Discourse of Foreign Farmworkers

In 1995, the Ontario provincial government, under conservative premier Mike Harris, repealed legislation put in place the year before by the former central-left government of Bob Rae that protected Ontario’s agricultural workers under the province’s labor code. Migrant workers were also affected by this legislation. In late April 2001, Mexican workers staged a two-day strike in a Leamington greenhouse, and in May 2001, approximately 100 Mexican offshore farmworkers protested in Leamington against substandard working and living conditions, including the lack of safety protection against pesticides, overcrowded living spaces, long working hours, no overtime pay, insufficient medical care, unfair government paycheck deductions, and threats of deportation to their home countries. After these events, some of the protesters were dismissed from the offshore program and sent back to Mexico. The media reports on these protests varied widely. Reports were either sympathetic to the workers’ concerns, or they condemned the protests as unjustified nagging by a small minority of angry workers. Several of the newspaper reports that were sympathetic to the protesting workers (e.g., Kitchener-Waterloo [Ontario] Record 2001; St. Catharines [Ontario] Standard 2001) presented the same quote from an anonymous migrant worker who criticizes the unfair treatment of foreign migrant workers by Canadian employers: “What I’ve realized here in Canada is that employers don’t hire us as human beings. They think we’re animals. . . . The first threat that they always make is that if you don’t like it, you can go back to Mexico.” In a report about the same protests, the Windsor (Ontario) Star quoted farmworkers who articulated similar concerns: “‘Growers don’t care whether you’re injured or not, they only care when you’re healthy,’” and “[the grower] said, ‘If you don’t work faster, you’ll be sent back to Mexico’” (Welch 2001). Other articles gave the events a different spin. A fact-finding mission after the protests uncovered that only a few migrant workers filed formal complaints against their employers. The lack of complaints was interpreted as assurance that workers were satisfied with their employment circumstances.

Cultural Judgments

No one would seriously argue that South Asian men drive taxis because of their navigational superiority or that South Asian women are preternaturally inclined to sew. However, cultural representations of a more subtle nature are a common ideological tool to organize the labor market and match immigrants with particular jobs. Stereotypical perceptions of the cultural characteristics of immigrant workers can typecast immigrants into certain occupations. Yet, cultural labor market processes typically involve more than stereotypes. They include processes of social and cultural distinction aimed at reproducing prevailing labor market structures. In other words, the subordination of immigrants in the labor market elevates nonimmigrants into a position of relative superiority. Cultural judgments differ from the processes involving norms and conventions discussed in the previous chapter. The latter relate to internal, group-particular structures of engagement and prioritization that guide the behavior of immigrants. The former, on the other hand, involve the external representation of immigrants by nonimmigrants. Though conceptually distinct, the two processes are related in the manner in which they occur in the everyday. Group-particular norms and conventions often provide the basis for critical judgment by people outside the group. Emphasizing processes of cultural judgment links the segmentation of immigrant labor to the forces of social reproduction. It does not simply attribute segmentation to the characteristics of immigrants themselves. The focus in this chapter is on representation of embodied cultural markers and performances, such as clothing and speech patterns. I use the example of South Asian immigrants to examine how exactly these characteristics relate to the segmentation of immigrant labor. The human body can be seen “as a surface of inscription” (McDowell and Sharpe 1997: 3) that is subject to the reading and interpretation of employers and other labor market actors. It creates distinct labor market identities for South Asian immigrants that imply a special suitability for certain occupations. For example, one respondent remarked that the concierge of the office building in which she worked as a consultant asked her to sign the janitor’s book every day. Office workers are usually not asked to sign this book.

Farmfare

In the summer of 1999, the provincial government of Ontario proposed to make Canadian welfare recipients work as seasonal labor in the horticulture sector. This idea came to be known as farmfare. Farmfare was not an entirely new idea. In 1971, Canada’s Parliament debated this topic under the rubric “Manpower: Use of Unemployed and Students Instead of West Indians to Pick Fruit.” Pierre Elliot Trudeau, then prime minister of Canada, defended the offshore program as necessary to fill jobs “which the unemployed and the students refuse to do” (quoted in Sharma 2001: 432). In August 1999, with neoliberalism at the top of the provincial policy agendas, the idea was floated again by a conservative member of the provincial parliament, Toni Skarica. This time, farmfare was not presented as an employment opportunity for desperate workers but as a disincentive to sign up for welfare. Ontario premier Mike Harris added momentum to the debate by raising the issue to reporters. Harris suggested that manual labor on Ontario’s farms could change the supposedly negative attitudes toward work among welfare recipients: “Getting up in the morning, getting regular, managing your time, getting out and doing things, feeling good about producing something, doing some work, they are all important . . . to help break that cycle of dependency” (quoted in Ibbitson 1999: A12). He also suggested that farmfare could help Ontario’s agricultural industries to deal with seasonal labor shortages (Gray 1999). In September 1999, Ontario’s Social Service Department confirmed that farmfare could be justified under Ontario’s workfare requirement that “able-bodied” welfare recipients should either train or work or lose their benefits. These were harsh words and tough measures proposed by the provincial government. Little wonder that farmfare generated fierce debate over the merits and potential consequences of such a program. Social advocacy groups, such as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, labor unions, and churches, including the United Church of Canada, mobilized opposition against farmfare. The United Farm Workers initiated a petition against the implementation of farmfare, which opposition politicians presented on several occasions to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

Between Support and Exclusion

In North America, the value of the ethnic community is deeply ingrained in national mythology. Ethnic communities supposedly enable immigrants to move from rags to riches, from dishwasher to millionaire. Neither John F. Kennedy nor Al Capone would have risen to the top of their trades without the support of their Irish and Italian communities, which endowed these figures with the best and the worst cultural qualities. In recent decades, however, a counternarrative involving ethnic communities has also appeared in popular mythology. African Americans and Latino communities supposedly keep their members from absorbing the virtues of mainstream society, infecting their members with a culture of despair. The causal link between ethnic community and success or failure seems unquestioned—although the exact processes that supposedly render members of ethnic and immigrant communities inferior remain unsubstantiated. In the labor market, ethnic communities can create opportunities and facilitate segmentation and subordination. For example, information about employment opportunities often travels through ethnic networks and among family members. These opportunities can lead to a comfortable job in corporate banking or to underpaid employment as a maid or a helper in a corner store. Some entrepreneurs may, in fact, recruit workers through ethnic and immigrant networks because community and family linkages result in a particularly vulnerable, yet disciplined, labor force. Whereas the previous two chapters focused on legal and institutional mechanisms of exclusion, the current chapter brings the discussion back to informal processes of distinction and exclusion. As in Vancouver, these less tangible, informal processes operate in Berlin, and they complement legal and institutional processes of subordination that affect immigrant labor. Informal processes of distinction and exclusion affect, in particular, those immigrants who escape legal exclusion because they possess citizenship, such as Spätaussiedler, or they have acquired economic and social rights by living and working in Germany for decades, such as Turkish immigrants. I illustrated in part II how exclusionary processes associated with habitus and embodied cultural capital operate. In this chapter, I focus on social networks, the ethnic economy, and residential immigrant concentration. The North American literature has demonstrated that social networks are of critical importance to the economic well-being of some immigrant groups.

Capital and Distinction

Early approaches to labor market segmentation focused on either demand- or supply-side processes (e.g., Ashton and Maguire 1984; Gordon et al. 1982; Reich et al. 1973). Work and social reproduction, however, are not independent spheres of human life and should not be separated into independent analytical categories. Recent scholarship on the segmentation of immigrant labor has begun treating labor markets as a multidimensional process involving the interaction of economic, social, and cultural practices. Michael Samers (1998), for example, has shown in his research that labor demand, citizenship, and policies on immigration and education are interlocking components of the segmentation of labor. In this chapter, I show how Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas of capital and habitus can be applied to the structuring of labor markets. Because labor markets are socially regulated, social theories, such as those developed by Bourdieu, can help us understand the relationship between migration and the labor market. Bourdieu’s ideas contribute an important cultural perspective to this relationship. My aim in this chapter is thus to present a coherent outline of this cultural perspective. The work of Pierre Bourdieu has been enormously influential in the social sciences over the past decades. His ideas have found widespread application in almost every research topic imaginable. Bourdieu’s own career stretched over several decades, beginning with early research in Algeria in the 1950s and ending with his death in January 2002. It would be impossible to give a full account of his work in this chapter. I therefore limit my discussion to his treatment of habitus and capital, extending the notion of capital to the context of citizenship. Although I already discussed citizenship at some length in the previous chapter, this discussion stopped short of revealing how citizenship can act as a form of capital that complements other types of capital. For Bourdieu, capital is about social reproduction. In this respect, citizenship and other social and cultural processes of distinction—as practices of social reproduction—link to international migration and the social regulation of labor markets. The chapter is organized into four sections.

International Segmentation of Labor

The relationship between migration and labor markets can be approached from different conceptual and philosophical angles. In this chapter, I draw on labor market segmentation theory to examine how the international mobility of workers interlinks with the international segmentation of labor. In addition, I highlight two aspects of this relationship that have been sidelined in the existing literature but that are important to understanding how this relationship works. The first aspect is the notion of citizenship. Although this notion has received considerable attention in the social sciences in recent years, it has been neglected as a driving force of the segmentation of labor. The second aspect is the cultural representation of migrating populations and workers, which contributes vitally to the regulation of labor markets. The structure of this chapter follows the intention to convey a particular theoretical perspective and to highlight particular aspects of this perspective. First, I present segmentation theory as an entry point into a discussion of the relationship between international migration and labor market regulation. Second, I introduce the notion of citizenship to this discussion. Third, I present cultural representations as critical components in the international segmentation of labor markets. To explain labor market segmentation theory one may begin with Karl Marx. Marx ([1867] 2001) called labor “variable capital” and the means of production “constant capital.” Labor is variable because workers can be hired and fired in response to business and seasonal cycles. The means of production, on the other hand, are constant because they constitute a fixed investment and stay idle in periods of economic slowdown. Segmentation theory begins with the premise that the idleness of machinery and other fixed investments can be prevented or reduced by dividing production into two distinct segments. The primary segment is capital-intensive; high levels of technology ensure the efficient use of the workforce. In times of economic contraction, this primary sector keeps operating to satisfy the basic demand that still exists for products. The secondary segment, on the other hand, is labor-intensive, with only minimal investments in machinery and technology.

Conclusion: Labor, Migration, and Action

Social, cultural, and legal practices associated with international migration are integral elements of a wider neoliberal regime of accumulation. Neoliberalism, however, is not a monolithic configuration. It evolved through a history and geography of experimentation (Peck 2004) and exists in a variety of forms. Likewise, the manner in which international migration regulates labor markets does not follow a prewritten, universal script but evolves in a place- and contextspecific manner. Formal citizenship, for example, is a powerful category to control migrant labor in many countries. In Canada, however, foreign immigrants and citizens have similar labor market rights, and in Germany long-term foreign residents acquire postnational rights, which put newcomers on more or less equal legal footing with nonmigrants. When citizenship fails to distinguish between migrant and nonmigrant workers, then other mechanisms of distinction, including various forms of cultural and social capital, assume more prominent roles. The case studies presented in this book show how these legal, social, and cultural processes of distinguishing and controlling international migrants regulate labor markets. Cultural representation is a critical process in maintaining, enforcing, and advancing this aspect of the neoliberal project. A particularly powerful discursive strategy is the representation of migrant labor as essential for production and economic well-being and, at the same time, the vilification of migrant workers as outsiders, parasites, and threats to local and national communities. Although I limited my empirical investigation to a few case studies, similar representations of migrant workers likely exist in Australia, throughout Europe, in the United States, and in other migrant-receiving industrialized countries. In recent years, cultural representations of migrants have been tied to the so-called war on terrorism, which constructs international migrants as a particularly deadly population. Exploiting the fears of terror, restrictive and oppressive policies and practices toward international migrants have gone far beyond genuine efforts to filter out traveling suicide assassins (Wright 2003). The strategic incorporation of new narratives into discourses of migration and the appropriation of relatively unrelated but highly visible events such as the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York illustrate the systematic, if not deliberate, nature of representation.

Landscape and Scale

That the offshore program has remained in place for decades and public outcry against it has been minimal is partly the achievement of a carefully spun discourse of foreign farm labor, as we saw in the previous chapter. In this chapter, I examine how this discourse makes use of several strategies. First, it situates the foreign migrant workers in the context of the familiar landscape of rural Ontario. Second, it frames the representation of offshore labor in dualisms of belonging and nonbelonging. Third, it associates various dualisms with different geographical scales. These scale-particular representations enable seemingly contradictory narratives to coexist. However, in the context of the wider discourse, geographical scales and associated dualisms interlock in a manner that situates seasonal migrant labor in subordinate economic and marginal social roles. It is still common among scholars to use essentialized ethnic categories to assess rural landscapes and examine social relationships in agricultural production. In view of such scholarly practices, it is particularly important to expose the ideological underpinnings of landscape representation. Geography has offered many approaches, associated with different traditions of scholarship, to the study of landscape. These approaches variously treat landscape as an expression of rural lifestyle, a manifestation of everyday social space, a material reflection of social relations, and an ideology. I assume the fourth perspective on landscape, which George L. Henderson (2003) also describes as “apocryphal” landscape because it reveals, not authentic social relations, but ideological ways of seeing. When Stephen Daniels and Denis Cosgrove (1988: 1) say, “A landscape is a cultural image,” they refer to the ideological representation of people and objects through landscape. According to this approach to landscape, the manner in which people are situated and represented in landscape can reveal ideologies of subordination and exclusion. For example, the portrayal of Gypsies as uncivilized, dirty, and a “polluting presence” in the English countryside reflects “the assumption that the countryside belongs to the privileged” (Sibley 1995: 107). In this context, landscape is the discursive construction of “a stereotyped pure space which cannot accommodate difference” (108).

Devalued Germans

Despite the privilege of German citizenship, Spätaussiedler experience difficulties in the German labor market. Unemployment tends to be high, and many of those who are employed fill positions in the secondary segment of the labor market. A problem for many Spätaussiedler is that their former occupations do not exist or are not in demand in Germany. Tractor operators, technicians in the oil industry, and coal miners from the former Soviet Union have difficulty finding employment in their fields, particularly in Berlin. Other Spätaussiedler still work in their general field, but below their original qualifications. Of these, many are denied work in their former occupations because their foreign occupational and educational credentials are not recognized by German authorities and employers. Government efforts to streamline the transferability of foreign credentials have concentrated on countries within the European Union (Schneider 1995); however, Spätaussiedler from the territory of the former Soviet Union do not benefit from these efforts. Although, as German citizens, they are legally entitled to credential assessment, exclusionary practices in the credential assessment and recognition process still make it difficult for Spätaussiedler to obtain work in the upper labor market segment. These immigrants fall victim to a double standard that values domestic and foreign credentials differently. The nonrecognition of foreign credentials as a mechanism of labor devaluation is not unusual in countries that receive large numbers of immigrants, as illustrated in chapter 5 in the case of immigrants in Vancouver. In Germany, Spätaussiedler present an interesting group because they enjoy citizenship rights and privileges unavailable to other immigrant groups. They receive full legal labor market access, economic integration assistance, the right to credential assessment, privileged treatment by labor market institutions, and, unlike foreigners and naturalized migrants, they are able to use their foreign qualifications to establish small businesses and offer vocational apprenticeships. In some instances, Spätaussiedler even receive preferential treatment relative to other Germans, for example, when applying for small business loans (Juris 2003, BFVG §14). In light of these privileges, labor devaluation through legal exclusion is apparently not an issue for Spätaussiedler.

Citizenship and Legal Classification

“Tell me under which paragraph you arrive, and I’ll tell you who you are!” These words explain how a community worker who helps immigrants settle in one of Berlin’s eastern suburbs assesses the issues confronting her newly arriving clients. Legal status categories are a defining factor in the eligibility for services and access to employment. This interviewee’s clients, all Spätaussiedler, are admitted to Germany under different paragraphs of German law. Paragraph 4 (of the Bundesvertriebenengesetz) indicates to the community worker that immigrants are eligible for the formal recognition of their foreign work experience; paragraph 7 (of the Staatangehörigkeitsgesetz) signifies that the immigrant is an immediate relative of a paragraph 4 Spätaussiedler and is entitled to government- sponsored language training but ineligible for recognition of work experience; and paragraph 8 (of the Bundesvertriebenengesetz) defines other family members who are not eligible for either the recognition of their work experience nor language training and are essentially treated as foreigners. This example illustrates how immigrants are being legally classified, permitting their differential treatment. Legal criteria slot immigrants into a hierarchy of status categories that not only provide different levels of access to services but also determine the level of access to the labor market. Although one could debate the underlying philosophical legitimacy of classifying immigrants in this manner, a political economy perspective sheds a revealing light on the function of this particular immigration scheme. Workers in each status category fulfill distinct roles in the German labor market. The web of legal definitions and policies for immigrants is thus an important component in the regulation of the German labor market. Germany has long maintained stringent regulations that limit labor market access to immigrants. Citizenship has been a particularly useful mechanism for dividing the immigrant population, generating a hierarchy of administrative categories and creating different labor market circumstances for each category. Germany not only distinguishes between Germans and non-Germans, but it also differentiates between Aussiedler and Spätaussiedler, European Union nationals, and immigrants of other nationalities. It imposes different sets of regulations on each of these groups.