Borders and boundaries in the lives of migrant agricultural workers: Towards a more equitable health services approach.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/2291-5796.69Keywords:
borders, marginalization, migrant agricultural workers, Seasonal agricultural workers program, healthcare accessAbstract
In 2018, over 70% of the 69,775 temporary migrant agricultural labourers arriving in Canada participated in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Despite having legal status in Canada, these individuals are often systematically excluded from community life and face barriers when accessing health and social services. SAWP workers’ exclusion from many public spaces and their incomplete access to the benefits of Canadian citizenship or residency provide us a unique opportunity to examine social and political mechanisms that construct (in)eligibility for health and protection in society. As individuals seeking to care for the sick and most marginalized, it is important for nurses to understand how migrant agricultural workers are positioned and imagined in society. We argue that the structural exclusion faced by this population can be uncovered by examining (1) border politics that inscribe inferior status onto migrant agricultural workers (2) nation-state borders that promote racialized surveillance and; (3) everyday normalization of exclusionary public service practices. We discuss how awareness of these contextual factors can be mobilized by nurses to work towards a more equitable health services approach for this population.
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References
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Horgan, M., and Liinamaa, S. (2017) ‘The social quarantining of migrant labour: Everyday effects of temporary foreign worker regulation in Canada’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43/5: 713–730.
Houssay-Holzschuch, M., and Teppo, A. (2009) ‘A mall for all? Race and Public Space in Post-Apartheid Cape Town’, Cultural Geographies, 16/3: 351–379.
Inouye, K. (2012) ‘Conditional love; representations of migrant work in Canadian newsprint media’, Social Identities, 18/5: 573–592.
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Moyce, S. C., and Schenker, M. (2018) ‘Migrant workers and their occupational health and safety’, Annual Review of Public Health, 39/1: 351–365.
Orkin, A., Lay, M., McLaughlin, J., Schwandt, M., and Cole, D. (2014) ‘Medical repatriation of migrant farm workers in Ontario: A descriptive analysis’, CMAJ Open, 2/3: 192–198.
Perry, J. A. (2018) ‘Living at work and intra-worker sociality among migrant farm workers in Canada’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 19/4: 1021–1036.
Preibisch, K. (2004) ‘Migrant agricultural workers and processes of social inclusion in rural Canada: Encuentros and desencuentros’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 29/57–58: 203–239.
Reid-Musson, E. (2017) ‘Grown close to homeTM: Migrant farmworker (Im)mobilities and unfreedom on Canadian family farms’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107/3: 716–730.
Robillard, C., McLaughlin, J., Cole, D., Vasilevska, B., and Gendron, R. (2018) ‘“Caught in the same webs”—Service providers’ insights on gender-based and structural violence among female temporary foreign workers in Canada’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 19/3: 583–606.
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Schmidt, S. (2013) ‘Claiming our turf: Students’ civic negotiation of the public space of school’, Theory and Research in Social Education, 41/4, 535–551.
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Springer, S. (2011) ‘Public space as emancipation: Meditations on anarchism, radical democracy, neoliberalism and violence’, Antipode, 43/2: 525–562.
Sthankiya, A. (2015) ‘Kelowna Media and RCMP Actions Called “Overtly Racist” by Coalition Group’, Kelowna Now. <https://www.kelownanow.com/watercooler/news/news/Kelowna/15/07/27/Kelowna_Media_and_RCMP_Actions_Called_Overtly_Racist_by_Coalition_Group/#fs_74101> accessed 5 June 2019.
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Walia, H. (2013) Undoing Border Imperialism. Oakland, CA and Washington, D.C.: AK Press ; Institute for Anarchist Studies.
Warner, M. (2002) Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.
Aguiar, L., Tomic, P., and Trumper, R. (2011) ‘Mexican migrant agricultural workers and accommodations on farms in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia’, Metropolis BC Working Paper No. 11–04.
Anderson, B., Sharma, N., and Wright, C. (2009) ‘Editorial: Why No Borders?’, Refuge, 26/2: 5–18.
Anderson, B. (2010) ‘Migration, immigration controls and the fashioning of precarious workers’, Work, employment and society, 24/2: 300-317.
Atkinson, L. (2016) ‘Reclaiming, Repurposing, and Re-creating Public Spaces: An Exploration of Groups and Individuals who are Creating Alternative, Counter and Subaltern Public Spaces to Meet Needs and Resist Consumer Capitalism’, Masters Thesis, York University.
Balibar, É., and Swenson, J. (2004) We, the people of Europe? Reflections on transnational citizenship. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Basok, T., Bélanger, D. and Rivas, E. (2014) ‘Reproducing deportability: Migrant agricultural workers in south-western Ontario’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40: 1394–1413.
Berlant, L. G. (2008) The female complaint: The unfinished business of sentimentality in American culture. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press:
Bhuyan, R., Jeyapal, D., Ku, J., Sakamoto, I., and Chou, E. (2017) ‘Branding ‘Canadian experience’ in immigration policy: Nation building in a neoliberal era’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 18/1: 47–62.
Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council (2016) Agriculture sector’s reliance on temporary foreign workers to fill labour shortages is growing, Conference Board of Canada. < www.newswire.ca/news-releases/agriculture-sectors-reliance-on-temporary-foreign-workers-to-fill-labour-shortages-is-growing-604000656.html> accessed 5 November 2017.
Case, T. (2006) ‘The Commodification and Militarization of American Public Space: From a Genealogy of the Public to a Politics of Place’, Bachelor of Arts Thesis, Florida Atlantic University. <https://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A1323/datastream/OBJ/view/commodification_and_militarization_of_American_public_space.pdf> accessed 2 June 2019.
Costigan, C., Lehr, S., and Miao, S. (2016) ‘Beyond economics: Broadening perspectives on immigration to Canada,’ Canadian Ethnic Studies, 48/1: 19–44.
Davis, M. (2006) City of quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles. London and New York: Verso.
Employment and Social Development Canada [ESDC] (2019) What we heard: Primary agriculture review [Guidance]. <https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/foreign-workers/reports/primary-agriculture.html> accessed 19 June 2019.
Encalada Grez, E. (2011) ‘Vulnerabilities of female migrant farm workers from Latin America and the Caribbean in Canada’, FOCAL Policy Brief.
Faraday, F. (2012) Made in Canada: How the law constructs migrant workers’ insecurity. Toronto: Metcalf Foundation.
Forcier, M., and Dufour, G. (2016) ‘Immigration, neoconservatism and neoliberalism: The new Canadian citizenship regime in the light of European trajectories’, Cogent Social Sciences 2/1: 1-18.
Gandhi, L. (2014) The common cause: Postcolonial ethics and the practice of democracy, 1900 - 1955. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Gulamhusein, A. (2014) ‘Aboriginality, Inclusion and Public Space in the City of Edmonton’, Masters Thesis, Carleton University.
Government of Canada. (n.d.). Temporary Foreign Worker Program 2018Q1-2019Q1. <https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/e8745429-21e7-4a73-b3f5-90a779b78d1e> accessed 13 June 2019.
Handschuh, D. (2015) ‘Foreign Farmworkers AWOL’, Castanet.Net. <https://www.castanet.net/news/Vernon/144469/Foreign-farm-workers-AWOL> accessed 24 June 2019.
Hennebry, J. (2012) ‘Permanently temporary? Agricultural migrant workers and their integration in Canada’, Institute for Research on Public Policy, Report No. 26. <https://irpp.org/research-studies/permanently-temporary/> accessed 16 November 2018.
Hennebry, J., and Preibisch, K. (2012) ‘A model for managed migration? Re-examining best practices in Canada’s seasonal agricultural worker program’, International Migration, 50: 19–40.
Hennebry, J., McLaughlin, J., and Preibisch, K. (2016) ‘Out of the loop: (In)access to health care for migrant workers in Canada’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 17/2: 521–538.
Herbert, S., and Brown, E. (2006) ‘Conceptions of space and crime in the punitive neoliberal city’, Antipode, 38/4: 755–777.
Horgan, M., and Liinamaa, S. (2017) ‘The social quarantining of migrant labour: Everyday effects of temporary foreign worker regulation in Canada’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43/5: 713–730.
Houssay-Holzschuch, M., and Teppo, A. (2009) ‘A mall for all? Race and Public Space in Post-Apartheid Cape Town’, Cultural Geographies, 16/3: 351–379.
Inouye, K. (2012) ‘Conditional love; representations of migrant work in Canadian newsprint media’, Social Identities, 18/5: 573–592.
International Organization for Migration [IOM] (2018) World Migration Report 2018. <https://www.iom.int/wmr/world-migration-report-2018> accessed 8 July 2019.
Jenson, J., and de Castell, S. (2013) ‘Tipping points: Marginality, misogyny and videogames’ Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 29/2: 72-85.
Lewis, H., Dwyer, P., Hodkinson, S., and Waite, L. (2015) ‘Hyper-precarious lives: Migrants, work and forced labour in the Global North’, Progress in Human Geography, 39/5: 580-600.
Lipsitz, G. (2007) ‘The racialization of space and the spatialization of race: Theorizing the hidden architecture of landscape’, Landscape Journal, 26/1: 10–23.
Low, S. M., and Smith, N. (Eds.) (2006) The politics of public space. New York: Routledge.
McLaughlin, J. (2007) ‘Falling through the Cracks: Seasonal Foreign Farm Workers’ Health and Compensation across Borders’, The Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario (IAVGO) Reporting Service 21/1.
McLaughlin, J. and Hennebry, J. (2013) ‘Pathways to Precarity: Structural Vulnerabilities and Lived Consequences in the Everyday Lives of Migrant Farmworkers in Canada’. In: Goldring L and Landolt P (ed.) Producing and Negotiating Non-Citizenship: Precarious Legal Status in Canada, pp. 174–194. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Mehta, V. (2014) ‘Evaluating public space’, Journal of Urban Design, 19/1: 53–88.
Moyce, S. C., and Schenker, M. (2018) ‘Migrant workers and their occupational health and safety’, Annual Review of Public Health, 39/1: 351–365.
Orkin, A., Lay, M., McLaughlin, J., Schwandt, M., and Cole, D. (2014) ‘Medical repatriation of migrant farm workers in Ontario: A descriptive analysis’, CMAJ Open, 2/3: 192–198.
Perry, J. A. (2018) ‘Living at work and intra-worker sociality among migrant farm workers in Canada’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 19/4: 1021–1036.
Preibisch, K. (2004) ‘Migrant agricultural workers and processes of social inclusion in rural Canada: Encuentros and desencuentros’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 29/57–58: 203–239.
Reid-Musson, E. (2017) ‘Grown close to homeTM: Migrant farmworker (Im)mobilities and unfreedom on Canadian family farms’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107/3: 716–730.
Robillard, C., McLaughlin, J., Cole, D., Vasilevska, B., and Gendron, R. (2018) ‘“Caught in the same webs”—Service providers’ insights on gender-based and structural violence among female temporary foreign workers in Canada’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 19/3: 583–606.
Sargeant, M., and Tucker, E. (2010) ‘Layers of vulnerability in occupational safety and health for migrant workers: Case studies from Canada and the UK’, Policy and Practice in Occupational Health and Safety, 7/2: 51–73.
Schmidt, S. (2013) ‘Claiming our turf: Students’ civic negotiation of the public space of school’, Theory and Research in Social Education, 41/4, 535–551.
Sharma, N. (2008) ‘On being not Canadian: The social organization of “migrant workers” in Canada’, Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 38/4: 415–439.
Sikka, A. (2013) ‘Labour Trafficking in Canada: Indicators, Stakeholders, and Investigative Methods’, Public Safety Canada, Report No. 42. <http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/442851/publication.html> accessed 15 June 2019.
Silvey, R. (2004) ‘Power, difference and mobility: feminist advances in migration studies’, Progress in Human Geography, 28/4: 490-506.
Sorkin, M. (Ed.) (1992) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. New York: Hill and Wang.
Springer, S. (2011) ‘Public space as emancipation: Meditations on anarchism, radical democracy, neoliberalism and violence’, Antipode, 43/2: 525–562.
Sthankiya, A. (2015) ‘Kelowna Media and RCMP Actions Called “Overtly Racist” by Coalition Group’, Kelowna Now. <https://www.kelownanow.com/watercooler/news/news/Kelowna/15/07/27/Kelowna_Media_and_RCMP_Actions_Called_Overtly_Racist_by_Coalition_Group/#fs_74101> accessed 5 June 2019.
Strauss, K., and McGrath, S. (2017) ‘Temporary migration, precarious employment and unfree labour relations: Exploring the ‘continuum of exploitation’ in Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program’, Geoforum, 78: 199–208.
Walia, H. (2013) Undoing Border Imperialism. Oakland, CA and Washington, D.C.: AK Press ; Institute for Anarchist Studies.
Warner, M. (2002) Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.
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Published
2020-12-30
How to Cite
Caxaj, S., Cohen, A., Buffam, B., & Abe, O. (2020). Borders and boundaries in the lives of migrant agricultural workers: Towards a more equitable health services approach . Witness: The Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse, 2(2), 92–103. https://doi.org/10.25071/2291-5796.69
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OPEN
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