Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Foreign Worker ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Agricultural Workers ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

For the last 40 years, migrant farm workers from the Caribbean and Mexico have been recruited to work temporarily on Canadian farms under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). In 2002, the pilot Foreign Worker Program (FWP) for low skilled migrant workers was initiated in the province of Quebec and under this program began the recruitment of Guatemalan migrant farm workers. Since the program's start, the number of Guatemalan migrants has nearly tripled and there seems to be a decline in the number of workers hired under the SAWP in Quebec. This paper examines the FWP's development, set-up, consequences and operation alongside the SAWP and shows how the Canadian state is expanding the number of flexibility and temporary worker programs. This paper draws attention to the neo-liberal context of migrant farm labour in Canada, pointing to the ways in which Canada's federal policies governing seasonal agricultural migrants and athe agricultural labour market are exploitative and racist.

scholarly journals Plus ça Change? – A Comparative Analysis of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program and the Pilot Foreign Worker Program for Farm Workers in Quebec

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia J Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Foreign Worker ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Agricultural Workers ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

For the last 40 years, migrant farm workers from the Caribbean and Mexico have been recruited to work temporarily on Canadian farms under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). In 2002, the pilot Foreign Worker Program (FWP) for low skilled migrant workers was initiated in the province of Quebec and under this program began the recruitment of Guatemalan migrant farm workers. Since the program's start, the number of Guatemalan migrants has nearly tripled and there seems to be a decline in the number of workers hired under the SAWP in Quebec. This paper examines the FWP's development, set-up, consequences and operation alongside the SAWP and shows how the Canadian state is expanding the number of flexibility and temporary worker programs. This paper draws attention to the neo-liberal context of migrant farm labour in Canada, pointing to the ways in which Canada's federal policies governing seasonal agricultural migrants and athe agricultural labour market are exploitative and racist.

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

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa James
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Agricultural Workers ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers ◽  
Canadian Public Policy ◽  
Migrant Farm

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.

scholarly journals Cosmopolitan county: migrant farm workers' impact on the agricultural community of Leamington

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
Essex County ◽  
Agricultural Community ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

Migrant farm workers are behind-the-scenes backbone of Canada's agricultural economy. Despite their significant role within the food production industry, the outer public is typically unfamiliar with their contributions, experiences, and even their presence in Canada. Many researchers agree that workers arriving through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program hold a precarious status, primarily due to the invisibility of their plight to the rest of Canada. In Leamington, Ontario, large-scale greenhouse operations call for thousands of workers from Mexico and the Caribbean to grow vegetables year-round. This study sought to gain an understanding of the relationship between migrant workers and community members by surveying and interviewing Leamington residents. While worker visibility and local familiarity with the presence of migrant workers is heightened in the Essex County region, the quality of social interactions was found to be severely limited. The implications were found to involve social marginalization, culture clash, and racial stereotyping.

scholarly journals Cosmopolitan county: migrant farm workers' impact on the agricultural community of Leamington

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
Essex County ◽  
Agricultural Community ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

Migrant farm workers are behind-the-scenes backbone of Canada's agricultural economy. Despite their significant role within the food production industry, the outer public is typically unfamiliar with their contributions, experiences, and even their presence in Canada. Many researchers agree that workers arriving through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program hold a precarious status, primarily due to the invisibility of their plight to the rest of Canada. In Leamington, Ontario, large-scale greenhouse operations call for thousands of workers from Mexico and the Caribbean to grow vegetables year-round. This study sought to gain an understanding of the relationship between migrant workers and community members by surveying and interviewing Leamington residents. While worker visibility and local familiarity with the presence of migrant workers is heightened in the Essex County region, the quality of social interactions was found to be severely limited. The implications were found to involve social marginalization, culture clash, and racial stereotyping.

scholarly journals A food policy for Canada, but not just for Canadians: Reaping justice for migrant farm workers

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-284
Author(s):  
Anelyse M. Weiler
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Foreign Worker ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Permanent Resident ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
Core Features

In this policy commentary, I highlight opportunities to advance equity and dignity for racialized migrant workers from less affluent countries who are hired through low-wage agricultural streams of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Core features of the program such as 'tied' work permits, non-citizenship, and workers' deportability make it risky for migrant farm workers to exercise their rights. I discuss five federal policy interventions to strengthen justice for migrant farm workers in Canada: 1) permanent resident status; 2) equal access to social protections; 3) open work permits; 4) democratic business ownership; and 5) trade policy that respects community self-determination. To realize a food system that enables health, freedom and dignity for all members of our communities, a Food Policy for Canada cannot be for Canadians alone.

"No Somos La Migra": The Challenges of Research Among Stationary Mexican Farmworkers in the Northeastern United States

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Duke ◽  
Claudia Santelices ◽  
Anna Nicolaysen ◽  
Merrill Singer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Northeastern United States ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
Precarious Situation

Engaging migrant farm workers in outreach, whether for social services or as participants in research projects, is particularly difficult. As a transient, semi-skilled, and largely undocumented workforce, migrant workers are understandably reluctant to engage with anyone whom they feel may jeopardize their already precarious situation. However, engaging with non-migrant farm workers presents its own unique challenges as well.

scholarly journals Evelyn Encalada Grez in Conversation with Marlea Clarke

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
Encalada Grez Evelyn
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Central American ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Founding Member ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Rural Mexico ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
The University

Evelyn is a community organiser and a PhD candidate at OISE of the  University of Toronto. Her dissertation focuses on migrant work across rural Ontario and Rural Mexico. Born in Chile, raised in Canada, Evelyn has worked in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras with the Central American Network in Solidarity with Women Maquila Workers and with the Workers Support Centre in Puebla, Mexico. Evelyn is a founding member of Justice for Migrant Workers, a political collective that has fought for the rights of migrant farm workers in Canada since 2001

scholarly journals Food Security and Obesity among Mexican Agricultural Migrant Workers

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (21) ◽  
pp. 4171 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Castañeda ◽  
Graciela Caire-Juvera ◽  
Sergio Sandoval ◽  
Pedro Alejandro Castañeda ◽  
Alma Delia Contreras ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Obesity Prevalence ◽  
Double Burden ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
The Relationship

Mexican migrant farm workers are one of the poorest and most marginalized social groups within the country. They face the double burden of malnutrition, food insecurity, as well as harsh living and labor conditions. Objective: To examine the relationship between household food insecurity (HFI) and obesity in a population of migrant farm workers in highly modernized agribusiness areas of Northwest Mexico. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study with a concentric (site) (n = 146 households) and systematic selection of participants (adult men and women). Methods included questionnaires regarding socio-demographic characteristics, food security, diet (two non-consecutive 24-h recalls), and physical activity (PA). Anthropometric data included height, weight, and waist circumference. Data analysis covered descriptive statistics, multivariate linear and logistic regression. Results: Sample showed 75% prevalence of overweight and obesity, while 87% of households reported some level of HFI. Mild HFI resulted in five times more probability of farm workers’ obesity (OR = 5.18, 95% CI: 1.37–19.58). However, there was a protective effect of HFI for obesity among men (OR 0.089, 95% CI: 0.01–0.58) in a context of intense labor-related PA. Conclusion: There is a difference by gender in the relationship of HFI with obesity prevalence related perhaps to the energy expenditure of male agricultural migrant workers.

scholarly journals Play-making with migrant farm workers in Ontario, Canada: a kinesthetic and embodied approach to qualitative research

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 689-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Adam Perry
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Migrant Farm Workers ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Seasonal Agricultural Workers ◽  
Migrant Farm ◽  
Ways Of Being

This article is a reflection on the use of theatre creation in qualitative research with migrant farm workers in Ontario, Canada. In this article I examine how the fundamentally embodied and kinesthetic dimensions of seasonal agricultural workers’ lives in Canada highlight the need to seek out and develop corresponding embodied approaches that are able to access and accurately represent the fraught and dynamic nature of workers’ experiences. I bring together ideas from both arts-informed research and participatory action research, and I examine how engaging research participants directly in collective theatre creation can effectively disrupt accepted ways of being and offer an important intervention on worker habitus. I reflect on how through incorporating an element of play-creation in the qualitative research process, I was able to a) access forms of knowledge that may otherwise have remained tacit and b) offer a disruption of the norms of isolation and antagonism endemic to daily life in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. This article contributes to debates concerning the role of the arts in qualitative and action research, as well as to those researchers who are seeking innovative ways of designing and implementing qualitative research in the areas of precarious work and citizenship.

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