Tomorrow We're All Going to the Harvest: Temporary Foreign Worker Programs and Neoliberal Political Economy 9780292743816

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Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture

Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest Temporary Foreign Worker Programs and Neoliberal Political Economy Leigh Binford

University of Texas Press   Austin

Copyright © 2013 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2013 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713–7819 http://utpress.utexas.edu/about/book-permissions ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Binford, Leigh, 1948– Tomorrow we’re all going to the harvest : temporary foreign worker programs and neoliberal political economy / by Leigh Binford. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-292-74380-9 (cl. : alk. paper) 1. Agricultural laborers, Foreign—Canada. 2. Foreign workers, Mexican—Canada.  3. Foreign workers—Government policy—Canada. 4. Canada—Emigration and immigration—Economic aspects. 5. Mexico—Emigration and immigration—Economic aspects. I. Title. HD8108.5.M6B56 2013 331.5'44—dc23 doi:10.7560/743809

2012026719

For Nance . . .

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Contents

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables ix List of Acronyms xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Contract Labor Migration in Theory and Practice 1 1.

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor: Tlaxcala, Mexico, and Ontario, Canada 21

2.

The Dual Process of Constructing Mexican Contract Workers

3.

“Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest”: Case Studies of Contract Labor Migration 65

4.

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply: Caribbean and Mexican Workers in Canada’s SAWP (by Leigh binford and Kerry Preibisch) 93

5.

The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and Mexican Development 116

6.

The Political Economy of Contract Labor in Neoliberal North America: Cheap Labor and Organized Labor 146

7.

Globalization and Temporary Migrants: Post-National Citizens, Realpolitik, and Disposable Labor Power

44

179

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Appendix: The SAWP: Saving the Family Farm or Feeding Corporate Enterprise? 195 Notes 201 References 237 Index 263

Maps, Figures, and Tables

Maps 3.1 Map of Northwest Tlaxcala 66 3.2 Map of Southern Ontario 67 Figures 4.1 Historic growth of the SAWP 94 4.2 Evolution of Mexican-dominated commodity sectors 101 4.3 Evolution of Caribbean-dominated commodity sectors 101 4.4 Caribbean and Mexican contract violations, in proportional terms, 1986–2003 107 Tables 4.1 Ontario SAWP employer labor force preferences by commodity sector 97 4.2 Caribbean and Mexican contract violations, 1986–2003 106 5.1 Distribution of remittances and relationship to average months worked, 1999–2001 120 5.2 Percentage of informants reporting having spent Canada-earned income in various ways 124 5.3 Percentage of informants reporting having invested Canada-earned income 125 5.4 Productive investment of remittances by category 128

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Acronyms

AEPA AEWR AFL AFL-CIO AWA CFU CIC CPP CREWS DAAC DOL EI FARMS FERME FLOC FOCAL FWP HRDC HRSDC HTA H-2A

Agricultural Employees Protection Act (Ontario, Canada) Adverse Effect Wage Rate (United States) Alberta Federation of Labour (Canada) American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations Agriculture Workers Alliance (Canada) Canadian Farmworkers Union Citizenship and Immigration (Canada) Canada Pension Plan Construction Recruitment for External Workers (Canada) Department of Agrarian Affairs and Colonization (Departamento de Asuntos Agrarios y Colonización) Department of Labor (United States) Employment Insurance (Canada) Foreign Area Resource Management Services (Ontario, Canada) Fondation des Entreprises en Recrutement de Maind’oeuvre agricole Étrangère (Quebec, Canada) Farm Labor Organizing Committee (United States) Canadian Foundation for the Americas (Fundación Canadiense para las Américas) Foreign Workers Program (Quebec) Human Resources Development Canada Human Resources and Skills Development Canada Home Town Association Agricultural Worker Temporary Labor Program (United States)

xii Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

H-2B ICE INS IOM IRCA J4MW LSPP MOL NCGA NCLSC NIEAP OECS OFVMB OHCOW OHIP OSHA PRADET

REDA SAWP SRA TFW TFWP UFCW USDA WSIB

Non-agricultural Temporary Worker Program (United States) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (United States) Immigration and Naturalization Service (United States) International Organization for Migration Immigration Reform and Control Act (United States) Justicia for Migrant Workers (Canada) Low Skill Pilot Project (Canada) Mexican Ministry of Labor and Social Planning (Secretaría de Trabajo y Previsión Social ) North Carolina Growers Association North Carolina Legal Services Corporation Non-Immigrant Employment Authorization Program (Canada) Organization of Eastern Caribbean States Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Marketing Board Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers Ontario Health Insurance Plan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (United States) Program for Agrarian Rehabilitation and Development in the State of Tlaxcala (Programa de Rehabilitación Agraria y Desarrollo en el Estado de Tlaxcala) Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act (United States) Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (Canada) Ministry of Agrarian Reform (Mexico) Temporary Foreign Worker Temporary Foreign Workers Program United Food and Commercial Workers (Canada) United States Department of Agriculture Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (Ontario, Canada)

Acknowledgments

The initial research on which this book is based was conducted in 2001– 2002 and financed by the Investigative System Ignacio Zaragoza of Mexico’s National Science and Technology Council (SIZA-CONACYT) through CIISDER-MAR (Center for Interdisciplinary DevelopmentMasters in Regional Analysis) of the University of Tlaxcala. I thank Bertoldo Sánchez Muñoz, at the time the institute’s director, for his support and acknowledge the work on the project carried out by Guillermo Carrasco Rivas, Socorro Arana, and Soledad Santillana de Rojas. In August and September of 2003 I traveled around southern Ontario from a “home base” in the residence of Dr. Kerry Preibisch of the Department of Sociology of the University of Guelph and Dr. Spenser Henson, who teaches in the university’s Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics. The Ontario fieldwork would not have been possible without Kerry’s logistical and intellectual companionship. She also coauthored Chapter 4, which benefited from many interviews that she and her field assistants carried out with Ontario horticulture growers. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Ontario growers and Mexican and Caribbean migrants with whom I had the opportunity to chat while in the province. Stan Raper and crew of the United Food and Commercial Workers; Sue Williams of FARMS; several staff members of the Mexican Consulate in Toronto; and John Wright, liaison chief at the Jamaican Consulate, took time out of their busy schedules in order to discuss the program with me. Public figures all, I have done my best to accurately represent their perspectives. In March of 2007, at the invitation of Marcus Taylor of Queens University, I participated in a forum on the SAWP at Queens University (Kingston, ON) with UFCW organizer Stan Raper and FARMS Presi-

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dent Ken Forth. Prior to the forum I had the opportunity to dine with Mr. Forth, who clarified several key historical points regarding the program’s development and FARM’s role in it. That forum was mildly historic for being the first direct encounter between the province’s principal UFCW union organizer (Raper), struggling to gain collective bargaining benefits for SAWP workers, and the farmers’ chief representative (Forth), who opposes unionization. While they disagreed strongly on the need for formal worker organization, Raper and Forth were probably surprised to find that their views converged on many other important issues. Over the last few years several Canadian students and younger scholars, studying one or another facet of the SAWP, passed through Puebla, and I was the beneficiary of their knowledge and enthusiasm: Kerry Preibisch, Nelson Ferguson, Janet McLaughlin, Evelyn Encalada, and Jenna Hennebry. Indeed, the fact that they and others will soon be turning recently completed doctoral theses into books served as an impetus to finish this long overdue manuscript. I feel certain that this new generation of scholars will move future work into previously uninvestigated directions and will interrogate aspects of the SAWP and other Temporary Foreign Workers Programs that have received little or no attention here. Portions of the arguments herein were published over the course of the last five years. “From Fields of Power to Fields of Sweat: The Dual Process of Constructing Mexican Agricultural Contract Workers in Canada and Mexico,” appeared in 2009 in Third World Quarterly and forms the basis for Chapter 2. Most of what is now Chapter 4, “Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply: The Ethnic Replacement of Foreign Agricultural Workers in Canada” was coauthored with Kerry Preibisch and published in 2007 in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. I have added to and in some cases modified positions taken there. A few of the ideas in Chapter 5 appeared in 2006 as a policy paper published online by the (now defunct) Canadian Foundation of the Americas (FOCAL); other material drawn from the project was published as “Social and Economic Contradictions of Rural Migrant Contract Labor Between Tlaxcala, Mexico and Canada” in 2002 in Culture and Agriculture (24, no. 2 (2002): 1–19). I thank the aforementioned organizations for permission to republish part or all of what appeared earlier. Much of what appears here was written or at least revised during a 2006–2007 sabbatical year spent at the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, where I was hosted by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and by the Department of Anthropology. The university provided an ideal climate for thinking and writing. Nils

Acknowledgments xv

Jacobsen, who made the initial invitation, was himself on leave during my time there, but Angelina Cotler, Dara Goldman, Ellen Moodie, and others in CLACS and the Department of Anthropology provided assistance of one sort or another. Special thanks go to Angelina Cotler of CLACS and Mahir Saul and Ellen Moodie of the Department of Anthropology for their warmth, kindness, intellectual stimulation, good food, and conversation. A number of friends in Canada, the United States, and Mexico provided one or another form of encouragement, advice, or assistance at one or another moment: Olga Abaizaid, Gavin Smith, Judy Hellman, Luin Goldring, Marcus Taylor, Susanne Sonderberg, Lesley Gill, Marc Edelman, Nicole Polier, and Alison Roseberry-Polier. In Ontario, Anthony Winson, Ellen Wall, Lisa Marr, Kerry Preibisch, and Janet McLaughlin supplied much useful material. In Puebla Ricardo Macip has always been there, offering freely of his rare intelligence, commitment, and warm friendship. Lesley Gill and Marcus Taylor read and commented critically on several chapters, and Janet McLaughlin read an earlier version of the manuscript, noting weak points and even correcting spelling and grammar and suggesting alternative phrasings. David Griffith and an anonymous reader reviewed the manuscript for the University of Texas Press, providing both encouragement and several excellent suggestions, which I have done my best to implement. Where I have not done so, the fault lies with me and me alone. I have a tremendous debt of gratitude for Theresa May, assistant director and editor-in-chief of the University of Texas Press, and her team (Leslie Tingle, managing editor; Kaila Wyllys, production coordinator; Michael Neibergall, freelance copyeditor) for expeditiously moving this project along. It is impossible to list the numerous SAWP workers and family members without whose assistance this project would not have been possible. For reasons that will become clear in the text, however, I refrain from mentioning them by name. Without their work and that of others like them, however, we would not be able to put food, and particularly fresh fruits and vegetables, on our tables. I write this book in the hope that sooner rather than later, they will receive their just due. This (and other) research received strong and consistent support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Institute of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, where I worked between 1997 and 2010, before moving to City University of New York’s College of Staten Island. I would particularly like to thank, belatedly, the institute’s founder and first director, the deceased Lic. Alfonso Vélez Pliego (1946–2006), as

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well as Mtro. Roberto Vélez Pliego (director between 1999 and 2007), and Dr. Agustín Grajales Porras, the institute’s current director. Final revisions were completed at Nicole Polier’s apartment in New York City, and I am grateful to Nicole and to Richard Ohlman for their friendship and hospitality. Nancy Churchill, my dearest friend and lifelong companion, has surely grown weary of my incessant commentary on the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program over the years. With this book I can at least put an end to her queries as to when this manuscript will be wrapped up. For that, and for more reasons than I can recount, I dedicate this book to her.

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Introduction: Contract Labor Migration in Theory and Practice

Over twenty years ago Domingo Rodríguez, a young Mexican from the state of Tlaxcala and a student at the public Autonomous University of Tlaxcala, succeeded in gaining entrance to the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. Since 1974, this program had been sending Mexican peasants and day laborers to rural areas of Ontario (and later, Quebec, Alberta, and Manitoba) where they worked long hours on farms producing fruits, vegetables, and similar crops both for domestic sale and exportation. Encouraged by Bertoldo Sánchez Muñoz, his Social Work thesis advisor, Rodríguez religiously logged his daily experiences, even providing a precise accounting of the bi-weekly paychecks, itemizing the amounts deducted for transportation, unemployment insurance, pension fund, and income tax. During two summers in Canada, he recorded selected aspects of his daily work activities, perceptions of his employers (he was transferred to a different employer the second season), relationships among workmates, and living and working conditions. Although perfunctory—doubtless due to the conditions under which the notes were compiled (often late at night following an exhausting day in the fields)— and usually rather dry, Rodríguez’s thesis, “Experiencias de un migrante: Relatos etnográficos” (1993), stands as the only first-person ethnographic account of contract labor experience in Canada and probably one of the few documents of its kind in the Americas.1 This book analyzes critically the experiences of Rodríguez and others like him in its consideration of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program as an example of Temporary Foreign Worker Programs. According to Cindy Hahamovich (2003), such programs first developed in the late nineteenth century and have persisted with ebbs and flows down to

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the present. They constituted intermediate state responses to contradictory economic and political pressures: employer demands for cheap labor on the one hand, and citizen fears of invasions by foreign Others on the other. Hahamovich explains: Temporary labor schemes were . . . state-brokered compromises designed to maintain high levels of migration while placating anti-immigrant movements. They offered employers foreign workers who could still be bound like indentured servants but who could also be disciplined by the threat of deportation. They placated trade unionists who feared foreign competition by promising to restrict guestworkers to the most onerous work and to expel them during economic downturns. And they assuaged nativists by isolating guestworkers from the general population. Finally, states got development aid from poor countries in the form of ready workers, without the responsibility of having to integrate those workers or pay for their welfare. The perfect immigrant was born. (2003, 72–73)

As Hahamovich makes clear, the “perfect immigrant” could be drawn in and sent away according to the needs of domestic capitalists; neither employers nor the State assumed responsibility for the workers’ prior formation or social reproduction; and contract workers could neither aspire to citizenship nor enjoy most of the rights that accrued to citizens, whether “natural” or naturalized. In “inviting” guest workers, nation states sought to import laborers, producers of surplus value, without importing real people with families and needs and expectations that extended beyond the field, the factory, or the construction site. However subject to external control, the “perfect immigrant” was and is not a slave, even when the living and working conditions of Temporary Foreign Workers are sufficiently rudimentary to call up memories of slave labor: Many employers exercise almost unlimited control, demanding long hours of fast-paced work in the grueling sun and/or installing workers in crowded dormitories, wooden shacks with leaky roofs and cracked walls, or rundown trailers (e.g., Hahamovich 2011, 236–237; Smith-Nonini 2002). But in contrast to slaves, they work on contract, receive cash payment in exchange for their services, and are free to leave at any time. Many circulate back and forth repeatedly and over many years between the “here” of their native community/country and the “there” of the work site. Indeed, a small percentage of Mexican participants in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program have spent more time over the last twenty years working and living on Canadian farms than they have in rural

Contract Labor Migration 3

Tlaxcala, Puebla, Hidalgo, Guanajuato, or whatever state they originate from. Circulation between source and destination countries also spells one of the major differences, for better and worse, between Temporary Foreign Workers and indentured laborers. Both tend to be “tied” to a particular employer for the duration of the contract, but when that contract terminates, indentured laborers generally have the right to remain in country and move about the labor market, while “guestworkers were, by definition, expected to leave” (Hahamovich 2003: 72; see Bacon 2008). Indenture served as a kind of brutal initiation for the recruitment of a permanent labor force that eventually would be granted most of the rights and protections of the citizen worker. Not so for the participants in Temporary Foreign Worker Programs; however permanent the programs became, they were created to resolve supposedly transitory labor shortages in specific sectors of the economy. The first TFWPs developed in Prussia and South Africa during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Their popularity grew during World War I, when France, the United States, and other countries recruited large labor forces in order to maximize wartime production. For instance, the first Mexican Braceros arrived in the United States during World War I, pioneers of a program, or series of programs really, that with highs and lows endured through 1964. Large TFWPs also developed in postwar England, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Sweden (Hahamovich 2003), where, according to Castles (1986), they played important roles in postwar capital accumulation during three decades of robust growth and low unemployment between 1945 and 1974. Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) became less necessary during and after the succeeding period of economic downturn and reduced industrial profits, which led to the global dispersion of intensive production processes to low-wage countries, made possible by revolutionary innovations in communications, transportation, and control techniques—features of what has generally come to be known as the New International Division of Labor. Six European countries canceled their TFWPs around the time of the 1973 oil crisis. Thirteen years later, Castles (1986) wrote what he referred to as an “obituary” for those programs (see Cohen 1987). Dialectically intertwined processes of “distortion” and “dependence,” the first revolving around the interests of employers and the second around the interests of workers, combined to sink most postwar TFWPs. Labor market “distortion” refers to a process whereby employers’ access

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to a foreign labor force recruited to meet an emergency situation evolves into permanent access. That is, employers in developed capitalist countries become accustomed to economically cheap and politically unorganized foreign workers and create all manner of disaster scenarios to justify a program’s continuation long after the emergency has passed. Foreign workers become transformed from emergency substitutes into the preferred workers. California tomato growers predicted disaster were the Bracero Program to be canceled, as did corporate Florida sugarcane interests, which gained access to Jamaicans through the small British West Indies Temporary Alien Labor Program, created in 1943. But when lawsuits and/or public outcry over abuses spelled the demise of these programs, agriculturalists both in the South and West “miraculously” figured out ways to raise the ratio of constant to viable capital, i.e., to replace humans with machines, whether harvesting delicate tomatoes (California) or muck-grown sugarcane (Florida). Martin and Teitelbaum observed that in 1999, California tomato growers, who had earlier claimed that they could not survive without the Braceros, employed machinery and 5000 workers to harvest 12 million tons of the juicy, red fruit; some thirty-nine years earlier, during the program’s last years, forty-five thousand manual workers harvested 2.2 million tons (2001: 124; see Wilkinson 1989 on Florida sugarcane). A different, if related, process shaped dependence as viewed from the workers’ perspectives. For instance, many Mexican Braceros either “settled out” when the program terminated or continued migrating cyclically as newly minted undocumented workers. Both groups served as beachheads or “bridges” for the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans that fled toward El Norte in the 1980s and 1990s seeking relief from deteriorating rural economies. Something similar occurred in Europe, where strong European welfare states accorded TFWs more rights than in the United States. Over time the workers struggled to expand those rights even more by sending for their families and settling out despite the lack of legal documents. This “family reunification” stage produced upward pressure on wages and demands on the State for housing, education, and health and social amenities, undermining migrants’ utility from both employers’ and bureaucrats’ perspectives and eventually sinking European TFWPs (Castles 1986). Foreign worker habituation to the markedly higher incomes and improved services available in the global North, and their struggle to access them long after states terminate TFWPs, have been conceptualized as a form of “dependency.”2

Contract Labor Migration 5

The Recrudescence of TFWPs More than three decades into neoliberal restructuring, concerns with distortion and dependence—or maybe just migration-shaped labor markets—have been put aside or forgotten. Birth rates are generally low in the capitalist North, domestic populations are aging, and the demand for flexible, low-wage labor has been growing apace in construction, meatpacking, horticulture, child care, and the restaurant and hospitality industries, among others. Turning to the underdeveloped (also capitalist) South, broadly speaking, neoliberal market openings ravaged agriculture, small business, and much industry, resulting in escalating rates of unemployment and, especially, underemployment (Nun 2000; Portes and Hoffman 2003; Bacon 2008; Ness 2011). Regardless of their academic credentials, most new entrants onto job markets in Mexico, El Salvador, and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean confront a limited number of choices: precarious and poorly paid work in the informal sector; criminal activity; or labor migration. Thirty years of “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey 2003) has forged an apparent “complementarity” between poor countries in the underdeveloped South with unambiguous labor surpluses, on the one hand, and wealthy countries in the overdeveloped North with purported labor deficits. Throw in the decline of the Western welfare state, add a large dose of home-grown xenophobia over the denationalizing impact of permanent migration, spice the mix with a bit of post-9/11 paranoia, stir well, and behold the result: another wave of interest in TFWPs among public officials, employers, and sectors of the public (Castles 2006), and this despite the fact that no clear solutions to migrant dependency, labor market distortion, or other problems have been suggested. In 2001 Martin and Teitelbaum offered a point-by-point refutation of what they called “The Mirage of Mexican Guest Workers.” Although aimed specifically at George W. Bush’s pre-9/11 plan to import up to three hundred thousand guest workers on three-year nonrenewable work visas, and focused specifically on Mexicans, the criticisms are of general relevance. According to the authors, TFWPs undercut wages, discourage the introduction of labor-saving technology, impede worker organization (and the improved wages, benefits, and working conditions that organized struggle makes possible), tend to persist far beyond the “emergency” situation that, real or imagined, often justifies their creation, and sooner or later contribute to the permanent, undocumented migra-

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tion they were intended to prevent or reduce. Host countries gain hard currency through remittances, but maintaining high levels of return requires continuous export of fresh waves of workers. El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti, and many regions of Mexico have become labor reserves for U.S. agriculture, services, and light industry at the expense of domestic investment and development (see Binford 2008; Vega 2002; Delgado Wise 2004; Grammage 2006; González 2006; Ness 2011). The authors concluded by referring to the programs as “a special subsidy for farmers, meatpackers, and families that hire nannies,” although they also cautioned that if people settle out, the migrants could “become a large obligation financed by all Americans” (Martin and Teitelbaum 2001: 128–129). Recently, a series of innovative policy designs have been developed to address the problems that plagued earlier programs. They tend to focus on some combination of conditional “portability” of work visas, wage deferrals, tax reimbursements to migrant workers ineligible for unemployment insurance or social security, a strengthening of penalties for employers who dip into the undocumented labor pool, and beefed-up enforcement of unauthorized migration. Ruhs insists that a new generation of TFWPs, building on the past, can provide “significant benefits for all sides involved, including migrant workers and their countries of origin” (Ruhs 2005: 1; see Ferguson 2007 and Martin 2007). He envisions a win-win-win situation for involved governments, employers, and migrants. Meanwhile, policy makers scour the horizon for successful programs that might inform a new generation of TFWPs.

The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (henceforth SAWP) is one such program, and this book offers a close, critical discussion and analysis of it based on field work in Mexico and Canada and an extensive reading of the Spanish- and English-language literatures. As of 2011 the SAWP had been in existence for forty-five years, during most of which time it avoided public controversy. Recent criticisms by academics, journalists, activists, and union organizers have not deterred sectors of the Canadian public, government officials, participating employers, and foreign observers from characterizing the SAWP as a “model program” (Leiken 2002; Greenhill and Aceytuno 2000; see Hennebry and Preibisch 2010), marked by complementarity (between the needs of participating

Contract Labor Migration 7

nations, employers, and workers) and “best practices” (see Muñoz 1999a, 1999b). The World Bank opined that among four TFWPs surveyed, the SAWP was best suited to inform TFWP design for Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Region (World Bank 2006: 117).3 Given this high recommendation from an influential global institution, a close examination of the SAWP would seem to be both merited and necessary. If it turns out that a purportedly “model program” is rife with exploitation and abuse, what might we expect of other TFWPs, real and proposed, that lack its contract guarantees, provisions for vigilance, and internal checks and balances (see Santibáñez Romellón, ed., 2007)? TFWPs have become an important instrument in the toolkit of northern governments seeking to ensure domestic employers’ access to cheap, Third World labor; secure the borders against real or imagined foreign threats; and cater to xenophobes concerned about imagined social and cultural contamination wrought by the presence in their midst of an undigestible foreign Other. Canada’s SAWP is a government-to-government contract labor program that annually sends workers from Mexico and a number of predominantly English-speaking Caribbean nations to Canada. The program began in 1966 in Ontario with 264 Jamaican participants but now involves more than twenty-five thousand Mexican and Caribbean (Jamaican, Barbadian, Trinidadian, Santa Lucian, and other) workers employed in horticultural and related enterprises in the southern reaches of nine Canadian provinces, stretching from Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island in the east to British Columbia in the west. Source-country governments are charged with recruitment, and criteria vary somewhat between Mexico on the one hand, and Jamaica and other Caribbean suppliers on the other. Mexican officials seek out reliable, family men with children; Jamaican government recruiters judge applicants more on physical strength and durability (McLaughlin 2010). In all cases, those accepted into the SAWP receive contracts that vary from six weeks (minimum) to eight months (maximum), working a minimum forty hour work week. Canadian officials and representatives of employer associations meet annually with their labor supply country counterparts in order to evaluate the program and negotiate wages and benefits for the coming year. Workers do not attend these meetings but are represented by government officials. Canadian employers cover a portion of workers’ round trip air transportation and, on arrival in Canada, contract workers residing without cost in employer-provided housing. Upwards of 70 percent of Mexican and Caribbean contract workers are sent to work on farms in Ontario, Canada’s main supplier of horticultural goods and the focus of this study.

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There they benefit from enrollment in the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) and pay into the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), upon which longterm seasonal workers will be able to draw once they retire. In case of accident or injury, health crisis, family emergency in the home country, or dispute with the employer, workers can seek the assistance of a government agent—“consular officials” in the case of Mexico and “liaison officers” for Caribbean-area nations—working out of the nearest consulate. Most important, SAWP participants enter Canada legally, avoiding the cost, physical danger, uncertainty, and psychological stress routinely experienced by undocumented immigrants to the United States. Many Mexican and Caribbean workers return year after year to the same farm— invited back by employers—and some even gain the trust of Canadian farmers, who allow them to use farm vehicles, occasionally loan them money, and may even visit them in their Mexican or Caribbean homes during the winter off-season. When queried, around 70 percent of seasonal workers express overall satisfaction with the program, though many also voice complaints regarding program structure, rules, or implementation (Verduzgo and Lozano 2003). Indeed, the high worker return rate has been routinely cited by employer organizations, government officials, and academics as evidence that the program works to everyone’s benefit. Canadian employers invite back a high proportion of workers for the following season, and the vast majority of those so invited choose to return. SAWP hourly wages are several times higher than those available to poorly educated rural workers and peasants in rural areas of Mexico and the Caribbean. Even if only slightly above provincial minimums—and thus low by Canadian standards—work weeks of fifty, sixty, or more hours make it possible for SAWP participants to save and remit home substantial sums. Many Mexican participants use remittances to construct, enlarge, or modernize houses, improve their diets, and even finance children’s education beyond the low secondary levels customary in most rural communities. A smaller number invest in land and livestock or capitalize small businesses that provide employment for one or two household members and generate additional income for the household. Most long-term migrants credit their participation in the SAWP for substantially improving the material conditions of their households. There seems no reason to doubt their word (see Chapter 5). Canadian horticulturalists also appear relatively satisfied with the SAWP, if the program’s growth and geographical extension are any indication.4 For several decades the SAWP remained confined to Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and Manitoba.5 Since the turn of the millennium, how-

Contract Labor Migration 9

ever, the provincial governments of New Britain, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (all in 2001), Saskatchewan (2003), and British Columbia (2004) petitioned to enter the program, usually following complaints by horticultural grower organizations of chronic labor shortages. As a result, the SAWP now cuts a swath across southern Canada from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.6 The program continues to grow numerically and expand geographically despite complaints from employers that it is expensive and involves an excess of record keeping and managerial oversight. Canadian growers have discovered no alternative work force as well suited to the conditions of labor-intensive horticultural enterprises: the labor is cheap; it is flexible; and the workers are reliable, which is to say that they present themselves ready to work day-after-day, heat or cold, rain or shine (Basok 2002). Foreign Area Resource Management Services (FARMS) president Gary Cooper opined that Without the offshore workers, it would be next to impossible to farm. . . . Most of the fruits and vegetables in Ontario would not be grown. Canadians will still eat those fruits and vegetables, so why don’t we enjoy the economic benefits of producing them? We can take Mexican tomatoes and ship them up here, you can send a Mexican to California to produce tomatoes there and ship them up here or you can send a Mexican up here and you grow the tomato here in Ontario. (cited in Marr 2002j: A11)

Since 1987, when Ontario growers created FARMS and assumed dayto-day control of the operation, the program has cost the Canadian government little in monetary terms.7 Few Mexicans overstay work visas, and for decades the SAWP avoided the kind of negative publicity that contributed to the demise of the U.S. Bracero Program (Galarza 1964).8 Some Canadian government officials even suggest that SAWP participants’ mandatory contributions to Employment Insurance—which these workers are ineligible to collect—be considered “an ‘employee-fee’ for having access to the Canadian labour market” (Greenhill and Aceytuno 2000: 4), and describe remittances returned by workers as a form of Canadian foreign aid to participating Third World countries (Marr 2002j: A11).9 These and other propositions are being challenged in the courts, in classrooms, on the Internet, in public forums, and occasionally on the farms themselves. Over the last decade, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) has mounted court challenges to the Ontario

10 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

provincial government’s prohibition against collective bargaining among agricultural workers and also litigated against payment into the Employment Insurance fund on the part of workers ineligible for most benefits. “El Contrato” (The Contract), an award-winning documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada and highly critical of the SAWP, aired in Canada during the fall of 2003. Wildcat work stoppages—one of the most recent asserting wage and housing contract violations on a farm in British Columbia—increasingly receive national media attention. Finally, Canadian activists organized into “Justicia for Migrant Workers” (J4MW) to educate the public about some of the seamier aspects of the SAWP (see Chapter 6). The SAWP is also receiving growing attention from academics and journalists in Canada and Mexico who are researching and writing about previously untouched themes around the costs and trade-offs involved in workers’ participation. Recent work has addressed the unfree nature of the SAWP labor force (Basok 2002, Preibisch 2000, Bauder 2006); social exclusion and social inclusion of contract workers in rural communities (Preibisch 2003, 2004, 2007b); the developmental implications of remittances (Binford 2002a, 2006; Binford ed. 2004; Basok 2002, 2003b; Verduzco and Lozano 2003), women in the SAWP (Preibisch 2007a, Becerril 2007, 2003; Hennebry 2007), and other issues. A small but growing Spanish-language literature exists on the SAWP, supported in part by Canadian Embassy research grants to Mexican students and academics (see Vanegas 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2004; Mellado 2000; Becerril 2007, 2008; Verduzco 2007, 2000; Verduzco and Lozano 2003).10 It is not my intention to summarize the literature on the SAWP here, for I draw liberally upon it in the course of this book. However, it is germane to note that since the mid-1990s, research has focused predominantly on Mexican participants, whereas a smaller corpus of writing produced between 1980 and 1995 treated mainly Caribbean workers, a shift that corresponds roughly to Mexico’s entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994) and the increase in Mexican representation in the SAWP from approximately 20 percent of all workers in 1986 to more than 50 percent in 2001. This book offers a critical examination of the SAWP based on interviews and observation in Mexico and Canada. As noted above, if a “model” program is replete with problems, what might we expect from the exponentially larger, less regulated contract labor programs that are being proposed or are underway in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere? If there is, as various scholars note, an inevitable trade-off between

Contract Labor Migration 11

the number of temporary foreign workers and the rights accorded them— higher numbers necessarily accompanied by fewer rights—what might be the implication for our assessment of programs proposing to temporarily admit tens or even hundreds of thousands of workers if participants in a small, “model program” are sometimes poorly housed, frequently overworked, occasionally maltreated, exposed to dangerous chemicals without adequate training and/or protective gear, socially excluded from active participation in community life, and told to “aguantar” (endure) by the very officials charged with defending their rights?

Fields of Power, Social Fields, and Hegemony In this book I draw on the concepts “fields of power” and “social fields” in order to socially and historically position Mexican workers, Canadian horticultural growers, consular officials, and others. These concepts have antecedents in anthropology in the work of Alexander Lesser, Max Glucksman, and Eric Wolf (Roseberry 1998a), and in the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (1990). But they were worked over and rendered more precise by William Roseberry (1998a, 1998b). Like Glucksman, Lesser, and Wolf, Roseberry was bothered by anthropologists’ tendency to represent rural communities and peasantries as if they were not connected to or part of larger world historical processes (1978: 3). The question concerns the old problem of the relationship between macro and micro or outside and inside: macro and “outside” being the capitalist “world system,” the international mercantile economy, Europe, etc.; micro and “inside” referring to the relationships, often specific and delimited in space and time, investigated by anthropologists and other social scientists. Roseberry was aware that too often anthropologists failed in their efforts to organically connect macro and micro in terms of an extended network of relationships that blurred the inside/outside dichotomy. He formulated the problem in the following way: The history of particular regions cannot be separated from the world historic processes of which they are a part, yet their history is not mechanically determined by the “world system.” The problem consists in part of understanding the “structures” that shape and limit the action of human subjects as well as in appreciating the action of human subjects in creating the very structures that limit them. (1983: 62–63)11

12 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

Roseberry deployed the mid-range concepts of “social field” and “field of power” as means of approaching the complexity of local history and social relationships while simultaneously acknowledging that observable local social relations have been structured by global processes of great reach, of which “local” histories form constituent parts. The field of power is constituted by networks of relationships—the precipitates of “world historic processes”—that impose structuration on local social fields. The relationships in a field of power are not “external” to those social fields but have been internalized as constitutive aspects of them, which is to say that such internalization is conditioned by existing tensions and protagonized by specific groups acting in the context of local history. For Roseberry, the field of power obliges us to pose a series of questions around the organization of production and changes in it; the positions occupied by persons, localities, and regions within the social and spatial networks of production and commercialization; the position and extension of influences, and so on, successively (1998a: 94). The concept also takes into account the State and its laws, policies, agencies, institutions, procedures, and licenses, and even organized religion, which “has the power of applying divine sanction which has real social force for those who believe in it, and of creating communities of believers beyond which action and social relations can be unimaginable” (1998a: 95). To summarize: The concept of a “field of power” is designed to identify a multidimensional field of social relations that mark out particular positions for the subjects (men, women, adults, children, husbands, wives . . .) through which the subjects, individually and collectively, establish relationships with other subjects, institutions and agencies that form part of the field. The field is never limited to a particular locality, in so far as the central social relationships that define it form part of broader “webs” or “networks” of relationships. A locality occupies, nevertheless, a particular and specific position within the webs and networks, and the subjects generally act from these particular positions (although their actions can transcend them). To the degree that they act, they routinely establish relationships with other subjects, individually and collectively, marked by tensions characteristic of the structuration of the field. The field is maintained in a kind of tension. This tension, and the struggles that characterize it, are a creative and destructive force within the field. (1998a: 96–97)

Under contemporary conditions of globalization, we should not expect precisely the same reaction to, or the same consequences from, the

Contract Labor Migration 13

construction of a Walmart in a Mexican neighborhood, the opening of a Korean maquiladora, or the arrival of significant amounts of “migradolares” returned to their communities by undocumented Mexican migrants working in New York City. Nor should we expect that every commodity sector (or specific agricultural enterprise) in southwestern Ontario will experience the same labor problems or that all the Mexicans hired to work there will have comparable experiences. With respect to the last-mentioned point, the type of farm; the number and national/ethnic identification of the employees; and perhaps even the age, sex, and ethnic descent of the owner (English, German, Dutch, etc.) contribute to shape the local social field and the migrants’ experiences therein. But those experiences will also depend upon preexisting social arrangements and their subjective complements. Important here is the manner in which households in northwest Tlaxcala become part of fields of force that articulate relationships between social fields in two (or more) countries. I take the position that whereas the social fields of those households participating in the SAWP have been transnationalized, at least for the duration of the contract, the communities have not, or have not been transnationalized in the same way or to the same degree. The small size of the program, its seasonal character (for any participating migrant), the dispersed nature of recruitment in Mexico (hundreds of communities) and of work and living sites in Ontario and elsewhere (hundreds of farms), and the ironclad control exercised over participants while in Canada impede, if they do not rule out, independent worker organization. The Gramscian concept of “hegemony” also plays an important role in this analysis. Hegemony refers to that constantly changing ratio between coercion and compliance in the exercise of rule by dominant over subordinate groups and is, as William Roseberry argued, better thought of as a means of understanding struggle than domination (see Crehan 2002). Indeed, Roseberry observed that the exercise of hegemony always implies a counter hegemony, a counter pressure of class struggle that shapes hegemony itself. In this book I investigate a variety of structures, processes, and experiences that condition relationships between Canadian growers and Mexican employees, highlighting the role of the domestic (Mexican) experience in the production and reproduction of a “dual frame of reference” through which wages in Canada—and the uses to which they can be put—are repeatedly compared to their counterparts in Mexico. Hegemony helps us understand why Mexican contract workers return year after year, why they so seldom engage in collective protests, and the spontaneous character of those protests that do take place.

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Research in Northwest Tlaxcala and Southwest Ontario Research for this book took place mainly in 2001–2002 in Tlaxcala, Mexico, and during August–September of 2003 in southwest Ontario. Both the Mexican state of Tlaxcala and the Canadian provincial government of Ontario are heavily involved in the SAWP. As I discuss in Chapter 1, the creation of the SAWP by the Canadian government was a response to pressure exerted by Ontario horticulturalists during the late 1950s and early 1960s; the initial 264 Jamaican SAWP recruits harvested tobacco there in 1966. During most of the program’s existence, Ontario fruit, vegetable, and tobacco growers employed between 75 and 80 percent of SAWP contract workers; this numerical domination continues today, albeit diminished somewhat with the recent extension of the SAWP to previously nonparticipating provinces. Indeed, as the program grew, it was transformed from a seasonal supplement of a largely Canadian horticultural work force in Ontario to an instrumental feature—Basok (2002) referred to it as a “structural necessity”—for the continued economic health of an industry in which annual revenues now exceed three hundred million Canadian dollars. In other words, the SAWP contributed to the “distortion” of the horticultural labor market. If Ontario is the principal receiving province, Tlaxcala has been one of the most important sending states, leading all Mexican states during the last half of the 1990s, with between 22 and 23 percent of SAWP workers, before falling in recent years to second place among Mexican states, with about 17 percent of participants. Most recruits originate from Tlaxcala’s high, dry northwest zone, little more than an hour’s bus ride from Mexico City. Tlaxcalans began to enlist in the SAWP soon after the Mexican government signed on to the program in 1974, for which reason some communities are home to people with ten, fifteen, twenty, and more years of SAWP experience. The work in Tlaxcala unfolded in Atotonilco, Nanacamilpa, and Sanctorum. All three number among the top SAWP source communities in Tlaxcala, but dispersed recruitment meant that at the community or municipal level, participating households represented but a small percentage of all households. For instance, Verduzco and Lozano reported 207 SAWP workers in Sanctorum and 188 in Nanacamilpa, representing 13.7 and 5.7 percent, respectively, of all households in those municipalities (2003: 18). This fact shaped my project in fundamental ways, moving it more in a sociological than anthropological-ethnographic direction. I focused on the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, the relationships and

Contract Labor Migration 15

contradictions therein, as opposed to the way that whole communities may have been transformed as a result of the participation of a minority of local households in it.12 Much of the information derived from in-depth interviews, administered in two phases by a team of trained interviewers of which I formed part. The first phase took place during the fall of 2001, when most active migrants had yet to return home from their Canadian workplaces; former migrants dismissed or voluntarily retired from the program predominated among the sixty “phase one” interviewees. I modified the interview schedule before a second round of interviews in winter of 2002, eliminating or rephrasing questions that seemed unnecessary or unclear, and adding additional questions in order to explore selected issues in greater detail. The interview schedule contained structured, semistructured, and openended questions designed to elicit information about household demography, socioeconomic indicators, recruitment to the SAWP, residence in Canada (province, type and size of farm, relationship to the owner), work experience (tasks, length of workweek, presence or absence of rest days), contacts with Mexican consular personnel, remittances and the uses to which they were put in Mexico, impact on the household, and the interviewee’s overall assessment of life and work in Canada. The second phase yielded 137 interviews, which, combined with the 60 from the first phase, gave a grand total of 197 interviews. Ten interviewees applied to the program but failed to gain admission or retired before working in Canada; several others had never applied for the program but were included for comparative purposes because of their U.S. H-2A work experience (for instance, see the discussion of “Inocencio” in Chapter 3). Interview teams employed a snowball method in which they sought assistance from earlier interviewees, municipal mayors, neighborhood merchants, and even passersby in order to locate new subjects. There exists no official registry of all current and former SAWP participants.13 Most interviews took place in the subject’s home, though a small number were carried out during celebrations (birthdays, weddings), in the home of a third party, at local work sites, or on the street.14 On occasion, interviewers received invitations to weddings, birthdays, or other celebrations, where they were offered chicken with mole sauce, rice and beans, cake, sodas, and other food and drink commonly served on festive occasions. The openness of current and former SAWP participants surprised both me and the field assistants, composed of students and researchers from the Autonomous University of Tlaxcala. However difficult to document, this willingness to embrace “difference”—whether difference comes in the

16 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

form of people or experiences—may be one of the enduring consequences of repeated seasonal work trips to Canada. This is not to say that all people we contacted responded to our queries candidly and in detail or that all were even willing to collaborate in the investigation. But the overall refusal level was less than five percent, and many people who evinced reticence or resistance in the initial stages of the interview warmed up once they understood that we had no formal relationship with either participating government. Some interviews continued for two, three, or even four hours and addressed numerous themes not contemplated in the schedule.15 Quantifiable material was coded and input into a database for analysis in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS); the results contributed many of the graphs, charts, and tables present in this book. In August and September of 2003, I carried out a month of fieldwork in Ontario, destination of over 77 percent of the migrants in the sample during their last contract labor episode. A rented car made it possible to appreciate firsthand the marked differences in crop regimes—from open field vegetables in the flat Holland Marsh area north of Toronto to orchards (cherry and peach, among others) and commercial nurseries in the Niagara peninsula, tobacco and ginseng farms around Simcoe, and acres of greenhouses in Leamington, located in Essex County at the province’s southwestern extremity. I attended Spanish-language church services in Niagara-on-the-Lake and a so-called Encounter of Two Cultures in Leamington (see Chapter 6). I interviewed flower growers and nursery owners in St. Catherines, as well as a representative of the growers’ Foreign Area Resource Management Services (FARMS) and representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which seeks to organize Ontario farmworkers. I also spoke to the staff of UFCW-linked Migrant Worker Support Centres located in Bradford, Simcoe, and Leamington.16 Often I crossed paths with Mexican and Caribbean contract workers laboring in fields, biking along rural roads, shopping in area food stores, attending church, or receiving assistance or participating in free English or bicycle safety classes in the support centers. Conversations with the workers were differentially contextualized and constrained: I judge that they were freer and more candid in the support centers, somewhat more cautious during chats that followed church services or over meals in their employer-provided quarters. Officials from the Mexican Consulate in Toronto kindly accorded me two lengthy interviews (totaling seven hours) during which they expounded their views of the SAWP and pro-

Contract Labor Migration 17

vided additional insights into the program’s history, structure, and operation. The Vice-Consul charged with overseeing Mexican consular officials in Ontario allowed me to listen in on a conference call during which he attempted to negotiate with a tobacco grower over his abrupt dismissal of two Mexican workers (see Chapter 2). The month-long fieldwork in Ontario supplied a broader context for understanding viewpoints and feelings about living and working in Canada expressed by migrants during interviews in their home communities; it also helped ground my reading of the literature dealing with the SAWP. I did not, however, meet any of the migrants whom I or my team had interviewed earlier in Tlaxcala.17 I had instructed interviewers to refrain from soliciting either the name of the Canadian employer or that of the farm in the belief that requesting such information might lead subjects to question our allegiances and motives and that workers might hold off reporting on illnesses, unfair treatment, episodes of discriminatory and racist treatment, and so on in order to “avoid trouble” that could jeopardize their economic futures. Some workers shied away from discussing some potentially sensitive topics anyway, such as the nature of their contacts with the Mexican Consulate. Others volunteered their employer’s name and insisted that we record accurately their ordeals and the unfair treatment to which they felt they had been subjected.18 I name those persons who occupied prominent public positions and reproduce accurately the nicknames Mexican workers assigned to two notoriously disliked Canadian growers, but have maintained the anonymity of all workers encountered in Tlaxcala and Canada, as well as employers interviewed in Canada. I returned to Canada briefly in the spring of 2007 to participate in a public forum on the SAWP at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. There I informally interviewed FARMS president Ken Forth. More useful in updating my understanding of the SAWP and of Mexico–Canada–United States migration was my participation in three seminars that brought together public officials, NGO representatives, and academics. The first took place in June 2006 in Ottawa, where I presented a paper on contract labor migration and rural development to representatives of FARMS, the Guatemalan and Canadian governments, and the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL), which hosted the event. Then on 5–6 June 2008, the Colegio de Tlaxcala organized and sponsored “The First Regional Seminar on Tlaxcalan Migration to the United States and Canada” in San Pablo Apetatitlán, Tlaxcala; this event was followed a few weeks later (23–24 June) by an “Expert Dialogue on Labour Mobility in North

18 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

America” in Mexico City, organized by FOCAL, the North American Studies Center (CISAN) of Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM), and the Metropolis Project. The presentations and discussions in these seminars pressed upon me the speed with which government-togovernment negotiations about TFWPs were being developed and the importance of raising a cautionary voice. The “Expert Dialogue” was conducted under Charterhouse Rules, which prevent me from directly quoting participants, but I feel comfortable noting that “complementarity” between Canadian labor demand and Mexican supply was uncritically assumed by most (not all) participants. And whereas the term “better practices” seemed to have displaced “best practices” by 2008, no one mentioned the word capitalism or discussed “surplus labor extraction” in two long days of relatively candid discussion.

Synopsis of Chapters Chapter 1, “Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor: Tlaxcala, Mexico, and Ontario, Canada” traces postwar agrarian developments in specific regions of two countries in order to analyze the social and historical genesis of labor market complementarity: rural Tlaxcala as an exporter of agricultural wage workers; southern Ontario as one important destination. The comparative examination reveals that “complementarity” was neither necessary nor inevitable but the product of particular social and historical relationships unfolding at global, national, and regional levels through which social fields formed and reformed over time through conflict and struggle. Chapter 2, “The Dual Process of Constructing Mexican Contract Workers,” analyzes the structuration of the social fields that compose the SAWP and traces some of the tensions that shape struggles therein. I discuss the particularly weak position of Mexican (and Caribbean) workers, who are dispersed among hundreds of rural communities and who lack independent representation before Canadian employers, consular personnel, and the Canadian government. However, I also register the contradictory positionings of Mexican government representatives who negotiate and advocate on behalf of the workers in a climate of competition with multiple Caribbean suppliers of labor power. Finally, I explain how the social field concept enables insights into the overall satisfaction expressed by the majority of Mexican workers, even as many complain of overwork, mistreatment, and substandard conditions on Canadian farms.

Contract Labor Migration 19

Chapter 3, titled “‘Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest’: Case Studies of Contract Labor Migration,” offers condensed narratives of migration experience constructed on the basis of in-depth interviews with sixteen SAWP participants or, in a few cases, U.S. H-2A contract labor migrants. The material complements statistical analysis of interview data, sharpens our understanding of the situations precipitating adscription to the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, and provides details of migrants’ individual experiences. In later sections of this book I repeatedly refer back to these narratives in order to illustrate specific points. Chapter 4, “Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply: Caribbean and Mexican Workers in Canada’s SAWP,” discusses the progressive displacement of Caribbean workers by Mexican ones since the mid1980s. There coauthor Kerry Preibisch and I argue that, whereas “hard racism” undoubtedly explains a portion of the ethnic/racial/national shift in the contract labor work force, a “soft racism” based on the assignment of different ethnic/racial/national groups to specific commodity sectors better accounts for hiring trends. As commodity sectors dominated historically by this or that Mexican or Caribbean group expand or contract, so do opportunities for employment. We also record and analyze critically the racialized beliefs through which Canadian employers explain or justify recruitment and task assignment. We observe that Mexicans’ lack of English-language facility and weak or nonexistent social networks in urban Ontario make them a more tractable and thus more exploitable labor force than Caribbeans. Some Ontario growers even engage in “country surfing,” through which they deliberately shift from one labor supply country to another in a search for the most exploitable work force. Chapter 5, “The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and Mexican Development,” takes up the relationship between migrant remittances and social and economic development. The discussion in this chapter is framed by the proposition that migrants trade off prolonged separation from their loved ones, social isolation in Canada, and long days of hard, physical work under extreme climatic conditions for economic betterment. I acknowledge the material improvements that some migrant workers—especially those with many trips to Canada—have been able to make, but suggest that sustaining these improvements often depends on continued participation in the SAWP. However, I draw upon a broad conception of development developed by Amartya Sen to argue that under capitalism, and particularly among migrant workers, advances along one developmental dimension come at the expense of “losses” along one or more others. Finally, I present evidence to dispute claims that remittance-

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based investment in human capital formation through education results in transgenerational development. Chapter 6 addresses “The Political Economy of Contract Labor in Neoliberal North America: Cheap Labor and Organized Labor.” The chapter begins by taking up the U.S. H-2A program in North Carolina and the role there of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). From the FLOC’s successful organizing campaign I move to discuss UFCW efforts to organize SAWP (particularly Mexican) workers and the opposition to that organization mounted by FARMS and the Canadian and Mexican governments. Against the structure-agency dichotomy that has gained ground in anthropology and sociology in recent decades, I suggest that the extreme degree of structuration of SAWP (unfree) labor relegates most protests to the kind of “backstage” carping and growling discussed by James Scott (1990), for which reason contract workers require the assistance and active support of sympathetic Canadian residents and citizens. Finally, Chapter 7, “Globalization and Temporary Migrants: PostNational Citizens, Realpolitik, and Disposable Labor Power,” discusses post-national citizenship and social inclusion/exclusion in relation to migrant labor in general and contract labor systems in particular, and contrasts the post-national perspective with one that turns around worker disposability. I mark the limits of post-national citizenship both theoretically, through discussion of Ellen Meiksins Wood’s analysis of globalized capital and the State, and empirically, via the Canadian government’s introduction of programs for low-skill migrant workers that provide far fewer benefits and safeguards than the SAWP. I also discuss the relevance of this approach to contemporary immigration regimes in the United States and Canada.

CHAPTER 1

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor: Tlaxcala, Mexico, and Ontario, Canada

This chapter places side by side the agrarian histories of southwest Ontario and northwest Tlaxcala, two culturally and spatially distant regions, lodged in social formations with different histories and brought into a direct—one might even say codependent—relationship in the late twentieth century. How did this codependence—which some call “complementarity”—develop, and how did it unfold in relationship to broader, extraregional social, economic, and political processes? How did labor migration come to play such a crucial role in Ontario horticulture? Was this always the case? And how is it that Mexicans, among them northwest Tlaxcalans, came to fulfill the demand for labor power there? I’m particularly interested in interrogating the social and historical conditions under which two social fields, broadly conceived, became tied together through seasonal migrant workers. Hence I address the “prehistory” of the SAWP and, to a degree, state development policies in both countries, as well as some of the social, economic, and political specificities of northwest Tlaxcala and southwest Ontario. The chapter has been divided into three dyadic sections, each of which treats social and economic processes during a specific period, first in Tlaxcala and then southwest Ontario. Tacking back and forth sheds light on key historical developments and how they eventually resolved in a convergence of interests between Canadian horticultural producers on the one hand, and Mexican peasants and rural workers on the other. Such tacking also makes it possible to highlight the historical processes through which some countries and regions become exporters of labor power and other countries and regions become labor importers. The first dyadic section covers an earlier period ending in the early to mid twentieth century. The second focuses on the post–World War II era and continues

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into the 1960s. The third and final section draws the two areas into closer relationship.

Tlaxcala—Period I: Golden Ages, Dark Ages Most social scientists and historians writing on contemporary Tlaxcala begin by discussing the state’s small size, dense population, excellent transport system (roads, railways) and proximity to the major metropolitan areas of Puebla and Mexico City, among the most important labor and product markets in Mexico. Many also contrast a prerevolutionary (pre1910) “golden age” with postrevolutionary collapse and economic stagnation. The first period combined a vibrant Porfirian-era textile industry, concentrated in the southern part of the state, with one of Mexico’s most important pulque-producing zones in the north. Pulque is a mildly alcoholic drink produced from the fermented juice of the maguey cactus. It was at one time the preferred beverage of Mexico’s working classes and peasantries; indeed, Vernon described pulque as “the ‘beer’ of the Mexican poor” (cited in Ramírez Rancaño 2000: 45).1 With the construction of a rail network linking key cities and agricultural regions of south central and southeast Mexico, both pulque and woven cotton textiles could be shipped easily from Tlaxcala to markets in Puebla, Veracruz, and Mexico City (Ramírez Rancaño 2000: 44–46). Before the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), a few dozen large land owners controlled most of Tlaxcala’s cultivable land. They combined the production of grain (corn for the resident workforce and barley for cattle feed) with the cultivation of maguey, from which specialized tlachiqueros extracted juice or aguamiel and transported it to tinacales for fermentation. The resulting product, pulque, was then loaded on trains while fresh, for transport to urban markets.2 The rural work force consisted of landless resident laborers ( peones acasillados) supplemented with semaneros eventuales, i.e., waged laborers from nearby communities who lived and worked on haciendas during the week and returned home on the weekend (Sánchez Bringas 1974; Farrell 1977).3 Haciendas in northern Tlaxcala sometimes drew workers from areas in the south, as in the case of the inhabitants of Tizostoc and Tecoac (municipality of Ixtacuixtla), who formerly worked as semaneros at San Nicolás el Grande and other haciendas around Nanacamilpa (Varela n.d.; see Farrell 1977: 168–169). Tlaxcala’s agricultural boom ended with the Mexican revolution, when

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 23

warfare and destruction of railway tracks disrupted the movement of pulque from northern Tlaxcala and southern Hidalgo to the key Mexico City market. Following the revolution, pulque became the object of blistering criticism by Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos and others for the unsanitary techniques involved in its manufacture and its presumed causal role in drunkenness, lethargy, and even criminality among the indigenous poor (Ramírez Rancaño 2000). The industry never recovered, and pulque gradually gave way to beer as the alcoholic beverage of choice among Mexico’s popular (poor and working) classes. During a period of rapid agrarian reform promoted by President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), most grain-cattle-pulque haciendas were forcefully expropriated and converted to ejidos, state lands granted in perpetuity to qualified members of recipient communities. Expropriation and redistribution was common in southern Tlaxcala, where former revolutionaries linked to Emiliano Zapata maintained an important presence. However, many haciendas in northern areas of the state were formally divided up among family members or heirs and survived the agrarian reform onslaught. The new owners gained protection from future expropriation by acquiring twenty-five-year “writs of nonencumbrance” (certificados de inafectabilidad) handed out by conservative post-Cárdenas governments sympathetic to private property (Ramírez Rancaño 1991: 163, 166–167).4 After the Second World War the larger landowners converted their farms into cattle ranches, corn-pulque farms, or dairy farms. Ejidalization deprived the surviving large landowners of their prerevolutionary unfree labor force, but many used their substantial economic resources to dominate ejidatarios and small private property owners (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 70–80). For instance, corn-pulque farmers and cattle ranchers monopolized ownership of tinacales, which made it possible for them to set low prices on aguamiel extracted on nearby ejidos, where most postreform maguey plants grew.5 Ranchers and large farmers also profited by renting machinery to the technologically poor land reform sector. And when large landowners needed seasonal workers for planting, harvest, etc., they could rely on a labor force of part-time, peasant day laborers who worked cheaply because their cost of reproduction was subsidized through subsistence cultivation of corn, beans, and other food crops. According to Sánchez Bringas, “In these ways, private property extended its territorial dominion over the ejidos, gaining access to the latter’s scarce territorial resources and taking advantage of peasant labor power through the extraction, concentration and marketing of products like aguamiel and milk”

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(1974: 93). Finally, many of the same surplus extractive mechanisms were used by rich peasants to dominate poorer ejidatarios, and could even be found within ejidos as a result of internal social differentiation resulting from, among other things, the region’s growing integration into the capitalist market economy (see Cook and Binford 1990). By 1960 some 64 percent of the total cultivated land in the northern area of the state was in private property; ejidos controlled the remaining 36 percent. Ten years later, in 1970, the average ejidatario held rights to 7.3 hectares, much of which consisted of uncultivable grazing land (agostadero) (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 83–85).6 Moreover, Tlaxcala sheltered an estimated seventeen thousand landless peasants, many of them the children of ejidatarios deprived of land because the agrarian reform laws prohibited subdivision of ejido plots. Indeed, in some communities those with “derechos a salvo”—which placed them on a waiting list should a plot become available in the future—outnumbered the ejidatarios proper and may have represented 10 percent of northern Tlaxcala’s total population. This dense concentration of landless peasants became denser still in the wake of rapid post-1950 population growth. Population growth and a skewed distribution of land combined to generate strong demographic pressures on natural resources. Eventually many poor peasants began to cultivate pasture lands, a strategy that exacerbated soil loss and erosion and contributed to the current high levels of environmental degradation in the state.7 Taking land out of pasture reduced the number of plow animals (mostly bulls) and compelled peasant agriculturalists to substitute rented machinery and chemical fertilizer for animal traction and organic fertilizer. Limited local and regional labor markets meant that much of the money to purchase agricultural goods and services could be obtained only via wage work in Mexico City and other urban centers. The vibrant prerevolutionary textile industry might have powered postrevolutionary economic prosperity. But technologically backward Tlaxcalan mills could not compete on the national market with newly developing industrial regions that employed modern, labor-saving machinery. Tlaxcalan textiles enjoyed a few years of recuperation during the Great Depression and the Second World War (1940–1944)—when imports collapsed and domestic demand increased—but thereafter entered into a period of steep decline (Ramírez Rancaño 1991: 206).8 Statewide a dozen mills closed down between 1960 and 1979, as did an additional thirty-four textile factories in nearby Puebla, many of which employed Tlaxcalan workers.

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 25

Southwest Ontario—Period I: Settlement and Early Development We move now to Ontario, Canada, a settler colony with fertile soils, a small population, and vibrant economic growth, all in marked contrast to Tlaxcala. Ontario was settled in the late 1700s by Empire Loyalists fleeing the recently liberated United States. The sparse indigenous population presented less of a barrier to well-armed English settlers than did the heavy forest cover. In Ontario, settlement was synonymous with the clearing of the land, at least for those who imagined an agricultural future. Once the initial problems had been overcome, southern areas of the territory, particularly the zone that ran between what is now the city of Hamilton in the east and Lake Huron in the west, offered ideal conditions for agriculture: rich soils, mild winters, and a one hundred eighty day growing season that would in time sustain, acre-for-acre, the most productive agriculture in Canada. The government envisioned a land tenure system in which a dominant, landholding gentry would lease land to tenants and purchase the services of landless cottars lodged at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy. According to Parr, the government wished to “avoid the worst of the dispersed and autonomous frontier freeholder model common in the fractious American republic” (1985: 92). Land speculation on the one side ran up against thirst for land on the other. Around 1848 some 57 percent of farmers were proprietors and the remaining 43 percent tenants. Schemes to cultivate untilled land held by and on behalf of the Crown and clergy helped reduce the percentage of tenants to 16.7 by 1871. In most cases, tenancy was less a permanent condition than “a rung on the so-called agricultural ladder” by means of which the son of an owneroperator rented a farm in his home area hoping to earn enough money in four or five years to buy land of his own (Wood 2000: 101). Recently arrived settlers were in a more precarious situation. Lacking capital or the support of a stable farming family, they could neither buy nor rent land and had to work for others until such time as they were able to accumulate sufficient funds to purchase an unimproved parcel on or near the frontier of settlement (Parr 1985: 94). From the beginning, then, wage labor—even if a seasonal pursuit and transitional in life cycle terms—played a key role in the future province’s economic development. Parr observed how this fact has frequently been overshadowed by the myth of the independent farming family:

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The myth of the province has been that the workers of the soil are its owners, and that farms were made from forest, swamp, and slabs of rock ill-disguised by brush by independent yeoman. Traditionally, those who worked farms were seen as freeholders who possessed the land they cleared, fenced, and tilled by patent, who were their neighbours’ equals in forming rural communities and have remained equal before the law. . . . Yet in each successive generation from the settlement phase onward, rural wage labourers have been essential to the functioning of the province’s persistent and unmistakably hierarchical agricultural system. (1985: 91–92)

Yet there never developed a stable agricultural labor force: Among the agricultural portion of the population there has never been a stable group of agricultural labourers, as we might find of, for example, carpenters or machinists in another sector of the economy. . . . Agricultural workers have been historically, as they are today, casual labourers dependent upon irregular spates of ill-paid waged labour for several different employers in order to maintain material subsistence. (Parr 1985: 95–96)

Hence, “A commonly heard complaint was that good farm labourers, as well as good domestic help, were almost impossible to find, but this did not seem to translate into higher wages” (Wood 2000: 101, emphasis added). Interestingly, we find the same complaint voiced today by Ontario horticulturalists. The closing of Ontario’s frontier around the middle of the nineteenth century should have contributed to a more stable agricultural working class by depriving upwardly mobile settlers and second or third generation offspring of farming families of access to land. However, this was also the period when Toronto and other cities began to grow, diversify, and drain off workers from the countryside. The growth of Ontario’s urban population and industry involved complex feedback loops between mechanizing farmers seeking to compensate for the lack of a cheap, stable, rural working class, and urban artisans who enlarged their workshops in order to meet the growing demand for farm machinery. This kind of synergy never developed in Tlaxcala or most other areas of Mexico, where a high percentage of rural dwellers were landless and, at least until after the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), tied to haciendas through debt peonage and other relationships that ensured owners

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 27

an abundant supply of cheap labor power remunerated at just above the biological minimum. Where labor is cheap, there exists little incentive to introduce improved technology, for which reason absolute surplus value trumps relative surplus value. Over time population growth and the exhaustion of the agricultural frontier might have contributed to the rise of a relatively stable agricultural proletariat in southwest Ontario. But the opening of the western plain states of Alberta and Saskatchewan to large-scale grain farming and stock raising toward the last quarter of the nineteenth century siphoned off frustrated homesteaders from southwest Ontario and elsewhere. And mechanization, which might have mitigated the labor supply problem by substituting machines for men, developed slowly in horticulture and related industries (Parr 1985: 99).

Tlaxcala—Period II: Labor Migration We return to Tlaxcala, where a large population relative to land availability, on the one hand, and stagnating postwar industry, on the other, eventually drove residents to seek additional sources of income beyond state and, occasionally, national borders. Neither rapid population growth nor truncated industrial development can be divorced from mass rural and urban poverty, which limits the internal market for commodities and undermines endogenous capitalist growth. As various researchers have pointed out, the Cárdenas land reform (1934–1940), combined with the government’s “squeezing” of the rural peasant sector through cheap food policies, had a great deal to do with setting the table for postwar Mexican economic expansion (see, e.g., Hamilton 1982). Rural areas in Mexico’s south and center supplied sugar, oil seeds, legumes, and grain cheaply to urban centers, while an unabsorbed mass of underemployed rural workers migrated to Mexico City and other industrial centers to meet a growing need for cheap labor power. Several million more worked part time in the United States, illegally or legally, during the 1942–1964 Bracero Program (Durand 2006). Ejidatarios also formed part of a growing mass market for processed food, clothing, utensils, and other products turned out by an industrial sector ensconced behind high tariff walls in Mexico’s version of Import Substitution Industrialization. Tlaxcala became caught up in the force field that marked this process. However, ethnographic work in the 1970s carried out by Peñalva García, Rothstein, Roldán Botello, and Farrell, among others, presented a panorama of postwar economic integration among communities of

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the Tlaxcalan south, center south, and east that included alternatives to permanent out-migration unavailable to many rural Mexicans. For example, Peñalva García showed how the inhabitants of Santa Cruz Tlaxcala, located twelve kilometers northeast of the state capital, pursued a mixed economic strategy that combined subsistence farming of corn and beans with industrial work in La Trinidad and other area textile factories located along the Zacuapan River. By the time La Trinidad closed in 1968, leaving 194 workers unemployed, many residents had already parlayed their industrial skills and union contacts into jobs in the new industrial city of Ciudad Sahagún, Hidalgo, which housed the state-owned Dina (Diesal Nacional) and Carros de Ferrocarril factories (Peñalva García 1978: 48–49). In a series of books and articles spanning more than two decades, Frances Rothstein (1982, 1986; see 1992a, 1992b, 1996, 1999, 2007) analyzed social and economic transformation in San Cosme Mazatecochco, which lay 15 kilometers from the city of Puebla on the slopes of the La Malinche volcano. Unlike Santa Cruz Tlaxcala, all San Cosmeros were peasant agriculturalists into the 1940s, when they began to supplement agriculture with employment in Pueblan textile factories and then later in Mexico City. Rothstein described a synergistic process in which factory workers remained bound to the land, but unlike workers in Santa Cruz Tlaxcala invested portions of their factory salaries in farm machinery and chemical fertilizers in order to increase the yields of generally poor, overworked soils. Only in recent decades did agriculture, hammered by low domestic corn prices and cheap imports, give way to household-based petty industry in the form of subcontracted clothing confection. When the workshops failed, San Cosmeros left in large numbers for the United States. By contrast Roldán Botello (1979) described how most households of San Francisco Tepeyanco, located a few kilometers south of the state capital, developed a mixed subsistence/commercial agriculture that provided for an acceptable level of material reproduction. Tepeyanco is one of a small number of communities in Tlaxcala with a significant amount of irrigated land, which enabled the intensive exploitation of market garden crops requiring a secure, year-round water supply.9 Even so, she pointed out that in the late 1970s not everyone could make a living from agriculture; a few people had secured work in the textile industry, and a small number of landless men had moved to Puebla and Mexico City, where they obtained employment as masons, restaurant waiters, subway employees, government agents, and watchmen. In many cases Tepeyanquense agri-

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 29

culturalists avoided selling to middlemen by becoming middlemen themselves and moving local produce along commercial routes between Veracruz and Mexico City. Finally, Michael Scott Farrell carried out doctoral dissertation fieldwork in communities located in the municipalities of Juan Cuatmazi and Panotla. Again, landlessness and land poverty, generally referred to in Latin American as minifundismo, led to the development of a growing rural proletariat “obliged to sell its unskilled labor in local and more distant markets” (1977: 57), the men mainly as Mexico City construction workers and the women as domestics. But consistent with other Tlaxcalan cases, most migration remained seasonal and people continued to grow subsistence goods on small, local plots. These cases point to the fallacy of drawing broad generalizations on the basis of census material. As I pointed out in a study of neoliberal state policy and international migration, household and community strategies develop on local social fields, where commercial relationships, resource access, and even locational advantages can impede, delay the arrival of, or cushion the effects of more general economic tendencies for many households (Binford, ed. 2004; Binford 2007; Binford and Churchill 2007). Tlaxcalans participated as Braceros during the 1942–1964 program, and some even settled in the United States when the program ended (Farrell 1977: 19).10 But most returned home, and Tlaxcala’s contribution to Mexico-U.S. migration flows remained minimal until the 1990s (Varela n.d.; Marchand, ed. 2006). Varela (n.d.) carried out the first systematic study of migration in the state in the communities of Tecoac and Tizostoc (municipality of Ixtacuixtla), where migration histories from a random sample of households indicated that U.S.-bound migration dropped off precipitously after the Bracero Agreement terminated and picked up again only in the 1990s. This general result was confirmed by the work of Marchand and her students in Huamantla and Apizaco, located in the east and center of the state, respectively (2006), and in a state-level analysis carried out by Huerta and Corona (2008). However, Martha Romero Hernández explained that U.S.-bound Bracero-era migration from Tlacualpan, in the municipality of Santa Ana Chautempan on the lower slopes of the La Malinche volcano, continued through the 1950s–1970s and into the present (2004: 50–51). This appears to be an exceptional case though, and most currently available evidence, thin to be sure, indicates that 1960s–1970s migration was overwhelmingly regional in scope.11 Tlaxcala differed from many other rural areas of Mexico in that proximity to mass labor and product markets made it possible for many people to work in Puebla,

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Mexico City, or another regional city and return on a weekly or even daily basis to rural residences. A small number of people continued to pursue this strategy into the new millennium (Gutiérrez 2001). Thus it is that in the mid-1970s Michael Scott Farrell referred to Tlaxcala as “a vast labor reserve for . . . urban centers, a peculiar suburbia of rural poverty on the fringe of Mexico City” (1977: 62, 71) and stated that “In Mexico City there are exaggerated sayings to the effect that the thousands of bricklayers, plasterers and others working in the city’s construction industry come exclusively from Tlaxcala” (91, 94). Similarly, Hugo Nutini and Timothy Murphy highlighted the role of local-regional migration in an important 1970 article on the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley. The authors stated that as a result of land fragmentation and poor soil quality, most households produced only about 50 percent of subsistence needs.12 They highlighted the absence of large estates on which people might obtain wage work in rural areas, then asked, somewhat rhetorically, “How, then, do people supplement their agricultural subsistence?” Their answer: By labor migration. It is the great movement of labor to the urban and highway factories and plants, and to the cities in general, which keeps the population above a bare subsistence level. . . . There is, of course, permanent migration to the cities of the valley and to other cities of Mexico, where the migrant (and eventually his immediate family) is absorbed into the urban setting, maintains only minimal ties with his native village, and, perhaps after a generation, cuts the ties completely. This type of migration, however, is numerically insignificant as compared with village centered migration. (1970: 87)

That may be so, but if we can trust figures provided by Vásquez López and Quiroz Cruz, Nutini and Murphy underestimated the significance of permanent out-migration during the 1960s. Mexican national census data indicates that between 1950 and 1960, Tlaxcala incurred a net migration loss (out-migration less in-migration) of 82,032 persons, equal to 17.4 percent of the state’s population. During the 1960–1970 decade the loss climbed to 105,411, or 18.6 percent of the population (Vazquez and Quiroz 1994: 61, 112), declining thereafter until it disappeared between 1980 and 1990, when rapid industrialization created thousands of jobs and converted Tlaxcala into a net importer of people (see below and Cervantes Castillo 2005: 62). Indeed, Cervantes Castillo notes that since the 1990s, “Morelos and Tlaxcala have become, along with the state of Mexico, the principal destinations for migrants originating from other states in the

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 31

central region” (65). Even so, Nutini and Murphy were probably correct that daily, weekly, and seasonal migration outweighed permanent outmigration and for the reasons that I discussed earlier: the transport system and growing regional labor markets.13 Significantly, neither Nutini and Murphy nor Vásquez López and Quiroz Cruz nor Farrell mentioned U.S. migration, which certainly existed, albeit at such a low level that migrants tended to fly beneath the social scientists’ radar (Varela, n.d.).14 Finally, available ethnographic evidence indicates that even when people have moved away from rural Tlaxcalan communities, they tend to retain important emotional, ideological, social, and economic ties to them. As of the early to mid-1970s the tendency was for “permanent” migrants to loan out, sharecrop, or rent their land rather than sell it, to contribute to community projects when requested to do so, and to return home on important ceremonial occasions: patron saint’s days, weddings, baptisms, funerals, etc. (see Roldán Botello 1979; Peñalva García 1978; Rothstein 1982). Be that as it may, when interpreted in the context of the historical record, the evidence underscores the internal (Mexican) migration alternatives available to Tlaxcaltecos unable to find employment in or around their communities. Notably, the proximity of northwest Tlaxcala both to Puebla and, more importantly, Mexico City enabled many people to move short distances on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis—or even to relocate their households while also maintaining regular contact with the community of origin. Tlaxcaltecos formed a low-wage, often seasonal work force that participated actively in the expansion of domestic capitalism under the postwar policy of Import Substitution Industrialization. Small numbers entered the Bracero Program, but few relocated to the United States or continued to journey there once the U.S. government unilaterally terminated the program in 1964. As for Canada, well, it was not even on the Mexican peasant or rural worker’s cognitive map.

Southwest Ontario—Period II: Modes of Incorporation While northern Tlaxcala—and indeed, the state as a whole—was expelling Mexicans (often temporarily) to nearby urban zones during much of the postwar period, southwest Ontario was pulling in Europeans and others. As noted above, the shortage of agricultural workers experienced by Ontario’s horticultural farmers harkened back to an earlier epoch, when the “opening of the western plains” to agriculture and settlement drew off agricultural laborers anxious to become independent farmers.

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In Ontario, rural labor shortages intensified during World War I as thousands of patriotic rural youth enlisted in the military to fight the German Kaiser. The crisis subsided during the depression when former migrants to urban areas lost their jobs and returned to the countryside. An abundance of food compensated for the hard labor and low wages of farm life. Many people judged rural work preferable to urban unemployment and the bread line. In any case, Canada’s entrance into World War II threatened another round of acute rural labor shortages. This time the government passed legislation designating farmwork a priority occupation and prohibited most farmworkers from taking jobs in the burgeoning industrial sector (Haythorne 1960: 20, 34–35, 75). Farmers had a patriotic duty to feed both the domestic population and the troops in the field, and the State had an obligation to ensure that they obtained enough workers to be able to do so. However, it soon became clear that the resident rural working population was of insufficient size—at least insufficient at the wages growers were prepared to pay. To avert a potential crisis, the government marshaled labor power from elsewhere. Authorities sent conscientious objectors to live and work on farms in lieu of military service and encouraged reserve-dwelling Native Americans to help out, providing free transportation to entice them to do so; they prodded Japanese internees into farmwork and created a Farm Duty Program that temporarily released army, air force, and naval personnel to assist farmers during the harvest season. Even German prisoners of war were sent to the farms (some thirty-five hundred between 1942 and 1945), paid a small salary, and transported between barracks and fields under armed guard (Satzewich 1991: 73–77; Haythorne 1960: 77). These measures worked fine during the wartime emergency. But with the 1945 armistice, forced and coerced workers had to be released and sent home—presuming they still had one. Canadian soldiers returning from the European theater helped for a short while, but low agricultural wages and poor working conditions, which had improved somewhat during the war, convinced many to leave the farms for the cities, where a vigorous postwar industry offered far more attractive conditions. Haythorne commented that . . . many left farm work. These included young people now freer to go back to or continue with their studies, older people unable to retire earlier, and those wishing to leave but not permitted to do so as long as National Selective Service regulations remained in force. With the re-

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 33

moval of wartime wage controls in 1946, earnings increased in other industries more rapidly than in agriculture where wages had not been controlled during the war years. This plus job opportunities elsewhere were strong attractions to farm workers. (1960: 78)

By 1952 even some stock raising areas of Ontario—hardly labor intensive—were experiencing labor shortages, as noted in a report by S.H. Lane and D.R. Campbell, who surveyed 320 randomly selected farms from sixteen townships in Ontario livestock areas (1954: 4–7). One can only surmise that the situation must have been similar in the agriculturally diverse southern part of the province, not included in the survey. The thrust of the Lane and Campbell report was that efforts to mitigate postwar labor problems had failed. Those efforts included the government’s encouragement of European migration into rural areas. Between 1946 and the mid-1950s, thousands of Europeans were allowed into Canada, many as “unfree immigrants.” The government assigned them to occupations and employers during a one- to two-year probationary period, after which they became “free immigrants” with rights to circulate on the labor market. But unless the State wanted to coerce legal residents and citizens to work in agriculture—a bad idea coming on the heels of a costly struggle against fascism—no means existed to ensure that prospective unfree immigrants would remain in agricultural employment once their probationary periods ended. Few did. The majority of the 4,227 Polish war veterans who migrated to Canada in order to escape Soviet tyranny headed for the cities at the first legal opportunity to do so (Satzewich 1989, 1991: 91–92), as did approximately seventy thousand Displaced Persons assigned to Ontario farmers between 1947–1954. Satzewich commented that they “took advantage of the upward mobility afforded them by the process of capital accumulation”—by which he meant urban capital accumulation (1991: 98). Authorities had less luck controlling the movements of those arriving as “free immigrants,” such as the nineteen thousand three hundred Dutch farmers who settled in Canada between 1947–1951 (about three thousand three hundred on Ontario farms). Many had been owner-operators in Europe before the war and worked for Canadian farmers only until the arrival of money from the sale of their European properties enabled them to purchase Canadian farms at depressed postwar prices. According to Schryer, another third (or more) of Dutch immigrants to farming areas of Ontario succeeded in transforming themselves from farmworkers to owner-operators through endogenous, household-based accumulation

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strategies (2006: 130). This, of course, further aggravated the rural employment problem (Satzewich 1991: 119–120). By the mid-1950s the postwar European recovery was in full swing, and competitors for migrant labor arose in Western Europe and Australia, as a result of which “Canada faced a dwindling pool of [European immigrant] labour upon which it could draw” (Satzewich 1991: 104–105).15 What of mechanization? Didn’t Canadian farmers in general and southwest Ontario farmers in particular seek to substitute machinery for labor power, as had occurred during the middle of the nineteenth century? Of course they did—to the degree possible, that is. “Tractorization,” a product of what Winson called the “mobile combustion engine” (1985: 425), began in the 1920s, but became stalled by low product prices, depressed markets, and a lack of capital during the depression, as well as by the rerouting of steel to the defense industry during the Second World War (Haythorne 1960: 35). Following the war’s end the use of laborsaving technologies picked up, helping “to ease the loss of many thousand men and women to other industries” (Haythorne 1960: 20). Farm size increased and the overall farm labor force (paid and unpaid workers) declined. Even so, labor supply shrank even more rapidly as former farmworkers fled to the cities. Also, the disappearance of smaller, less competitive farms and the increase in the average acreage of the remaining ones meant an increase in the ratio of paid to unpaid (family) employees. Fewer people engaged in farmwork, but a higher proportion of them were waged or salaried. This was particularly the case in the horticultural (fruit and vegetable) sector, tobacco, and other crops common in southwest Ontario, which is the subject of this book. As of the mid-1980s, horticultural farms in Ontario had an average of 235 improved acres and average gross annual sales of over three hundred fifty thousand Canadian dollars (Winson 1996: 97).16 While machinery came into general use, it proved no substitute for the discriminating eye and sensitive touch when it came to distinguishing ripe from unripe produce or mature from immature tobacco. As farm specialization advanced there, seasonal labor demand continued to grow. From the mid-1950s, to the early 1960s, hired labor accounted for 22 to 56 percent of total production costs per acre, depending on the crop (Satzewich 1991: 60),17 and the historic state-sponsored “immigration strategy” pursued by government to make up for deficiencies in the domestic labor supply proved increasingly untenable.

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 35

Tlaxcala—Period III: Peasant Land Struggles and Government Response Notwithstanding the relative success of many households that implemented a “mixed” local/regional and agricultural/industrial or commercial strategy, tensions heightened in Tlaxcala during the late 1960s and early 1970s when the twenty-five-year certificados de inafectabilidad given out to large landowners by post-Cárdenas regimes approached expiration. Agrarian discontent was also sparked by postwar state agricultural policies that discriminated against peasant agriculturalists. Post-Cárdenas administrations reduced the agricultural budget and shifted state support toward dam and irrigation projects, mostly located in northern Mexico, in order to build up Mexico’s export potential. A state hostile to small-scale, rain-fed agriculture in the south deprived most peasants of access to credit and technical assistance. Also, and as mentioned earlier, postwar governments put into place cheap food policies that channeled capital from the countryside to the city, where the real axis of import substitution-based economic development was thought to reside. A key part of the policy involved the institution of price controls on basic foods (corn, beans, sugar, etc.) consumed by the urban working classes (see Appendini 2001; Hewitt de Alcantará 1980; Bartra 1986; Otero 1999; Rubio 2001). Between 1962 and 1973 the government marketing board froze the prices of a number of important food crops purchased through the state’s National Basic Foods Company (CONASUPO) marketing system. Peasants responded in Chayanovian fashion by working their fields more intensively, as well as expanding the amount of land under cultivation so as to make up for lost income (see Chayanov 1966). As I pointed out earlier, small-scale producers in northern Tlaxcala reduced the size of animal herds and sowed subsistence crops on pasture lands of dubious fertility. Apart from increasing their need for money, this change in strategy had negative consequences for local labor markets and aggravated land erosion, which affected more than 70 percent of the state’s land base by the early 1960s (Ramírez Rancaño 1991: 200–201). Most daily, weekly, or seasonal Tlaxcalan migrants followed a strategy in which they combined rural wage labor or work in nearby cities with subsistence production. But a growing sector of landless peasants—among them the children of ejidatarios—confronted an uncertain future. I noted above that many people left the state permanently, particularly following the collapse of the regional textile industry. Others struggled to eek out a meager living via

36 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

a series of constantly shifting strategies, eventually joining the legion of peasants that formed the social base of the 1970–1973 land movement. That movement passed through two phases. In the first more or less legal phase, Tlaxcalan peasants, organized by the Independent Peasant Central (Central Campesino Independiente, or CCI) along with university student and rural schoolteacher allies, pressured the government to expropriate and redistribute several dozen large private landholdings (latifundios) that exceeded legal limits. However, the government divided the movement when it bought off a key student leader and demobilized a march on Mexico City by promising to investigate peasant demands. Agrarian reform officials then agreed to expropriate three latifundios in northern Tlaxcala, but this gesture—probably intended as a form of damage control—backfired by raising the hopes of thousands of landless cultivators left out of the settlement. When additional expropriations failed to follow, a series of independent, locally organized (and thus difficult to control) land invasions spread across the landscape during 1973 (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 125–128). Negotiations proved fruitless, and on 23 June 1973 the government called in the army, judicial police, and other security forces to remove invaders from thirty-five occupied properties (Ramírez Rancaño 1991: 239). The government successfully combated a final wave of land invasions during the governorship of Emilio Sánchez Piedras (1975–1981) by means of selective purchase and distribution of land, agrarian rhetoric, and clever political maneuvering (Ramírez Rancaño 1991: 246–256). Protests, marches, and land invasions prevailed in many Mexican states during the early 1970s. The simultaneous outbreak of broad, if often spontaneous and unarticulated, protests and actions owed much to underlying structural contradictions that could no longer be contained, even if the immediate causes, concrete enemies, and specific demands varied from one conflicted region to another (Bartra 1986: 103).18 In the aftermath of the movement the Tlaxcala state government responded with a strategy that embraced rural price policy, selective agrarian reform, and the provision of alternative, nonagricultural employment to rural, landless workers. In Tlaxcala the Agrarian Reform Ministry spent between fifteen and twenty million pesos to purchase 3,628 hectares for distribution to landless peasants; it also expropriated the Santa Elena estate—occupied by protestors—when the owner, former governor Isidro Candia, offered to sell but only at an unacceptably high price (Ramírez Rancaño 1991: 258–259). However, land purchase/expropriation and

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 37

redistribution remained selective, and employment creation rather than land distribution formed the essence of the government response. For instance, based on a study of the purported roots of rural discontent, the Tlaxcala branch of the Department of Agrarian Affairs and Colonization (Departamento de Asuntos Agrarios y Colonización, or DAAC) designed “Plan Maíz” in July of 1972 as a food-for-work program focused on rural road construction. In November the Ministry of Public Works (Secretaría de Obras Públicas, or MOP) hired five thousand peasants at twenty pesos daily, the number rising to twelve thousand by May of 1973 (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 135–136). In September of 1972 the government created the Program for Agrarian Rehabilitation and Development in the State of Tlaxcala (Programa de Rehabilitación Agraria y Desarrollo en el Estado de Tlaxcala, or PRADET) to set up small-scale industrial enterprises in rural areas; by April of 1973 there existed twenty projected ejidal businesses, located for the most part in Tlaxcala’s conflicted northern zone (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 144), but not one survived for more than a few years (see Coloca-Rivas 1999: 83–84 for an example).19 And in 1972 President Echeverría declared “Plan Benito Juárez,” which in Tlaxcala provided machinery for the construction of four dams and twenty reservoirs ( jagüeyes) for small-scale irrigation (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 136). The most effective measure proved to be the use of fiscal incentives and tax breaks to attract industries away from congested and polluted Mexico City. The strategy included the development of industrial zones in Apizaco, Huamantla, Tlaxco, and Calpulalpan in northern areas of the state and Ixtacuixtla in the south (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 138). Success followed when, during the Sánchez Piedras administration (1975–1981), two hundred fifty enterprises generating an estimated thirty-two thousand two hundred jobs were installed in Tlaxcala (Ramírez Rancaño 1991: 263). The resulting immigration of job seekers into the state balanced out emigrants by 1980. A decade later census takers recorded a net migration inflow, though by the turn of the millennium Tlaxcalans were on the move once again, this time to the United States. While the evidence remains circumstantial, a case can be made that the agreement to send Mexican contract workers to Canada formed part of the Mexican government’s response to a growing rural employment crisis and related agrarian mobilization in Tlaxcala and elsewhere. Indeed, for several decades prior to the 1992 constitutional amendment that paved the way for the privatization and sale of ejido land, Mexican presidents had been declaring, albeit with little success, the imminent end of agrarian reform.

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Food-for-work programs (such as Plan Maíz) and small-scale, ejido-based industries (such as PRADET) manifested the state’s interest in employment creation and anticipated neoliberal development policies by more than a decade. The most important step involved the state-sponsored reindustrialization of Tlaxcala, through which discontented, landless peasants and underemployed rural proletarians were to “metamorphize” into contented industrial laborers and service sector workers. Mexico’s entry into the SAWP can be viewed as one measure, among others, designed to provide waged employment for a rural surplus population. I doubt that either Mexican or Canadian officials thought that twelve years would be required for the number of Mexican temporary migrants to exceed one thousand (in 1986) from the initial 203 participants in 1974.20 In the case of Tlaxcala, some residents of Atotonilco, Nanacamilpa and other communities working in Mexico City learned about the program soon after it began, and, with limited and increasingly unattractive local and regional economic alternatives, they counted themselves among the early recruits.21

Southwest Ontario—Period III: Canadian Farmers and the Advent of the SAWP As the postwar rural economic crisis was intensifying in Mexico and households struggled to make modest ends meet, southern Ontario horticultural employers scrambled to find enough cheap labor during peak periods of the annual agricultural cycle. They complained vociferously to the government beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but most officials turned a deaf ear, denying that an agricultural labor shortage existed and accusing growers of failing to avail themselves of the domestic recruitment mechanisms in place at the time. They argued that employers were neither actively advertising jobs nor providing adequate incentives to ensure that employed workers remained for the duration of the harvest season. For government officials, the issue was the distribution and not the overall quantity of agricultural wage workers. From their perspective, farmers always seemed to want someone else to bring the workers to them (Satzewich 2007 & 1991: Chapter 6; Department of Manpower and Immigration 1973: 26). Two events paved the way for the creation of the SAWP. First, in 1962 a white paper on immigration reform reversed a long-standing racist policy that had excluded most immigrants from the Commonwealth Caribbean

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 39

(Avery 1995: 180). Satzewich documents in detail how Canadian politicians and bureaucrats reacted historically to growers’ requests for migrant workers from Caribbean countries by asserting that blacks were unlikely to be able to adapt to Canada’s cold climate or assimilate culturally and that their presence would probably lead to a “race relations problem”—though it’s difficult to imagine a “race relations problem” developing without a racist somewhere in the mix (Satzewich 1991). In 1958 the director of the Immigration Branch summarized postwar government immigration policy as follows: . . . it has been our long-standing practice to deal favourably with British subjects of white race from the British West Indies provided there are reasonable grounds for assuming the proposed migrant will become satisfactorily established and has either sufficient funds for maintenance or evidence of satisfactory settlement arrangements. On the other hand, apart from a limited domestic movement, no encouragement is given to persons of coloured race unless they have close relatives in Canada or their cases have exceptional merit, such as graduate nurses, qualified stenographers, etc. (cited in Satzewich 1991: 126)

Eventually the ideological climate—influenced no doubt by the U.S. civil rights movement—shifted leftward and the government’s openly racist policy became a political liability. Also, Ontario horticulturalists began to clamor for the right to import Caribbean workers, influenced in part by the positive experiences of nearby Michigan fruit and vegetable growers (Satzewich 1991: 149). A severe labor shortage in the fall of 1965 caught government bureaucrats flatfooted and proved the final straw. The need for workers became so acute that “in a fashion reminiscent of the Pied Piper,” the Ontario Department of Citizenship and Immigration “sent vans equipped with loudspeakers through the streets of Detroit advertising job openings in the Canadian harvest” (166). Within a year Jamaica had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Canadian government, and in 1966, 264 Jamaican seasonal workers entered Canada; other Caribbeans followed and the number of workers increased rapidly, topping five thousand (from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados) eight years later (see Chapter 4, Figure 4.1). Opening the SAWP to Mexico had nothing to do with a shortage of Caribbean applicants and much to do with a desire on the part of Canadian authorities to break the Caribbean “monopoly” and knock down wages, which increased during the SAWP’s early years (Satzewich 2007).

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Some Ontario growers sought to reduce costs by bringing in privately contracted Portuguese from the Azores and Mexican Mennonites from Chihuahua and Durango (as well as undocumented Mexicans), but a government investigation led to a 1973 internal memo by the Department of Manpower and Immigration that exposed the scathing abuses by labor contractors and participating farmers. According to Satzewich (2007), the anonymous authors’ suggestion that the government could “control to some extent the living and working conditions” of these workers by integrating them into the SAWP represented an effort to avoid a potential legitimacy crisis (Department of Manpower and Immigration 1973: 7). The government followed the recommendation and within a year approached its Mexican and Portuguese counterparts. Portugal refused the offer, the Mexican government accepted it, and the first 208 Mexican workers arrived in Canada in 1974.22 By this date contract labor had become part of the Non-Immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP), which granted temporary work visas to contract workers in agriculture but denied them any possibility of becoming permanent legal residents (“landed immigrants” in Canadian parlance), thus alleviating white Canadians’ concerns over the settlement of a “nonassimilable” mass of people of color. As I discuss elsewhere in this book, the NIEAP established the legal machinery through which Canadian employers have gained increasing access to cheap, captive Third World labor power.

Conclusions In this chapter I have traced the steps by which northwest Tlaxcala became a labor supply area for southwest Ontario. I have neither framed that history by a full-blown theory of capitalist development and underdevelopment nor sought to develop such a theory through it, but elected to analyze the different dynamics of agriculture, land ownership, and wage work as they unfolded on distinct social fields. I pointed out how by the end of the nineteenth century grain production gave way to mixed agriculture and regional markets substituted for overseas ones in southwest Ontario, and how, as well, the settlement and growth of Toronto and other cities as regional sites of industrial development provided the basis for synergistic exchanges between rural and urban economic spheres, evidence of a dynamic, internally based capitalist growth—although we should not omit the fact that grain farmers’ initial wealth owed much to the high prices commanded by Canadian grain in the English market. I noted how the

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 41

crucial role of the agricultural wage worker has been largely written out of this history and drew on the work of Parr, Satzewich, and others in order to give rural workers their due in southwest Ontario, as well as to highlight the state’s role in ensuring that the owners of diverse horticultural operations obtained access to adequate numbers of them during key periods. Long before the arrival of Mexican and Caribbean contract workers, rural prosperity in southwest Ontario was highly dependent on political crises and economic and social underdevelopment elsewhere: northern Quebec and the Maritimes in Canada; and Germany, Poland, Holland, and other European nations devastated by the Second World War. By the time European settlers were routing indigenous populations and breaking ground in southwest Ontario, Mexico had been subject to several hundred years of Spanish rule, and the hacienda system, characterized by large landholdings worked by unfree labor, was well advanced— although it would reach its maximum florescence during the late nineteenth century dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1874–1910). Eventually the labor frozen up by the unfree relations that characterized that system was unfrozen by the Mexican Revolution and the land redistribution that followed, especially during the Cárdenas administration (1934–1940). However, rapid postwar population growth and the end of large-scale, effective land reform generated a landless population with limited opportunities for local employment. Many rural Mexicans worked temporarily in the United States as Bracero Program contract workers or as undocumented migrants; many more though—northwest Tlaxcalans among them—were drawn to Mexico City, which concentrated most of the nation’s industrial complex, a product of the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) policy adopted by postwar governments in Latin America and influenced by the work of Raúl Preibisch and the Economic Commission on Latin America (Kay 1989). Cheap food policies erected on the backs of rural producers and wage workers played an important role in suppressing wages in benefit of ISI (Otero 1999: 58; Appendini 2001: 36). The approach enjoyed several decades of relative success in Mexico by macroeconomic standards, but began to unravel around the time the Bracero Program was terminated by the U.S. government in the mid-1960s. A skewed income distribution placed limits on the size of the home market for industrial goods, supplied by ISI industries protected behind high tariff barriers. The kind of synergy that developed in Canada, the United States, and other settler colonies, through which agriculture and industry mutually stimulated one another, did not develop in Mexico or at least

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not to the same degree. Small-scale, rain-fed agriculture—whether ejido or private property based—remained a “refuge zone” for those who could not be fully absorbed by the urban economy. Only a minority of the population was fully incorporated into the formal sector of the market economy and formed the backbone of mass purchasing power, which meant that industrial development would confront limits sooner rather than later. Finally, the importation of capital goods and the establishment of multinational subsidiaries contributed to continuous drains on hard currencies and periodic crises and devaluations (Guillén Romo 2007; Rubio 2001). As conditions in agriculture deteriorated, growing numbers of peasants were converted to semiproletarian status, increasingly dependent on wage work to compensate for the low yields and declining value of agricultural production on small plots of land. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, large numbers of northwest Tlaxcalans participated in the movement for the expropriation and distribution of the remaining large landholdings. The governing Institutional Revolutionary Party responded with a judicious mix of repression, bribery, and selective land redistribution on the one hand, and “make-work” programs, the Border Industrialization Project (which brought maquiladoras to Mexico), investment in rural industry, and entry into the SAWP on the other. This latter list of “responses” and programs fomented deepening proletarianization of the rural work force without necessarily severing peasants’ links to the land. Proletarianization proceeded apace, but was neither smooth nor totalizing. Indeed, many of the struggles—such as the 1970s land struggle in Tlaxcala and elsewhere— were aimed at curtailing or reversing the process. Apart from its latent or manifest symbolism, land provided food and food was life, not to be gainsaid under conditions of declining urban employment opportunities and informal sector growth. As the economic situation deteriorated, international migration, previously concentrated in Mexico’s west and westcentral region, gradually began to embrace areas in Puebla, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and even Tlaxcala. With this historical sketch as background, the next chapter takes up the mechanics of the SAWP, for many a “model” Temporary Foreign Worker Program. I interrogate the Canadian experiences of Tlaxcalan contract workers and place them in the context of etic, or outside, critiques leveled by academics, political activists, unionists, and others. The current chapter focused on the dialectics of development in two loosely defined social and geographical regions—differentially positioned in a more encompassing

Agricultural Crisis, Migration, and Contract Labor 43

world capitalist system—on the basis of distinct historical experiences: Canada as a settler colony, Mexico a Spanish colonial dependency. Chapter 2 turns to the SAWP and attempts to resolve the apparent contradiction between workers’ praise of the program, on the one hand, and strong criticisms of it by academics, activists, and unionists, on the other.

CHAPTER 2

The Dual Process of Constructing Mexican Contract Workers

The last chapter discussed how the SAWP was created in 1966 to provide cheap, reliable workers for southwest Ontario’s labor-intensive horticulture industry: producers of apples, tender fruits (peaches, cherries, and other soft-skinned fruits), open-field vegetables (carrots, broccoli, cabbage, etc.), greenhouse tomatoes, tobacco, and related products. We saw how for several decades Canadian growers relied on European immigrants and domestic workers recruited from marginal sectors or provinces with seasonal labor surpluses to supply their needs, then went offshore to the Caribbean and Mexico when most Anglo-European labor sources dried up and the state deracialized immigration policy in the early 1960s. Currently the SAWP recruits from Mexico and the English-speaking Caribbean, and 65–70 percent of the workers go to Ontario, where in 2000 they accounted for almost half the paid hours worked in horticulture (Weston and Scarpa de Masellis 2003; Brem 2006: 3). Canadian farmers complain about the program’s cost, but they laud the reliability and generally high level of motivation displayed by seasonal workers (Basok 2002: 55–57; Bauder 2006: 167–168, 178–180). Indeed, many employers insist that they would be unable to compete in global markets if the government canceled the program or allowed contract workers to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. A repeated employer complaint concerns the bureaucratic rules, procedures, and hierarchy of officials and institutions they must negotiate in order to hire and manage foreign workers. Those rules and procedures are designed both to ensure a modicum of government control over the program and, more importantly, to protect the rights of the workers themselves. But historically the on-the-ground reality of Temporary Foreign Worker Programs (TFWPs)—and not just the SAWP—has not measured

Constructing Mexican Contract Workers 45

up to the regulatory ideals. For instance, in the case of the Bracero Program that brought four and a half million Mexicans to the United States between 1942 and 1964, Galarza wrote that according to the “principal provisions of the [Bracero] contract,” Mexican workers were not to be used to displace domestic workers but only fill shortages. . . . Hiring and sanitary conditions were to be adequate. Deductions amounting to 10 per cent of earnings were authorized for deposit in a savings fund payable to the worker on his return to Mexico. Work was guaranteed for three-quarters of the duration of the contract. Wages were to be equal to those prevailing in the area of employment, but in any case not less than 30 cents per hour. (1964: 47–48)

And so on. But by the end of his detailed exposé, Galarza had shown conclusively that these and most other “regulations” were systematically violated during the program’s twenty-two-year duration. Indeed, as of 2010, former Braceros—now elderly Mexican men in their sixties, seventies, and eighties—were still attempting to recover the 10 percent of their U.S. wages held back by employers and supposedly returned to Mexico. In practice, rules were ignored, bypassed, or undermined by groups and individuals maneuvering on complex and contradictory social fields characterized by the highly unequal distribution of what Eric Wolf (1990) referred to as “structural power.”1 Workers in the SAWP are substantially better off than were the Braceros, in no small part as a consequence of U.S. employers’ scandalous treatment of Mexicans during that program and the Mexican government’s desire not to see those conditions repeated in Canada. Indeed, most participants express high levels of satisfaction with the SAWP when questioned by researchers. When asked about their plans, a solid majority wish to return in future years to work in Canada, and most succeed in doing so. Between 1991 and 1993, “named” workers (see below) ranged from a low of 49 to a high of 63 percent of all participants, and in 1994 they rose to 72 percent, indicating an impressive level of workforce stability (Verduzco 2000: 340, 342). On the other hand, the SAWP, which has been portrayed by government officials and others as a “model” program implementing “best practices” (or at least “better” practices), has been subject to growing criticism on the part of academics (Binford 2002a, 2006; Preibisch 2007a, 2007b, 2004, 2003, 2000; Preibisch and Hermoso 2006; Hennebry and Preibisch 2010, 2009; Basok 2002, 1999; Bauder 2006; Becerril 2008, 2007; Durand 2006; Fairey et al. 2008; Sharma

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2006, 2002a, 2002b, 2000; Smart 1998; Smith 2005; Weston 2000; McLaughlin 2009), pro-migrant activists (Encalada 2006; Ramsaroop and Fernandes 2002; Fuchs 2007), unionists (Raper 2007; United Food and Commercial Workers 2002, 2004, 2005, 2009) and some journalists (e.g., Marr 2002a–j). These criticisms include discrimination in recruitment, low pay, overwork, substandard housing, refusal to grant vacation pay, arbitrary dismissals, inattentive consular officials, tight control over employee movements, inadequate medical care, and other issues. How do we square the circle, then, when the “exterior” or etic critique (the critique from outside) of the SAWP is only partly affirmed by the “interior” or emic perspective of the participants?2 Are worker expressions of satisfaction to be taken at face value, or might they better be conceived as strategic responses designed to protect precarious economic futures? This chapter analyzes the “dual process of social construction” of Mexican migrant workers involved in the SAWP, which has recently been sending over twenty-five thousand Mexican and Caribbean workers annually to labor in Canadian horticulture for periods of between six weeks and eight months. Drawing on a modified version of Henri Lefebvre’s ideas, Robin Cohen differentiated between exterior and interior conditioning of migrant workers. For Cohen, exterior conditioning refers to social relations/ reproduction of labor at the point of production under capital’s control, although it also includes state policing of borders and state and employers’ roles in recruitment. Interior conditioning consists of “those elements of the workers’ conditioning and ideology that sustain and reproduce the forms of control generated at the exterior level” (1987: 187–188). Following Cohen’s lead I argue that exterior and interior conditioning work off one another, and particularly that so-called exterior conditioning— including employers’ point of production control—establishes the context within which migrant workers’ experience unfolds, for which reason it contributes to their “interior conditioning.” But I also submit that the result is shaped by workers’ reliance on a “dual frame of reference” through which they gauge Canadian wages and working conditions the only way they can, which is in relationship to Mexican ones (Waldinger and Lichter 2003). Given that neoliberal policies have reduced the options available in Mexico and diminished the attractiveness of those that remain, contract labor in Canada presents one of the few opportunities many poor, rural Mexicans have to acquire the income necessary for a minimally dignified life. Consequently, most workers in the SAWP, where wages are several times higher than in their home communities, do every-

Constructing Mexican Contract Workers 47

thing in their power to please employers and remain in the program. In other words, the field of power in which exterior and interior conditionings unfold—and through which migrants are constructed as a productive workforce that can be profitably deployed—is constituted through the social reproduction of laborers both at the point of reproduction (in Mexico) and at the point of production (in Canada). The squeezing of surplus value from migrant laborers within Canadian horticulture is predicated on the squeezing of Mexican labor markets through neoliberal restructuring.3

Neoliberal Reforms and Precarious Labor Space limitations prevent a detailed discussion of the impact of neoliberal reforms, yet it is necessary to contextualize the motivations of Mexican contract workers when they sign up to work in Canada. Mexico’s agrarian sector experienced growing structural dualism during the post– World War II period as a result of government policies that kept food costs low and contributed to urban industrial capitalist accumulation, a point discussed briefly in the last chapter. Even so, Mexico remained selfsufficient in basic grains and oilseeds into the late 1960s, when the internal contradictions of the Import Substitution Industrialization model began to manifest themselves. The oil shock and the succeeding 1982 debt crisis set the stage for structural adjustment and the shift to the neoliberal policies that followed. Beginning in the mid- to late 1980s, the government sold off peri-state industries, privatized the rural banking system, and dismantled state purchasing and distribution institutions (FERTIMEX for fertilizers, TABAMEX for tobacco, INMECAFE for coffee, and CONASUPO for basic foods) that had provided nominal support to many smalland medium-scale farmers. Finally, the state subscribed to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1986, amended the land reform provision of the constitution in 1992, and signed on to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 (Lechuga 2006; Rubio 2001). Collectively these policies represented a huge reduction in government assistance to small farmers and contributed to sharp declines in many producer prices. Most significantly, NAFTA has been accompanied by a multinational takeover of Mexican grain commercialization and massive imports from the United States, leading to further real price declines. The overall effect has been the consolidation of a shift from “food selfsufficiency,” in which Mexico produces grains and other basic foods, to so-

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called “food security,” where the government relies on international markets to supply those foods that can be produced more cheaply elsewhere, or, perhaps better stated, are sold more cheaply because producers benefit from large state subsidies (Zermeño 2008; Madueño 2007). In Mexico the small PROCAMPO Program of Direct Support to the Countryside grants permitted under NAFTA have fallen far short of compensating for rising costs of production (see Fitting 2006). Moreover, they expired formally in 2009, by which time NAFTA negotiators presumed that Mexican farmers either would have modernized in order to compete in global markets or would have abandoned farming in order to dedicate themselves to some other activity (Seefoo, ed. 2008a, 2008b). In 2003 former finance minister Fernando Canales Clarion ordained that “The campesinos will have to transform themselves into industrial workers or true businesspeople, particularly the poor corn and bean producers” (cited in Zermeño 2008: 30). As noted in the previous chapter, many small producers did abandon rural areas for the cities, but compared to the 1950–1980 period of Import Substitution Industrialization and robust economic growth, cities are now less able than in the past to absorb them. Like other areas of Latin America, Mexico has experienced growing “informalization” and a rise in plura-activity, through which rural and urban households diversify income sources, lengthen work time, and intensify effort in a (usually) vain attempt to compensate for declining real wages (Estrada Iguíniz 1999; González de la Rocha 2001; Wiggins et al. 1999; Portes and Hoffman 2003). While David Barkin is probably correct in touting the resilience of the Mexican peasantry, the fact is that between 2000 and 2005 Mexico lost 1.5 million jobs in the countryside, the number of workers competing for casual agricultural day labor jobs in Mexico’s north and west swelled, and the Mexican-born population in the United States increased by 2 million, drawing migrants from states outside the historic western Mexico sending areas (see Binford, ed. 2004).4 In the present social and economic context, one can understand how legal, international contract work at wages far higher than those within easy reach might appeal to many rural Mexicans.

Bureaucratic Mandates and Unfree Labor The SAWP attracts rural workers and small-scale peasants who have been negatively affected by neoliberal policy and who lack the resources, network contacts, and/or will to risk undocumented migration to the United

Constructing Mexican Contract Workers 49

States. Ministry of Labor (MOL) officials advertise a contract of known duration—which may be as short as six weeks or as long as eight months— with a minimum forty-hour work week, a set hourly wage rate that is six to eight times that paid in rural Mexico, employer-provided housing, subsidized airfare, and health and life insurance. Mexican consular officers, or liaison officers in the case of Caribbean participants, oversee SAWP workers in Canada in order to protect their human and labor rights. The MOL targets landless or land poor rural proletarians and semiproletarians who are physically fit, in their peak productive years (22–45), and have completed between three and ten years of schooling. Although the MOL gives preference to married males with children (or other dependents), women were allowed into the SAWP in the mid-1980s at the request of Canadian growers. Their numbers grew rapidly from that point, yet women currently represent less than 4 percent of total Mexican SAWP workers (Hennebry 2008: Table 3, p. 345). Demand for this program— determined by the needs of participating Canadian horticulturalists—has always exceeded the supply of available slots; some applicants are rejected, others enter a labor reserve that can be activated to meet emergencies and shortfalls. The first phase of recruitment generates a labor force that, at least on paper, meets the minimum criteria for inclusion.5 The more interesting process concerns the manner in which “raw recruits,” albeit adults with substantial work experience in agriculture, are molded even as they mold themselves, into a work force capable of producing copious amounts of surplus value for Canadian growers. Although this “molding” takes place at the Canadian work and living site (principal site of production), I believe that conditions at the Mexican residence site (principal site of reproduction) serve as a constant, and indispensable, reference point. Labor mobility, or rather the lack of it, provides the key here. To begin, the MOL assigns workers to an employer for the duration of the contract; as is the case with other TFWPs, workers have no right to circulate on the labor market. When the contract season terminates, employers complete an end-of-year evaluation that each worker must deliver to the regional MOL office shortly after returning if he or she wants to work in Canada the following year. The results of that evaluation weigh heavily in determining the worker’s SAWP future. Employers comment on the worker’s performance and comportment while in Canada and choose (or not) to invite the worker back for the following year. Those asked back are known as “named workers” (nominales), and barring bureaucratic error or oversight at the Mexican end,

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they are returned to the same employer the following season. Those favorably evaluated without being named usually receive a transfer to another employer. But the MOL punishes the recipients of negative reports with temporary (one- or two-year) suspensions or expels them permanently from the SAWP, unless there exist mitigating circumstances which are brought forward on their behalf. The extensive and relatively unchecked employer power undermines many contractual rights and guarantees, including the workers’ right to refuse dangerous work or employer requests to labor overtime or on the weekend. When Ontario growers acclaim Mexican workers’ reliability and desire to please, treating these as intrinsic cultural or even ethnic/racial characteristics (see Chapter 4), they engage in a convenient form of social amnesia involving the erasure of their coercive power over workers and the consequences of that power for workforce compliance.6 It is useful to analyze the weak position of Mexican (and Caribbean) workers in terms of their “deportability.” Writing about Mexican migrants in the United States, Nicolas De Genova stated that, “It is deportability, and not deportation as such, that has historically rendered Mexican labor to be a distinctly disposable commodity. ‘Illegality’ is thus lived through a palpable sense of deportability whereby some are deported in order that most may remain . . . as workers” (2005: 8). Different from undocumented Mexican migrants, SAWP workers from Mexico and the Caribbean enter Canada legally, although to remain there and to return in the future they must carry out their duties to the employers’ satisfaction. A failing grade in work performance or personal comportment results in dismissal and deportation. In other words, when a worker is fired, the contract becomes voided and the right to remain in Canada immediately suspended. The legal worker is transformed from a legal temporary worker into an “illegal” who must be “deported.” That is one kind of deportability. But I want to suggest that legally sanctioned migrant workers can also be “dismissed” (expelled, i.e., “deported”) from Canada, or at least from a future there, as a result of negative evaluations tendered by their Canadian employers and delivered to the MOL in Mexico. Nonrenewal (equivalent to dismissal) of a previously active program participant who is “resting up” in Mexico between work trips to Canada has the same effect as deportation, even though it comes after as opposed to during the contract period. Thus, regardless of previous experience, no worker can state with certainty that future return is guaranteed. Even workers who have rendered years of faithful service— during which they generated large amounts of surplus value—are poten-

Constructing Mexican Contract Workers 51

tially subject to replacement by younger persons better able to sustain intense work rhythms.7 Second, new Mexican recruits are unable to transfer away from employers who abuse or overwork them because of an unwritten MOL rule that requires contract workers to complete three seasons with the initial employer before they are allowed to request a transfer. The rule ensures a modicum of workforce stability for employers who provide short contracts and/or work weeks, poor working and/or living conditions, and abusive treatment, but it has the opposite effect on migrant contract workers, who experience personal instability resulting from poverty, overwork, illness, accidents, and insults to their dignity (Hennebry 2009). Those able to “aguantar” (withstand or bear up under) the situation for three seasons and then request transfer reenter the “employment lottery,” where their next assignment will, they hope, improve on the previous one.8 Others drop out of the program out of frustration, but they are easily replaced. Of course, contract workers who are satisfied with their current situations— and they are numerous—do everything in their power to fulfill the employer’s expectations, secure a good evaluation, and receive an invitation, i.e., be named, to return the following season. The daily consequence of this unfree labor regime was narrated by Domingo Rodríguez (1993), who chronicled two years of SAWP contract labor in Ontario in a University of Tlaxcala social work thesis. Rodríguez contrasted his first employer, who was mean and abusive, with the kind, even lax treatment meted out by the second. The latter even sent Mexican crews off to pick fruit without supervision, in contrast to the first employer, who carefully managed his Mexican workers, routinely critiquing their performance and urging them to work faster. The unsupervised crew could have slacked off or at least toiled at a more leisurely pace. However, crew members showed that they had internalized the disciplinary regime when they reached agreement among themselves to work steadily in order to justify the trust the grower had placed in them, as well as to avoid repercussions should he be dissatisfied with the amount of work accomplished. . . . This boss . . . neither supervised us nor sent someone else to do so, he said nothing about whether we should work fast or not, or whether the work was poorly done. During the 10 a.m. rest break all the compañeros commented on the boss’s attitude, and we concluded that we had to give a fair day’s work [teníamos que trabajar lo que era justo] so that he would be satisfied and wouldn’t send anyone to keep an eye on us. (1993: 74–75)

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Obviously these workers hoped to be named by the employer the next season. Once back in Mexico, SAWP participants compare working and living conditions; occasionally a worker attempts to get a friend or relative transferred to the same farm by asking his employer to request the person, sight unseen, by name. This kind of network hiring, which is extremely common both among undocumented migrants and Mexican participants in the H-2A contract labor program in the United States (Cornelius 1999; Griffith 2006), can give occasional positive results in Canada too, but its effectiveness is diminished by the MOL’s control over work assignments and strict enforcement of the three-year rule.

Consular Officials: Entre la espina y la pared 9 On the workers’ side there exists no institutionalized and recriminationfree procedure through which they might check the enormous power that employers exercise over their present and future situations. In Ontario, Mexican contract workers’ interests are represented by five officials working out of the Mexican Consulate in downtown Toronto, supplemented since 2005 by several more in a satellite office in Leamington, located in the province’s extreme southwest. However, Mexico competes with Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and other Caribbean Commonwealth nations for a limited number of annual worker placements, and its consular representatives are under pressure to maintain good relations with Ontario growers, who choose the source countries from which they draw their workers. The more vigorously the Consulate advocates on behalf of Mexican migrant workers, the greater the likelihood that growers will opt for Caribbeans over Mexicans. Alternatively, if consular officers side with employers, as workers often claim, Mexican (or Caribbean, as the case may be) workers themselves bear the consequences. Workers who suffer accidents or illnesses that require hospitalization or who need to make an emergency trip home to Mexico to resolve an urgent family matter usually receive prompt and effective consular attention. But many workers criticize the Consulate for taking the employer’s side in labor-management conflicts. Consular officials declare that while they seek to defend the rights of Mexican workers, they must also “assure that the worker respects the agreement” (asegurar que el trabajador respecta el acuerdo) and sanction those workers who violate it.10 When consular officers are called in by workers to deal with labor conflicts, they at-

Constructing Mexican Contract Workers 53

tempt to negotiate a solution, but too often, according to workers, the result favors the employer. Forty-eight seasonal workers (26 percent of the total) interviewed in northwest Tlaxcala stated that they had requested assistance from the Consulate on at least one occasion during their last trip to Canada, and fifteen of the thirty-four (44 percent) willing to discuss the matter claimed to have been poorly attended or stated that their complaints were ignored. Informants in Tlaxcala and Ontario frequently opined that they kept most grievances to themselves because, according to them, “The Consulate resolves nothing.” In one home country survey a quarter of Mexican workers reported that employers had mistreated them on occasion, but “less than half . . . complained directly to the consulate” (Verduzco and Lozano 2003: 71). The Mexican and other consulates may occasionally remove a particularly abusive grower from the rolls. However, labor market competition means that growers dropped by one country can usually count on obtaining replacement workers from another. Though reticent to admit to it publicly, consular representatives feel pressure from their governments to place as many workers as possible, and they jump at the opportunity to increase their numbers—even when the benefits of additional placements may also carry significant costs to their workers. In Ontario, the government and employer bureaucracies charged with managing the SAWP splice together five different, bilaterally negotiated and competitive contract labor programs. If Mexico refuses to supply agricultural workers on Canadian growers’ terms—channeled through the Foreign Area Resources Management Services (FARMS) and endorsed by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC)—plenty of other underdeveloped Latin American and Caribbean countries, inside and outside the SAWP, will be eager to do so in Mexico’s stead. In 2003 Guatemala began sending agricultural contract workers to Quebec in a new Foreign Workers Program that appears to have attracted some Quebecois employers formerly inscribed in the provincial SAWP program (see Chapter 7).11 I got a fly-on-the-wall perspective of how the relationship between Canadian employers and source country officials sometimes plays out during a 2003 visit to Mexico’s Toronto Consulate, located on Bay Street in a downtown skyscraper. As a three-hour afternoon interview wound down, Carlos Obrador, then chief of the consular section charged with overseeing the SAWP, invited me to listen in on a conference call as he attempted to resolve a sticky problem between an Ontario tobacco farmer and two Mexican employees whom the farmer was sending back to Mexico the next day for being “complainers” and slow workers, unable to pull their

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weight with the rest of the crew. Obrador was working two phone lines, speaking to Arturo, a worker, in Spanish on one and to Brent Davis of Riverdale Farms in English on the other.12 The story, as reconstructed from my field notes, unfolded as follows: Arturo said that he had an accident when a heavy crate fell on his head. He suffered chronic pains and dizziness and had seen a doctor but did not know the result. He continued to work, but Davis, his employer, decided to dismiss him and send him back to Mexico on a plane early the next morning. For his part, Davis said that Arturo was not pulling his weight, that frequently he (Davis) saw him (Arturo) leaning on his hoe not doing anything and that Arturo took breaks that exceeded the allotted fifteen minutes. Davis said that he doubted the story of the accident, which he thought Arturo had invented, and that he had taken Arturo to a doctor who found nothing wrong with him. Hence he was sending him back to Mexico. At one point Davis added that he was sending Jesús Antonio back as well because he was sick with an ulcer when he arrived and worked too slowly. In neither case did Davis consult with Mexican consular officials or even inform them of his intentions, a clear violation of program regulations. Obrador checked his records and determined that the men had been working on this farm for several months without apparent problems. He asked Davis if he had notified Jesús Antonio of the decision, which he had not, so Obrador got him on the phone as well in order to break the news.13 Obrador disputed Davis’s contention that Jesús Antonio had arrived with an ulcer, or that he was at least incapable of work, because he had passed a medical examination in Mexico approved by a Canadian doctor. But he insisted that if the worker did indeed have an ulcer, it should be controllable with the proper medication. Davis claimed that Jesús Antonio had been a poor employee from the beginning, that his (Davis’s) wife had taken him to the doctor on numerous occasions. He also volunteered that once he had seen him “eating weeds” from around the house, and that they certainly couldn’t be good for him.14 As for Arturo, he simply felt him to be a slacker and claimed that other workers recognized this, “though you would never get them to say so.” The fact that the medical exam proved negative was good enough for him. They had even taken Arturo for a CAT Scan. Obrador told Davis that he had the right to send the workers back, but that he was supposed to notify the Mexican Consulate before taking action. Davis dug in and said that these two workers had become big

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Carlos Obrador, until 2007 the chief of Mexican consular officials in Ontario, works in his Bay Street office in the Toronto Consulate in 2003.

problems and that they were going to go. He said that he and his wife had spent a lot of time taking “these people” to doctors, etc., and in an obvious hyperbole stated that their time (referring to himself and his spouse) was worth “thousands of dollars per hour.” Obrador replied that might be fine, but that protocol required that a representative of the Mexican government be notified and the case discussed. Again Davis said that they (the workers) were going to go, to which Obrador, now somewhat agitated, replied that this fact would be duly registered and that there could be repercussions. Davis stated that he was going to do what he had to do, and Obrador said that that was OK, that he too would do what he had to do. Obrador then talked to the workers and explained the situation, that the plane tickets had been purchased and that there was little he could do. He told them to make a report of the incident to the Secretaría [Department of Labor and Social Planning] and that this event would not jeopardize their future participation in the program. He also told them that he thought the farmer’s attitude unfair and prejudicial, that they had worked for several months without the farmer complaining to the Consulate and that the decision to dismiss them was sudden and without precedent.

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Davis displayed little respect for his employees, the Mexican foreign service, or the contract regulations. He assumed the right to decide the fates of the two men without consultation. He even alluded to the possibility of substituting other workers for Mexicans.15 On balance, Davis treated the Consulate as extraneous to employer-employee relations. And on balance it appears that in this case he was correct. In another case, Inocencio, who resides in a house on a hillside terrace in Atotonilco, left his workplace in Canada and returned to Mexico on his own recognizance following a potentially lethal case of pesticide poisoning incurred while working in an Ontario greenhouse. Inocencio claimed that his appeal to the Mexican Consulate for assistance went unheeded and that his anxiety heightened when his eyesight began to fade and he experienced painful, debilitating headaches. Concerned about his health and unable to imagine an alternative, he left the farm and found his way to Toronto, where he purchased a plane ticket and returned to Mexico to seek medical treatment for the condition. Meanwhile, the Mexican Consulate listed him as missing, and his name was entered into FARMS records as Absent Without Leave (AWOL). Eventually Mexican officials came looking for him in Atotonilco. Even though he explained the problem and showed them the medicine his doctor had prescribed, he was expelled from the SAWP.16 During one interview Obrador offered the hypothetical case of a grower with a zero-tolerance alcohol policy on his farm who wanted to dismiss a worker caught drinking. The consular official assigned to the case would ask the employer to allow him/her a word with the worker in order to explain the rules and convince the worker to adhere to them.17 Here as elsewhere the staff must work within a contract that grants employers enormous control—wielded at their discretion—over SAWP workers living on their property. One grower prohibits all alcohol consumption; another down the road occasionally treats his employees to a few beers. The former requires that workers solicit permission before leaving the farm, even on their days off; the latter grants them discretionary use of the pickup truck.18 In any case, the Consulate’s preference for a “negotiation strategy” over a more aggressive “advocacy strategy” has contributed, over time and as a result of many concrete experiences, to a commonsense belief shared by many workers that they lack effective institutionalized channels of protest in the face of substandard living conditions, abuse, and overwork.19 Even the Mexican Consulate’s “routine service” is limited by staff deficiencies. Until 2005 five officials attended eight thousand workers—

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evidence of the low priority given the program by the Mexican government. In cost-benefit terms, the SAWP generates a mere fifty to seventy million dollars annually in foreign exchange, less than 1 percent of the twenty-plus billion dollars in remittances that enter Mexico from the United States. As the number of Mexican contract workers increased rapidly in the late 1990s, the Consulate adopted cost-cutting measures— eliminating an orientation session for newly arrived workers at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and subcontracting out tax return preparation to Babkirk Tax Preparations of Leamington—and provided an inferior level of constituent attention compared to the Jamaican Consulate.20 Budget cuts also drove Mexican consular authorities to press Canadian government officials to assume more responsibility for Mexican workers’ human rights in order to eliminate what one described as “a [Mexican] subvention to the Canadian government.”21

Divided They Stand . . . On the other hand, the dialectic of Self and Other, channeled through nationalist (and racist) discourse, works to reinforce a collective sense of pride in Mexicanidad (Mexicanness) among workers that also benefits employers. Eusebio, a fifty-two-year-old from the state of Morelos with sixteen seasons in the SAWP, mentioned that his employer regretted having replaced some Mexican workers with Trinidadians, because she now understands that the Mexicans work harder: “She’s got fourteen Trinidadians,” Eusebio said, “but they don’t produce as much as the Mexicans, neither by the hour nor by piecework. We might be lazy [people],” he stated with a trace of irony, “but we get the work out” (Aunque seamos flojos, sacamos el trabajo).22 Clarito, a forty-three-year-old married male from Nanacamilpa, claimed that on his Canadian farm he was among the first group of Mexicans hired to replace Jamaicans, whom the owner, according to him, characterized as mañosos, i.e., as “sly” or “cunning,” always seeking advantage. He said that Mexicans accept as many hours of work as they are offered, while Jamaicans refuse to continue beyond a certain point. Insofar as Mexican workers reproduce employer prejudices about Caribbeans, racialized as black, some Mexicans, racialized as brown (or maybe just as “Mexican”), collaborate in their exploitation by working more intensively and placing themselves more readily at the beck and call of employers than their self-perceived Caribbean rivals. Indeed, for a variety of reasons— white racism, cultural stereotypes, and perceived docility among them—

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Mexicans increased their representation in the SAWP labor force from 20 percent in 1986 to more than 50 percent two decades later (see Preibisch and Binford 2007 and Chapter 4). Yet more than ideology is at stake here. For many Mexican workers must be aware that failure to outperform Caribbeans—with the employer as the sole accredited judge—could lead to their replacement, should the employer decide to switch labor supply countries. Behind an employer’s approving remarks lurks an ever-present threat to which those remarks direct attention. Workers have no way of knowing what the boss really thinks about their work—a point highlighted in the experience of Domingo Rodríguez (1993) described earlier—for which reason most adopt a conservative strategy, adjusting to accelerated work rhythms and extended workdays in the fields, and acceding to “requests” for overtime and Sunday work even when they might prefer to forgo additional income for some time off. There exists no careful study of comparative labor productivity in the SAWP, but employers routinely claim that hourly contract workers accomplish two to three times more work than Canadian nationals, more than sufficient to compensate for the relatively high cost (wages, housing, transport, etc.) of the SAWP labor force (see, for instance, Bauder 2006: 179–180).23 If these subjective evaluations are accurate, SAWP contract workers produce considerably more surplus value, both in terms of rate and mass, than domestic agricultural workers. Indeed, by 2000 the SAWP, originally conceived as a temporary stopgap that would be terminated when the supply of Canadian labor increased, had become indispensable to the economic survival of Ontario’s horticulture industry, accounting for 52 percent of employed workers and 45 percent of employed hours worked (Weston and Scarpa 2003: 65; see Bauder 2006: 158). While in Canada, temporary Mexican and Caribbean workers have limited space to maneuver. Some feign sickness or injury in order to gain a brief respite, but taken too far—and the precise limits of the employer’s tolerance cannot be known in advance—such practices can redound to a negative end-of-year evaluation and future suspension or dismissal from the SAWP. As Larkin pointed out, some growers follow a policy of selective retention by purging workers whose performance falls short of their conception of a proper work ethic (1989: 85–86). Too much “backchat” or complaining can have the same result, especially on larger farms where many workers compete for a limited number of relatively secure spots, with the remainder of the vacancies being filled by new recruits. Another

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manifestation of discontent involves dropping out of the SAWP: opting not to turn in the evaluation form to the MOL at season’s end, abandoning the farm, and returning to Mexico, or, more common in the case of Caribbean than Mexican workers, activating contacts with family members or friends residing in Toronto or other cities in order to live and work illegally in Canada. However, individual acts of this nature are like small ripples dissipating outward in a large pond: they leave the contours of the social field and the power relations therein undisturbed. Driven by poverty and the prospect of gaining legal access to work at far better wages than they can earn in Mexico, new recruits take the places of those who drop out or retire, and things proceed pretty much as before. This is decidedly not the kind of situation in which “resistance,” or at least the collective forms of it that matter most, are on frequent public display—at least not yet. In various ways and to different degrees, the contractually sanctioned powers granted the employer, competition among source country governments, and the contradictions that permeate the liaison/consular official role conspire against contract workers, whether Mexican or Caribbean. The workers are not powerless, nor do they lack agency; small “spaces of negotiability” (Rogaly 2008: 1439–1440) certainly exist. But the use (or threat of) force embodied in the annual evaluation, the threeyear rule, arbitrary dismissal, and so on are usually enough to confine grievances to the margins, out of sight and hearing of their targets. Finally, apart from systemic exploitation and the institutionalized and noninstitutionalized forms of oppression that characterize the program, the workers themselves sometimes undermine collective esprit de corps through malicious gossip, theft, threats of physical violence, and competition over access to showers and stoves, the most comfortable bed, and promotion to foreman, etc., that develop in the barracks, bunkhouses, and trailers in which they live and the fields, greenhouses, and packing sheds where they work. Indeed, Mysyk et al. (2008) wrote that Mexican interviewees working mainly in greenhouses named competition among coworkers as an important cause of nervios (nerves), a culturally specific, nonmedicalized condition with a variety of negative and at times debilitating physical and psychological manifestations. Contract workforce conflicts are exacerbated by tensions resulting from long days and weeks of intense work; limited rest time (especially during the peak harvest season) during which workers must cook, wash clothes, and clean their living quarters; distance from family and home community; social and linguistic isolation; the economic burden of supporting the Mexican household;

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and the need to work in partnership with other Mexicans representing different regional cultures. The following case study provides one, albeit somewhat extreme, example of distrust and cumulative tensions among workers from different regions: On returning from their last day of work on Tammerhill Farm (Waterford, Ontario) in 2001 or 2002, Enrique (from Morelos) and Fernando (from Guanajuato) discovered that they had each been robbed of two thousand Canadian dollars, money that they intended to take back to Mexico in pocket. After a thorough search for the missing funds proved fruitless, they decided that Víctor (from Chiapas), who had earlier passed on tales about them to the employer—that they were lazy and did not keep their living quarters clean, etc.—had to be the culprit. Fernando, “a violent type,” according to Enrique (the narrator), put a knife to Víctor’s throat and threatened to slice it open. Víctor confessed that he had stolen the money and wired it to Mexico. He promised that he would sell a piece of land in Chiapas and repay the money as soon as he returned home, and he signed promissory notes to that effect. Eventually Víctor did pay up, but only after Enrique threatened to inform the Mexican Consulate and seek Víctor’s expulsion from the program. Finally, Enrique noted that when he arrived home penniless, his spouse interpreted his account of the robbery as a lame attempt to cover up the fact that he had blown the money womanizing. She accepted his explanation only when she saw how much energy he expended in efforts to recover the stolen funds.24

The case illustrates many common problems: theft of funds, distrust that develops between spouses separated by great distance, divided loyalties as some workers seek advantage with employers, and the threatened use of consular authorities—without actual recourse to them—in a personal dispute. While Enrique did not call the Mexican Consulate, consular officials are often asked to intervene in worker disagreements. Indeed, a significant portion of staff time and effort goes to dealing with conflicts among Mexican employees. Consular authorities would probably prefer that the feuding parties sort out their problems themselves, but experienced staffers also know that actions that upset the social peace on the farm or that attract the attention of the neighbors or Canadian authorities can provoke an employer to change source countries.

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Personal Labor Relations Living and working close by the owner (or the owner’s representative) establishes conditions for the development of personal labor relations. Employers benefit from their position of power over contract workers in order to obtain “favors” from them, such as working on weekends or late into the evening to bring in a harvest. As we have seen, economic need and concern over possible reprisals motivate many workers to “volunteer”; but some also strive to gain the employer’s approval in the hope that one favor will be paid with another, as customarily occurs between patrons and their clients in rural Mexico.25 This strategy may work occasionally, but most Canadian growers like to keep work life and personal life separate. A common result, documented by Larkin in the case of Anglo-Canadian employers and their Caribbean employees, is “the reciprocal construction of a divided world”: . . . without the Ontario employers, the West Indian men could not work in Canada; and without the West Indian employees, tobacco, fruit, and vegetable farmers would not have a reliable source of labor. But it becomes equally evident that while the West Indian workers and the Ontario farmers share the world they have created on the farms, there is another level at which they divide this world along lines of mutually exclusive cultural values and expectations: the West Indian men work on the contract for reasons which can only be understood in relation to the meaning of migration in the West Indies, and the Ontario farmers import the West Indian workers for reasons which only make sense in relation to the crisis of farming in Ontario. (Larkin 1989: 77)

It seems probable that “reciprocal construction” occurs in the case of Mexican contract workers and Canadian growers as well, based on social, cultural, and linguistic differences between the groups. Indeed, Mexican workers’ efforts to please employers and develop social relationships with them, and the effort of employers to maintain formal relations with and a distance from employees, indicate different habituses at work (Bourdieu 1990). Even so, whatever small advantage workers might obtain from efforts to micromanage work and living situations, they know that power rests with the grower and that confrontations, complaints, frequent illnesses, a refusal to work overtime or on weekends, and/or phone calls to consular officials can result in a negative evaluation at the end of the

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contract season and suspension or dismissal from the SAWP. Whether in Canada or in Mexico, they are, after all, “deportable,” for which reason it is a mistake to treat “reciprocal construction” as framed by functional complementarity, as does Larkin. Only by ignoring the very different positions that workers and employers occupy in this social field of power, which is transnational in scope, can one sustain that the exchange of labor power for wages is a fair or balanced exchange. Mexican workers’ deportability, and the dire implications that deportability holds for their economic presents and futures, binds point of production relations in Canadian horticultural fields to the neoliberal-based social construction of surplus labor power in the Mexican countryside.

Conclusion Resistance to such a highly structured and controlled social environment—similar in many ways to the “total institutions” (military schools, mental institutions, hospitals, etc.) studied by Erving Goffman (1961)— does occur, despite the possibility of reprisals. For instance, in recent years a few farms have been subject to spontaneous work stoppages in protest of low wages and substandard housing conditions or unfair treatment.26 Moreover, countless examples exist of the strategies that Mexican workers implement to lighten workloads and make difficult situations more livable—the southwest Ontario version of Scott’s “small arms in the class war” or Ong’s “cultural struggle” (Scott 1990; Ong 1991). Most workers agree, however, that even as they complain, the best way to “get ahead” in Canada is to work hard, respect the law, and maintain a low profile, especially in public, whatever the physical and psychological costs. It is this behavioral code that, put into practice, makes Mexican workers so attractive to southwest Ontario horticulture producers (Wall 1992; Basok 2002). As a Mexican male with twenty seasons of work experience in Canada explained to Ofelia Becerril, “It is really hard to do something [to make a difference]. If we protest, even if all 3,000 workers stationed in Leamington did, we’d get sent back to Mexico. They can do that because there are another 3,000 Mexican workers ready to come to Canada and work” (quoted in Becerril 2007: 171). It is tempting to represent the violence I have discussed as a vestige of precapitalist unfree labor forms that will disappear with the further spread of neoliberal capitalism. However, Robin Cohen (2006, 1987) demonstrated that regardless of whether one is discussing the periphery,

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semiperiphery, or, as here, the so-called center of the world capitalist system, capitalists have always drawn upon unfree labor, made practically invisible through a process that Ann Kingsolver (2007) refers to as “strategic alterity.”27 It is also important to note that the force involved in disciplining SAWP workers cannot be understood in isolation from the more amorphous socioeconomic forces that incline thousands of people to apply to the program and, if admitted, to seek to remain in it. I refer, of course, to the struggle to escape the structural violence of the rural Mexican version of savage capitalism as it unfolds in northwest Tlaxcala, where I carried out fieldwork for this project (on structural violence, see Farmer 2004, 2003; Scheper-Hughes 1992). As bad as things may seem in the Canadian workplace, they are infinitely worse, on the whole, in the Mexican countryside, where poverty and precarity—intensified under the neoliberal regime—await most of those who “fail” in the north. Moreover, the material rewards of repeated trips there are real, concrete, and visible to members of the community who have not worked in the SAWP, reinforcing the practical value of “working oneself to death” (trabajar para matarse) in Canada (Cordero Díaz 2006).28 At least at the beginning of their sojourn, the expectations and, to a lesser degree, the objective conditions of work in Canada and in Mexico establish what Waldinger and Lichter called a “dual frame of reference” (2003: 40–41, 179). Within a short time most contract workers learn that even as they earn in Canadian dollars, they also spend in Canadian dollars; many also discover that hourly SAWP wages lie close to the bottom of the national salary scale and that, contrary to Memorandum of Understanding stipulations, they are paid significantly less than most Canadian workers doing the same jobs. Indeed, surveys in the Niagara region of Ontario documented that between 2001 and 2003 both Canadian citizens and legal residents received between 9 and 14 percent more per hour when performing the same tasks as foreign contract workers (Brem 2006). On the other hand, the cold brutality of making a living in Mexico, refreshed each year when workers return home, impels them to continue subjecting themselves to the exhausting, alienating, and highly coercive conditions of contract work, as mediated by differences in personal labor relations on the farm. Indeed, low wages and restricted opportunities in rural Mexico, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, etc., go a long way toward cognitively stabilizing a dual frame of reference and constitute features of the structural conditions that frame workers’ understanding of their experiences, through which a migrant horticultural workforce is constructed, even as it also constructs itself. Given that poor, rural Mexican males and females

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have few possibilities locally to obtain the necessary resources for a dignified house and decent food, clothing, and education for their families, this “dual frame” accurately represents key elements of contract workers’ objective experience. Together with the virtually unchecked power of employers over workers’ SAWP futures, lack of labor market mobility, physical isolation, and a tendency for labor relations to become personalized, the dual frame of reference helps us understand why feelings of discontent are commonly displaced on employers and their representatives—rated by workers as more or less desirable—and not the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program as an institution. Discontent there is, but it develops under such severe structural constraints that collective forms tend to involve relatively spontaneous wildcat strikes and work stoppages. In more organized forms of resistance, groups such as the two-hundred-fifty-thousand-strong United Food and Commercial Workers union and Justicia for Migrant Workers, a promigrant activist organization working out of Toronto, act on behalf of the workers. But as these organizations mounted advertising campaigns and challenged provincial legislation limiting workers’ rights, the Canadian government introduced a larger and more ambitious TFWP—devoid of most protections and oversights present in the SAWP—legalizing the recruitment of Third World workers for a variety of mostly low-wage occupations.29

CHAPTER 3

“Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest”: Case Studies of Contract Labor Migration

In this chapter I lower the level of abstraction in order to interrogate, through a series of short case studies, a variety of individual experiences with the SAWP. The material was assembled from interviews, observations, and casual conversations. It offers insight into the flesh-and-blood issues that motivate migration and elucidates many experiences of migrants and their understandings of them. Subjects were interviewed in late 2001 and early 2002. Some of the issues discussed here were introduced in Chapter 2; others, particularly those pertaining to household economic strategies and the role of education (often referred to as “human capital development”), will be taken up in more detail in Chapter 5. I will refer back to some of these cases elsewhere in the text, but I have elected to present them as a body here in order to preserve a sense of the workers’ lives, or at least key dimensions of those lives. Ages, marital status, and experiences vary greatly. But all of the persons whose experiences are described and discussed are male, and at the time I interviewed them, all but one had worked at least one season in the SAWP. Several interviewees also had prior international migratory experience as undocumented workers or legal H-2A contract workers in the United States. At the end of the chapter I synthesize some of the issues that potential migrants work through as they attempt to balance resources (monetary and nonmonetary) and their goals or projects with different programs and destinations.

Tranquilino Over the course of his fifty-nine years, Tranquilino has accumulated a tremendous amount of migratory experience, including working in Mexico

Map 3.1. Northwest Tlaxcala

Map 3.2. Southern Ontario

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City and the U.S. Bracero Program, the latter between 1960 and 1964. He ceased migrating to the United States when the Bracero Program was unilaterally terminated by the U.S. government in 1964. Twelve years later (1977) he joined the SAWP, just three years after Mexico signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Canada. When he learned of the program, Tranquilino was in Mexico City caring for a young daughter, hospitalized and in danger of losing her eyesight. His need for money to address her health crisis motivated his application, which must have been among the first from Atotonilco. But the experience was at least tolerable, because between 1978 and 2001 Tranquilino worked in Canada on twenty-two occasions, taking leave only during the 1983 and 1984 seasons in order to attend to his ill spouse. Many of Tranquilino’s contracts were short, and he didn’t report having invested remittance money in a business, although he volunteered that he had used portions of Canada-earned income to purchase some animals (cows) along with the rights to ten hectares of ejido land, and he explained that his twenty-four-year-old unmarried son, the sole remaining child living with the parents, cultivated the land when he was away. Currently, most of the estimated ten thousand Canadian dollars he earns as a contract worker goes to maintain his reduced household and help out his married children, as well as to cover health care needs. Tranquilino would like to set up a business, but in order to get a loan one has to put up collateral with a market value equal to the amount solicited. He argued that if he had such collateral, he wouldn’t be seeking a loan in the first place. He mentioned on several occasions that the Canadian government helps its farmers but that the Mexican government does nothing for the campesinos. As a result of their work in Canada, he and other migrants know how to grow a lot of different things, but they need financial and technical assistance, neither of which is available. He has come to see how “backward” (atrasado) his country is, and argued, “We need sources of work so that we can become more skilled, so that our children can advance. . . . My children are better educated [than I was], but they have no jobs; the government does not help us.”

Roberto While Tranquilino’s household has passed its demographic peak, Roberto’s is undergoing a process of expansion. Not one of his four children—the oldest is eight years old—is even close to working age (not to say that

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they don’t contribute unpaid household labor), for which reason basic household reproductive costs are high. Those costs will increase over the next few years as first the four-year-old and later the two-year-old enter school, at which point the parents will have to provide shoes, uniforms, supplies, and the ever-needed contributions (cooperaciones or cuotas) solicited by administrators for school improvements and school functions. Roberto’s is a common situation: limited education (sixth grade), married, and many young children, which translates into heavy responsibilities. He mentioned that he had worked at a Mexico City taco stand between 1993 and 1997, remaining in the city during the week and returning to the community on the weekends, but he couldn’t earn enough money to meet the household’s needs. (Two of his children were born during this period.) With three children and a fourth on the way in 1999, the SAWP offered the only imaginable way out of his economic bind. He claimed to have no land, though he did have some sheep, purchased with money saved from working in Canada. But even if he did have land, no immediate family member would be in a position to cultivate it, given the fact that Delfina, Roberto’s spouse, is pregnant with her fifth child and caring for the other four. Delfina mentioned toward the end of the interview that when Roberto was away she felt afraid and that she had to be both mother and father to the children. It’s clear that he doesn’t like leaving, and when I asked her how she felt about it, she said that right now she would say, “No,” that she wanted him to stay but that as the time of his programmed departure approached and the previous year’s savings had been spent, she would agree because there were no alternatives. On each six-month trip to Canada, Roberto works in tobacco, returning between six thousand and eight thousand Canadian dollars to Mexico, which goes to buy food and clothing and pays for health care, home improvement, and the children’s education. It’s clear that there’s not much, if any, left over to put into a savings fund, and indeed, Delfina said that the last time Roberto left, she had had to borrow money from neighbors for food until the first remittance arrived. Despite their discontent with the personal arrangements and the toll that his absence takes on the family, Roberto sees no alternative to continued migration. There isn’t much work available in the fields, and when there is work the jornal (a day’s work) pays only fifty pesos, not enough to feed a family of six, soon to be seven. To make matters worse, many people in Atotonilco are leaving their fields idle either because they lack money to prepare and plant or because the cost of production exceeds the value of the crop. When local campesinos do not sow, local day

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laborers have no work. Roberto estimated that he would have to earn between seven thousand and eight thousand pesos monthly year-round—an impossible dream for a poorly educated agricultural day laborer-mason such as himself—in order to stay in Mexico.

Enrique The third case is that of Enrique, thirty-six years old, married with five children, and also supporting a granddaughter, the two-year-old child of his sixteen-year-old daughter, who is separated from the child’s biological father. They live high up on the hillside at the south end of Atotonilco, next to a dirt road in an area undergoing expansion. Even so, the neighborhood has access to electricity, potable water, and drainage. Enrique’s is a large household (children ranging from three to sixteen) that, though poor, seems to have forged a viable economic strategy based on a combination of seasonal work in Canada, farming a small (.5 hectare) field loaned to the couple by Enrique’s father-in-law, and raising animals. Enrique and Natalia own plough horses—which they both work themselves and rent out—as well as a cow and chickens. And they take care of a neighbor’s goats in exchange for half the offspring. Enrique has no interstate Mexican migratory experience, but he made seven trips to Canada between 1994 and 2001, working mostly in tobacco. His contracts are generally of short duration—the last one lasted two months, ten days—and the money goes to household economic maintenance (food, clothing, health and educational needs), but he also said that he tries to hold out some money each time with which to add to the livestock (a young bull, a cow). He leaves in July after preparing and planting the fields and returns in October in time for the harvest— a strategy followed by some other small farmers in Atotonilco. While Enrique sweats through the hot Canadian summer, harvesting tobacco fields and loading drying ovens, Natalia, assisted by the children, weeds and fumigates the cornfield, milks the cow, and cares for the other animals. When the opportunity presents itself, she even picks tomatoes for day wages. It is notable that the couple’s economic strategy encompasses the children. Their fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, both females, finished only primary school. Enrique stated that he and his wife began to acquire livestock partly to keep the kids occupied and out of trouble. Though resource poor, the household is currently, and increasingly will become, labor rich.

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Moreover, given that the animals reproduce naturally, albeit with a certain level of human care and assistance, the capital problem may take care of itself in time. Still, there remains a lot to be done that would be facilitated by Canadian dollars: The house needs plastering, and the kitchen roof, which consists of a sheet of badly oxidized tin, leaks when it rains. Most of Enrique’s Canadian experiences have been more than satisfactory, particularly with his penultimate employer, for whom he worked for two or three years and who treated him very well. However, in 2001 the MOL assigned him to a different, unfriendly farmer. They told Enrique that his former employer had not invited him back. Serendipitously, Enrique encountered the man in church and learned that the Mexican authorities had told the employer that Enrique had decided to remain in Mexico in order to attend to a sick child. Though requested to return (“named”) in 2002 by his latest employer, for whom he does not really wish to work, Enrique opted for the path of passive resistance and withheld the sealed evaluation form from the MOL office on his return to Mexico, for which reason he will almost certainly be ousted from the program. However, this doesn’t seem to trouble him: The new employer has had a lot of problems, but they keep sending him Mexicans. Since I was new, I didn’t know how things worked [no sé cómo es el movimiento]. One rainy day I was sent alone to close up the houses [probably referring here to the tobacco curing sheds] with the others just watching. I didn’t deliver the letter because I don’t want to return to that employer. If they don’t call me again, then I’ll tell my wife that we’ll plant tomatoes.1

Raymundo, Heriberto, and Joel Raymundo, Heriberto, and Joel are brothers, aged thirty-five, thirtythree, and thirty, respectively. All completed primary school and are married with children, none aged over eleven years. Apart from three children between six months and seven years old, Heriberto, the middle brother, lives with the parents (or the parents with him). Raymundo was first to apply to the SAWP, in 1992, following a series of labor migration trips to Mexico City, Acapulco (Guerrero), and Guadalajara (Jalisco), where he worked in construction as a general helper, commonly referred to as a chalán. Heriberto and Joel followed Raymundo into the program, each opting to apply after marriage and around the time of the birth of the

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couple’s first child, which entailed new responsibilities and added financial burdens. Raymundo was sent to Quebec as opposed to Ontario, and he has enjoyed considerable success, learning French, rising in the labor hierarchy, and developing such a strong identification with Quebec and Quebecois culture that he dreams of relocating there permanently. Indeed, in Chapter 5 I explain how Raymundo’s Canadian experiences and the personal transformations to which they have given rise have led to serious conflicts between him and his spouse, which may augur a future breakup. Different from the seasoned Raymundo, younger brother Joel is just beginning his migratory career. His family (wife and two children, aged two years and four months, respectively) reside in a one-room adobe house, a marked contrast to Raymundo’s solid, well-appointed brick structure. Joel is poor. Landless himself, he sharecrops a hectare of rainfed land and earns money working locally both as an agricultural day laborer and as a mason when work is available.2 Previously, then, he combined agriculture (subsistence production and day labor) during the rainy summer season with construction work during the dry winter season. But construction work paid only about a hundred pesos daily, at the time about ten U.S. dollars, close to the amount it costs to feed the family, according to Joel. So following his older brothers, he applied to the SAWP in 2000. In 2001 he made his second trip, which lasted only ten weeks. His immediate goal is to improve his housing situation. He noted how Raymundo had required about five years’ seasonal work in Canada—and each of those with longer contracts than those given Joel—in order to build the house in which we were sitting. Joel explained how utterly boring life was in Canada, how there was nothing for the migrants to do when they were not working. The quarters, which he deemed “adequate,” had a television, but all the channels were in English, and workers had no place to play soccer. Sometimes the farmer dropped them in town, and they walked around window shopping and ate fried chicken or hamburgers, returning on foot. Apart from the trips to town they occasionally visited other farms, but most of this visiting must have taken place late in the afternoons or in the evenings, because the contract workers labored every day of their ten-week contract, with the exception of the day the tobacco harvesting machine broke down. Window shopping was fine, but Joel tried not to purchase Canadian merchandise, having been warned off doing so by the problems that Raymundo experienced when he bought a cassette player and television set in Canada only to discover that he could not obtain spare parts in Mexico when the items needed repairs. Joel also said that he had made compara-

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tive cost calculations between goods in Canada and similar ones in Mexico and didn’t find much difference. Besides, migrants returning with goods ran the risk that Mexican customs agents at the Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City would harass them on their return, charging high import duties or seizing the merchandise if they refused to pay bribes. According to Joel, customs officials are always on the lookout for people who appear weak and do not know how “to stand up for themselves” (defenderse). Joel expressed disappointment with the pay and was particularly displeased with the deductions from his paycheck, which he said came to one hundred to one hundred twenty dollars weekly among four categories, including two types of social security. To Joel’s query as to where this money went, his employer replied that the government used it to support Canadians who didn’t work. Joel took the grower at his word. It angered him that Mexican migrants labor to maintain nonworking Canadians, whom he characterized as lazy people who just live on the dole. He said that the pay would have been fine if he had received everything in the check. He even speculated at one point that the employer and the Mexican Consul might be splitting the deductions, because when he called the Mexican Consulate in Toronto to complain about the amount of money withheld, he was told by an official there that he was only trying to make trouble for his Canadian employer. He also complained about the deductions for the loans they received—some one hundred fifty to two hundred Canadian dollars per person when they first arrived—considering that the money reimbursed through payroll deductions might have exceeded the amount borrowed.3 I asked whether the farmer hired Jamaicans, and Joel replied that, according to the grower, he had had them the year before but they were a lot of trouble: They didn’t obey, just did what they wanted, and didn’t maintain the house in good order—were “very unclean” (muy cochinos), for which reason he replaced them with Mexicans, whom he claimed to respect a great deal. The farmer named Joel to return to the farm in 2002, and Joel stated that he would work with the same crew except for one migrant who was not invited back because of a drunken spree during which he crashed the tractor into an electricity post. Joel would like to get a longer contract, but there is little that he can do. The length of the contract depends on the needs of the Canadian employer to whom one is assigned by the MOL, and that involves the luck of the draw. His brother, for instance, works for eight months, but Joel knows—because the farmer told him—that he (Joel) will be called back around July 20.

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He also complained about all the paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles contract workers have to deal with in order to reenroll in the SAWP each year, in particular the requirement to report to Mexico City prior to being given the assigned departure date. Joel already knows the date, he stated, because the farmer told him, so why all the to and fro?

Inocencio In Chapter 2 I summarized the experience of Inocencio, a native of Atotonilco who fled his assigned post in Ontario following a severe case of pesticide poisoning that threatened his eyesight. He claimed to have been dismissed from the SAWP despite doctor’s certificates testifying to his physical state. At that point Inocencio decided to sign up for the U.S. H-2A program, which has fewer entry requirements. “Why, even a college professor [such as myself] could enroll,” he joked. The initial fee of five thousand pesos covered the cost of the passport and travel, but much of this money was reimbursed during the course of the contract. Like other H-2A recruits from Tlaxcala, Inocencio was sent to North Carolina to harvest tobacco, but he complained that work was scarce on the farm to which he was assigned. The employers inscribed in H-2A do not fulfill the contracts; they hire more people than required and work them inordinately hard. Inocencio stated that he would like to see Tlaxcala’s governor get involved in the H-2A program, to the benefit of all migrants and not just him. He had yet to decide whether or not to migrate in 2002. If he doesn’t, he will at least be able to pay the bills because he both farms a plot of land and sells flavored ices (raspados) on the side. I asked Inocencio why more people didn’t work in the assembly plants in Tlaxcala or Puebla, and he responded with a question, asking me how much I thought maquiladora work paid. He scoffed at my reply of about forty pesos daily (a low estimate) by noting that it takes one hundred pesos daily, roughly ten U.S. dollars at that time, to put food on the table.4 Factory work is intense and taxing and yet pays little, for which reason migration seemed about the only alternative to him, especially given the fact that he had completed only six years of schooling. He asked what good (i.e., well-paying) job he could obtain with such low qualifications, and I admitted that there probably was none. At best one might hope to win the lottery. I also asked Inocencio about undocumented migration to the United States, and he said that most people who go there already have a job arranged and waiting for them. Migrants from Atotonilco work

A Mexican migrant works in a nursery in St. Catherines, Ontario, in 2003.

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mainly in Utah, with Oregon and Colorado as secondary destinations. But according to Inocencio, U.S. migration is replete with potential problems: Migrants sometimes change as a result of their experiences there and may even abandon their families.

Miguel In his early to mid-thirties, Miguel is married with two children and works as both a campesino and in construction. His house, which he built himself, contains two structures and is situated on one of Atotonilco’s steep, north-facing terraces. The more finished and “modern” front space has walls of concrete block and a cement roof, and is separated from an older, cruder structure off the rear patio that has concrete block walls covered over by tin sheeting (lámina). Miguel enjoys access to piped drinking water, electricity, and a drainage system and has even installed a naturalgas-powered hot water heater. The only farm animals consisted of some chickens. His household is demographically young and landless or land poor; like many others in Atotonilco, the members live mainly from remittance earnings. Between 1999 and 2001 those remittances derived from work in the United States as opposed to Canada. In 1999 he signed up with a Tlaxcala labor recruiter for the U.S. H-2B program, followed by two consecutive years (2000, 2001) in U.S. H-2A. H-2B contract workers are employed in nonagricultural sectors: cleaning hotel rooms, shelling crabs in canneries along the Atlantic seaboard, and harvesting Christmas trees in Maine, among others. They receive lower wages than H-2A workers because they do not benefit from the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, and they also must pay for housing, which is free to H-2A workers (Griffith 2006; Durand 2006; Ness 2011; see Chapter 6).5 But it is easier to enter H-2B—“Even women get in!” stated Miguel effusively—than H-2A, for which one requires a passport, voting credential, and experience in agricultural work. He also said that neither H-2A nor H-2B involved subscription or enrollment fees, which is to say that the Mexican recruiter did not charge for the service—though he mentioned later that the passport and travel expenses (food and bus tickets) ran seven thousand pesos.6 It was precisely the ease of entry—the absence of so much bureaucratic hassle and repeated trips to Mexico City—that attracted Miguel and presumably others to opt for seasonal contract work in the United States as opposed to Canada. But Miguel stated that he was also drawn by the opportunity to earn U.S.

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dollars. At current exchange rates and an average wage of seven dollars per hour in both countries, one earns over 30 percent more in the United States.7 However, Miguel’s experience has not generally been good. In H-2B he was sent to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to work in a carrot packing plant, but was given only a few hours of work weekly—explained by the plant owner as being a result of low carrot prices, perhaps the product of a temporary glut in the market—and was unable to amass any savings. When one combines a low hourly wage of US$5.15, scarcity of work, and the cost of renting a room or apartment, it’s understandable that the trip turned out to be more of an “adventure” than an economic boon to Miguel and his household. In 2000 Miguel transferred to H-2A because he had heard that it paid better. And that turned out to be so, at least for the 2000 season, when he obtained a three-and-a-half-month contract with a North Carolina tobacco farmer named Terry Williams. Miguel had nothing but good things to say about this employer, who never pushed the workers, treated them to restaurant meals at the end of the tobacco harvest and again when the sweet potato harvest terminated, and went out of his way to ensure that they received quality medical care by personally taking them to a doctor when they were ill or had an accident. Also, Williams programmed fieldwork for the cooler early morning and late afternoon hours in order to avoid the scorching mid-afternoon summer heat and humidity, which can be brutal in the U.S. Southeast. Williams or his spouse “Jani” (probably Jane) even brought sodas and cookies to the fields, distributing them among the workers. The Mexican employees rested on Sundays and went to church with the couple, who were members of “the Brotherhood” (los Hermanos).8 The employers provided their H-2A workers with a comfortable house equipped with a billiard table and TV room. Perhaps most importantly, Williams offered plenty of work, something on the order of nine to ten hours daily for six days per week, and paid US$7.15/hour. As a result Miguel was able to save or send back to Mexico some thirty-five thousand pesos, with which he bought a motorcycle and construction materials for his still-unfinished house. But things took a turn for the worse in 2001 when he was assigned to Yals Beard, referred to as “El Pájaro” (The Bird), by Mexican contract workers: He was an older man, racist, and terribly exploitative of the migrants. Beard demanded a work rhythm that few could maintain and got rid of most of those unable to keep up the killer pace by cutting their

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hours: “He’s a very bad person. He set them to work at whatever task, and then cut the work hours of anyone who didn’t put out. He pressured people” (Es muy malo, los pone a trabajar lo que sea; él que no rinde ya no les da el trabajo, presiona la gente). To those who had a hard time keeping up, “he ran the machine right up on them” (le echa la máquina encima). The migrants reported him to the association (the North Carolina Growers Association, see Chapter 6), but when Beard was called in for a meeting, he sent his son (characterized by Miguel as a decent person) in his place. Things improved for a few days, but afterward, “It was the same thing.” Beard had twenty-two workers, but there was no foreman, and neither Beard nor his son spoke Spanish. Two-thirds of the workers wilted under the intense work regimen and abusive treatment, and when they left Beard requested replacements from the association. Miguel survived “out of necessity” and because “if you don’t finish out the contract, they suspend you for three years.” He also noted that the association was large, with fifteen hundred members, and that “because the Association is full of stupid people, they don’t keep an eye on the farmers.” Despite making an effort, Miguel failed to obtain as much work as he wanted, averaging only thirty to thirty-five hours weekly when he needed at least fifty hours weekly in order to earn enough money to meet his economic obligations in Mexico. In this case the proof is in the numbers. The 2001 contract was for five months (six weeks longer than the 2000 contract), yet Miguel saved only twenty-two thousand pesos, eight thousand fewer than the previous year. Now he wants to change employers again and is going to talk to the Mexican recruiter because Beard’s bad reputation is very well known. With Williams they had a phone in the house where they lived, but with Beard they gained access to a phone only by walking or biking a kilometer. Williams took them to purchase their food, and Beard’s son did the same (which may explain why he was better liked than his father). Miguel also noted that Beard put them to work after the plants had been fumigated even though there was a clause in the association contract prohibiting this. He noted that with Terry Williams they harvested the tobacco by hand, with Beard by machine. Indeed, Williams himself taught them to cut tobacco. On their first meeting, “The boss went for them, asking if anyone spoke English, if they were hungry, and he took them to a restaurant.” After that he asked them, “‘Do you know how to harvest tobacco? Whether you do or not, I’ll come for you, take you to the field, and teach you how. Tomorrow we’re all going to the harvest.’”

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Arón I met Arón at his mother’s house on a residential street in Nanacamilpa while looking for his brother. Arón has never been to Canada, but his U.S. work experience, both in the H-2A program and more recently as an undocumented migrant, makes for an interesting contrast with the SAWP. Arón is in his late twenties or early thirties and is married with children. A couple of years ago he traveled from Nanacamilpa to the U.S. South, where he worked as an H-2A guest worker on a South Carolina farm. The pay was bad, and he wasn’t making any money, so Arón abandoned the farm after two months and somehow landed a job with a firm constructing parking lots for large commercial enterprises like Walmart. Through the construction firm he obtained a Social Security number, a key credential in order to be able to work in the formal sector of the U.S. economy. He built parking lot curbs until one brother, already in the United States, invited him to join a crew of housepainters. This older brother had left earlier for the States, crossed the border clandestinely, and secured work with a construction firm. He then set himself up as a small, informal independent contractor, subcontracting housepainting with the same firm, hired it seems because he had good relations with the firm’s owner and probably because he charged significantly less than legal, formal-sector businesses. The housepainting enterprise consisted of three Mexicans: the two brothers and an unrelated male who spoke English. As a painter Arón earned seven to nine dollars per hour. By good fortune the three acquired a cheap rental house—a mere $270 per month, with utilities included, compared to the $500 or more that was the going rate in the area—which left only the cable bill. He planned to return to South Carolina in May of 2002. His job was waiting for him, and money for the coyote was already deposited with some reliable people. For US$1500, the coyote would take him from Mexico City to the door of the house in South Carolina. In short, things have gone well for him. Eventually he hopes to save enough money to establish a small business in Nanacamilpa, which seemed to me saturated with them already. I asked Arón how he accounted for the different decisions made by the brothers: two undocumented and in the United States (though Arón was legal during his H-2A period), a third working legally in Canada’s SAWP. Why didn’t Arón apply for the SAWP? Why didn’t the brother who goes to Canada opt for the United States? Arón said that he based his decision on the exchange rates of the U.S. and Canadian dollars, and fixed (Cana-

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dian) versus indeterminate (U.S.) contracts. At the time of his departure, the U.S. dollar was much stronger than its Canadian counterpart (a situation that has since been reversed); as for the contract issue, Arón wanted some say about his employment situation. He also indicated that the fixed contracts of the SAWP that he (Arón) found unappealing attracted his brother, who does not want to spend much time away from his family.

Domatilo, Norberto, and Joaquín Domatilo, Norberto, and Joaquín are brothers, aged thirty-two, thirty, and twenty-six, respectively. I entered their dirt yard from a doorway that opened on to a side street in Nanacamilpa and encountered a narrow courtyard; on the left a long brick wall bounded the east side of the property; on the right there lay a row of attached concrete block buildings. This was the family compound. The father had ejido land, but as the tenure rights were in his name, the three brothers were technically landless and worked as day laborers in agriculture, picked up odd jobs (driver’s helper, mason’s assistant) here and there, and helped out their father when asked to do so. Joaquín, unmarried and the youngest, had pierced both ears, the first male body piercing I’d seen in the area. Different from the earlier group of brothers (Raymundo, Heriberto, and Joel) from Atotonilco, whose initiation into the SAWP proceeded in order of chronological age, these three brothers applied together in 2000, migrating for the first time in 2001. It bears mentioning that all had worked previously in the Federal District: Joaquín and Norberto made a series of short, generally two-week, visits to work on construction projects, while Domatilo labored for eight years (1989–1997) in a packing plant, until the high cost of housing and rising incidence of crime drove him back to Nanacamilpa. At the time of the interview in early 2002, the main priority for at least two of the brothers was housing. All three rented small, one- or two-room apartments from their father, paying him between one hundred fifty and three hundred fifty pesos monthly. Apart from rent they had to come up with money for cooking gas, water, and electricity, but opportunities for earning a steady income in Nanacamilpa were limited. The father controlled the four-hectare ejido plot, though he probably gave his sons a share of the harvest (or proceeds from its sale) in compensation for their labor contribution. Agricultural land rental and sharecropping opportunities were much less available in Nanacamilpa than in Atotonilco and

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Sanctorum, and agricultural day labor, when available, paid only thirty to forty pesos, according to Norberto.9 Occasionally one of the brothers was hired to dig up old maguey plants at a piece rate that came to between four hundred eighty and five hundred pesos weekly, but that work was irregular. The fact is that the maguey cactus is in danger of disappearing from one of Mexico’s historically most important pulque-producing regions. I asked why the three, and particularly the two married brothers, who now head households of their own, waited so long to apply for the SAWP. Domatilo suggested that they would have entered earlier but for a lack of assistance from the neighbors. They didn’t know how or where to apply until the town mayor made a public announcement. Even in communities like Nanacamilpa with long histories of Canadian contract labor migration and substantial numbers of past and current migrants, social networks continue to play a role in the recruitment process. As farm assignments by the Ministry of Labor tend to be random, it is not surprising that the brothers wound up on different farms dedicated to different types of crops: Joaquín in a Quebec greenhouse, Domatilo on a Quebec vegetable farm, and Norberto working Ontario tobacco. Moreover, there existed no relationship between economic necessity—crudely estimable by household size—and the duration of the contract. Though Joaquín is the bachelor, his contract of four months and twenty-three days was slightly longer than that of Norberto (four months, ten days), who has five mouths to feed, including his own. The more fortunate Domatilo was offered a six-month, eighteen-day contract. However, the two older brothers were sent home early due to a shorter than anticipated harvest season. Domatilo returned home a full month early, and Norberto a mere ten weeks after he arrived, even though the Canadian tobacco farmer offered to place him with a neighbor for an additional two weeks. To make matters worse, the employer assigned Norberto to hourly wage tasks whereas the other four crew members harvested tobacco and loaded and unloaded drying kilns at the higher task rate (ten hours of credit for what usually amounts to seven hours of work). After filling the daily kiln, tobacco pickers had the opportunity to work another two or three hours and earn more money.10 But Norberto said that his job grading the cured tobacco entailed only seven to eight hours of work daily.11 Norberto emphasized that 2001 was a good year for tobacco and that things were always more or less this way with this particular boss. He asked for a longer contract the next year but was told by Mexican authorities that he would have to return to the same farm (the three-year rule) since the grower had requested him back by name. However, the house-

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hold’s monetary needs were high, and the sixteen thousand pesos he remitted from Canada plus the two hundred Canadian dollars he brought home with him on the plane were not enough to cover them. He said that he wanted to build a house, which would mean purchasing a lot and amassing building materials, but this year he didn’t have enough money left over after covering household expenses to begin the process. He estimated that he would need a steady year-round income of three thousand six hundred pesos monthly in order to think of quitting the program. Given high household reproductive costs and low incomes, neither Norberto nor Domatilo was in a position to make productive investments (land or a business), although they thought that they would do so in the future. At the time of the interview they were focused on helping out their parents, putting food on the table, constructing their own houses, and educating the children. Domatilo, whose longer contract made it possible for him to save twice as much as his brothers, said that in the past “I would never have even thought of going to Canada, but I did it. If the whole family could go to Canada to live, I’d do it. The children would receive a better education” (Nunca hubiera pensado en ir a Canadá pero lo hice. Si toda la familia pudiera ir a Canadá para quedarse lo haría. Los hijos tendrían otro nivel del estudio).

Osorio I encountered Osorio installing lights in the interior of an intercity bus parked on one of Nanacamilpa’s neat, wide boulevards near its sole Pemex gasoline station. I was initially skeptical of Osorio’s claim that he was really a campesino and was just “helping out” a friend. The fact, though, is that these days, however people present themselves to strangers (particularly foreigners), they are always on the lookout for work and prepared to seize any attractive opportunity that comes their way. Osorio, twenty-eight years old, is married with two children (one school age) and rents a simple two-room adobe house with a flagstone (solera) roof for 350 pesos per month. He is using significant portions of his remittances to buy a piece of land on which to build a house. Like Norberto, Osorio worked in tobacco in southwest Ontario, but he had had the good fortune to be assigned to a harvesting crew that accumulated many hours by combining task work in tobacco (harvesting leaves, loading and unloading drying kilns) with additional hourly labor. He saved between six thousand and six thousand five hundred Canadian dollars in 2001, his third

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work contract—equal to between thirty-five thousand and forty thousand pesos and higher than the sample median remittance of CND$5150 (roughly thirty thousand pesos)—and he hoped to begin building a house soon. While Osorio seemed satisfied with working and living in Canada and planned to continue migrating there for the foreseeable future, he would eventually like to establish a business selling clothing so as to remain in Nanacamilpa year-round. However, such a business would have to be very successful to generate the eight thousand pesos monthly that he estimated he required in order to retire from the SAWP. When in Nanacamilpa, Osario looks for whatever work he can find. Sometimes he digs up maguey plants with pick and shovel; occasionally friends invite him to install grain silos, for which he earns 800 pesos for each of the two weeks required to finish the job, or 1,600 pesos if the crew works double shifts. Indeed, he had just returned from one such assignment in Tehuacán, Puebla. Now he was helping out with the bus project for a few days. Each of the last three persons represented himself as a peasant agriculturalist (campesino), although not one possessed tenure rights to land. Nor were any of them engaged in rental or sharecropping arrangements, in part as a result of the high level of land scarcity in Nanacamilpa, as well as the interviewees’ absence from the area during key phases of the agricultural cycle. It seems that this group of young men (twenty-six, twentyeight, thirty years old) first applied to the SAWP because of a lack of work and/or the low pay and irregularity of most of the work that was available. Like many others, they form part of the stagnant portion of the reserve army of labor, moving into and out of the labor force and among jobs according to fluctuations in local and regional labor markets (see Marx 1967: 600–603).12 And like other interviewees in similar circumstances, they are prime candidates for recruitment to full-time and part-time capitalist agricultural enterprises in southwest Ontario. In each case remittances from Canada provide the bulk of household income, the amount depending mainly on the duration of the contract. With four or five months work there they can save around thirty thousand pesos, equivalent to two thousand five hundred pesos monthly in Mexico when spread out over the year. The three gave figures of three thousand six hundred, four thousand, and eight thousand pesos as the minimum monthly amount they would have to earn locally in order to remain in Nanacamilpa. The male heads of growing households and/or those with children approaching school age, find themselves in a revolving door. About the best they can hope to do is save enough money to build a house and pro-

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vide an education for their children. Whether they can save the money required for a substantial investment depends on the length of the contract and the stage in the household’s demographic cycle, as well as local economic conditions: the breadth and depth of the consumer market, cost of land and animals, and so on.

Manolo I knocked on the metal door set in a cement block wall that surrounded Manolo’s house lot and was met by Ebet, Manolo’s adolescent daughter. The unfinished second story was visible over the wall that separated the compound from the street on Sanctorum’s northern periphery. As it turned out, this house was a physical manifestation of Manolo’s economic success in Canada and a beacon drawing the attention of prospective SAWP recruits. Manolo hadn’t wanted to go to Canada, but his brothers, twelve to fifteen years older, worked there and constructed fine houses with part of their earnings. Manolo saw the houses and realized that he would never be able to build anything comparable if he stayed in Mexico. When he applied in 1999, he was thirty-four years old and married with two children: eleven-year-old Ebet and baby Manolo. (Shortly thereafter his wife, Aída, also gave birth to Manuel, now two.) In 2001 Manolo worked for seven months along with five other Mexicans on a vegetable farm in southwest Ontario. He spoke enthusiastically of this experience, praising the employer for his kindness and attention. The contract workers occupied the ground floor of the employer’s house. Despite the fact that the farmer spoke only a little Spanish, Manolo and another worker established a personal relationship with him and were invited twice a week on average to dine with the family. Through their halting conversations, Canadian farmer and Mexican seasonal employees shared information and personal viewpoints about their respective countries. The work involved growing and harvesting vegetables, then washing, selecting, and packing them into a salad mix for delivery. Among other tasks, the workers had to lift and carry heavy crates of cabbages and other vegetables. On one occasion Manolo had an accident and suffered a hernia (“se descompuso la cintura”). He was forced to return to Mexico when the Canadian doctor to whom his employer took him was unable to resolve the problem. Three weeks later Manolo was back working in Canada, the round-trip airfare paid by the grower.

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It is possible that Manolo’s accident was partly a product of inattention brought about by overwork. He stated that he and the other Mexicans often toiled fifteen to sixteen hours daily, seven days a week—such long hours that the employer bought them supper so they wouldn’t have to spend time cooking but would be able to eat and retire directly. At times he also purchased breakfast for them.13 Manolo earned between fifteen and sixteen thousand Canadian dollars, a large amount by SAWP standards, which accounts for the rapid progress of the addition to the house. The house, though, requires more work, for which reason he planned to return in 2002, after which he said that he would decide whether to continue. His good fortune has come at the cost, borne by many young migrants, of being separated from his spouse and missing many important benchmark events during the children’s formative years. Toward the end of a two-and-a-half hour conversation, Manolo waxed nostalgic as he discussed his family and the difficulty of being so far away from them for so long. Despite having roughed out the second story of the house and having acquired beds, furniture, a couch set, and television, Manolo is one of the small number of migrants who would prefer a short, threemonth contract to his current seven-month one. But he also noted that such is not an option, given that he was invited back for 2002 by the Canadian employer. Even if Manolo could change farms, it is questionable whether he would do so given the risk of a poor reassignment. For four months in 2000 he worked for a grower who withheld the workers’ pay and was eventually expelled from the SAWP. The workers were relocated, and though Manolo failed to recover the unpaid wages, he at least met up with a considerate employer who provided an almost unlimited amount of work and, as we have seen, displayed concern for his employees’ welfare.

Jesús When I met him, Jesús was making fireworks on a table in his patio. Until he and others explained it to me, I did not understand just how dangerous this can be. Indeed, state authorities require that fireworks workshops be located beyond the inhabited section of the community and set a safe distance from one another in order to insure that accidents, if and when they occur, do not lead to chain reactions resulting in multiple injuries and deaths. It is true that as one turns west off the highway to Calpulal-

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pan and winds upward along the sinuous road that leads to Sanctorum, the surrounding hills are a checkerboard of small, white shacks where the town’s fireworks makers supposedly ply their trade. Appearances deceive, however, and are intended for the authorities; most pyrotechnic manufacture takes place in town, inside houses or on open-air patios like that of Jesús. Fireworks making or pirotécnica has only recently been introduced in Sanctorum, but it has already become an important local economic complement to the crisis-ridden agricultural sector. Twenty-six-year-old Jesús, married with two small children, has a lengthy history of labor migration that belies his young age. In 1990 at fifteen he worked for a year in the Federal District in an ironworks, or ferratería, because of a lack of local employment opportunities. Nine years later he applied through a labor recruiter in Hueyotlipan to enter the H-2A program, and he was sent to a North Carolina tobacco farm for four months where he earned US$7.80 per hour. He paid the recruiter five thousand pesos and was eventually reimbursed all but a thousand. After a second year in H-2A, Jesús established his small fireworks workshop, currently attended by himself and Dolores, his spouse. Things went well for Jesús in the tobacco fields, where there was plenty of work and a salary some 30 percent higher than in Canada, for which reason it is not at all clear why he decided to try the SAWP, except for the fact that in 2001 he seems to have had difficulty getting together the initial payment required by the H-2A recruiter. He easily gained acceptance to the SAWP and was given a seven-month contract with a commercial flower-growing firm in southwest Ontario. But things went poorly right from the beginning. He was among thirty migrants assigned to a house that contained only three stoves (one of which was often broken), five refrigerators, and seven showers—insufficient for the number of inhabitants. To make matters worse, the returnees, who were familiar with the situation, quickly claimed all the spaces on the dry, upper floor, and Jesús wound up along with seven other workers in a cold, humid basement. The overcrowding meant that upon arriving back at the house after a day in the greenhouses or fields, workers competed to be the first to use the showers and stoves. Jesús discovered that the employer had overhired and that the Mexican foremen, or mayordomos—SAWP contract workers like himself—gave more hours to returning workers, often leaving the new arrivals on the sidelines. He and others demanded more consideration from the foremen with the argument that “We came here to work; if we had wanted to sleep, we would have remained in Mexico.” As a consequence of the lim-

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ited hours, Jesús claimed to have sent only five hundred to eight hundred Canadian dollars home monthly and returned with three hundred dollars in pocket, well below the average of the subjects of this study. In sum, things had gone much better for him in the United States than in Canada, and yet Jesús stated that he was willing to give the SAWP another chance. To stay in Mexico he needs nine thousand pesos monthly, “because that would be equal to what I could earn in the United States,” which has become his yardstick. He said that he had requested a change in employers but that he would return at least one more time even if authorities denied the request. Later I learned from Manolo that Jesús had put in to work on the same farm as his brother, and that Manolo’s employer had named Jesús for 2002 at Manolo’s request, despite having no personal knowledge of him.

César The last case I discuss was collected by Soledad de Santillana Rojas during a conversation with the spouse of César Castro, a forty-four-year-old landless day laborer with four children. César applied to the SAWP for the first time in 1996 with the assistance of his brother and made his first trip the following year, contracted for two months to harvest cabbages. The second contract occurred in 1998 and was for four to five months, working Christmas trees. During the last contract, of eight months duration, he toiled in strawberries, but after two months injured his shoulder carrying the boxes of strawberries that the women harvested. He advised his employer and was taken to see a doctor, who gave him pills and a salve. He was given check-ups over the course of fifteen days but perceived no improvement, nor was he able to work. As a result, he decided to return to Nanacamilpa. According to his wife, “We were surprised when he returned so soon. He told us that they made him sign a document renouncing the insurance.” In Mexico the doctors took X-rays and determined that he had displaced three vertebrae in his spinal column. His spouse said, “We had to carry him because he couldn’t move on his own.” After three or four months of treatment he was able to get up and about. He requested help with the medical expenses from the MOL, but was told that since he had resigned he was ineligible for assistance and had even been expelled from the program. In July of 2001 he entered the H-2A program and was contracted to

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pick peaches for two months. The money was scarcely enough to cover his living expenses. He asked the recruiter for another contract and left again, but when he arrived in the United States he found that there was no work. His wife had no idea where he went or where he was at the time of the interview. He left that employer and began to seek work “on the other side” (en el otro lado) as an undocumented migrant. He calls home monthly, only to tell his family that some days he works and others he does not. All this time he has sent only a little money. In what follows I emphasize a few of the more salient points that can be extracted from the narratives. First, it is clear that marriage and, especially, the birth of children often inform decisions to migrate, whether to Canada or the United States. Many people saw the SAWP as an economic alternative when some combination of agricultural production, local agricultural (and other) wage labor, and work in Mexico City and/ or elsewhere failed to provide the basis for a minimally dignified life.14 Local and regional product and labor markets have been gutted by neoliberal economic reforms, and the generalization of the employment crisis to Mexico City and the surrounding metropolitan area makes labor migration there a less attractive alternative than before the 1994–1995 peso devaluation. The crisis is felt most strongly by men in their late twenties and early thirties (Roberto, Raymundo, Heriberto, Joel, Manolo, and others), whose households are undergoing demographic expansion. But age distribution of offspring is almost as important as the number of dependents, for when children reach school age, monetary demands on resident working members increase. A few decades ago such demands might have diminished when the majority of children terminated their school careers at some point in the primary (grades one to six) or secondary (grades seven to nine) cycle. But that is no longer the case, as indicated by the statistical difference between interviewees forty to forty-nine years of age, who completed an average of only 5.2 years of school, and those under thirty, who finished an average of 8.4 years.15 Most parents now hope that their children will complete secondary school (ninth grade), and many aspire to see them obtain a vocational degree, study through high school or even continue to university. These extended educational careers, compared to the truncated ones of the past, imply additional years of familial economic assistance and probably a greater degree of planning—insofar as planning is possible under conditions of chronic want and economic instability—in order to make avail-

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able the necessary resources.16 In Chapter 5, I evaluate this “human capital” strategy of intergenerational household development. Another prominent reason for migrating to Canada or another international destination has to do with housing. At the time of the interviews, 30 percent of informants lived in rented or borrowed housing or with their parents. A substantial, albeit undetermined, percentage had already constructed residences, mainly with money remitted from Canada and/or in a few cases from the United States. Joel saw how Raymundo worked for five years in order to raise up a comfortable three-room house. He hopes to replicate his older brother’s success. Manolo began to think seriously about migrating when his older brothers used remittances to build houses previously beyond the imagination of rural stay-at-homes. And every time Jesús leaves through his front door, he has a clear view of the semifinished second story of his older brother’s (Manolo’s) house, located directly across the street. Finally, the brothers Domatilo, Norberto, and Joaquín, who rent small apartments from their father, look forward to buying lots, building houses, and establishing their independence. Migration also seems to be contributing to the transformation of collective ideas about what counts as a proper house. Adobe and wooden structures with tile or tin roofs, the norm a few decades ago, are increasingly looked upon as symbols of poverty. A “real” house in northwest Tlaxcala has a cement or tile (mosaico) floor, cement block or brick walls, a cement roof, and indoor plumbing. Better yet if it rises two stories rather than one. The materials are expensive—especially the doors, window frames, and plumbing fixtures (sinks, shower heads, tile, etc.) that are part of the “finish” or acabado.17 However, members of many households and/ or close relatives in all three communities have construction experience, which makes it possible to save on labor costs. The sixteen cases discussed in this chapter highlight the variety of international migration alternatives available to residents: Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, the H-2A and H-2B programs, and undocumented migration to the United States. Because the project focused on the SAWP, I did not undertake a systematic examination of either H-2A, H-2B, or undocumented migration to the United States.18 However, it became clear in the course of fieldwork that it would be necessary to pay at least lip service to U.S.-bound migration, given that a small but significant percentage of informants also had work experience there, either before or after participating in the SAWP. Furthermore, other residents of these communities bypass the program completely. H-2A offers

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many of the same advantages (free housing, subsidized transport, a guaranteed wage) as the SAWP and has fewer age restrictions and bureaucratic requirements (see Chapter 6 for detailed discussion). In 2001–2002 the greatest attraction of the United States was the opportunity to earn U.S. dollars, at that time worth 25–30 percent more than the Canadian dollar.19 However, in 2001–2002 application to H-2A required an initial lump sum payment of around five thousand pesos, 80 percent of which was eventually reimbursed to most participants. This amount of money lay beyond the reach of many poor, rural Tlaxcalans.20 The limited data on H-2A indicates that migrant experiences have been much more mixed compared to the SAWP. Neither the Mexican nor the United States government exercises systematic oversight of H-2A (Durand 2006: 55–64), and the private association of tobacco growers that administers H-2A in North Carolina, the state to which most Tlaxcalans are sent, has been reluctant to discipline or remove unusually cruel and exploitative growers like Yals Beard, whose outrageous work demands were related by Miguel. Finally, undocumented U.S. migration involves high costs (around fifteen thousand pesos or more in 2000 and twice that amount in 2010) and physical and psychological risks, yet it is favored by those, such as Arón, averse to fixed contracts and arbitrary work assignments.21 This strategy is most likely to be pursued when the prospective migrant has friends and/or family in the United States willing to help finance the trip, provide shelter (at least temporarily), and assist with the job search. If Inocencio is correct, most undocumented migrants from Atotonilco—bound for Utah, Oregon, or Colorado—already have jobs waiting for them when they arrive. Interviewees in all three communities tended to agree that U.S.bound migration was much less common than migration to Canada, but that could change in the near future if networks linking northwest Tlaxcala and U.S. destination sites grow more dense (see Massey, Goldring and Durand 1994), the SAWP proves incapable of absorbing new aspirants, and/or Mexican MOL officials adopt criteria unfavorable to Tlaxcala in the allocation of available slots. Since 1999 the Mexican government has expanded the program to previously nonparticipating states, and the aggregate share of contract workers from the Federal District and six nearby states declined from 88.9 percent in 1999 to 71.6 percent in 2004. More specifically, Tlaxcala’s share fell during the same period from 22.8 percent to 17.8 percent, even though the total number of workers originating from the state increased by 187 (calculated from Durand 2006: 77— Table 4). If decentralization of the SAWP continues into the future, new

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aspirants from Tlaxcala may find it increasingly difficult to secure a spot in the program, and the number of participants from Atotonilco, Nanacamilpa, and Sanctorum will stagnate or decline—unless, of course, the SAWP undergoes a significant numerical expansion.22 Most migrants claim “satisfactory” experiences in Canada, but the case studies document numerous and varied problems: foul-ups in the MOL that result in the reassignment of migrants invited back (“named”) by their previous year’s employer (Enrique); employers who mistreat, overwork, and even occasionally steal from employees (Manolo); occupational health problems caused by heavy lifting and pesticide poisoning (Inocencio, Manolo, César); inattentive Mexican officials attached to the Toronto Consulate (Inocencio); occasional crowded and substandard housing and cooking facilities (Jesús); and discrimination in the allocation of available work (Norberto, Jesús). To these we can add the “silent” unseen and undocumented costs of boredom and alienation at rural Canadian working and living sites (Joel), the double or triple days put in by the female spouses of absent male migrants (Roberto), and the emotional distance that occasionally develops between migrant husbands who identify with Canadian culture and their stay-at-home wives (Raymundo, discussed further in Chapter 5). More detailed conversations with these migrants or the presentation of a greater number of case studies undoubtedly would allow us to document further the dark side of the agreement extolled by Verduzco as entailing “the functional complementarity between labor supply and labor demand” (la complementaridad functional entre una oferta y una demanda laboral ) and that ostensibly involves “dignified and adequate mechanisms that have permitted a healthy interaction between the two countries” (mecanismos dignos y adecuados que han permitido una saludable interacción entre los dos países) (2000: 345). One cannot acquire knowledge of this dark side by talking exclusively to consular officials or representatives of the MOL, or by interviewing Mexican contract workers at their Canadian work sites, where complaints tend to be kept under wraps in order to avoid jeopardizing future labor contracts and access to the Canadian dollars that play key roles in the reproduction of workers’ Mexican households (see Bauder 2006: 163–164). The capital-labor relationship is an inherently unequal one, as Marx documented almost a century and a half ago; it becomes less so when organized workers secure through struggle better working conditions and a larger share of the value that they produce. But contract labor is unfree labor in the sense that Mexican (and Caribbean area) workers have no say over the length of the contract, the tasks for which they are being hired,

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or the employer for whom they work. And as I pointed out earlier, for the first three years the MOL does not entertain a worker’s requests for a change of employer regardless of employer-employee relationship, working conditions, and/or housing quality. Finally, government officials mandated to protect their interests—interests already severely curtailed by a contract that favors employer’s rights over worker’s rights—frequently take the employer’s side, telling workers not to make trouble and to endure (aguantar) the situation until the contract ends (see the discussion in Verma 2003: 49–53). To be fair, the migrant’s legal status and a certain level of Mexican governmental oversight in Canada eliminate many of the risks associated with undocumented U.S. migration (high entry costs, dangerous border crossings, apprehension and deportation, de facto “criminalization,” job insecurity, and high cost of living) and contribute to reducing the incidence of other risks (superexploitation, arbitrary dismissal, nonpayment of wages, family abandonment, and alcohol or drug addiction). For these reasons and despite the problems documented here and elsewhere, the SAWP continues to be popular with a large number of rural dwellers in Atotonilco, Nanacamilpa, Sanctorum, and many other communities of Tlaxcala’s north and northwest, as well as with rural Mexicans in other states.

CHAPTER 4

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply: Caribbean and Mexican Workers in Canada’s SAWP Leigh Binford and Kerry PreiBisch The question that orients this chapter is a straightforward one: What happens when largely Anglo-Canadian growers are confronted with two (or more) sources of non-Canadian, “Third World” contract workers from among whom they can choose? Neither the availability of the workers, nor the ease of contracting them varies by regional or national origin—which is to say that the employer can access as many or as few as required and for as much or little time as needed—and neither wages nor benefits nor the rights and obligations of the contracting parties vary in any significant way. Yet as is pointed out in Chapter 2, employers entering the program request workers by country. Through 1973 all such workers were of AfroIndo-Caribbean descent, regardless of whether they came from Jamaica, Barbados, or Trinidad and Tobago.1 Complications arose in 1974 when the SAWP added a new, Mexican “brand” of worker to compete with the Caribbean brand(s) on the shelves of the contract labor supermarket frequented by surplus value-hungry Canadian horticulturalists. By that year the Caribbeans had a substantial five-thousand-worker lead, most of which was accounted for by Jamaica. One has to wonder to what degree the invitations to Mexico (accepted) and Portugal (rejected) to join were inspired exclusively by the 1973 report of the abuses that accompanied uncontrolled contract labor migration, as some analysts maintain, as against the prospect of a lighter-skinned alternative labor force.2 After all, the program seemed to be working pretty well, if the rising number of early 1970s hires is any indication (Figure 4.1). Why was it deemed necessary (or desirable) to bring in Mexicans (but see Satzewich 2007)? Once placed “on display,” the Mexican brand took some time to penetrate the market. The history here is murky. It seems to us, though, that

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12000

NUMBER OF WORKERS

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Fig. 4.1. Historic growth of the SAWP

Mexican participation remained at a relatively low level for the first dozen years after 1974 because the program was not growing—or was not growing very fast; few new employers joined, and most holdovers were electing to continue with the Caribbean workers with whom they began before 1974.3 In other words, employers were taking advantage of the “naming system” and rehiring the same people year after year. When they needed to replace one or more workers, most continued to draw from the Caribbean instead of Mexico because of a generalized belief that it was a bad idea to “mix” culturally and linguistically different labor forces, especially when they are housed in close quarters.4 Linked to this was the government’s intentional use of quotas to limit the size of the program, which at the time was viewed as a stopgap solution to temporary domestic labor shortages in the horticultural sector that would be alleviated over time by the recruitment of Canadian resident- and citizen-workers. From 1980–1984 the number of contract workers actually declined.5 FARMS was formed in 1987 and breathed new life into the SAWP; the ensuing fifteen years saw several periods of rapid escalation in the number of participating growers and contract workers. For a small per “unit” fee, FARMS became an intermediary between employers and the government, relieving the former of much burdensome bureaucratic paperwork. Many previously unaffiliated growers signed on to the SAWP, and from 1987 to 1990 the program doubled in size, with Mexicans—only 20 percent of workers in 1987—accounting for almost half the growth. By 1990, 37 percent of all SAWP workers came from Mexico. After several years

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply 95

of stagnation, labor demand picked up again between 1994 and 2001. This time Mexico accounted for a whopping 70 percent of the increase as Caribbeans fluctuated narrowly between six thousand five hundred and seven thousand annually, well below the high point of eight thousand hires attained in 1989. By 2001, 51 percent of SAWP workers were Mexican (Figure 4.1). How do we account for this? We believe that the differential racialization of the SAWP labor force played a key role in the process. According to Miles, racialization involves “those instances where social relations between people have been structured by the signification of human biological characteristics in such a way as to define and construct differentiated social collectivities” (cited in Satzewich 1998: 32). In the SAWP, racialization defines a particular form of “strategic alterity” through which capitalist employers both devalue groups—thus justifying low wages—and mask that devaluation on the basis of ascribed social, physical, and cultural attributes. But whereas all Mexican and Caribbean contract workers are racialized by Canadian employers, they are not racialized in the same way. Indeed, differential racialization involving the specific biological and/or durable cultural characteristics ascribed to each group shape employers’ recruitment strategies and employer-employee relations and contribute to reproduce and even intensify divisions among source country contract workers. Racialized discourses and practices undermine the potential for solidarity of workers sharing similar class positions. In this chapter we do not document the historical genesis and development of racialization as regards Mexicans and Caribbeans in Canada, which would be another project, but point to some of the contemporary forms that racialization assumes, the manner in which employers explain hiring decisions in racial terms, and some of the implications for racialization for the lives of temporary foreign workers. For many growers racialization is about the bottom line, which is to say it is about labor productivity. With farm-gate prices stagnant or falling and most input prices on the rise, cheapening the cost of labor power—i.e., extracting more value per labor dollar—remains one of the only strategies available to Canadian horticulturalists struggling to defend profit levels in a globalized marketplace. The acquisition of cheap labor is also one of the only areas in which Canadian growers might expect assistance from governments strongly committed to cheap food policies (see Appendix I). In the context of the SAWP, racialization entails sets of beliefs and practices that circulate in rural communities and inform growers’ hiring de-

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cisions. Whatever the rationale, those decisions matter. Collectively they play a role in shaping the SAWP labor market and workforce: the number of available slots (new and returning workers), as well as the ethnic/racial/ national groups called upon to fill them. Moreover, growers’ beliefs and practices also influence workers’ perspectives and contribute to divisions among workers that, however comparable in class terms, speak different languages, perform different cultures, and are bearers of different social histories.

Racially Based Labor Market Segmentation and the Evolution of Commodity Sectors Let’s begin by noting that growers often select countries on the basis of recommendations of members of a network of formal and informal contacts centered in churches, grower organizations, and recreational golfing groups, among other venues.6 This involves, to put it succinctly, the social circulation of racialized discourses. For example, one grower who began with Caribbean help and later switched to Mexican labor explained his decision in the following way: “We talked to other growers around who were in the program already, and they said for the type of work that you’re doing, the Mexicans are probably a little more suited to that type of agriculture.” As the statement suggests, different groups of workers have become discursively (and practically) associated with different “types of agriculture” based on natural—or cultural in some instances—advantages attributed to them by growers. Once a certain kind of labor force has been recruited and proves both reliable and productive, the naming system whereby the grower invites back workers for another season then kicks in, contributing to a kind of hiring inertia. On smaller farms in particular, some growers establish personal relationships with employees, who are invited back year after year. With this in mind we note that for 2000–2003, Ontario SAWP employment figures showed substantial ethnic/racial/national segmentation by commodity sector.7 Between 2000 and 2003, Mexicans thoroughly dominated flower (87–93 percent), nursery (75–80 percent) and greenhouse (85–90 percent) production; Caribbean workers predominated in apples (75–80 percent) and tobacco (65–70 percent). The remaining commodity sectors fell into a more amorphous middle: Canning was a wash; Mexicans had a clear edge in open-field (i.e., nongreenhouse) vegetables (55–60 percent) and a very slight one, if that, in ginseng (50–55 percent);

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply 97

Table 4.1. Ontario SAWP employer labor force preferences by commodity sector Mexican Domination

Caribbean Domination

Greenhouse Flowers Nurseries

Apples Tobacco

Mexican Edge

Caribbean Edge

No Edge

Vegetables Ginseng

Tender fruits

Canning

and Caribbean workers had the advantage in tender fruits (around 60 percent). Putting these into columns makes the relationships clearer. A cursory examination of Table 4.1 indicates that Mexicans are favored for jobs entailing stoop labor, while a preference for Caribbeans appears where work often involves reaching upwards (harvesting apples and tender fruits) or bearing heavy loads (tobacco). It is impossible to know exactly how these associations developed, although they suggest a rather straightforward and simplistic association of presumed phenotypic differences in size and body mass on the one hand, with the purported task requirements of certain jobs on the other. Thus Mexican workers, usually shorter in stature than Caribbeans, are chosen for work that involves stooping close to the ground, while the “taller” Caribbean workers are considered more suited to fruit-tree picking. In the words of a Canadian administrator, “The reason for the shift to the Mexican . . . is that the Mexican workers were shorter, so they had the field crops. And then they had the West Indian men who were taller men for the fruit trees so they didn’t have to use a ladder or break their backs from bending over for the vegetable crops” (Canadian civil servant, interview with Preibisch, November 2002).8 Another grower further explained the widely held perception that Jamaicans are better at picking fruit: “I know some guys have Mexican men for it, but I have heard of more people switching from Mexicans to Jamaicans for picking peaches than I have going from Jamaicans to Mexicans. I think that Jamaicans, for picking in the orchards, are just bar none the best, so that’s why we have it set up the way we do.”9 Some growers even opined that different nationalities “like” different types of work, thus moving away from physical markers to introduce a national character element into decision making; they then represent hiring and task assignment decisions as employer concessions to workers’ preexisting, culturally inscribed preferences. The owner of a large, commercial nursery who hires both Mexicans and Jamaicans stated:

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Jamaicans like more physical work. In their society work is culturally either male or female, digging or lugging pots for men, weeding for women; while Mexicans don’t discriminate between these types of work. They like more variety. They don’t like to dig evergreens, but give them a hoe and they will outwork the Jamaicans every time. (Canadian nursery owner, interview with Binford, St. Catherines, Ontario, 10 September 2003)

As this last statement indicates, some growers recruit workers from different supply countries and of different genders as an intentional strategy aimed at maximizing overall labor productivity.10 The owner of one diversified fruit farm hires Jamaican men for picking peaches, Mexican men for pruning, Mexican women for packing, and ethnic Vietnamese Canadians for vineyard work. It is worth quoting his explanation for this racialized and gendered allocation of labor: We have the Mexican women who just strictly stay in the packing barn. I tried using Jamaicans in the vineyard and you know, you can call it stereotyping, but they don’t hold a candle to the Vietnamese. For tying and that, it’s unbelievable how fast they [Vietnamese] are, they’re just like machines, they’re really good. . . . Jamaicans are better peach pickers. I mean I could take the Vietnamese and put them in the field but they don’t like it, it’s [a] complete turn around, I’ll lose my shirt that way. I mean, as fast as they are at tying, they’re just so small and petite that they have no arms, no strength. (Canadian employer, interview with Preibisch, August 2002)

All these associations represent forms of racialization analogous to the gender typing practiced by maquiladora managers who argue that women’s “natural dexterity” and patience give them advantages over men when it comes to routine industrial assembly of small parts (Wright 2006). Often such associations lead to a kind of “conjugated oppression” involving a conflation of class and ethnic hierarchies, resulting in “an experience of oppression that is more than merely the sum of its constituent parts: class and ideology” (Bourgois 1988: 330).11 Whether it is grounded in ascribed physical, mental, or cultural attributes is irrelevant from the point of view of racialization effects (Satzewich 1998: 32). Beyond the certainties expressed by Ontario farmers, none of these claims has been verified— nor does it seem possible (or recommended) to attempt to do so.12 According to Avery, the association of people of different national or

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ethnic origin with certain skills and occupations has a lengthy genealogy in Canada. Avery notes how the post–World War II government immigration bureaucracy bound certain types of immigrants to certain kinds of jobs: For instance, “Balts”—Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians—were regarded as excellent lumber workers and domestics while Ukrainians and Poles, the “stalwart peasants” of yesterday, were still thought of as people who would till the soil and work in the mines, despite their high degree of education. Italians, it was believed, would make poor farmers but good construction workers. Jews were viewed as essentially urban and not used to hard labor; they would probably only be successful in Canada as “garment workers, furriers, dressmakers and milliners.” (1995: 157)

That these assignments were not fixed is indicated by the fact that in the 1960s Caribbean males were believed “to maintain stooped positions for long periods of time without becoming weary” (Satzewich 1991: 177), a trait that many employers now associate with Mexicans. Notwithstanding the purported advantages to productivity, this strategy has the added effect of dividing an already divided work force by pitting workers of different racial/ethnic/national backgrounds against one another. Some SAWP temporary workers from Atotonilco, Nanacamilpa, and Sanctorum recounted with pride employers’ claims about their superior endurance, skill, and work ethic compared to “los jaimaquinos,” the term used by many Mexicans to refer to all Caribbeans, regardless of country of origin. And through their impact on decisions about employment—whom to employ in what—the beliefs have very real consequences for workers’ earning power. Assignment to commodity sectors with relatively short contracts, such as tobacco, has meant that Caribbeans accumulate about 20 percent fewer work hours—and close to 20 percent less income—over the course of a contract season than do Mexicans (see Russell 2003: 47, 67–68).13 This brings us to a second point. Once racialized assignments enter the cultural repertoire of employers, they remain relatively durable, shaping future SAWP demand in each commodity sector. If greenhouse production experiences robust growth, so too will the demand for Mexicans, since Mexican contract workers predominate in that commodity sector. If apple production enters into crisis because the Canadian market is being inundated by cheap imports, the demand for Caribbean-origin workers will fall as well. The aggregate demand for workers from different ethnic/

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racial/national groups will depend on the pattern of economic activity in the commodity sectors in which they are employed. Figures 4.2–4.3 graph those sectors dominated by Mexican workers (greenhouses, nurseries, flowers in Figure 4.2) and those dominated by Caribbean workers (apples, tobacco in Figure 4.3). The graphs make it clear that between 1994 and 2009, aggregate labor demand grew in the Mexican-dominated commodity sectors and declined in the Caribbean-dominated ones. Such growth or decline had nothing to do with the specific ethnic/racial/national composition of the sectorial labor force and much to do with national and international demand, globalized competition, and state policy. For instance, greenhouse vegetables and floriculture are Canadian agriculture’s greatest success stories under globalization. Greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers increased in value by 1,058 percent and 994 percent, respectively, between 1980 and 2000 (Weston and Scarpa de Masellis 2003) with another 15.9 percent (tomatoes) and 25.8 percent (cucumbers) rise between 2000 and 2005 (Ontario Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs 2005a). Ontario accounts for 50 percent of the industry nationally, and the town of Leamington (Essex County) alone contains the largest concentration of greenhouses in North America (Basok 2003a: 7). By contrast, apples and tobacco, both of which are Caribbeandominated, have undergone stagnation (apples) or decline (tobacco) in production and employment: apples as a consequence of changing phytosanitary standards, a general decline in farm-gate prices, and the flooding of the Canadian market with U.S. stock, to the extent that Canada is now a net apple importer (Agriculture and Agri-food Canada 2004; Weston and Scarpa 2003); tobacco as a consequence of high interest rates, multifaceted government actions seeking to reduce the use of tobacco, changing public attitudes, inclement weather and crop diseases, and changing production factors, which collectively resulted in a significant reduction in the number of tobacco growers, the volume of tobacco grown, and acres used for growing it (Ramsey et al. 2003). Between 1995 and 2004, apple acreage declined 43.4 percent, from 30,748 to 17,400 acres (Ontario Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs 2005b), for which reason it is no surprise that SAWP vacancies in apples fell from 1994 to 2003. They increased thereafter but by 2009 had not attained the level reached in 1994. As for tobacco, according to journalist Lisa Grace Marr the number of tobacco farmers declined from 1,083 in 2000 to 981 in 2001 (Marr 2002h: A6). An industry representative reported in 2003 that the number had fallen further to around nine hundred.14 According to FARMS statistics, the number of tobacco growers

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Fig. 4.2. Evolution of Mexican-dominated commodity sectors

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2005

2010 TOBACCO APPLES

Fig. 4.3. Evolution of Caribbean-dominated commodity sectors

participating in the SAWP dwindled by 15 percent (from 489 to 413) between 2005 and 2006, and the number of contract worker vacancies fell an even steeper 19 percent (from 3,622 to 2,918), dropping tobacco from second to fourth place as a user of SAWP workers (FARMS 2007).15 The downward trend continued thereafter. By 2009 fewer than 1,500 SAWP participants worked in tobacco. We estimate that the combined decline in apples and tobacco cost Caribbeans seventeen hundred seasonal jobs between 1994 and 2009. The particulars of the recent evolution of acreage, unit price, and value in Ontario’s horticulture industry reinforce our contention that commodity

102 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

sector evolution played a strong role in the overall growth in Mexican SAWP labor vis-à-vis Caribbean labor. Vacancies in tobacco (Caribbean workers) have been falling for a decade, while those in greenhouses (Mexican workers) have been rapidly increasing. These are sectors that one or the other group has dominated in recent years. However, it is important that we keep in mind that a continuing process of racial/ethnic/national task assignments channeled through the market stands behind the differential effects on commodity sector labor demand. Moreover, given that some groups (Mexicans) benefit more than others (Caribbeans) within an overall process of labor expansion-contraction, it becomes possible to argue that within the program, racialization shades over into racism, since even as some groups benefit, others are discriminated against in hiring on the basis of purportedly inherent (racially based) characteristics that make them inferior candidates for certain types of work. Employers may argue that their hiring decisions are informed exclusively by economic criteria, yet claims about the differential productivity of one or another ethnic/ racial/national group in this or that task almost always involve beliefs about stable physical, mental, and/or cultural distinctions (see Simmons 1998: 88–89). While there exists no necessary association of an ethnic/racial/national group and particular commodity sectors or crop regimes, once a particular labor force becomes linked with particular commodity sectors in the minds of employers and in their business practices, then regional, national, and global capitalist relationships, channeled through the purportedly invisible hand of the market, play important roles in shaping labor demand. Here the naming system and the labor force stability that it enables generate a degree of inertia in future labor force composition, since employers who have recruited and trained a core group of workers familiar with their operations are unlikely to risk wholesale conversion to a new and untested group unless such conversion holds out the promise of substantial improvements in labor productivity and thus lower unit costs, which is to say more surplus value and higher returns. While many growers employ production-related ethnic/racial/national discourses in order to justify the preponderance of, say, Caribbean workers in tobacco or Mexican workers in nurseries, alternative beliefs and practices do exist and are available for assimilation. Indeed, the mere fact that Mexican workers were called upon to fill 20–25 percent of the vacancies in apples, 30–35 percent in tobacco, and around 40 percent in tender fruit—all Caribbean-dominated or Caribbean-edge commodity sectors—

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply 103

suggests a level of heterodoxy in the ethnic/racial/national domain of discourse and practice.16 Finally, some SAWP hiring decisions are based on factors that have nothing to do with beliefs about group differences in work abilities, as we are about to see.

Differences That Make a Difference . . . Rejecting racialized claims about task performance does not exhaust the domain of influence of ethnic/racial thinking on employment decisions. Mexican and Caribbean workers—and among the latter, different national groups of Caribbeans—do differ in some obvious ways that could have implications for work-related matters. These can be summarized as follows: (1) Some English-speaking Caribbeans are recruited from urban areas, and as a result of prior waves of Caribbean migration in the 1960s and 1970s have network contact with legal residents and citizens in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada; (2) Spanish-speaking Mexicans originate overwhelmingly from rural areas, and rural origin and the small historic Mexican immigrant “base” in Canada combine to reduce the likelihood that Mexican contract workers become acquainted with Canadian residents or citizens of Mexican descent. Language and network contacts have implications for workers’ reliability and docility, characteristics that employers value in SAWP workers. According to employers, “good” workers are industrious, obedient, and have the physical and emotional stamina to work through to the end of their contracts (Basok 2002). In addition, good workers should have prior farming experience at least and ideally some agricultural training. When placing orders for foreign workers, some employers request specific skill sets: international driver’s licenses, English-language proficiency, or experience driving a tractor. Being able to fulfill these requests serves as a measure of the labor supply country’s recruitment capacity, a point we discuss below. Furthermore, good workers do not question employment practices or complain about housing conditions. As one consular official stated, “[Voicing rights] causes some employers to switch, because a lot of them don’t want backchat or voicing of rights.” Mexicans’ low or nonexistent facility in English limits “backchat” or relegates it to a language that most employers do not understand, as a result of which Mexican workers experience a higher degree of vulnerability than do Caribbean ones (Basok 2002).17 A liaison officer from the Caribbean region explained:

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Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

Caribbean people tend to question things, and they don’t back down on what they perceive to be their rights. That could be a negative because some employers don’t want that. They want a peaceful life, a guy who comes and works hard and doesn’t mind if he gets a ten-minute break or not. Somehow our guys use their sense: “Why should I work from six in the morning till five in the evening without at least two 20-minute breaks?” Some employers don’t see that as a necessary thing. And they don’t see that the guys get some time off or a day off. Working seven days a week is not an easy thing. So when our boys raise their concern about these things, they get looked at or they might even get switched. So that is one of the reasons why I could see us losing a lot of ground. Eventually [pauses]. . . well you know, we have already lost a lot of ground. (Sending country civil servant, interview with Preibisch, July 2002)

As this official suggested, “good” workers limit social commitments and accept overtime hours. On the whole, Mexicans meet employer expectations more frequently than Caribbeans. A southwest Ontario grower stated, “The Jamaicans are no good because they complain a lot and spend their time partying. A lot go AWOL. With the St. Lucians, when there were quite a few around here, they started to party. There are all kinds of Mexicans around. The Jamaicans also have relatives in Toronto, so weekends they don’t want to work.” The previous passage points to a significant difference between Caribbeans and Mexicans: the existence of a large immigrant Caribbean community in the Greater Toronto Area (and elsewhere). Like Canada, the participating Caribbean nations are members of the British Commonwealth. Commonwealth membership was strategically employed by postwar Caribbean governments as a means of extracting concessions from their Canadian counterpart, especially after 1971 when England shut the doors on immigration from underdeveloped areas of the Commonwealth (Cohen 2006: 76–79); for its part, the Canadian government sought to deny or minimize requests for a more open policy without simultaneously offending those who made them (Satzewich 1991: 123–180). The migration of Caribbean domestic workers, who were able later to sponsor many members of their families, was one example of this kind of political give and take. As a result of earlier waves of immigration, the 2001 Jamaica-origin immigrant and nonimmigrant population in Canada approached one hundred twenty-two thousand, equivalent to 4.6 percent of the island’s 2.6 million residents (Mueller 2005: 36—Table 2; Russell 2003: 3).18 Mexican immigration, historically small, grew rapidly after

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply 105

the 1994 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) but by 2001 still numbered fewer than forty-three thousand persons, a mere .04 percent of the domestic Mexican population.19 Moreover, approximately half the Mexicans in Canada were German-speaking Mennonites, with few or no ties to non-Mennonite Mexicans, making them poor candidates as potential sponsors for Mexican contract workers seeking Canadian residence (Mueller 2005: 38–42).20 Networks multiply some Caribbean workers’ social commitments outside the workplace, while Mexicans, with fewer off-farm social options, tend to be more openly enthusiastic about working long days and through weekends. Given the limited options, it is not surprising that about a third of Tlaxcalan interviewees claimed that they played soccer, while three of ten used some of their time off to “walk around” ( pasear); a mere 4 percent attended a church service on Sundays, likely those working and living near Leamington, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Bradford, or another town with a Catholic church and Spanish-language mass. Even as they complained about boredom and the unvarying routine, many people interviewed in Tlaxcala insisted that they went to Canada to work and earn as much money as possible; given the limited recreational opportunities available to them, they may have been making a virtue of a necessity. In sum, a much larger number of Caribbean than Mexican migrants who want to stay in Canada can potentially “lose themselves” in the regional diaspora in Toronto. FARMS keeps careful track of persons who go AWOL as well as those who breach their contracts and are dismissed and sent home (deported). The difference in the percentage of combined AWOL/Contract Breaches with respect to total hires between Caribbeans and Mexicans is consistent with our earlier discussion. From 1986–2003, combined Caribbean AWOLS and contract breaches, represented here as “contract violations,” underwent two periods of cyclical rise and decline. They rose during the late 1980s, reaching a high of 7.8 percent of hires in 1988 before falling to 2.4 percent in 1994; there followed a second, albeit slower rise to approximately 5.0 percent of hires during 1999–2001, followed by another decline to 2.0 percent in 2002. The line graphing contract violations for Mexican workers displays no discernible pattern over time, never topping 2.6 percent or dipping below 1 percent of hires (Figure 4.4). As the percentage of Caribbean “problem workers” rose, the Caribbean-Mexican contract “violation gap,” represented by the distance between the two plotted lines in Figure 4.4, widened.21 The absence of a worker, especially during the peak harvest season, disrupts and upsets the employer’s task scheduling until such time as a re-

4160 4802 5947 7742 7364 6950 6278 6319 6067 6443 6254 6761 6892 7476 7377 7919 7382 7390

Year

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

847 1229 2100 3560 4214 4136 3818 3887 3857 3825 4187 4581 5272 6078 7281 8060 7538 7082

Mexican Recruitment (2) 37 80 124 144 148 116 89 76 63 105 67 103 146 166 134 146 131 75

Caribbean Breaches (3) 6 11 2 1 15 1 38 63 36 56 67 83 114 68 191 68 95 59

Mexican Breaches (4) 123 195 340 410 325 205 115 147 84 114 132 139 125 204 220 273 87 74

Caribbean AWOLS (5)

Source: Calculations based on Thomas (1997: 56–7) and information provided by FARMS

Caribbean Recruitment (1)

Table 4.2. Caribbean and Mexican contract violations, 1986–2003

4 7 20 21 35 17 18 24 52 30 11 34 23 7 1 0 89 54

Mexican AWOLS (6) .04 .06 .08 .07 .06 .05 .03 .04 .02 .03 .03 .04 .04 .05 .05 .05 .03 .02

% Caribbean Violations 7=(3+5)/1 .01 .01 .01 .01 .01 .00 .01 .02 .02 .02 .02 .03 .03 .01 .03 .01 .02 .02

% Mexican Violations 8=(4+6)/2

.03 .04 .07 .07 .05 .04 .02 .01 .00 .01 .01 .01 .01 .04 .02 .04 .01 .00

Violation Gap 9=7-8

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply 107 9

PERCENTAGE OF WORKERS VIOLATING CONTRACTS

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1986

1991

1996 YEAR

2001 CARIBBEANS MEXICANS

Fig. 4.4. Caribbean and Mexican contract violations, in proportional terms, 1986–2003

placement can be obtained (at additional cost in administrative and transportation fees). If the worker left soon after arriving, the employer may have to absorb the portion of the airfare that was to have been deducted from the worker’s paycheck. Given the working and living conditions, and judging by the precedents of both the U.S. H-2A experiences and the Caribbeans in Canada, we believe that more Mexicans would go AWOL if they had contacts in Canada willing to help them live and work in urban areas. Too many AWOLs reflect poorly on a labor supply country’s ability to provide reliable workers and can move employers to look elsewhere for contract workers. One Caribbean official attributed the AWOL problem to a flawed recruitment policy that brought in urban dwellers who are illsuited to agricultural work and are more likely than rural-origin people to have social networks in Canada. In 2003, the Canadian High Commissioner to Jamaica stated that “if the numbers [of AWOLs] increase, we will then turn to other sources [of labor]” (Globe and Mail 2003). Following these remarks, the Jamaican government shifted recruitment to rural areas and began eliminating workers who failed to be named (invited back) by their Canadian employer.22 When three Jamaican workers were caught allegedly smuggling drugs into Canada in 2003, the Jamaican Ministry of Labour banned all residents from the workers’ home parish from the SAWP for three years ( Jamaican Observer 2004). After tripling in number from 1994 to 2001 (84 to 273), Caribbean AWOLs declined to 87 and then 73 in 2002 and 2003, respectively. FARMS holds labor supply country representatives responsible for

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providing capable, reliable, and skilled workers. A Canadian administrator reflected on employer’s expectations for the recruitment process in labor supply countries and inter-country competition as follows: The [labor supply governments] could do a better job of selecting more suitable workers for agriculture. . . . Employers would like nothing better than to have farmers come up, people that come from a farming background. This might be a nice thing on their wish list, but the supply countries, knowing this in advance, should be working towards that. And that’s when, over time, you build up the confidence in their workers and hopefully the employers will come their way. It’s a five-horse race here: four Caribbean countries plus Mexico, and the employer has the choice of which ones they want to go to. (Canadian civil servant, interview with Preibisch, July 2002)

Mexican officials claim that they do attempt to match farm workers to farms, sourcing workers from regions that specialize in the commodity being produced in Canada. Mexico’s agro-industrial sector produces a number of commodities grown by their neighbor to the far north. However, most SAWP workers come from poor, rural, dry-land farming areas where the Mesoamerican triad of corn, beans, and squash predominates (Basok 2002; Verduzco and Lozano 2003; Colby 1997).23 In addition to recruiting suitable workers, labor supply countries must provide good “service” for everyday concerns. Employers expect to have calls responded to and questions answered. They expect home country officials to be willing to visit the farm if a dispute arises and mediate that dispute (in their favor, of course) in a timely fashion in order to limit disruptions. Furthermore, employers expect labor supply countries to deliver workers quickly, i.e., “just in time” for production. In 2001–2003, the Mexican Consulate was roundly criticized by the industry because of delays in processing employer requests for workers. As one Canadian administrator remarked: [The Mexican Consulate is] not quick on response, and I even have a joke that Mexico works on siesta time and they do. They take their time and nothing’s ever an emergency. Growers do get frustrated with it, and we’ve had a few growers switch back to the Caribbean Program in the last year. (Canadian civil servant, interview with Preibisch, November 2002)

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In order to meet some of these demands, the Mexican and Jamaican governments established, in 2005, a satellite consular office and a Ministry of Labour Liaison Service, respectively, in the town of Leamington, where over 27 percent of SAWP employees are concentrated. When employers sour on a specific country, they often switch to a different labor supply country the following season.24 Sometimes this involves “country surfing” in a conscious search for the hardest working and most docile labor force; at other times it represents a flight from a country whose liaison officers or consular officials more forcefully defend housing and other contract provisions or who are unable to meet the employer’s needs for timely delivery of the requested number of workers. The Canadian government’s insistence that the program work through bilateral relationships generates competition among supply country governments. Each consular or liaison staff is held accountable by its government to preserve if not enlarge the country’s market share of labor placements in the SAWP and, consequently, secure foreign exchange earnings in the form of remitted Canadian dollars. In the case of the smaller Caribbean nations, those remittances represent important sources of revenue. Labor supply country officials are thus reluctant to become too aggressive with employers for fear of losing the farm to a competitor nation; they know that if they refuse an employer access to workers, for whatever reason, other countries will step in to fill the void (see Chapter 2). For their part, growers are well aware of the power they hold, as was made clear by one Ontario farmer who claimed that his reduction in the number of workers requested from a Caribbean country precipitated a visit from a top-ranking Ministry of Labor official, who reportedly pleaded, “‘I know you’ve had a problem, and I want to talk to these men. Please don’t give up on [our country].’” (Canadian employer, interview with Preibisch, December 2002)

Sexuality, Racism, and Community Relations The “soft” or neoracism discussed in the first section of this chapter is not the only face racism presents in southern Ontario. As we will see, a more conventional form of racism rears its head as well, especially when the possibility of sexual contact between SAWP Afro-Caribbean males and Anglo-Canadian females arises. One administrator commented that the concentration of Mexican workers in Leamington greenhouses was due to

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the “closer association” between Mexicans and the region’s growers who are of Southern European (mostly Italian) origin (Basok 2002).25 On the other hand, a consular officer speculated that employers face community pressure to hire “brown” (Mexican) workers as opposed to “black” (Caribbean) ones: I get the impression that there is a lot of pressure for [growers] to move towards Mexican workers. Not necessarily from the government point of view, but from the community point of view. There is this feeling that the Mexican worker who is closer in complexion to the white Canadian would be more acceptable. (Sending country civil servant, interview with Preibisch, July 2002)

Past Canadian government policies bear some responsibility for feelings of contemporary discomfort. As noted in Chapter 1, from 1947 to 1966 the government adopted the position that black workers were not suitable candidates for permanent settlement in Canada, arguing that their presence might result in the emergence of a “race relations” problem (Stasiulis and Bakan 2003; Satzewich 1991). In the early 1960s Canada shifted to a nonracial immigration policy, and within ten years “two-thirds or more . . . of all immigrants came from Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and other non-European sources” (Simmons 1998: 93–94). The 1971 Multiculturalism Act, which proclaimed Canada a “multicultural nation,” represented the government’s tacit acknowledgment of changes in the overall social demography. But the declaration of multiculturalism and the federal funding of different cultural components of the Canadian nation to enable public celebration of their unique contributions to the Canadian mosaic has had limited impact on racist discourses and practices. To take one case, in his ethnographic study of “Paradise,” a pseudonym for a rural community located about an hour north of Toronto, Barrett documented the salience of race as a meaningful emic category among both long-term residents (referred to by him as “natives”) and more recent arrivals (his “newcomers”). He found that “the idea of separate biologically based races, which can be identified mainly by skin colour and ranked along a scale of superiority and inferiority, was almost universal among Paradise people” (1994: 268), and that racist commentary and treatment was a daily fact of life for African Canadians and other minority groups. There is no reason to believe that historically Euro-Canadian–dominated farming areas south of Toronto are any different. Indeed, many growers and nonfarming Canadians express concern over the possibility of sexual

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply 111

miscegenation between male Caribbean SAWP workers and white Canadian women (Larkin 1989: 14; Preibisch 2004, 2003) but little concern about Mexicans, whom they usually portray as god-fearing family men. A female nursery owner from the St. Catherines area recounted how the leering stares she claims were directed at her by her father’s Barbadian contract workers during her youth led her to opt for Mexicans several decades later, leading to an intergenerational change in labor force from her father’s farm to her horticultural enterprise: I grew up on a fruit farm on the other side of Grimsby, and my father always had guys from Barbados. And I didn’t like the way they looked at me, the way they behaved in the off hours. And in the latter years they would go carousing in downtown Grimsby and come back with women late at night. So I told my husband, I don’t want to deal with that situation. I’ve lived with it, grown up with it. And my husband had experience with Mexicans in Michigan when he managed a farm down there. He said they were good and reliable and very strong, family-oriented people. We decided to try that. My [Mexican] guys, they treat me with respect. They never look at me as other than an employer, and I feel comfortable having my children around them, especially when they were younger.

This implies that she would not have felt comfortable having Barbadians—or probably any Caribbean-region workers—around her children. Of course, the respect she may receive from her Mexican employees has much to do with language differences and, more importantly, the power she exercises over them.26 One rural resident suggested that the labor replacement of Caribbean workers with Mexicans was in part to deter sexual relationships and, consequently, served to discipline Caribbean workers: Originally it was all Jamaicans [here] and some of them got a bit cocky and stuff like that because they had never had money before and now they had this money, so they felt like the big rich guy. So some of them got more advanced with the women and a few other things. That was back a few years ago. So then the farmers brought in some Mexican workers and some of the farmers switched to Mexican workers, and they couldn’t go out and communicate with the women. And generally back home they were more family orientated and that’s the way they were living here. The Jamaicans found out that they could be replaced and so

112 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

some of the farmers have gone back to Jamaicans and other ones have Mexicans and Jamaicans. (quoted in Preibisch 2003: 99)

Growers fear that the SAWP will be eliminated or interfered with, for which reason community pressure from white-dominated rural towns is a lobbying force they prefer to avoid.27 They are concerned about the effect that neighbors’ negative perceptions might have on their enterprises. Many growers conceal worker housing from the main roads, symbolically marking their exclusion from Canadian society (Cecil and Ebanks 1991; Preibisch 2004, 2003). And they do not want their SAWP employees to exercise a social life in Canada, including forming sexual and other relationships—in part out of economic considerations—so they take steps to limit workers’ social activity (Preibisch 2004, 2003; Larkin 1989: 53–54, 60–61).28 They can do so because workers reside on their property, and property owners have the legal right to bar entry to visitors. Employer and community prejudices about the impropriety of sexual communing between black men and white women even resulted in one contributor to a North-South Institute study cynically insisting that “the migrant workers in general, and the Jamaicans in particular, must be taught to respect the Canadian culture and resist the temptation to engage in sexual relations with the women of the host communities” (Russell 2003: 95). The researcher has adopted the employer view of the ideal SAWP worker as a partial person who is expected to keep physical powers in peak working order while placing emotional feelings and needs on hold for the duration of the contract. The whole situation has taken on a racialized dimension with implications for growers’ choice of labor supply countries, as illustrated in the following interview excerpt: The Caribbean men, culturally, have multiple wives [so] it’s not unusual, [to] have girlfriends, being the free love. The whole idea is not unusual so they’ll have girlfriends here and children here. We’ve seen a large amount of mulatto children in this area because of local girls meeting up with the Caribbean guys. Growers got kind of, and they still do get upset with the domestic situation that is happening on their property. There are girls coming in and saying, “I want to see the father of my child, he owes me child support.” You know, all these kinds of things happening. With the Mexican men, that, it wasn’t happening quite so much. These people were also very hard working and wanted to work very hard for their money, more so than the Caribbean guys.29 (quoted in Preibisch 2003: 99)

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply 113

This and other statements give a small hint of the depth of racial prejudice that exists in rural, horticultural zones of southwest Ontario. As the interview excerpt illustrates, some employers express fear (and a barely concealed envy) of the purported sexual potency of adult Caribbean males, represented as being irresistible to white Canadian females; also, they are concerned about the possibility of “mixed race offspring” [“We’ve seen a large amount of mulatto children in this area”] who are born out of wedlock [“. . . girls coming in and saying, ‘I want to see the father of my child, he owes me child support’”]. Another obvious concern involves the fear that such behaviors—and the sponsoring grower—will be negatively judged by other members of the rural community. No grower or community member interviewed expressed similar concerns about Mexican contract workers. On the other hand, detailed inquiry into Mexican migrants’ sexual practices, mainly in the Leamington area (greenhouse industry) indicated that many if not most Mexican male migrants engaged in erotic and sometimes emotional relationships with female Mexican migrants, local Mennonite women, prostitutes, and (occasionally) white Canadian females. A Mexican researcher who carried out extensive fieldwork on the SAWP recently wrote, “My fieldwork revealed that Leamington had become a space for the reaffirmation of Mexican male masculinity” (Becerril 2008: 293). Representations of Mexican males as sexually controlled, family men seem to be driven by preexisting stereotypes, reinforced by language differences, other cultural factors, and perhaps implicit fears of violence that inhibit most migrants from seeking to strike up relations with white Canadian women. Though some female SAWP migrants choose sexual abstinence while in Canada, others engage in affairs with Mexican males and, in a few notable cases, with male Canadian employers. In 2003, many white Canadians were scandalized when one of Niagara- on-the-Lake’s wealthiest farmers committed suicide shortly after his wife caught him en flagrante delicto during working hours with a Mexican SAWP employee (Becerril 2008: 295–296). Despite racist fears and advocate warnings, relationships do form between foreign workers and the local population, though they tend to be more common in the case of Caribbean workers. Between 1994 and 2002, 269 Caribbean workers ended their contracts for reasons of marriage (an average of thirty marriages annually) compared to a mere three MexicanCanadian unions during the nine-year period. That 96 percent of current SAWP participants are male makes it obvious that in all but a few cases, the nuptials involved migrant males and nonmigrant Canadian female

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residents or citizens. But these unions probably have less to do with ethnicity or national origin than with language and mobility. The Englishlanguage facility of Caribbean men, combined with their social networks, contributes to their greater ability, relative to Mexicans, to circulate geographically and socially. The unions also ensure that for those Canadians so predisposed, racist fears will find substantial experiential sustenance.30 One way that growers feel they can both protect white women from the threat of “dangerous foreign bodies” and also avoid problems with their neighbors is to hire Mexican instead of Caribbean workers.31

Conclusions While scholars have made inroads into understanding the role of citizenship status and more recently gender in shaping and organizing the horticulture labor market, this chapter has emphasized processes of racialization. In our discussion of the ethnic/racial/national transformation of the SAWP over the last fifteen years, several social and economic processes came into play. In part, the significant growth in the Mexican versus the Caribbean labor force was due to the changing fortunes of Canada’s horticultural commodity sectors under neoliberal globalization. For example, we noted the stagnation in the production of apples, a crop in which Caribbean workers have predominated, as a result of foreign competition, alongside the remarkable expansion of Canada’s greenhouse sector, in which Mexican workers predominate. Pairing this material with growers’ narratives added another dimension, revealing how employers’ use of racial and cultural discourses “naturally” associate different ethnic/racial/ national groups of workers with particular crops. Furthermore, we saw how racialized notions of the efficiency of different groups of people have been and are deployed as a labor strategy, evidencing how the racialization of the production process operates to produce the laborers demanded by commercial farmers in the late capitalist countries of the North. Whether or not Mexicans are more docile than Trinidadians or whether Jamaicans are more efficient at picking peaches than Mexicans matters less than employers’ beliefs about what makes a “good” worker, a discourse repeatedly invoked by the industry and Canadian government officials in annual provincial and federal meetings and communicated in myriad ways to the representatives of labor supply countries. We also showed how some growers “country surf ” in search of the most docile, reliable, and therefore exploitable labor force, regardless of country of origin—although country

Interrogating Racialized Global Labor Supply 115

of origin certainly influences their perception of docility, reliability, and exploitability. Finally, preferences for Mexican workers are buttressed by the belief that “brown” people from former Spanish colonies are closer physically and culturally to Canada’s imagined white community. One thing that we are seeing in this program is an internal process of racialization in which some ethnic/racial/national groups are regarded as more desirable than others—desirability varying with crop and task. For many employers and government officials, these beliefs have become part of common sense, descriptions of “the way the world is.” When employers designate a worker’s source country, they both materialize these beliefs and reduce the space for potentially counterintuitive experiences, thus setting the stage for a self-reinforcing cycle through which experience proves the correctness of the belief and the belief contributes to future experience. The result is a relatively durable, though not indissoluble, power-knowledge nexus through which different groups of workers are presumed to possess natural physical attributes and/or social-cultural dispositions that affect labor productivity and have implications for the economic survival of agricultural enterprises competing in regional, national, and global markets. Finally, this process of racialization is partly sustained by the binational character of the SAWP and the resulting competition among labor supply countries, with government officials of each source country struggling to gain placements at the expense of the rest, even when doing so entails supplying contract workers to country-surfing employers known for overworking, abusing, and mistreating temporary employees.

CHAPTER 5

The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and Mexican Development

Introduction It could be argued that subjecting themselves to a process of racialization is the price that Mexican (and Caribbean) peasants and rural workers must pay in order to access a Canadian labor market in which, with hard work and a little luck, they will be able to save and remit enough money to achieve higher levels of material well-being in Mexico than would be possible if they depended exclusively on what they can squeeze out of the national economy. I am referencing “development” here, a tricky term subject to a great deal of debate and alternative interpretation. Rannveig Agunias observes—correctly in my view—that “most writings on remittances and development seem to share an implicit assumption that there is a clearly agreed definition of development. Indeed, the literature is littered with studies exploring the impacts of remittances on development without clearly establishing what they mean by development in the first place” (2006: 42–43). Most studies do, however, assume that “development”—whatever it is—occurs when economic activity (as measured by income, gross national product, and so on) increases. For instance, some scholars believe that remittances foster development because recipient households can be shown to have higher incomes than nonrecipient households. Here I take a somewhat different approach to the development question, one that may perplex readers. I distinguish between the aforementioned approach and an approach to development as a sustainable process entailing an across-the-board increase in human freedom, to use Amartya Sen’s terms. Sen argues against tying development exclusively to income or any other aspect of the economy in favor of a conception that entails the re-

The SAWP and Mexican Development 117

duction or removal of “unfreedoms” that block the realization of an individual’s substantive freedom in five linked domains: political freedoms, social opportunities, transparency guarantees, protective security, and, yes, economic facilities (1999: 10). For Sen the achievement of greater freedom in one domain has implications for the advancement of freedom in others, which is to say that each freedom is both constitutive of development, i.e., a measure of development, and instrumental to the development process itself. The effectiveness of freedom as an instrument lies in the fact that different kinds of freedom interrelate with one another, and freedom of one type may greatly aid in advancing freedom of other types. The two roles are thus linked by empirical connections, relating freedom of one kind to freedom of other kinds. (Sen 1999: 37)

Key to Sen’s position is his belief that substantive advances in growth, industrialization, etc., are not necessary conditions for economically poor countries to advance a development agenda, since “economic facilities” constitutes only one of five forms of substantive freedom: “A poor country may have less money to spend on health care and education, but it also needs less money to spend to provide the same services, which would cost much more in the richer countries” (48). Sen’s optimism about the possibilities of advance along a series of development “fronts” contrasts with the postmodern pessimism of Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysts, though it seems clear that Sen and representatives of the discourse school are not talking about the same thing.1 Sen’s conception of “development as freedom” bursts with the urgency that we must do something now in order to mitigate what Marc Edelman referred to as “this vast human tragedy” (1999: 9) that can’t necessarily wait for Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s amorphous “multitude” (2004) to coalesce out of the thousands of globally dispersed, new social movements with which Arturo Escobar (1991, 1995) and other Foucauldian-inspired antidevelopmentalists identify. On the other hand, the critical anticapitalist position from which postmodern antidevelopmentalists argue contains an implicit critique of Sen, whose unfailing optimism about the possibilities for the extension of freedoms within capitalism elides the inherently uneven character of accumulation as social classes and regions within nation states, countries, and even continents “develop” at different rates and in different ways—and at one another’s expense as well (see Harvey 1989).2 That is to say that the reduction or

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removal of one or more unfreedoms in some places tends to be accompanied by the enhancement or establishment of other unfreedoms in those or some other places.3 Of course there remains enormous scope for improvement in the lives of subaltern peoples. But a generalized, relatively equitable and sustainable development in Sen’s terms is not possible in a world economic system based on capitalist relations of production and characterized by the endless drive for accumulation. To say this is to grant a measure of priority to economic facilities over, say, political freedoms, social opportunities and Sen’s other substantive freedoms. Yet Sen, despite a refusal to order or prioritize the five substantive freedoms, also places special emphasis on the economic. He notes, for instance, that . . . the growth-mediated process [economic facilities] has an advantage over its support-led alternative [political freedoms, transparency guarantees, etc.]; it may, ultimately, offer much more, since there are more deprivations—other than premature mortality, or high morbidity, or illiteracy—that are very directly connected with the lowness of incomes (such as being inadequately clothed and sheltered). It is clearly better to have high income as well as high longevity (and other standard indicators of quality of life), rather than only the latter. This is a point worth emphasizing. . . .” (1999: 48, emphasis in the original)

In applying this position to the SAWP, I will acknowledge gains in freedom that some northwest Tlaxcalans have experienced as a result of working in Canada, but I will also register the costs in freedoms foregone, traded away, or frustrated in the process. I begin by discussing Canadaearned income and that portion that is sent to or returned in pocket to Mexico; the narrative then takes up the ways that Mexican households reported using remitted monies. I note the high levels of “unproductive” (household maintenance, etc.) as opposed to “productive” (investment) expenditures, and try to explain why productive uses of remittances are so low. Later sections take up remittances and human capital formation and address some of the consequences of contract labor migration for those members left behind in Mexico. A more detailed discussion of the remittance-development debate can be found in several earlier publications (Binford 2002b, 2008). The information presented here derives from interviews with 187 former or active SAWP participants carried out in late 2001 and early 2002 in three communities (two rural and one urban) in northwest Tlaxcala. All SAWP workers in this snowball sample were male and had com-

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pleted an average of six years of schooling. Ninety-one percent were married or in common-law relationships. The average household contained five persons, generally a married couple and three children. More than 95 percent of interviewees claimed expertise in agriculture, but most also listed one or more secondary occupations: bricklayer, carpenter, bicycle repair technician, preacher, policeman, tailor, merchant, and baker, among others. Former or active participants had made an average of 5.3 trips to Canada; three-quarters worked in Ontario during their last migration, another fifth in Quebec.4

Wages and Remittances in Canada Before discussing the role of Canada-based savings and remittances on household well-being and development, it is important to document the funds that most households have available. I focus here on workers’ net Canada-earned income. Tlaxcalan participants whose last contract labor trips occurred between 1999 and 2001 worked a mean of sixty-three hours weekly for almost five months, in the course of which they earned a median of CAN$9,387; after subtracting tax payments, mandatory contributions (Canada Pension Plan, transport, etc.), and the costs of food, phone bills, clothing, and other purchases, as well as small amounts for recreation, they returned a median of CAN$5,150 (equivalent to CAN$1,120 monthly) to Mexico via bank, wire, and in-pocket transfers, equivalent to almost thirty thousand Mexican pesos or about US$3,350 at that time. These figures are in line with those of most other studies carried out during the same period (Verduzco and Lozano 2003: 85; Basok 2000: 84 and 2002: 131–132; Colby 1997: 8–9), though recent studies in Ontario and British Columbia report a longer average work week of seventy-four hours (see Preibisch 2010: 404). We gain perspective on this figure by noting that over the course of five months, the “average” northwest Tlaxcala contract worker in Canada returned to Mexico the yearly equivalent of 2.2 minimum Mexican salaries. Mexico’s National Statistical and Geographical Institute (INEGI) uses two minimum monthly salaries as the poverty level cut-off point for a family of four persons. The poverty level is based on the cost of the basic food basket and does not take into account education, clothing, health care, utilities, and other basic needs, for which reason some researchers regard it a gross underestimate (see Boltvinik 1999). Most workers with six-, seven-, or eight-month contracts remitted considerably more money,

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Table 5.1. Distribution of remittances and relationship to average months worked, 1999–2001 Total Remittances Last Trip (1999–2001) in Canadian Dollars < 3,000 3,000–4,999 5,000–6,999 7,000–8,999 9,000–10,999 >11,000

Average Months Worked Last Trip (1999–2001)

Distribution N

3.02 4.03 5.41 6.48 6.70 7.17 5.08

20 46 30 25 12 12 145

% 13.8 31.7 20.7 17.2 8.3 8.3 100.0

while the 45 percent of participants with contracts of four or fewer months during their last trip tended to return less. Indeed, 14 percent of households saved and remitted less than three thousand Canadian dollars (Table 5.1), about 60 percent of the sample median.5 The “demand driven” character of the SAWP, designed to ensure maximum labor force flexibility for Canadian horticulturalists, means that some employers restrict use of temporary foreign workers to peak periods of the harvest, resulting in complaints about short contracts and “voluntary” attrition on the part of disgruntled workers who abandon the program after one or two seasons.6 Many participating SAWP workers supplement Canada-earned income directly or indirectly through wage work, petty commerce, householdbased commodity production, and/or small-scale agriculture during their four to ten months in Mexico between contracts; to this must be added the income, in cash and kind, produced by other, nonmigrating household members. Of participating households in Atotonilco, Nanacamilpa, and Sanctorum, 60 percent cultivated land (owned, rented, borrowed, sharecropped, or accessed via ejido rights) during the agricultural cycle preceding the interview. But even for corn-growing households obtaining average yields (estimated at two tons per hectare in Atotonilco), corn tends to be a losing proposition monetarily.7 In late 2001 and early 2002, a weak Canadian dollar meant that hourly SAWP wages barely equaled the U.S. federal minimum wage. The relatively large remittances were enabled by the free housing and subsidized transportation stipulated in the contract. However, long work weeks (often seven days during the peak harvest season) and social and physi-

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cal isolation “stimulate” saving by limiting nonwork time and depriving SAWP employees of access to potentially costly off-farm social and recreational activities. Few Mexican workers in southwest Ontario visited Toronto, Hamilton, or any other Canadian city; nor had the majority of interviewees ever seen Niagara Falls, despite its geographical proximity to many of them. As we will see in Chapters 6 and 7, community support groups in several rural Ontario towns established educational, recreational, and other programs in order to bring migrants from different farms together, diversify their experiences, and reduce or alleviate stress.

Canada-Based Income and Household Well-Being Based on remittance use surveys, the income earned through the SAWP improves the material situation of participating Tlaxcalan households, especially those of workers who have made repeated contract labor trips to Canada. Of the workers with fewer than six trips, 40 percent resided in rented or borrowed houses or lived with their parents, but almost 90 percent of contract workers with six or more trips owned their own homes; the figure rises to 97 percent for those with nine trips or more. Apart from home ownership, the size and quality of housing stock improves with the number of trips to Canada. Houses of migrants with six or more trips average 3.3 rooms, compared to only 2.2 rooms for those with fewer than six trips.8 Dirt or brick floors occur in 10 percent of the houses of migrants with fewer than six trips; no migrant interviewee with six or more trips lived in a house with a dirt or brick floor. Significant differences also exist in terms of private telephone access and vehicle ownership between those with five or fewer trips and those with six or more. Fifteen percent of workers with five or fewer trips have a telephone installed in the house, and 7 percent own a vehicle. The comparable figures for workers with six or more trips are 39 percent and 21 percent for telephone access and vehicle ownership, respectively. Possession of a series of other goods (stereo, television) or access to services such as running water, electricity, and drainage did not vary with the number of trips. Many households already owned stereos or televisions prior to entering the program, and basic services, installed by state or municipal governments, were available to all community residents, regardless of migration status.9 The evidence indicates that the more times a worker returns to Canada, the greater the possibility of accumulating money and constructing or ac-

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quiring “big ticket” items such as a house and vehicle. However, the number of trips, while decisive, is not the only factor involved, for the length of the trips also plays a key role in a household’s material well-being. Moreover, the number of trips and the length of the last trip are related to one another. The last contract of migrants with six or more trips to Canada averaged 5.6 months, compared to 4.4 months for contracts of workers with fewer than six trips, as a result of which the former could be expected to net an average of one thousand three hundred Canadian dollars more during the season. This result suggests that new migrants tend to be assigned shorter contracts—a point affirmed by Mexican consular personnel in Toronto—and that those who continue in the program for many years gravitate toward farms that offer more work or that are involved in commodity sectors with longer seasons, such as greenhouse production of tomatoes and cucumbers. Even where contracts tend to be relatively short, as in tender fruits or tobacco, employers sometimes reward one or two select workers with a longer contract and a better paying supervisory position. Also, a small percentage of growers provide incentive bonuses to seasonal employees based on the horticultural firm’s (or household’s) annual performance. While commodity sector organizations have no written policy on such incentives, they frown on members who regularly offer hourly salaries that exceed the recommended rate established in the contract. A St. Catherines nursery owner who pays her Mexican workers 8–10 percent above the contract minimum once they have proven themselves explained: I don’t believe in taking advantage of people from other countries. I know that there are some people that say, “Nope, I’m just going to pay them the minimum and that’s it.” But if they work well for you I believe in recognizing that; you know, I’ve benefited from them, I feel that I can share the profits with them.10

This is an exceptional case, as indicated by the fact that only 8 of 358 SAWP participants (2.2 percent) interviewed by Verduzco and Lozano (2003) reported hourly wages for 2002 above eight dollars, at a time when the contract called for an hourly payment of CAN$7.25 (increased to CAN$8.58 by the 2007 season). By contrast, 74 percent of the interviewees in this study reported that they received the contract minimum; the remaining 26 percent was split between those who reported being paid more and those who claimed to have been paid less. These unsubstantiated reports suggest that the scope for vertical mobility within the

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workplace is very narrow indeed; they also pose the disturbing possibility that upwards of 10 percent of Canadian employers are violating the contract—although strict controls make this last worker claim a dubious one.11 Workers with years of contract labor experience learn about “good employers”—those who offer the best combination of contract duration, weekly hours, housing, working conditions, and perhaps premium wages and/or annual bonuses. They cannot request assignment to the owners of those farms, but some, like Jesús in Chapter 3, are able to activate networks in Canada through which they succeed in being named, despite the lack of previous work experience in the soliciting grower’s enterprise. It is important to keep in mind that wage increases above the general contract minimum, as well as improvements in status, are granted in a highly paternalistic (if not calculated) fashion and at the employer’s discretion (see Chapter 2). Some employers even make this part of their personal labor relations strategy. Thus some workers with long-term experience on a farm receive a slightly higher wage than new, inexperienced recruits, although they may also be expected to manage a crew, transport other workers to the grocery store, and handle complex farm machinery, in effect performing skilled work for the hourly wage of an unskilled worker. Around 2004 the contract incorporated a “recognition payment” for workers with a minimum of five years continuous employment with the same grower. But this payment for longevity is discretionary, amounts to less than 1 percent of the average worker’s weekly pay, and does not increase with additional years of service. It is best regarded as a political gesture responding to consular and public (UFCW, J4MW) pressure to address the longevity issue, but it does not seriously affect surplus value appropriation. Above I addressed large purchases (vehicles), the contracting of key services (telephone), and house construction. But how do SAWP participants usually spend the monies they remit to Mexico? The question is difficult to answer with precision because most households, even poor ones, pool income from diverse sources: rural wage labor, crop sales, petty commerce, government transfer payments, and so on. Given the diversity of income sources, it becomes well-nigh impossible to sort out which income source or combination of sources was used to purchase what. This points to a shortcoming of remittance use surveys. On the other hand, interviewees had no problem estimating whether they spent “a lot,” “some,” “a little,” or “none” (“mucho,” “algo,” “un poco,” or “nada”), respectively, of Canada-earned income in certain ways. The results are reported in Tables 5.2 and 5.3 as the percentage of interviewees reporting each of the four

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Table 5.2. Percentage of informants reporting having spent Canada-earned income in various ways Reported Amount of Expenditure (Percentage of Respondents) Category Family maintenance Clothing purchase Education Health care Debt repayment Savings

# of Trips

A Lot

Some

A Little

None

6 >5 >6 6 6 6 6

48.7 74.5 2.5 13.7 17.5 45.1 16.2 17.6 11.2 11.8 0.0 3.9

31.2 19.6 18.7 25.5 22.5 29.4 20.0 25.5 18.7 17.6 11.2 13.7

13.7 0.0 55.0 49.0 16.2 11.8 31.2 41.2 28.7 23.5 32.5 29.4

6.2 0.0 23.7 11.8 43.7 13.7 32.5 15.7 41.2 47.0 56.2 52.9

possibilities. As before, I distinguish the spending strategies of workers with five or fewer trips to Canada from those with six or more trips.12 Table 5.2 focuses on expenditures related to “household reproduction,” which includes the provision of a series of items and services—food (included in family maintenance), clothing, education, and health care needs—that every household requires. Table 5.3 provides information about “productive investments,” limited here to the purchase of land and livestock, as well as the creation and expansion of small businesses that might improve the household’s future economic situation. Regardless of the number of trips to Canada, few households were able to save much Canada-earned income, and around 30 percent of interviewees reported having used a significant portion of it (“a lot” or “some”) to pay off debts, regardless of the number of trips. Usually the previous year’s Canada-earned income has been used up before the migrant departs for his or her next trip, with the result that the spouse or caretaker often has to borrow money or purchase food and other necessities on credit until the first remittance arrives. This is a common occurrence regardless of the number of contract labor trips that have already been made to Canada. Migrant households with six or more trips are more likely to spend “a lot”

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Table 5.3. Percentage of informants reporting having invested Canada-earned income Reported Amount of Expenditure (Percentage of Respondents) Expenditure Purchase of animals Land purchase Business investment Purchase of vehicle

# of Trips

A Lot

Some

A Little

None

6 6 6 6

1.2 9.8 6.2 7.8 3.7 7.8 2.5 7.8

1.2 2.0 1.2 7.8 3.7 5.9 0.0 5.6

0.0 7.8 1.2 3.9 2.5 3.9 0.0 0.0

97.8 80.4 91.2 80.4 90.0 82.3 97.5 86.3

or “some” of their Canada-earned income on family maintenance, education, and the purchase of clothing than are those with five or fewer trips. On average, migrants in the former group are more than a decade older than those in the latter (44.2 compared to 33.7 years) and their households have increased in size through the birth of additional children (a mean of 5.6 compared to 4.5 members), a point that I discuss below.

Canada-Based Income and Productive Investment Table 5.3 reports on interviewees’ estimates of the productive use of Canada-earned income. In no case did those who spent “a lot” of savings and remittances to purchase animals, land, or a vehicle or who invested in a business exceed more than 10 percent of the sample. Even so, the percentages are higher for migrants with six or more trips than for those with five or fewer ones. Indeed, when we combine the percentages recorded for the categories “a lot” and “some,” between 12 and 16 percent of migrants with six or more trips to Canada responded that they had invested portions of their remittances productively, compared to between 3 and 8 percent of those with five or fewer trips, the figures varying somewhat from one investment category to another. I have included vehicular purchases in the list for the sake of comparison, despite the fact that the productive use of automobiles, trucks, and other nonagricultural machinery varies

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greatly. Some automobiles and vans enter taxi service, at least for a time, while trucks can be rented out for hauling goods and persons to and from regional markets. But at another point in time the same vehicles may be used exclusively for private, household use. This is particularly likely as the number of vehicles competing for a position in a limited, local transportation/hauling market increases (Binford 2003, 2002b). Why do such a small proportion of SAWP participants report investing significant amounts (“a lot” or “some”) of their Canada-earned income productively? And why are the percentages, albeit still low, higher in the case of migrants with six or more trips to Canada? To begin, research on remittance expenditures of Mexican migrants to the United States has reported that income from early labor trips goes toward pressing household needs such as debt repayment, clothing purchase, construction, and other prime necessities (Jones 1995: 74–76; Massey and Parrado 1998: 11–12). By the sixth trip, if not before, a small percentage of contract labor migrants are better positioned economically to set aside some money for investment purposes. This is especially so for migrants fortunate enough to obtain longer-than-average contracts and work weeks. However, several factors limit the frequency and scale of investments. First, considering the low hourly wages in Canada and the high, previously unmet basic needs, it is difficult to accumulate a large investment fund, regardless of the length of the contract and work week. Second, as I noted earlier, migrants with many labor trips to Canada tend to be chronologically older and their families larger and more costly to maintain than those of younger, less experienced migrants. The same point was made almost a quarter century ago by Griffith in his work on the U.S. H-2 contract labor program (1983: 364–365, 1986a: 887).13 Moreover, older, more experienced migrants have children who attend school, and this means additional expenses. Some 45.1 percent of migrants with six or more trips to Canada claimed to have spent “a lot” of their Canada-earned income on education, compared to only 17.5 percent of those with five or fewer trips (Table 5.2). Of course, investment in education can be “productive” of human capital, a perspective assumed by some investigators (e.g., Conway and Cohen 1998: 33), presuming that cultural capital can be converted into higher incomes (economic capital) than would have been generated in its absence. I take up this issue below. Third, in most cases the “level” of household reproduction—what Marx (1967: 171) referred to as the “historical and moral element[s]” in the determination of the value of labor power—often rises with additional migratory trips, with the result that many migrants (their spouses and

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children) come to treat as necessities the same goods and services that a few years earlier were probably considered middle- class luxury items beyond their reach.14 A fifth of informants with more than five trips to Canada own cars or trucks; over 15 percent have a satellite dish; and almost 40 percent have a private telephone line. Once integrated into a household’s normative inventory of consumption, telephones (more recently cell phones), satellite or cable television service, and vehicles raise the cost of household reproduction to levels that in many cases can only be sustained through the comparatively higher income obtained by labor migration to Canada. Like many migrants to the United States, northwest Tlaxcalans who perform contract labor in Canada have come to depend on international labor migration to finance the very lifestyles that migration—contract labor migration in this case—initially made possible (Reichart 1982; Cordero Díaz 2006; McCoy 1985a: 196; see Ganaselall 1992: 185–186; Binford 2003, 2008).15 Even those who have not been able to purchase luxury items or gain access to highly desired services used Canada-based income to improve their diets and clothing stock and purchase household durables like furniture, appliances, and electronic goods. More meat, milk, and eggs mean higher food costs for those without chickens, cows, and cattle, which are harder to maintain when the male household head is absent for many months of the year; appliances mean higher electricity bills and periodic repair and replacement costs as well. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that 74.5 percent of migrants with six or more trips spent “a lot” of their Canada-earned income on “family maintenance” compared to 48.7 percent of those with fewer than six trips. Finally, on average, currently active migrants stated that they would have to earn Mex$4,780 monthly (median of Mex$4,000) in order to consider dropping out of the program; a third stated that they would require Mex$6,000 or more. Few rural Tlaxcalans are in a position to accrue such high incomes, equivalent to more than US$7,000 annually at 2002 prices. Table 5.4 summarizes major investments and their distribution. Less than 30 percent of current and former SAWP participants had made remittance-based investments of any type (see Subtotal 1). Of thirty-nine recorded productive investments, six involved livestock purchase (often a cow), fourteen the purchase of land, and thirteen the establishment of a small business. Six households undertook multiple investments that embraced two or more of the above-mentioned categories. It is worth noting that 44 percent of SAWP participants with six or more trips to Canada possessed secure tenure rights to land (ejido or, occasionally, private) compared to only 20 percent of those with fewer than six trips, though

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Table 5.4. Productive investment of remittances by category

Type of Remittance Investment Animals Only Land Only Business Only Multiple investments (animals/land/business) Subtotal 1: With Investments Subtotal 2: Without Investments Grand Total

Number

Overall Percent

Distribution of Productive Investments (Percent)

6 14 13 6 39 92 131

4.6 10.7 9.9 4.6 29.8 70.2 100.0

15.4 35.9 33.3 15.4 100.0 — —

the average amount of land did not differ significantly for land owners in the two groups.16 Land ownership retains its value as a source of status in rural communities. Land is also one of the few relatively secure storehouses of value in rural areas of Mexico, and if cultivable can provide off-season employment for SAWP participants as well as for members of the household during the time the male household head is working in Canada.17 The products of small-scale (peasant) agriculture or stockraising can be consumed by the household or sold in order to complement Canada-earned income. But Mexican agriculture—hard hit by low-cost imports from the United States and elsewhere, rising producer prices, and government abandonment of small-scale, dryland farmers—does not offer a viable economic alternative to Canadian labor migration. Indeed, dryland zones of Puebla and Tlaxcala that previously contributed little to international migration flows—primarily to the United States—have been incorporated into such flows in an accelerated fashion over the course of the last twenty years (Binford 2010, 2005a, 2005b, 1998; Marchand, ed. 2006). The situation with corn farming has become so critical in Mexico that even well-watered areas, such as Guanajuato’s El Bajío region, where one hectare can yield ten tons or more of sorghum, are sending large numbers of people north, despite the physical danger and high cost of crossing the border (Steffen and Echánove 2003: 103–104). Whereas more than 10 percent of SAWP participants had established small-scale enterprises at the time of the interview, not one of these gen-

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erated an income competitive with that obtainable through contract labor migration. Most industry in northwest Tlaxcala is of the householdbased, artisan type (fireworks workshops, carpentry, bread making) and is marked by low levels of productivity and low profits. Some towns— particularly Nanacamilpa—have vibrant commercial sectors, but most commercial activity financed with money earned in Canada tends to involve housefront stores, known as tiendas, or the sale of food (tacos, fruit drinks, popsicles), clothing, and other items. The market for all these goods is limited by the generalized poverty and low purchasing power of resident populations. Low start-up costs in these labor-intensive businesses make for ease of entry but also contribute to unit multiplication and a resulting price competition that drives down returns all around. As in the case of agricultural investments, the small, mostly household-based enterprises that some current and former SAWP migrants have established can complement but do not substitute for contract labor migration income. Thus, business owners—most of whom established their enterprises prior to entering the SAWP, even if they used remittances later to maintain or enlarge them—continue their annual pilgrimages to Canada. I do not want to leave the impression that SAWP participants never develop successful enterprises. Of course they do. A University of Tlaxcala biologist explained how small-scale agriculturalists with SAWP experience working on the slopes of La Malinche, a thirteen-thousand-foot extinct volcano that dominates Tlaxcala’s eastern flank, took up broccoli cultivation and have become the principal source for locally marketed broccoli in the state. But they are also among a small number of farmers with access to unpolluted irrigation water.18 Whereas the slopes of La Malinche offer physical and climatic conditions appropriate for transferring technology from Canada to Mexico, northwest Tlaxcala does not, nor do the majority of other areas from which the SAWP draws its recruits. Despite Mexican consular claims that the MOL attempts to match the skills of SAWP recruits with the needs of Canadian growers, few Tlaxcalans had experience, prior to their arrival in Canada, in apples, tender fruits, tobacco, open-field vegetables, decorative plants, or greenhouse tomatoes, among other crops. What they learn there has little chance of being transferred to highland Mexico, in part because technological and climatic conditions in the two areas are so utterly different. Nonetheless, many students of migration—contract labor and otherwise—continue to maintain that labor migration is, can be, or should be a means of financing local economic development. While

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some simply repeat truisms without subjecting them to empirical investigation, others base their conclusions on the exceptional success story and/ or the role that remittances play in small business formation.19

The SAWP and Human Capital: Development for the Future? Many SAWP participants believe that investment in their children’s education is both more important and more secure than investment in land, animals, or a small business. About three-quarters of migrants with six or more trips to Canada indicated that they spent either “a lot” (45.1 percent) or “some” (29.4 percent) of Canada- earned income on their children’s education.20 Only the category of household maintenance recorded higher percentages. It seems, then, that many SAWP participants are making thoughtful decisions to provide their children with educational opportunities that most of them were denied, either because of poverty or, in the case of older migrants, a lack of secondary and preparatory schools in the area. In conversation, many contract labor migrants are clear about this. They want their children to stay in school and study as long as possible, and they hope that at least one child will achieve the credentials necessary to embark upon a professional career: to become a nurse, accountant, secretary, etc. Theirs represents a twist on the classic transgenerational immigrant success story in which first-generation immigrant parents work long hours at poorly paid jobs in order to be able to provide their children with the means to obtain a well-paying job with benefits in the professional, white collar sector.21 In the case of Mexican contract workers, the story has a transnational aspect: The money is earned in Canada, but the children (and jobs) remain at home in the Mexican national space.22 The Verduzco and Lozano study, carried out as part of a North-South Institute project (2003), offered a useful, though flawed, quantitative analysis of the phenomenon that reinforces the account provided by my interviewees. On the basis of interviews carried out in seven rural communities, two of which (Nanacamilpa and Sanctorum) were among those treated here, the authors found “no direct relationship” between workers’ level of education and years of participation in the program.23 However, they did find that those SAWP participants’ children who had left school completed an average of 9.8 years compared to the fathers’ 7.7 years. The authors then attempted to enrich the analysis by factoring in the effects of

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the number of seasonal trips to Canada (divided into three groups) and family cycle (two groups, according to whether the worker was twenty to thirty-five or thirty-six to fifty years old at the time of the interview). More years of work experience in Canada seemed to be accompanied by higher levels of education on the part of the migrants’ children: Of the total number of children of workers belonging to Group C [nine or more trips to Canada], 42.6% attended school for 10 years or more. That percentage is 28% for Group B, and only 15% for Group A. In other words, 85% of the children of workers with fewer years of participation in the Program (Group A) have fewer years of schooling; 72% of the children of workers from Group B have fewer years of schooling, and 57.4% of the workers from Group C are in that situation. (2003: 110)

However, when the rather crude proxy for “household demographic stage” is factored in, Group A, B, and C differences practically disappear, and those that do persist are not consistent with the idea that more years of SAWP work experience result in more years of schooling in the following generation. For instance, the children of workers in the thirty-six to fifty age range completed 9.7, 10.4, and 9.9 years of schooling, according to whether they were in Group A, B, or C, respectively (2003: 111). The relationship between years of schooling and number of trips follows no consistent pattern. Whereas it seems likely that SAWP participants spend more on their children’s education than do parents in nonmigrant households—not least of all because they have more money available—it is not at all clear that these expenditures have the desired effect in communities with substantial levels of international migration (to the United States as well as to Canada) and where international migrants of all kinds tend to enjoy more economic success, and thus distinction, than nonmigrants (see Macías Gamboa and Reyes Vergara 2004: 187). A convincing examination of the relationship will require a substantially larger sample, the inclusion of a control group of children from nonmigrant households for comparative purposes, and careful statistical control over age and domestic cycle variables in order to take into account the general improvement in access to secondary school (grades 7–9) and high school (grades 10–12) that has occurred over the last twenty years. For the moment, though, let’s give those who argue for remittances’ contributions to education the benefit of the doubt and assume that SAWP

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migrants’ expenditure of a substantial proportion of Canada-earned income on their children’s education does, indeed, have the effect of keeping them in school longer and thus endowing them with more “cultural capital” than the children of nonmigrants. The matter cannot be left here, for the expenditure will have been in vain unless the graduates are able to convert that cultural capital into jobs that meet the parents’ expectations or at least make their sacrifices worthwhile. In other words, the investment will prove worthwhile (in economic terms) only if it can be valorized.24 Whether education does or does not accomplish this will depend, ceteris paribis, on the degree of match between the knowledge and skills that prospective employees possess and those that employers seek. In Mexico the relationship is often undermined by what is colloquially known as “palanca” (leverage), that network of contacts that an individual or group of related persons can draw upon in order to obtain advantage in the bureaucracy, the job market, or elsewhere.25 In short, Bourdieuian cultural capital is more likely to be “activated” when combined with social capital. Rural Mexicans are not bereft of palanca, but their networks tend to be strongest and most reliable in and around the community of residence, whereas most formal-sector jobs are found in urban areas.26 What I referred to above as the “transgenerational immigrant success story” then, plays out best in a rapidly expanding economy where job growth outpaces the number of new, qualified job seekers. That, at least, was the experience of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Italian and Irish immigrants to the United States. But Mexico is located on capitalism’s underdeveloped periphery—which assumes more the appearance of normality, as flexible employment and informality gain ground in the historic centers of accumulation. Even during the 1970s period of rapid growth, the number of secure, formal-sector jobs did not keep pace with the number of new entrants into the labor force. Then economic crisis, structural adjustment, and neoliberalism contributed to widen the gap. Between 1980 and 1996, the economically active population grew by more than seventeen million, compared with an increase of a mere two million new, formal-sector jobs, many of which were poorly paid and offered few benefits (Dussel 1999: 66). Competition has intensified to the point that employers are able to pick from candidates with university degrees for positions that a few decades earlier would have gone to high school or even secondary school graduates (see Gledhill 1993: 413). In other words, educational qualifications are being devalued in the job market as fast as they rise.

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The small percentage of rural youth able, with the help of their families, to keep pace with or outstrip educational expectations must then compete against urban youth endowed with more palanca and degrees from conservative, private universities to which they were sent by middle-class parents pursuing the same long-term strategies, albeit with more economic (and social) advantage. To make matters worse, the successful job seeker may feel defrauded by the poor salary resulting from so much sacrifice. In one documented case, the regional branch of a nationwide chain of department stores paid its floor managers, most of whom had university bachelor’s degrees, about five hundred U.S. dollars monthly in 2004. The average high school graduate ( preparatoria) earned US$215 monthly—barely above the poverty line and a mere US$15 per month more than employees with a primary school education.27 A broad macroeconomic examination of the relationship between “education and employment perspectives for Mexican rural youth” reinforces the case study. Based on 2002 government figures, the average difference in income between someone with a completed secondary education (ninth grade) and some high school education (between grades ten and twelve) in “less urbanized areas” was 0.3 minimum salaries, or about thirty U.S. dollars monthly (van Gameren and Urbina Hinojosa n.d.: Table 3; for an opposing view, see Silva et al. 2010). Working secondary school graduates earned an average of 1.9 minimum salaries (below the federal poverty line of two minimum salaries), while workers who entered the job market after completing between ten and twelve grades earned 2.2 minimum salaries. These figures do not bode well for the children of SAWP workers, who, according to Verduzco and Lozano (2003: 109), completed an average of only 9.8 grades (combining Groups A, B, and C). Some rural Mexicans and their parents seem to be aware of the diminutive payoff. Between 1998 and 2000, Griffith, Heppel, and Torres interviewed more than seven hundred Mexican participants in the U.S. H-2 contract labor program and found that, generally, . . . work surpasses schooling in importance in the lives of most H-2 workers, and the relations between education and work are vague. Again and again in Mexico, we heard stories that underscored the high value of working in the United States as opposed to pursuing an education in Mexico. . . . many of the youth of Mexico seem to be rejecting education as a path toward upward mobility. Certainly part of this derives from the limited opportunities facing people with education in Mexico. In particular, many perceived occupations requiring years of schooling are being

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restricted to members of higher classes. While lured by higher wages, there are, at the same time, family pressures to join the waged labor force and contribute to household incomes. (2002: 78–79)

Even the highly qualified are not immune. According to Parrado, who studied labor mobility over the lifetime of three cohorts of Mexican males divided among five occupational classes, “The neoliberal period in Mexico was marked by a deterioration of upward mobility opportunities even among highly educated workers and increased prospects of downward mobility” (2005: 752, emphasis in the original). Parrado concluded that “there is no automatic mechanism guaranteeing that the destructive effects of economic reform will translate into increased employment opportunities in technologically advanced or competitive areas” (753). Indeed, recent information from Mexico’s Education Secretariat indicates higher rates of unemployment for those with bachelor’s or engineering degrees than for people without any studies or who failed to complete primary school (Hernández 2010).28

Migration to Canada Versus Migration to the United States During 2001–2002 when most interviews for this study were carried out, the Canadian dollar was weak against the U.S. dollar (it has since strengthened), and many former and active SAWP participants were quick to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of legal, contract labor migration to Canada as opposed to illegal (undocumented) migration to the United States. Indeed, a small number of older migrants had worked legally in the United States during the Bracero Program, other persons with SAWP experience had worked in the United States more recently, and a few former SAWP participants dropped out of the program in order to give either undocumented migration or legal H-2A migration to the United States a try. Those who had never been to the United States mentioned three comparative disadvantages of the SAWP vis-à-vis undocumented U.S. migration. First, Canadian wages are comparatively low and stagnant—or were until recently; furthermore, until 2004 (when “recognition pay” was introduced by FARMS) first-time participants earned as much as those with five, ten, fifteen, or more years of SAWP experience. Migrants know that many undocumented workers in the United States have the possibility for upward mobility within the enterprise. For instance, entry-level

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dishwashers in urban restaurants often move into “food prep,” and a small percentage make “cook,” with each upward step in the restaurant hierarchy accompanied by a substantial increase in hourly wage (Cordero Díaz 2006; Smith 1996; Macías Gamboa and Reyes Vergara 2004). According to Macías Gamboa and Reyes Vergara, such upward job mobility depends more upon “informal instruction acquired by means of the transmission of knowledge and skills from worker to worker, frequently from one countryman to another” than formal education, the significance of which tends to be levelled when Mexicans clandestinely cross the U.S. border (2004: 185). More recently, Macías Gamboa has argued that the growing precarization of work in Mexico—perhaps best represented by the hypertrophy of the informal sector, which employs more than 60 percent of the economically active population—has weakened the link between employment and formal education. Increasingly individuals, families, and communities “display scepticism with respect to formal educational trajectories” and “elements of pragmatism that lead to the transfer of the axis of education from the school and classroom (formal education) to work process and production (informal education)” (2008: 43). Second, the average SAWP contract lasts about five months, and no contract can exceed eight months annually, which places limits on the amount of money that participants can earn, save, and remit (or return in pocket) during any given year. By contrast, undocumented migrants to the United States can extend their stays as long as judged necessary in order to meet savings targets, presuming of course that they are not apprehended by U.S. authorities and deported. Indeed, the mid-1990s tightening of border security led undocumented migrants to increase the duration of labor migration trips from around nine to fifteen months (Durand and Massey 2003), although surveys in three recently incorporated rural and peri-urban communities in Puebla and Veracruz indicated that first-time migrants there were prolonging their initial trips to the United States to three years or more (Binford 2005a: 16; see Cornelius 2007 and Fuentes et al. 2010). The recent global financial crisis has only intensified the tendency (Hicken, Cohen and Narvaez 2010).29 Long trips serve as defensive strategies undertaken to avoid the added expense, physical danger, and psychological trauma incurred in multiple crossings of dangerous and contested spaces.30 And while family breakup and a more general distancing from the sending community in Mexico are potential consequences, longer sojourns also make it possible for migrants with self-discipline and good luck to remit enough money to realize some major goals. The tight control over SAWP workers and, more

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importantly, the absence of large, working-class Mexican communities into which they might “disappear,” deprive all but a few from using the SAWP as a trampoline to prolonged or permanent residence in Canada. Third, the absorptive capacity of the SAWP is limited by Canadian demand. Several thousand additional Mexicans have been recruited since British Columbia entered the program in 2004, but in Quebec hundreds of Mexicans lost jobs to cheaper Guatemalan workers brought in under the auspices of the Foreign Workers Program, part of the Low-Skill Pilot Project initiated in 2002 (Preibisch 2010: 419–420). Moreover, in 2003 the Mexican government decentralized the SAWP, which facilitated participation from inhabitants of northern and southern states. As a result, in recent years the number of Tlaxcala-based temporary agricultural workers increased only slowly—from 1,869 in 2003 to 2,099 in 2007—and the state’s overall contribution to the SAWP declined five or six percentage points (García Ramírez 2008). In Tlaxcala, then, the likelihood that firsttime aspirants gain admittance to the program depends increasingly on the retirement (or dismissal) of current participants. Finally, many contract workers resent what they perceive as a lack of social acceptance—which some represented as racism during interviews— on the part of local Canadian society, and many express displeasure at the physical and social isolation of the work/living site and the high degree of control that some employers seek to exercise over their actions and lifestyle choices (see Basok 2004; Bauder et al. n.d.; Bauder 2006; Preibisch 2007b, 2004, 2003; Verduzco and Lozano 2003: 91–94). Verduzco and Lozano reported that among 346 SAWP interviewees, “most frequently farms are located at a distance of 20 km. [from town], and the average distance of the farm to the closest town is 7 kilometers, although some are located at a distance of 150 km. from any town” (2003: 91). By contrast and as becomes clear from books like Rubén Martínez’s Crossing the Border (2001), small towns throughout the United States, such as Warren, Arkansas, and Norwalk, Minnesota, which formerly harbored few or no Latinos, contain growing populations of Mexicans (and other Latin Americans) that are contributing to the transformation of local social relationships and perhaps even cultural norms.31 As Martínez notes, a bit too optimistically in my view, “For all the expressions of racism, there are signs in Warren of the kind of multiracial future being forged throughout the country” (2001: 231). Despite their “illegal” status and “deportability,” undocumented U.S. migrants—some 70 percent of whom are now estimated to reside in cities—have considerable freedom of movement and association, especially within the large and growing

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Dozens of numbered shopping carts await their SAWP owners in Simcoe, Ontario, 2003. Migrant workers are allowed to leave food carts while they browse the adjacent mall.

Doña María mole (Mexico) meets Irish Moss (Jamaica) at a supermarket in Bradford, Ontario, 2003.

Latino communities there. No better example exists than the massive numbers of migrants who participated in the May Day 2006 marches and work stoppages protesting congressional intentions to further criminalize their mere presence. The situation of Mexican contract workers in Canada is different, obviously. With the exception of Leamington, Ontario, and a few other small, regional cities, contract workers are present, if at all, as seasonal “birds of passage”: harvesting tobacco under a grueling sun, riding bicycles along narrow country roads, or queued up in the checkout lines of the local A&P or Food Centre on Friday afternoon and early evening, when most

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Weekly food shopping completed, migrant workers wait to be bused home in Simcoe, Ontario, 2003.

“respectable” long-time residents “know enough” to stay away.32 But the “birds of passage” metaphor is misleading, given that some SAWP workers are now present throughout the calendar year in Ontario, even if no single worker remains for more than eight months (Verduzco and Lozano 2003: 56; Preibisch 2007b).33 Should we be surprised to find that the three features of the SAWP about which workers most complain are among the same ones that attract Canadian farmers to the program? Canadian horticulturalists are attracted to the SAWP because it provides them with (1) low- cost labor power (2) that can be brought in and released according to the grower’s needs and (3) that exhibits a high degree of reliability as a consequence of residing in employer-controlled housing on or near the work site. The different (and contrary) evaluations made by Canadian growers and Mexican workers mark the extremes of the subjective possibilities embodied in this (particularly unfree) form of the capital-labor relationship.34

The SAWP and Family and Household Relations Contract labor migration, particularly when it entails movement over great distances and across cultural divides, has implications for family and household relationships. Any assessment of the developmental implications of contract labor migration needs to take account of these implications. The contract guarantees of the SAWP provide a degree of security

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absent when undocumented migrants strike out for the United States. Medical emergencies are generally attended to, assaults and violent thefts are rare, and the workers usually return home on or about the date indicated in the contract. Furthermore, consular officials assist in arranging emergency trips to Mexico in cases of the death or health crisis of a close relative. Some employers even grant trusted SAWP employees temporary leave, allowing them to return to their jobs in Canada once the emergency passes. Nonetheless, it is inevitable that both migrants and stay-athome members of the household will manifest concern for one another’s physical health and psychological well-being. Depression and loneliness, especially in the case of Mexicans residing on rural Canadian farms in a culturally and linguistically strange (to them) society, are common (see McLaughlin 2009; Hennebry and Preibisch 2009; Mysyk et al. 2008). According to staff personnel of the Simcoe Migrant Support Centre, such feelings are particularly intense at the beginning of the contract season, i.e., shortly following separation from the family, and toward the season’s end, when work is scarce and migrants have more time to reflect on how much they miss their loved ones.35 Meanwhile, migrants’ spouses find themselves working double or triple days and substituting for their absent husbands in role functions for which they have not been socially prepared. Hennebry (2007) points out how many spouses she interviewed manage the family farm and business, negotiate banking institutions in order to gain access to remittances, and exercise daily control over household funds. But in Atotonilco, Nanacamilpa, and Sanctorum, they usually fall short in their efforts to fill a dual parental role with the children, who often pine uncontrollably for their father and rebel against maternal authority. Interviewees stated that school attendance and grades commonly suffer and that some adolescents even become involved in drug use, petty crime, and other trouble. Most migrants call home regularly—which helps explain the large percentage of migrant households with telephone lines—but verbal instructions, reprimands, and assurances are of limited effectiveness without the father’s physical presence. While these problems accompany migration-induced family separation in general and thus are not specific to the SAWP (c.f., Griffith et al. 2002: 119; D’Aubeterre 2000), the likelihood that members of the Mexican household experience physical and/or psychological crises increases with longer contracts. Half the migrants interviewed reported negative effects in their children, but the figure was 65 percent in the case of migrants with contracts exceeding six months, compared to 43 percent in the case of those with shorter ones.36 In Sen’s terms, those children so

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affected experience lower levels of “protective security” and fewer “social opportunities.” As one migrant worker lamented, “It’s not the same to speak to him [his son] by telephone as it is to be here and see him, go out with him, play with him and get to know him” (quoted in Arana Hernández and Rodríguez Maldonado 2006: 28). Long separations weigh on workers and can even affect their performance on the job. In one case the owner of a large commercial nursery argued for split seasons for workers with long contracts, expressing sympathy for their plights: “These guys that are away from their families for a long time, we’d like to see them go home, see their family, come back for the remainder of the year.” His concern, though, was at least partly motivated by the bottom line: “But we’re saying that these guys probably perform better [with a split season]. And we’ve noticed that . . . if they go home, see their family, come back again. And that’s a big investment for us, but I think it pays off.”37 In cost-benefit terms, the nursery owner has decided that money paid on his account for a round trip plane ticket is more than compensated by the rise in productivity of a physically rested and psychologically at-peace SAWP worker.38 Household problems are not exclusive to Mexican contract workers. Based on a survey of Jamaican SAWP participants, Russell stated that “the relatively long periods of separation have caused some emotional problems at home [which] should not be dismissed as minor because they can lead to major difficulties that may even end in the breakdown of stable relationships, dissolution of families and the emergence of dysfunctional families” (2003: 120). On the other hand, the experience can also contribute to personal transformations with potentially important broad social consequences. When asked if they had changed as a result of their experiences in Canada, many Mexican men reported that time away from their families resulted in an enhanced appreciation for spouse and children and that performing “female” household chores they once took for granted (such as washing, cooking, and cleaning) in Canada contributed to a revaluation of these activities and a greater willingness to help out with housework on returning to Mexico (see also Preibisch and Hermoso 2006: 104–105). Male migrants’ claims that they are more apt to express affection openly and more willing to assist with female-identified household tasks suggest a gradual shift in historic, rural heterosexual partner relationships based on “respect” (in which responsibilities are gendered and males are charged with decision making) for more “companionate” forms that involve give and take and open discussion around different courses of action (Hirsch 2003). Conversely, female substitution for their hus-

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bands in matters involving household budgets, certain aspects of parentchild relations, civic duties, and other customarily male prerogatives may contribute to a greater sense of self-determination, even as they add up to more work. The depth and endurance of such changes in migrants’ male and/or female partners are in need of further study (see Hennebry 2007; Stephen 2007; Arana Hernández and Rodríguez Maldonado 2006).39 Finally, tensions between spouses may follow if male migrants develop an enduring identification with the Canadian living site and form close relationships there as well. This occurred in the case of Raymundo (discussed in Chapter 3), aged thirty-five in 2002, who is one of the 15–20 percent of SAWP participants whose last assignment landed them in Quebec.40 Over the course of nine migratory episodes working in fruit and open-field vegetables, Raymundo learned French, which earned him the respect and confidence of his employer, who appointed him foreman. Raymundo supervised other temporary migrants and after obtaining his international driver’s license was given the responsibility of transporting the other workers to local stores for food shopping. By early 2002, he had become open about his desire to settle in Canada, stating that while in Atotonilco and between trips, he marked time until his return to Canada: “I can’t wait to return to work” (No veo la hora de regresar a trabajar). The commitment to Quebec caused friction between Raymundo and Aveina, his spouse, who mentioned that since working in Canada, Raymundo had become less affectionate and that he paid less attention to her than before. Furthermore, she stated, “I don’t like the photographs of other women that he brings back, or the things they write to him in letters” (No me gustan las fotografías que trae de otras mujeres, ni las cosas que le escriben en las cartas).41

Conclusions: The SAWP Is a Poverty Regulation Program, Not a Development Program This chapter investigated the development potential of remittances generated by participants in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Less than 30 percent of the migrants interviewed invested portions of their remittances in land, animals, or small businesses, and those who did so treated those investments as complementary to rather than substitutes for continued contract labor migration. At present, Canadaearned income has a limited impact on economic activity in northwest Tlaxcala. First of all, participating households represent a small percent-

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age of the total number of households in the study communities and a far smaller percentage in the broadly defined region of northwest Tlaxcala. Despite the fact that the SAWP participants who live there enjoy higher than average incomes, the amount of money entering these communities is not sufficient to finance a major transformation of local economic structures.42 If, for instance, the estimated 207 SAWP participants from Sanctorum returned an average of US$3,350 in 2001, the total annual inflow into this community of three thousand inhabitants would equal US$693,450, or $231.15 annually for each man, woman, and child.43 A portion is spent locally, entering into circulation and generating local “multiplier effects” (Taylor and Fletcher n.d.); but most remittance monies leave the community when recipients use them to purchase food, clothing, footwear, construction materials, and other goods produced elsewhere (Yúñez-Naude 2004; Arroyo Alejandre and Corvera Valenzuela 2003). Some local merchants benefit from Canadian remittances, and some stores, especially in Atotonilco and Sanctorum, would likely disappear without them, but small-town commerce generates little in the way of gainful employment, for which reason it does not ameliorate the economic “push” factors that are the ultimate forces driving people northward. Individual households may experience some development, but there may be little effect on the congregate community, a conclusion consistent with earlier studies of temporary foreign worker programs (McCoy 1985a: 196; Wood and McCoy 1985b: 275). Finally, long-term participants in the SAWP become eligible for pensions under the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), but because of low hourly wages and the limited duration of most contracts—around five months on average for Mexican workers—twenty or more years of service yields a monthly pension of only fifty to sixty Canadian dollars.44 The aforementioned points suggest that in order to assess the impact of remittances it is necessary to examine the embeddedness of any particular locality in networks of relationships that extend beyond the immediate area and that have contributed to making that area what it has become. This is decidedly not a question of two discrete domains—one local, the other global—that interact in some mechanical fashion, but a matter of how communities become defined historically through the internalization of external forces in specific social fields (Roseberry 1998b). I suggested two additional reasons for the limited productive impact of migrant remittances on household economic development. First, program participants are selected from among the rural poor and extremely poor: landless or land-poor peasants and workers, married (by institu-

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tional authority or common law) or divorced, responsible for children and/or other dependents, and possessing limited education. They are the Mexican equivalent of the low-wage, casual U.S. labor force analyzed by David Griffith in Jones’s Minimal (1993). To different degrees these Mexican contract workers combine subsistence production, petty commodity production, petty commerce, and wage labor both locally and elsewhere. They exhibit high levels of unfulfilled needs (for food, clothing, housing, and education, among others) when they enter the SAWP, for which reason they have little ability to save and invest productively until they have resolved these pressing demands. But then the moderate lifestyle improvements that many participants make following multiple trips to Canada require a steady inflow of Canada-earned income to be sustained: telephones (cellular or otherwise) mean monthly telephone bills; vehicles must be maintained and repaired; cable television entails monthly fees, and so on.45 A similar point was made more than twenty-five years ago in reference to Mexican migrants to the United States (Wiest 1984; Reichart 1981, 1982), but the situation has strong parallels among historic and contemporary upwardly mobile sectors of many countries, the United States included (see Schorr 1998).46 A deferred form of “investment strategy” involves using Canadaearned income to finance children’s education. I expressed doubts about this strategy by pointing out the depressed state of the job market in much of Mexico and the small difference in wages between secondary school graduates and those with some high school or technical training, which is as far as most northwest Tlaxcala youth are likely to advance.47 However, we need case studies that more carefully interrogate academic achievement and occupational mobility in rural areas in order to subject to critical scrutiny the common belief, endlessly promoted by the World Bank and other international financial institutions, that the major problem of lesser developed countries is their low level of human capital. Given that the SAWP completed its forty-fifth year (the thirty-seventh year for Mexico) in 2011, such a study could probably be carried out with the children and even grandchildren of current and former participants. The limited contributions that the SAWP makes to rural development are less indicative of shortcomings in the Mexico-Canada program than of the low purchasing power of the rural masses who live in SAWP catchment areas. At the turn of the millennium, Bertoldo Sánchez Muñoz found that 84 percent of 1,298 Tlaxcala households surveyed around the state had monetary incomes of less than two thousand pesos monthly, placing them below the federal poverty level; 41 percent of the house-

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holds earned less than one thousand pesos monthly, which situated them among the officially defined “extreme poor” (2001: 47). Though skewed by Sánchez Muñoz’s failure to take into account the value of subsistence production, the results provide a rough idea of the very low level of mass purchasing power in rural and urban Tlaxcala and the difficulties that small businesses—such as those established by the interviewees in this study—have of making ends meet. It is important to point out that in order to have the opportunity to earn an income that moves the Mexico-based members of the household unit out of economic poverty, SAWP participants must themselves live in poverty, Canadian-style, during their time in the destination country: They receive low wages, endure long days and weeks of toil, enjoy only limited opportunities for rest and relaxation, and often reside in crowded living conditions.48 Moreover, the greater the Canadian earning power, the less the opportunity to consume directly the goods purchased with it, since income correlated positively with contract length, and the more time a migrant spends in Canada, the less time he/she passes in Mexico. Over the course of nine years a worker fortunate enough to obtain an eight-month contract with a “good” employer will be physically present for three years in Mexico compared to six in Canada. If we move beyond the enhanced economic freedom that many households experience as a result of the participation of one or more members in the SAWP and interrogate the implications of contract labor for Sen’s other freedoms, the portrait of development becomes much more complicated. Because of their temporary worker status, SAWP participants enjoy less political freedom in Canada than in Mexico; the social opportunities of children may increase (higher level of education), but the lack of transparency guarantees, i.e., the role of palanca discussed above, makes it difficult for even well-educated children from the countryside to obtain work in cities commensurate with their level of formal qualification. Furthermore, the protective security of children declines in the absence of the father (or mother), unable to lend the necessary guidance and support from a distance of several thousand miles. (One might argue that the anxiety and worry associated with protracted absence represents a decline in the protective security of all household members.) The situation of female partners generally worsens as well, at least in the short- to mediumterm, as they attempt to fill both parental roles and work a double or triple day. The long-term impact of migration on gender relations remains to be seen. In sum, both contract workers and members of their domestic units enter into deep forms of noneconomic (non-income-related) poverty

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through what Sen refers to as “capability deprivation” (1999: 89): They are deprived of the freedoms (“capabilities”) instrumental to the attainment of the kind of life that they have come to value. The reduction of some unfreedoms comes accompanied by the increase of others. A fuller appreciation (and evaluation) of the SAWP and development would require carrying out a similar exercise with Canadian family farmers, corporate growers, food processors, retailers, exporters, and consumers. For these reasons I argue that the SAWP is not a development program, certainly not in any integral or holistic sense. Neither is it an antipoverty program, because the SAWP makes little contribution to longterm poverty reduction in Mexico. With the exception of those with short contracts, participants “evade” economic poverty during the time they participate in the SAWP, which may vary from a year or two to several decades. While no one has examined the current economic status of former SAWP workers—those who quit or were expelled from the program—the structure and functioning of the SAWP and conditions in the home communities strongly indicate that few workers will have accumulated either the technological knowledge or the financial resources—which would have to be substantial—to permanently improve their lots. I think of the SAWP as a means of “regulating [some of] the poor.” It provides temporary employment for a small number of working class Mexicans, many of whom occupy one of the strata of Marx’s reserve army of labor prior to their acceptance into the program: alternately employed and unemployed, supported at times by the extended family, involved in subsistence production but frequently on borrowed or rented land, moving between the city and the countryside, etc. All these are elements of a precarious and shifting existence to which the SAWP temporarily puts an end.

CHAPTER 6

The Political Economy of Contract Labor in Neoliberal North America: Cheap Labor and Organized Labor

Seasonal workers are among the most difficult to organize. And when these workers are migrants from over a thousand miles away, scattered on hundreds of farms, the problems multiply. Moreover, as the faces change from one year to the next, the slow task of educating and organizing must begin anew each season. Taking into account the discussions in Chapters 2 and 4 of this book, one would think that the quote that begins this chapter was written with the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) in mind. Those chapters detailed some of the “exterior conditionings” and “internal determinations” (Cohen 1987) that contribute to SAWP workers’ weak and vulnerable position in the social field of southwest Ontario. In fact, I lifted the statement from a mid-1970s critical review of a system of Puerto Rican contract labor in northeastern areas of the United States.1 Though accorded many of the rights of citizenship, such as mobility on the labor market and free movement between Puerto Rico and the United States, Puerto Rican contract workers confronted serious obstacles, generic to contract migration, that kept them in place as a cheap labor force. Worse still for those with fewer rights (See García-Colón n.d.). I have two fundamental objects for this chapter. The first is to offer a comparative perspective on North American contract labor programs by taking a close look at the H-2A program in the United States, with special emphasis on the North Carolina tobacco and cucumber industries. The reason is twofold. On the one hand, the H-2 program, parent to H-2A and H-2B, followed a trajectory similar to that of the SAWP in that a long-term Caribbean domination gave way over the course of the last fif-

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teen years to Mexican domination.2 And yet, as we shall see, the reasons for this shift varied from one place to another, making it more complex than the racial/national/ethnic shift that Kerry Preibisch and I analyzed in Chapter 4. On the other hand, it is important to take a close look at H-2A because however the U.S government ultimately decides the immigration issue, it seems likely that a new and expanded contract labor program— larger, more punitive, and more user friendly (i.e., employer friendly)— will be one result (Castañeda 2007). The second object takes off from the quotation that introduced this chapter by highlighting cases of resistance and successful organization undertaken on behalf of and by foreign temporary workers both in the United States and Canada. On this point it is germane to note that even if migrant workers often appear “as chaff in the wind, blown about by forces too powerful for them to comprehend, let alone oppose”—the image extruded in the early chapters of The New Helots—Robin Cohen, the statement’s author, followed by insisting that “the conditions that oppress migrant labourers are not so deterministic that they can never be changed or contested” (1987: 179–180). Thus the second half of the chapter takes up those changes and contestations by examining the history of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), especially its struggle to organize Mexican H-2A workers and others against the Mt. Olive Pickle Company and the North Carolina Growers Association. There then follows a more detailed look at the campaign spearheaded by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) to organize SAWP participants and other agricultural workers in southwest Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, as well as other forms of civil society mobilization on the workers’ behalf.

H-2A and the Mexicanization of the U.S. Agricultural Labor Force H-2A is a U.S. Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) similar to Canada’s SAWP. The predecessor H-2 program was introduced in 1943 to compensate Florida farmers for the loss of African American farmworkers who moved north to take positions in war-related industries. After the Second World War, H-2 channeled farmworkers from the Bahamas and West Indies to vegetable and citrus growers in Florida and apple growers in the Northeast, but the government soon restricted the southern arm of the program to the sugar sector, which expanded

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rapidly following the Cuban Revolution. The postwar H-2 program— previously known as the British West Indies Temporary Alien Labor Program—functioned under the ninth proviso of the 1917 Immigration Act, for which reason it survived the 1964 demise of the much larger (and more controversial) Bracero Program (Griffith et al. 2002: 25; Griffith 2003: 14).3 By the early 1980s between eight and ten thousand male workers originating from Jamaica, Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Dominica traveled annually to south Florida on H-2 visas to cut sugarcane (Wood and McCoy 1985b: 254). Like contemporary H-2A (and SAWP) workers, their contracts stipulated free housing and a guaranteed hourly wage. However, the big sugar companies that contracted them converted hourly salaries to piece rates and dismissed workers unable to meet productivity quotas (DeWind et al. 1977: 15; Wood and McCoy 1985b: 255; Griffith 2006: 69; Griffith et al. 2002: 23–24). In 1986 workers responded to these and other abuses with a spontaneous work stoppage, broken up by local law enforcement personnel, who deported about three hundred workers (see below). Legal action against the employers followed. After the courts decided that the sugar companies owed former cane cutters millions of dollars in back wages, the sugar industry opted out of H-2 (Griffith 2006: 67–74; Griffith et al. 2002: 26–27, 29; Hahamovich 2011: 208–225).4 Beginning in the early 1990s, the axis of H-2A employment shifted to the Eastern seaboard, and participating farmers substituted Mexicans for Caribbeans. This substitution was more complicated than the racial/ ethnic/national replacement documented in Chapter 4 for the SAWP. There Kerry Preibisch and I argued that the empirical trends were best explained by a combination of racial/ethnic/national task association, growth/decline of specific commodity sectors, employer country surfing in search of the most exploitable labor force, and racism. In the United States though, Mexican H-2A recruits were entering commodity sectors previously dominated by crews composed of African Americans and/or Mexican Americans and undocumented Mexicans. A previously racialized labor force was reracialized, but the contours and dynamics of the process varied from one commodity sector and geographical region to another (Griffith 2006, 2003; Griffith et al. 2002). In North Carolina tobacco and cucumbers, the growers of which employ about 40 percent of H-2A labor nationally, Mexicans entered to replace and not displace African Americans who were abandoning agricultural wage work for less physically taxing and often better paid urban employment. As African Americans left tobacco, they were replaced by undocumented Mexicans, who entered the

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region as part of the Latino migration contributing to the configuration of the New South. Griffith observes, Job growth in construction, tourism (hotels and restaurants), and health care, linked directly to population growth, as well as the expansion of military duty and employment during and after the Vietnam War, drew African Americans out of agriculture at the same time that Latino crews based in Florida were becoming more organized, more diversified, and more familiar with a wide range of harvests. The Latinization of the South that began in Florida in the 1950s after the mechanization of cotton and sugar beets was far advanced by the mid-1980s in much of the rural South . . . (2006: 59)

Most of these crews were composed of undocumented immigrants, and stepped up INS raids after 1986 (post IRCA) generated a demand for legal Mexican labor. A key figure in supplying that demand was Stan Eury, a former employee of the North Carolina Employment Security Commission. Eury’s experience with the commission proved useful when in 1989 he formed the North Carolina Growers Association (henceforth NCGA or the “Association”) to recruit H-2A workers in order “to offset a lack of domestic farm workers and to insulate [farmers] from raids by federal immigration agents hunting illegal immigrants” (Glascock 1999). That same year the Association contracted 189 Mexican workers for forty North Carolina farms. Robust expansion during the 1990s led to more than a thousand participating farmers by 2001, who employed over ten thousand mostly Mexican contract workers.5 Eury also created the for-profit International Labor Management Corporation, which supplies H-2A and H-2B contract workers to employers in four additional Southeastern states. All in all, Eury’s enterprises recruit seventeen thousand workers annually, more than a third of the national H-2A total, in what has become an annual five-million-dollar business (Smith-Nonini 2009).6 The need for a middleman between the farmers and the government derives from the highly bureaucratic character of H-2A.7 H-2A requests have to be approved by the U.S. Department of Labor, after which they are moved along to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for final determination (United States Department of Agriculture 1988).8 In what Philip Martin (2001b: 2) characterized as a “show-me” attitude, prospective employers of H-2A workers must demonstrate to the DOL that they advertised unsuccessfully for domestic agricultural workers:

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Farmers seeking temporary foreign workers must convince the DOL on a job by job basis that there are not sufficient US workers to fill actual or anticipated job vacancies, as would occur for seasonal harvesting: each job vacancy needs a certification that US workers are not available to fill the job despite government and employer recruitment of workers. (2–3)

Eury and other brokers are skilled at the ins and outs of paperwork and expert at skating along the edges of the reigning legislation regulating recruitment procedures without violating the letter of the law (see Glascock 1999). At the beginning of the new millennium, participating farmers paid dearly for this service: a two-hundred-dollar annual association membership charge plus an additional amount per contract worker (Prieto 2002). Of this money, a filing fee of one hundred dollars plus ten dollars for each job opportunity certified went to the DOL (United States Department of Agriculture 1988); the NCGA also used the funds to cover advertising costs for domestic workers and for recruitment in Mexico. Because of high costs and contractual guarantees (free housing, Adverse Effect Wage Rate) most farmers in North Carolina shun H-2A and take their chances with undocumented Mexicans (Smith-Nonini 2009, 1999: 7, 9). On the other hand, many participating employers implement “cost recovery” schemes through payroll deductions. Indeed, H-2A contracting and recruitment has been riddled with graft and corruption both in the United States and Mexico. Inocencio and Miguel, whose labor histories were discussed in Chapter 3, made allusion to the rural agents, known as reclutistas or enganchadores, charged with recruiting H-2A workers. Many recruiters work as subcontractors for Del-Al Associates, based in San Antonio, Texas, and owned by Jorge Del Alamo, a Cuban immigrant who arrived in the United States following the 1959 revolution that ousted the Batista regime (see Griffith 2006: 166–167).9 Whether linked to Del-Al Associates or another enterprise, local recruiters fill orders and channel workers to U.S. consulates in Monterrey, Nuevo León, or, secondarily, Hermosillo, Sonora, in northern Mexico, where they are processed and bused to U.S. destinations. Along with North Carolina, other tobacco growing states such as Kentucky and Virginia employ H-2A workers, as do Georgia (Vidalia onions), New York and Connecticut (apples), and Maine (cranberries). In the west, H-2A workers can be found digging potatoes in Idaho and herding sheep in Montana. Mexico has gained a dominant position in the program, supplying 92 percent of 2006 contract workers, according to Todd Huizinga, a spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey (cited in

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Malkin 2007a). Many Caribbean-area workers continue in tree fruits, while Northern and Eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and South America (mainly herders from Chile and Peru) contribute a smattering of participants. If Mexicans become too organized and demanding or the Mexican government insistent on assuming a more active role in recruitment and oversight, employers could substitute more politically vulnerable and economically needy populations (see Griffith 2004: 35). Indeed, Mike Bell, a former Eury protégé and the founder (in 2000) of Manpower of the Americas, an important supplier of Mexican H-2A and H-2B workers for North Carolina and elsewhere, stated that he “plans to extend his reach as far south as Guatemala” for H-2A workers (HennessyFiske 2004).10 In what follows I delve deeper into H-2A, focusing on North Carolina, which presents the best documentation. The state is an agricultural powerhouse that draws upon the labor power of several hundred thousand wage workers, only a small percentage of whom come from H-2A. Indeed, North Carolina has become an important destination for Mexican and other migrants and occupies a key place in what some have called the New Latino South (see Gill 2010; Popke and Hapke 2006). North Carolina accounts for about 40 percent of national H-2A hires, and it is the principal U.S. destination of northwest Tlaxcalans who opt to work legally in the United States.11 Finally, five to seven thousand North Carolina H-2A workers joined the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) union which, following years of lawsuits, boycotts, and community organizing, succeeded in winning a three-way contract with Mt. Olive Pickle Company and the North Carolina Growers Association.12 This campaign holds valuable lessons for organizing other groups of contract workers struggling to reduce the power imbalance structurally built into TFWPs. Following a discussion of H-2A in North Carolina and the FLOC campaign there, I return to Canada in order to analyze labor organization in southwest Ontario.

H-2A in North Carolina H-2A wages are slightly higher than those in Canada’s SAWP, and most contractual rights compare favorably, but H-2A wage and contract guarantees are less likely to be respected, and workers are subjected to higher levels of control on the part of growers, the NCGA, and labor recruiters (Smith-Nonini 2009, 2002). For instance, the NCGA arranges transport

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for Mexican workers from the U.S. border and conducts a mandatory orientation session in Stan Eury’s warehouse in Vass, North Carolina, before sending them along to their respective employers. The contract requires that workers renounce tenancy rights, as a result of which the employer/proprietor can legally turn visitors away from the property.13 A 2000 Human Rights Watch report summarized how the absence of tenancy rights combined with the workers’ captive status to produce a “double whammy” of unfreedom in Amartya Sen’s terms: “H-2A workers are caught in the antithesis of a free labor system, unable to exercise rights of association but also unable to move to another employer to seek better terms” (202). Until recently the NCGA ordered workers to channel their complaints to its representatives and to avoid agents of the Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) and FLOC.14 The former, which receives state and federal funding, is a branch of the Legal Services Corporation and provides free legal assistance to people unable to afford a private attorney. For many years it served as the sole check on the NCGA and employers, criticizing the Association and suing several growers on behalf of Mexican contract workers (e.g., Glascock 1999: 6; Thompson and Melia 2000).15 Eury presents the North Carolina Growers Association as “a progressive labor organization” and accuses LANC of filing frivolous lawsuits in an attempt to destroy the H-2A program, an accusation similar to that made by Canada’s FARMS against the United Food and Commercial Workers union. He has argued that critics “can’t see the forest for the trees” and that “this is the best thing that has ever happened to farm workers in North Carolina” (quoted in Glascock 1999: 3). Mike Bell, a former Peace Corps worker in Honduras and president of Manpower of the Americas, was more emphatic: “If they [critics] opened their minds, they would see we [recruiters and the NCGA] are the [workers’] true advocates.” He acknowledged the critics’ “good intentions,” but concluded that “it [opposition to the program] ends up hurting more than it helps” (quoted in Hennessy-Fiske 2004). The NCGA strives to impress this message upon Mexican contract workers early in the orientation process. From the balcony of a mock hacienda façade that occupies one wall of the interior of the Association’s warehouse, NCGA representative Jay Hill lectures workers to the effect that LANC is their “enemy” and should be avoided; he orders them to throw the Know Your Rights booklet—issued to new H-2A workers by LANC—into a trash can and to pick up a copy of the NCGA Em-

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ployee Handbook, which reinforces his verbal messages with written admonitions:16 FLS [Farmworker Legal Services, i.e., LANC] has a hidden motive when they approach you. They say that they are your friends and they are concerned about your rights and well-being, but in reality their motive is to destroy the program which brings you to North Carolina legally. . . . FLS discourage the growers with excessive [legal] suits which are for the most part without merit. The history of FLS shows that the workers who have talked with them have harmed themselves. Don’t be fooled and allow them to take away your jobs.17 (quoted in Human Rights Watch 2000: 219)

The worker orientation occurs beneath a banner that reads “Servicios Legales Quieren Destruir El Programa H-2A” (Legal Services Wants to Destroy the H-2A Program) and warns in Spanish, “Don’t be a puppet of Legal Services” (Human Rights Watch 2000: 221; Glascock 1999; SmithNonini 2009, 2002: 77–78).18 LANC support is important. But until recently, negative propaganda, spatial isolation reinforced by the absence of worker tenancy rights, and the workers’ staunch (and justified) belief that complaints usually lead to blacklisting made workers reticent to pursue their rights under the law, presuming, that is, that they were aware of them.19 According to SmithNonini, most workers are unaware of many contract guarantees, and a majority are ignorant of basic information related to their employment: It’s rare that the labor camps are marked, and many are hidden at the end of crude tracks marked with no trespassing signs. The majority of H-2A workers interviewed in the camps have no idea where they are. Only some know the name of the farmer or the foreman who transports them to the farm; others are not sure. (2002: 73).

Apart from transportation subsidies, housing, basic services (electricity, water, kitchen facilities or meals at nominal cost), and health insurance, H-2A guarantees employees payment for a minimum of 75 percent of contracted days, whether they work or not, at an Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) calculated state-by-state by the Department of Agriculture and ratified by the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration. The AEWR has the object of dissuading U.S. employers from using the H-2A program to replace domestic workers with cheaper foreign ones.20 Finally,

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H-2A contract workers are exempt from paying Social Security taxes or into unemployment insurance (see United States Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration 1988). It is not possible here to speak about other states and regions, but in North Carolina many of the contractual rights are often abrogated in practice. Some North Carolina growers persist in paying piece rates that are below the mandated AEWR level when converted to hourly wages. Other employers routinely write overly long contracts that idle workers for weeks after the harvest has ended. Expenses for food and other necessities mount up, provoking many workers to leave the farm and either return to Mexico at their own expense or seek employment elsewhere as undocumented immigrants. In either case the employer saves the cost of return transportation, and the NCGA adds the employee to the Association’s black list. A U.S. General Accounting Office study in the mid-1990s reported that 40 percent of H-2A workers of one major employer left before the end of the contract, “losing their right to both the three-quarters guarantee and transportation home” (United States General Accounting Office 1997: 61–62).21 Housing quality is probably better for H-2A workers in North Carolina than for independently contracted U.S. farmworkers because it is more likely to be inspected (Smith-Nonini 2002: 69; but see Leco Tomás 2003: 324–327 and Smith-Nonini 1999), but work in hot, humid weather without adequate water, toilet, and rest breaks abounds, as does the application of pesticides during field labors or shortly beforehand.22 Few of these violations get reported and even fewer are investigated (see SmithNonini 2009, 1999; Yeoman 2001).23 In a cruel twist, H-2A workers are excluded from the 1983 Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, which applies to other U.S. farmworkers, including undocumented ones. Formally, H-2A workers fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act, federal Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), the Environmental Protection Agency’s worker protection standards for pesticides, and North Carolina’s wage and migrant housing laws. H-2A workers also come under North Carolina’s Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act or REDA statute, designed to punish employers who retaliate against workers for reporting violations. REDA has occasionally been applied to North Carolina employers and could be applied to the North Carolina Growers Association, which has a history of blacklisting employees for asserting their rights or making complaints to private or government watchdog organizations (Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid of North Carolina n.d.).

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But these laws and regulations have been ineffective because the government bureaucracies charged with their enforcement are understaffed and deficient in Spanish-speaking field agents. Also, the laws are “complaint driven,” meaning that the onus of reporting rests with foreign workers who are kept under close surveillance, are frequently unaware of the law or their contract rights, and who tend to believe that efforts to respond to mistreatment and contract violations will lead to expulsion from the program and deprive them of legal U.S. work opportunities in the future (see Smith-Nonini 2009, 2002, 1999; Southern Poverty Law Center 2007).24 As noted by Smith-Nonini, [Because] the workers are without transportation, unable to speak English and lack access to mail or telephone in the majority of the labor camps, they confront enormous obstacles in order to obtain information about the services and rights that correspond to them, and to contact service providers (or defenders) when they need help. (2002: 78)25

Government workers who attempt to enforce the law enter into conflict with the powerful NCGA, which has a vociferous and politically wellconnected spokesperson in Stan Eury. Eury is known in Washington—he contributes to the Republican Party—and participates actively in local and state affairs. In 2002 he served as a council member in the local government in Vass, North Carolina, and, paradoxically, was named to the North Carolina Agricultural Safety and Health Council (North Carolina Labor Ledger 2002: 2). Some problems of worker representation could be minimized if the Mexican government played an intermediary role between workers and employers, as it does in Canada. However, as Durand observes of the H-2A program, . . . the Mexican government plays no role; it exercises no control; it puts no conditions [on the program]; it maintains no records; it doesn’t negotiate; it does nothing. This matter is managed by the enterprises and the U.S. Consulates without the participation of the Mexican government. It’s nothing more than the privatization of the temporary worker program, a privatization that without doubt entails considerable risk. (2006: 56)

Finally, important differences extend into Mexican migrant catchment areas, where rural-based labor contractors frequently bilk prospective H-2A participants of hundreds of dollars in fees as a requirement for ac-

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ceptance into the program (Malkin 2007b; Smith-Nonini 2009). In the only published community-based Mexican study of H-2A, Leco Tomás recorded rather modest costs of one hundred to fifteen hundred pesos paid to contractors by prospective recruits in Cherán, Michoacán, in order to reserve places in the program (2003: 317). By contrast, the Southern Poverty Law Center records recruitment costs of from five hundred to more than ten thousand U.S. dollars for H-2A and H-2B workers, often leading to the loss of homes and other property to labor recruiters holding the titles as collateral (Southern Poverty Law Center 2007: 9–14). Many U.S. growers treat H-2A employees humanely, respecting the terms of the contract and taking pains to protect their health and wellbeing; their continued presence serves to advertise the program. Chapter 3 presented a brief discussion of Miguel, whose God-fearing, tobaccogrowing employers, Terry and “Jani,” outfitted H-2A workers’ living quarters with a billiard table and television room, allowed workers to rest during the hottest times of the day, and brought cold drinks and snacks to the field. Most important, the work was plentiful and paid at or above the AEWR. Yet we saw how the following year the Association assigned Miguel to Yals Beard, who worked his laborers to the breaking point and showered them with abuse. Indeed, Beard, referred to by workers as El Pájaro (The Bird), and another abusive employer given the nickname El Diablo (The Devil), are two infamous, NCGA-linked tobacco growers whose excessive demands and inhumane treatment drive Mexican workers away. According to Griffith, El Diablo “received a new crew each year because the workers were not willing to return to his farm” (2006: 167). A few H-2A participants use the program strategically in order to cross the border safely, legally, and far more cheaply than with coyotes (smugglers). Some may arrive in North Carolina intending to see the contract through only to discover that far better wages and working conditions are to be had elsewhere. Chapter 3 offered the example of Arón, who abandoned his H-2A South Carolina farm assignment after two months in order to take a job in a crew paving parking lots and thereafter join his brother’s small, unregistered housepainting business. Whether his escape was preplanned or he was drawn away by the urban demand for Mexican labor power and the proximity of a close family member cannot be ascertained on the basis of the available evidence. That Arón remained on the farm for several months suggests that he was willing to give H-2A a go. Be that as it may, undocumented and H-2A populations only partly overlap. Unlike the SAWP, participation in H-2A is not subject to formal age and education limitations, giving recruiters on the ground a broad leeway in

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choosing candidates. But in order to minimize workplace abandonment, which would reflect badly on their capabilities, some recruiters, such as those around Cherán, Michoacán, a well-known Purépecha community, pass over young men for mature males, preferably married and between twenty-five and forty-five years old. One recruiter there insists on “a pact” (un acuerdo mutuo) with workers, who promise to work hard and not attempt to “escape,” in exchange for the recruiter’s recommendation (Leco Tomás 2003: 320).

Unions in the Fields I concluded Chapter 2 by noting that high levels of control and weak checks and balances impede SAWP workers from representing their own interests. Spontaneous work stoppages, such as the one in Leamington, Ontario, in 2001, are usually followed by dismissal from the SAWP, deportation of the involved parties, and blacklisting from future participation. The same has been recorded in H-2A and its antecedent programs. The best-known event took place one day in April of 1986, when a wildcat strike by Caribbean workers at a U.S. Sugar Corporation camp in Okeelanta, Florida, was met by the violent roundup and deportation of three hundred fifty workers—many of them uninvolved in the action—by local and state police making liberal use of tear gas and police dogs. The workers were placed on buses, driven to the airport, flown back to the Caribbean, and blacklisted from the program. Their possessions remained in Florida, and few ever recovered them (Wilkinson 1989: 227–228; Hahamovich 2011: 208–213; see Bacon 2008). The resulting negative publicity and law suits filed by legal aid authorities on behalf of the workers alleging underpayment of wages contributed to the program’s demise. By the early 1990s U.S. Sugar and other growers accomplished what they had previously asserted to be impossible: they mechanized the sugar harvest on the soft muck of reclaimed swampland and sent Jamaican and other Caribbean H-2A workers packing. The spontaneous strike or labor protest has been the historic rule in the contract labor programs examined in this book. Without arguing for a rigid structural determination that would strip contract workers of will and the capacity to exercise it, the SAWP and, as I attempted to show above, H-2A do seem to mark the limits of agency models of social mobilization. So long as as they remain in these programs, participants can wield some of the “weapons of the weak” documented by James Scott

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(1990), but even then they have to take care not to cross the boundaries of the employer’s tolerance—which are seldom known in advance— because they can easily be replaced. Unlike the peasants and rural workers of Sedaka, Scott’s Malaysian field site, foreign contract workers are not members of a local (Canadian) moral community able to exercise pressure on landed elites but are subaltern figures whose economic contribution tends to be minimized or unacknowledged through the process that Kingsolver (2007) refers to as “strategic alterity.” Ontario horticulturalists concerned about their social image are likely to clamp down with more rather than less force on Mexican and Caribbean contract workers by concealing housing, restricting visitors, and prohibiting late-night revelry, loud music, and alcohol consumption (see Preibisch 2004: 217–228). It’s important to keep in mind, too, that reproduction of these relationships involves a convergence of interests between growers and particular state institutions, as well as the weak position of labor supply country governments vis-à-vis both. It is upon interstate relationships that the real “complementarity” of the program rests. Indeed, both the SAWP and H-2A—where workers enjoy markedly fewer protections than in the SAWP—are prime examples of statesponsored cheap food policies. In these cases North American governments establish and police programs that enable growers and processors to extract surplus value from superexploited workers, paid below the cost of reproduction. As I pointed out in Chapter 5, contract workers, like other low-wage migrants, live economic poverty in the overdeveloped North, persisting on far less than they earn so that stay-at-home members in the underdeveloped South can escape, at least for a time, poverty’s even more debilitating material forms there. (And as I also noted, following Amartya Sen’s lead, no one in these households escapes various forms of capability deprivation.) The situation is probably worse for H-2A than SAWP workers, because in the H-2A program labor supply governments play no role in recruitment and exercise no oversight, U.S. growers are well-organized and politically connected, and LANC, which provides the only official check on abuse, is small and underfunded. Recently this has begun to change as the union movement has taken up the cause of contract workers both in the United States and Canada. Below I examine struggles undertaken by the FLOC in North Carolina and the UFCW in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. The narrative is guided by an interrogation of the “conditions of possibility” under which Mexican contract workers might organize and form a countervailing power to that of employers and the governments that back them.

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The Farm Labor Organizing Committee The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) has pursued one approach. In an effort to follow the lines of control and take advantage of vertical forms of integration, FLOC sets its sights simultaneously on food processors and the growers who supply them with raw material (Griffith 2004). The union, currently an AFL-CIO affiliate, had its embryonic beginnings when, in 1967, twenty-year-old Baldemar Velásquez (b. 1947) began to organize migrant farmworkers in Ohio. Twelve years later in Halstead, Ohio, FLOC held its first constitutional convention. By that date it was already striking the tomato fields of farmers supplying the Campbell Soup Company. During an eight-year struggle, FLOC exerted pressure on Campbell through strikes, boycotts, a highly publicized march from Toledo, Ohio, to Campbell’s home offices in Camden, New Jersey, a “corporate campaign” to gain support among the company’s shareholders and investors and, key to the success of the preceding, the involvement of progressive churches and human rights and justice-oriented community groups (Valdés 1984; Barger and Reza 1994: 44–97). The first major breakthrough occurred in 1985 with the establishment of the Dunlop Commission, described as “a private labor relations board,” headed by John Dunlop, a former secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, and composed of representatives from FLOC and Campbell Soup. A year later the union, company, and farmers, now organized into associations, signed a three-way agreement that set hourly wages for harvesters and drivers and piece wages for hand pickers, as well as incentives for higher yields. Between that date and 1997 FLOC renewed its earlier contract and signed similar agreements with the Vlasic, Heinz, Green Bay, and Aunt Jane corporations in Ohio and Michigan. The contracts provided seven thousand workers wage increases and standardized grievance procedures and eliminated child labor and sharecropping. The importance of the change in migrant farmworkers’ official status from independent “sharecroppers”—picking a farmer’s cucumbers for half the harvest proceeds—to “employees” cannot be underestimated; as employees, the workers would be guaranteed a minimum hourly wage, obtain access to worker compensation insurance and Social Security, and even see their tax burdens decline (Barger and Reza 1994: 44–97; Farm Labor Organizing Committee n.d.). In 1999 FLOC focused its sights on North Carolina in order— according to its web site—“to keep the pickle industry in Ohio and Michigan and prevent the processors from locating to nonunionized states in

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the South” (Farm Labor Organizing Committee n.d.). FLOC followed the same multipronged strategy as in its earlier Ohio-Michigan campaign: organizing broad community support for the farmworkers (in this case mostly H-2A migrants from Mexico), a consumer boycott of the Mt. Olive brand, and a campaign to convince regional store owners to remove Mt. Olive Pickle products from their shelves. Since Mt. Olive suppliers obtained their H-2A workers through the NCGA, any settlement would have to involve the Association too. Pursuing a line of reasoning formerly wielded by Campbell Soup, Mt. Olive Pickle administrators took the position that the company purchased and processed pickles but did not grow them, for which reason it had nothing to do with the lot of the cucumber picker.26 But commodity chain analysis has shown for Canada, the United States, and elsewhere (Barndt 2008; Striffler 2005; Wall 1992; Winson 1993; Smith-Nonini 2009) that a growing number of farmers occupy subordinate positions in a linked set of relationships in which they bear most of the risk while the processor or (increasingly) retailer gets most of the profit (see Appendix 1). One could even suggest that more and more agriculture assumes the form of a putting out/buying up system in which suppliers extend raw and semifinished goods to farmers (“putting out”), dictate the precise production steps to be followed, and then purchase (“buying up”) the finished product—which still has to pass a quality check—at a price they decide. In other words, much commercial agriculture has been subjected to a process of maquiladorización. Barger and Reza summarized the system in the cases of cucumbers and tomatoes in the Midwest: Each winter a company determines its produce requirements for the coming year. The company then signs a contract with each individual farmer for his or her entire season’s production; and prices, pesticide use, and other conditions are set before planting. In order to ensure consistency in its products, the company sells its own seedlings to its growers. That company, and only that company, then buys back all the harvested produce. (1994: 58)27

For his part Eury sustained that production declined in the Midwest after the FLOC contract there, and “it may go down here if workers unionize.” He suggested, “Pickles are not a high profit crop,” for which reason “many [growers] would get out of the business of cucumber growing if workers unionize” (cited in Smith-Nonini 1998). But FLOC recognized that a better deal for the cucumber pickers depended on downward

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redistribution of value, allowing Velásquez to counter that farmers came out well from the contracts because they received higher prices from the processors (Smith-Nonini 1998). As I read Smith-Nonini’s trenchant summary, three events—the culmination of years of struggle—brought Mt. Olive and the NCGA to the negotiating table: the first involved a lawsuit filed by LANC on 20 April 2004 on behalf of nine H-2A workers who accused the NCGA of maintaining a blacklist and violating North Carolina’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) by intimidating and extorting workers; the second occurred when FLOC, with broad (though mainly urban, ecumenical- and university-based) support, entered into negotiations with several major grocery chains over the removal of Mt. Olive Pickle products from the shelves; and the third took place when the General Assembly of the United Methodist Church voted to join the boycott, despite lobbying by Mt. Olive CEO Bill Bryan, a United Methodist himself, to prevent the move. The retailer boycott, a potentially debilitating lawsuit, and Bryan’s public embarrassment convinced the NCGA and Mt. Olive to negotiate with FLOC, with another three-way contract the end result. Smith-Nonini observes that this was “the first labor contract associated with an H-2A program,” and through the establishment of a FLOC office to monitor recruitment practices in Mexico, “it is the first labor contract being enforced on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border” (2009).28 Apart from greater control and regulation of recruitment, FLOC won an end to NCGA blacklisting, reincorporation of some formerly blacklisted workers into the program, sick and bereavement leave, employer payment of the costs of transportation and visa application and, importantly, union representation in the labor camps of NCGA-affiliated growers through a system of trained H-2A migrant “union reps.” On the other hand, some farmers are dropping out of the NCGA and obtaining H-2A workers through non-NCGA contractors (Smith-Nonini 2009). Indeed, recent figures suggest that NCGA membership has declined by about a third, falling from more than a thousand members to six hundred fifty.29 Finally, I don’t believe that it’s possible to completely disjoin the success enjoyed by FLOC from the figure of Baldemar Velásquez, who spearheaded the formation of the union, has served as its president from the beginning, and has played a key role in establishing a nonviolent, community-based approach to social change with a broad human rights agenda that goes beyond mere economic issues. Arguably Velásquez is an organic intellectual cut in the Gramscian mold. Born in 1947 in Pharr in

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the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, his family pursued the life of migrant farm laborers until settling in northwest Ohio when Velásquez was seven, part of a growing permanent Chicano population that developed with the postwar expansion of the region’s tomato industry (Valdés 1984: 44–45). He has deep roots in the Mexican American migrant farming community—he recalls working in the fields at the age of four and learning English mainly in school—but he also obtained university degrees (in sociology in 1967 and in practical theology in 1991), and he is an ordained chaplain (also 1991). He has attended conferences, chaired commissions, served on boards, and led delegations in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere as a result of which he possesses an extensive array of national and international contacts. In 1989 Velásquez was named a recipient of the prestigious five-year MacArthur Fellowship (Farm Labor Organizing Committee n.d.; Barger and Reza 1994: 54–57). Velásquez’s training, experience, strong religious convictions, nonviolent orientation, and even his musical interests—he plays guitar in Águila Negra (Black Eagle), a Mexican American musical group that has released several CDs—endow him with a rare ability to move fluidly up and down social class and status hierarchies in order to relate to migrant farmworkers, organizers, corporate heads, bureaucrats, faith communities, social activists, and academics.

Organizing Ontario: The United Food and Commercial Workers In North Carolina, FLOC showed that it is possible to gain benefits for foreign contract workers. Can the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) win similar gains in Ontario and elsewhere? What strategies have they pursued, and what obstacles have they confronted? Those are some of the questions that I address here. To begin, it is important to record that Canadian farmworkers have formed no organization comparable to César Chávez’s United Farm Workers Union (UFWU), or even Velásquez’s FLOC. According to Shields, “In the first part of the twentieth century, independent agricultural commodity producers were the major force behind mass protest movements and political change in Canada. In the class struggle of farmers, however, the role of paid farm labour has tended to be neglected” (1992: 246). Thus it is that in The Intimate Commodity (1993), which analyzes more than a century of transformation of the Canadian food industry, sociologist Anthony Winson—no friend of capital—devoted zero attention to farmworkers’ organization, though

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he does discuss farmers’ historic efforts to organize. Of course, to have a farmworkers union you need farmworkers. And in the Canadian plains, railroads, credit, government assistance, and the availability of machinery made it possible for simple commodity-producing households to cultivate large extensions of land with minimal use of hired labor. Several decades ago Harriet Friedmann explained how with “flexible levels of personal consumption and of labor per worker, and with no profit requirement,” such households “could reproduce themselves at a world wheat price sufficiently low to undermine the reproduction of capitalist producers” (1978: 585). At the other extreme, agriculture in the Maritimes and parts of Quebec never experienced the dynamic transformation of that in, say, Ontario, and remains to this day mostly small scale and household based, producing little utility. Winson describes “a real decapitalization of Maritime agriculture” after 1960 (1985: 430 [author’s emphasis]), which helps account for the region’s role as a seasonal labor reserve for more agriculturally and industrially developed areas of Canada (Haythorne 1941; Winson 1985). Perhaps the first marginally successful farmworkers’ union—“an active if short-lived force”—developed among Alberta beet workers in the 1930s (the Beet Workers Industrial Union). But as Shields notes, “This labourintensive occupation, like the factory, provided a forum for close activity among the workers, making organizing an easier task” (1992: 248). A more contemporary example, and one relevant to Ontario, comes from British Columbia, where the fertile soils and temperate climates of the Fraser and Okanagan Valleys provide ideal conditions for the growth of tree fruits (Fraser Valley) and vegetable and berry production (Okanagan Valley). Most of the labor power in the Fraser Valley has been supplied by Punjabi immigrants who first entered Canada early in the twentieth century. With outside assistance, they formed the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU) in April 1980. Although the CFU won important gains for its largely Punjabi constituency, the ethnic exclusivity of the organization impeded further expansion in British Columbia (see Sharma 1982: 14; Anonymous 1983: 62, 66–68; Shields 1992: 251). The CFU still exists, but it has lost force with the aging and nonreplacement of the Punjabi farmworker population. Claims of imminent disaster on the part of the provincial horticultural lobby achieved the extension of the SAWP to British Columbia in 2004, albeit under conditions even less favorable to migrant workers than those in Ontario.30 In the spring of 1981 the CFU attempted to extend its operations to Ontario tobacco workers, but shut its offices two years later because of legal obstacles to farmworker organizing there. Ontario was one of two

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Canadian provinces (the other being Alberta) that excluded farmworkers from the provincial Labour Relations Act, for which reason they were not allowed to form associations, join unions, or bargain collectively (Shields 1992: 252).31 Indeed, in 1988 the UFCW attempted to organize Cuddy Chicks (London, Ontario), a hatchery employing three hundred people in factory-like conditions, but lost when the court accepted the company’s argument that the hatchery did not fall under the Labour Relations Act because it involved agricultural not industrial production (Wall 1996: 519). This historic situation was partly reversed through Bill 91 “An Act Respecting Labour Relations in the Agriculture Industry,” passed by the New Democratic Party (NDP) government in 1994, but the legislation was repealed a year later following the NDP’s loss to the Conservative Party led by Mike Harris.32 By then the UFCW, with more than two hundred fifty thousand members nationwide, had become committed to organizing agricultural workers in Ontario, though real progress would have to wait on changes in the extant legislation. The court challenge that the UFCW mounted in 1995 constituted the first prong of what eventually became a tripartite campaign. The two additional prongs include the “pre-organization” of workers via the establishment of Migrant Worker Support Centres in commercial areas where migrants congregate to food shop, eat, and relax (prong two), and the mustering of broad, public support by focusing public attention on the plight of migrant workers in Ontario (prong three). I address each briefly below. 1. The First Prong: The Court Challenge After several reversals at lower levels, the UFCW legal challenge prospered in December 2001 when the Supreme Court found that the wholesale exclusion of agricultural workers from Ontario’s Labour Relations Act violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s equivalent to the U.S. Bill of Rights, and ordered the drafting of new legislation that would bring the law and the Charter into alignment. But what kind of code would the government substitute? Would farmworkers be granted the same legal rights as other private sector workers, which include strike actions and collective bargaining, or would the range of legitimate, i.e., state-sanctioned, activity be narrower? “We can’t have anything with strike action in it,” stated Hector Delanghe, chair of the Labour Issues Coordinating Committee of the Ontario Fruit and Vege-

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table Growers Association. “This is living organism time,” noted Ken Forth, “These are dairy cows and peaches and broccoli and chickens. They will die if not cared for literally on an hour-by-hour basis. Somebody has to address that” (quoted in Mann 2002). The provincial government did indeed address growers’ concerns when it passed the Agricultural Employees Protection Act (AEPA) in August of 2003. The AEPA granted agricultural workers, including migrant workers, the right to form associations but prohibited them from conducting strike actions or engaging in collective bargaining. It established a tribunal before which agricultural employees could bring their grievances, but the tribunal could only urge, not compel, employers to change their ways (see Raper 2007). And it provided security for complaining SAWP workers that employers would not extract payback through negative end-of-year evaluations. In sum, the AEPA was a toothless document, ratifying most existing relations in the field of power. The UFCW had no recourse but to return to court and hope for a more union-friendly decision the next time around.33 According to the UFCW’s Raper, “The government justified this with the argument that agriculture was ‘different’ and that they were protecting the family farm” (TML Daily 2004).34 2. The Second Prong: UFCW Migrant Worker Support Centres Even before the latest lawsuit began its crawl through the courts, the UFCW had opened Migrant Worker Support Centres with bilingual (Spanish-English) staffs in Leamington (2 June 2002), Bradford (4 May 2003), Simcoe (29 June 2003) and Virgil (2005) to service the needs of its future union affiliates. By 2009 the strategy had been extended to British Columbia (three centers), Quebec (one), and Manitoba (one), and the UFCW was arguing that “Together, they stand as Canada’s . . . most comprehensive resource of support and outreach to seasonal and temporary agricultural workers” (United Food and Commercial Workers 2009: 9). These centers followed closely on a Global Justice Care Van Project organized by Stan Raper and the preparation and dissemination in 2002 of a “National Report: Status of Migrant Farm Workers in Canada” by the UFCW (Raper 2007; see Basok 2004: 59; Preibisch 2004: 227– 229; United Food and Commercial Workers 2002).35 The centers open Wednesday through Sunday from early spring until late fall (five months annually) from noon to eight in the evening.36 They offer free English-

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language classes, bilingual legal assistance, safety information, and help with health matters, tax forms, the Canada Pension Plan, social security, and the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP cards). Occasionally staff members intervene with employers and consular personnel on behalf of TFWs, although one staffer told me that when it comes to the Consulate, they try to get the complainant to make the call.37 According to Raper, farmers initially responded with hostility to the centers because of their watchdog and advocacy functions, but the more progressive ones have come around, “dropping workers off, phoning us asking to translate for them, asking to provide health and safety courses for them” (2007: 117).38 In Simcoe and Bradford in 2003, the centers were located close to food stores; in Leamington the UFCW rented the first floor of a twostory clapboard house across from St. Michael’s Catholic Church, which is among several provincial churches offering a Sunday Spanish-language mass (see below).39 Migrants visit the centers when they are driven into town to food shop and remit money home, or during their scarce free time if they reside within cycling or walking distance.40 FARMS, individual growers, and Mexican consular representatives claim that the UFCW is mainly interested in SAWP workers as a steady source of union dues.41 Consular officials accuse the UFCW of attempting to destroy the contract labor program, characterize UFCW support centers (centros de apoyo) as “conflict centers” (centros de conflicto), and claim that staff members are “poorly informed” (mal informados) and impart inaccurate information to the workers.42 They are also quick to fault the UFCW for interference in a program that has considerable longevity and that is, according to them, characterized by a high level of satisfaction all around. The critiques sometimes have merit, but five visits to Ontario centers in August and September of 2003, during which I interviewed both staff members and Mexican migrant workers, provided ample evidence that the programs were well attended and the proffered advice and assistance highly valued.43 As Kerry Preibisch and I suggested in Chapter 4, the Mexican Consulate lacks sufficient personnel to attend to many routine (and some less routine) problems that beset the more than nine thousand poorly educated, Spanish-speaking workers thrust into a foreign and sometimes hostile social and cultural environment. Indeed, the centers’ popularity among Leamington-area contract workers may have played a role in prodding the Mexican and Jamaican consulates to open consular branch offices there in 2005. From the beginning of the SAWP, migrant workers have been socially excluded from the daily life of local communities—when they are not the

English-language lessons are held in the Migrant Worker Support Centre in Simcoe, Ontario.

WORKERS RIGHTS IN CANADA OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY ACT NO Right to refuse dangerous work Right to committees’ training Right to WHIMIS Right to Pesticide Application

EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS ACT NO Right to overtime with pay Right to hours of work (no definition) Right to holiday pay Right to Vacations with pay EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT NO Right to regular benefits if laid off YES Right to parental benefits Right to sick benefits—allowed with minimum 900 hours worked, collection is limited NO LABOUR RELATIONS ACT PROTECTION —no right to bargain collectively

NO RIGHT TO STRIKE NO ACCESS TO EMPLOYERS YES RIGHT TO ASSOCIATION —tribunal—3 farmers —no legal recourse after tribunal

YES RIGHT TO WSEB YES RIGHT TO OHIP

YES RIGHT TO RBC INSURANCE –death benefit YES RIGHT TO CPP/INCOME TAX YES RIGHT TO REPATRIATION AND TRANSFERS NO RIGHT TO STATUS—permanency in Canada A sign in Simcoe’s Migrant Worker Support Centre informs SAWP workers of their (lack of) legal rights.

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objects of veiled or explicit racist commentary and treatment (Cecil and Ebanks 1991; Smart 1998; Colby 1997; Wall 1984; Preibisch 2000; see Chapter 4). More than two decades ago, Wall (1984: 89) portrayed SAWP farmworkers in the Flamborough area “as generally peripheral members of the farming community” and concluded that “while there are few examples of outright or overt racial incidents, the more subtle, covert forms of prejudice and discrimination are present. Offshore farmworkers are tolerated by Flamborough residents as long as they stay on the fields and in their place.” One of Wall’s interviewees stated, “If you wanted to collect money for starving black babies on the islands, you would probably get generous contributions from Flamborough residents; but don’t let the farmworkers into our homes or sleep with our women” (quoted in Wall 1984: 89). As discussed in Chapter 4, fear of miscegenation has been one reason for the replacement of Caribbean workers by Mexican ones, who are perceived as sexually less threatening. Yet Mexicans, too, experience various degrees of rejection when they enter rural towns on weekend evenings to shop, eat out, and relax. Thus a pilot study carried out in Simcoe and Delhi, located in the heart of Ontario tobacco country, concluded that neither Caribbean nor Mexican SAWP workers developed personal relationships with local inhabitants and that “distorted images of behaviour and attitudes” often occurred (Bauder et al. n.d.: 10). Alongside “exclusion,” there have developed processes of “inclusion” of SAWP workers in community life, particularly in commercial centers located in farming districts where migrant workers present a significant visible presence for most of the year (Basok 2004; Preibisch 2004). I discuss this process of inclusion and some of the limits to it below and return to it in the concluding chapter. Here I merely note that the evidence for social inclusion seems to be strongest for the towns in which the UFCW opened Migrant Worker Support Centres in 2002–2003, whereas workers “employed in remote communities . . . continue to experience social isolation which prevents them from claiming some of their basic rights” (Basok 2004: 60; see Preibisch 2004: 211–221). The Mexican Consulate has done little to challenge the exclusion of Mexican workers. The Consulate doesn’t offer English classes or provide workers tips on the hazards of pedaling bicycles along narrow rural roads without breakdown lanes. Migrants get struck by vehicles every year, especially in the late afternoon or evening and sometimes with tragic consequences (see Ramsaroop and Fernandes 2002 for a partial listing). Nor do Mexican consular officers have time to attend to most medical emergencies, particularly minor ones (i.e., ones they consider minor). Sup-

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port Centre staff often shuttle ill or injured workers to doctors’ appointments and translate for them, reducing the kinds of miscommunications repeatedly documented by medical anthropologists and others who have studied cross-cultural medicine. In sum, complaints on the part of consular personnel sound a bit like sour grapes. Consular officials believe that the Canadian government and volunteer organizations (schools, churches, and other groups) should play more of a role in helping migrant workers adapt to the Canadian social milieu, and they are willing to work with them. They also view volunteer organizations as less politicized than the UFCW. But whereas food stores, malls, and banks are happy to do business with these workers, and growers are pleased to give them work, no organization or coalition of organizations has volunteered to pay the estimated forty-thousand-dollar (Canadian) annual cost per center (in 2003) of establishing something akin to a system of alternative (i.e., nonunion) offices to address the pressing needs of the Mexican (and Caribbean) temporary worker population. It is possible that over time this amorphous public, a fraction of which is involved with migrant issues, could become a thorn in the sides of FARMS, HRSDC, and the consulates and the bête noir of the program as currently constituted, but that will depend on the ability of the UFCW and other groups to forge a broad, pro-migrant constituency from community activists, university students, faith communities, and others. 3. The Third Prong: Focusing Public Attention This leads to the “community unionism” model developed by the United Farm Workers Union (UFWU) in California and adopted by the CFU and FLOC. Given the nature of farm work . . . a farmworkers’ union can not simply concern itself with standard industrial relations but must extend its interests to matters affecting workers beyond their labouring hours, such as housing, health, education, and the like. In short, the union must be actively engaged in working to improve the workers’ total community. Moreover, because of the relatively weak position of the farmworkers, the union must also enlist the support of outside, community-based groups to aid it in its struggle, through such activities as lobbying government and even orchestrating consumer boycotts which can become a major industrial weapon in the union’s arsenal . . . (Shields 1992: 251)

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One might think that the UFCW, too, would pursue this approach with respect to migrant workers, and to some degree it has. Indeed, the Migrant Worker Support Centres are aimed at improving “the workers’ total community.” But the UFCW has a mixed record of involving other groups on an equal basis in the struggle for migrant worker rights. Most local, community-based, and/or ecumenical efforts developed in response to the growing profile of migrant workers—particularly Mexican migrant workers—are in commercial towns servicing rural farming regions. The groups are numerous, local in orientation, mostly volunteer, and varied in their goals and strategies. Many are less interested in bringing about changes in the SAWP than in combating workers’ social and spatial isolation by exposing them to a broader, more diverse, and complex range of social experiences during their stay in Canada. Some provide services to migrant workers in the area, and a few combine service provision with a “watchdog” function intended to hold employers accountable for fulfilling the contract terms (Preibisch 2007b, 2004). The UFCW sometimes collaborates with these organizations, but growers’ political hegemony in much of rural Ontario constitutes a formidable obstacle. For instance, Frontier College, a national literacy organization based in Toronto, places young people—referred to as “laborerteachers”—on SAWP farms, where they work and live under the same conditions and hourly pay as Mexican migrants as they teach ESL and impart information about Canada during the migrants’ sparse free time. If placed on a “problem farm,” laborer-teachers may witness—and perhaps experience directly—superexploitation and abuse, but there is not a great deal they can do to help the workers without jeopardizing the college’s program, which has self-declared humanitarian and not political aims.44 If enough employers perceived that “laborer-teachers” had begun to transform themselves into “laborer-teacher-activists,” the program would be doomed, and SAWP workers would lose access to a valuable resource (Gabriel and Macdonald 2011: 60–61). Another case, recounted by Tanya Basok (an active participant in the events), concerned a Migrant Worker Coalition in Leamington composed of representatives of the local business community, growers, the Mexican Consulate, and the Town Hall. The coalition formed following a series of newspaper articles, written by a Windsor, Ontario, journalist, documenting the plight of area SAWP workers. The group ran a successful “Bridges for Bicycles” project and provided interpreters to assist Mexican migrant workers with health and other needs. However, “In order to avoid conflict

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with the growers on the committee, the Coalition denied membership to organized labour representatives . . . [and] stays away from any discussion of migrant workers’ rights” (2004: 58), despite the fact that the lack of rights, as well as the social and other barriers to the exercise of those that workers do possess, is at the root of their plight.45 The coalition collapsed anyway when employers complained about the presence of labor organizers at its first sponsored event (Preibisch 2004: 228; see Gabriel and Macdonald 2011: 60, 63). During a 14 September 2003 celebration of the so-called Encounter of Two Cultures46 and Mexican Independence Day in Leamington, I obtained evidence of the divisions that Basok described.47 The Sunday “Encounter” included a Spanish-language mass by Fr. Murphy at St. Michael’s Catholic Church—which leased part of an adjacent house to the local UFCW for its Support Centre—followed by speeches (including one by the Mexican Vice Consul), a presentation by youthful folk dancers, musical interludes, audience participation contests, and food sales (purchased from tables and booths set up on one side of the parking lot where the post-mass festivities took place).48 Hundreds of male migrants arrived by bicycle, but apart from the organizers, few European Canadians were in evidence. UFCW Support Centre staffers played no active part in the proceedings but did a steady business next door, as many migrants took a break from the fiesta in order to visit the center for information or to seek help with a problem. René and Mary, the Salvadoran Canadian couple that ran the center, noted that when the door is open or a light is on, people come for assistance. At the time, many workers needed help with their income taxes.49 The UFCW also experiences conflicts with activist organizations that share its basic goals but manifest tactical (and perhaps strategic) differences. For instance, Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW), which was formed in the summer of 2002 by volunteers working with the Global Justice Care Van Project, comprises students, labor and human rights activists, researchers, and others “committed to advancing the rights of migrant workers and building ties between all migrant workers” (Basok 2004: 60; see Fuchs 2007 and Encalada 2006). Several J4MW participants told me that they have been troubled by the UFCW’s tendency to “sacrifice”—a word also used, perhaps inadvertently, by UFCW organizer Stan Raper during an interview—individual workers to larger UFCW organizational goals (TML Daily 2004; Raper 2007). For instance, the UFCW sometimes urges disgruntled workers to make their

SAWP workers arrive by foot and bicycle to St. Michael’s Parish Centre in Leamington, Ontario.

“Celebrating Two Cultures” in Leamington, Ontario, 14 September 2003. The UFCW Support Centre is visible in the background, across the parking lot.

A few people boogie to the music at “Celebrating Two Cultures.”

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complaints public, thus generating negative publicity about the SAWP, but the UFCW can do nothing for them when they are fired or later removed from the program. By contrast, J4MW seeks “to organise migrant farm workers as a united front [but] with minimal risk of repatriation” (Encalada 2006: 24). The UFCW does join with other groups for specific activities, and it maintains a high profile in mass media by issuing annual assessments of the SAWP (see United Food and Commercial Workers 2009, 2005, 2004, 2002), news briefs, and commentary. With few resources, J4MW has to depend more on virtual media (listserv, its website, and the readership of Internet journals and magazines), a cheap form of communication but one that reaches a smaller, more select public. The UFCW is also quick to take opportunistic advantage of on-farm labor conflicts such as wildcat strikes and cases of occupational death or injury of SAWP employees. The union participates in public forums and debates around SAWP. And it cosponsored the premiere (in September 2003) of “El Contrato” (The Contract), a documentary critical of the SAWP in the Leamington greenhouse industry, directed by Min Sook Lee and financed by the National Film Board of Canada. Such activity differs from the organizing strategies used by the UFWU or FLOC but may be the only approach available in an area with a small year-round Mexican population and where agricultural workers are legally prohibited from organizing in meaningful ways. Finally, beginning in 2008 the UFCW initiated what might be considered a “fourth prong” when it signed an agreement with the governor of Michoacán empowering the union to advocate for the human and labor rights of Michoacán residents during their sojourns in Canada. The UFCW planned to sign similar agreements with other state governors in a clear effort to provide a counterweight to employer-friendly policies of both involved central governments. Considering the turbulence of Mexican state politics, governors’ financial dependence on Mexico City, and the high level of dispersion of contract workers from any single Mexican state within Ontario, it is difficult to envision how such a strategy could serve more than publicity purposes. The UFCW has continued to pursue it nevertheless, adding the Federal District and Guanajuato to its arsenal of supportive state governments, and recently, in December 2011, protesting Mexican federal government collusion in the expulsion of unionaffiliated TFWs from the SAWP (United Food and Commercial Workers Canada and Agriculture Workers Alliance 2011a, 2011b).

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Unions in the (Ontario) Fields: An Assessment For a number of reasons, the UFCW has a tougher assignment than did the FLOC. FLOC organized under conditions in which the right to form unions and bargain collectively had already been established. By contrast, the UFCW will have to win the court battle over Ontario’s exclusion of farmworkers from the province’s Labour Relations Act, and it will have to ensure that any court decision favorable to farmworkers includes TFWs as well (see Raper 2007). Should it win the court battle, the UFCW will then have to develop a strategy to prevent Ontario growers from “purifying” their work forces by eliminating politicized elements and retaining docile ones, or recruiting Guatemalans and others through the less-regulated Low-skill Pilot Project, as seems to be occurring in Quebec and elsewhere (see Chapter 4). The addition of new source countries intensifies interstate competition and can move source country governments to recruit even more selectively. One can imagine the kind of pressure Mexican and other officials might exert upon SAWP workers not to join the UFCW. Up to the present this has not been a problem for the FLOC in North Carolina because Mexico enjoys close to a monopoly position in the tobacco-cucumber seasonal labor force as a result of the NCGA’s decision to recruit there. Additionally, the Mexican government has shown no interest in monitoring H-2A, which pales in size compared to undocumented Mexican migration. It is also worth mentioning here that at least in Ontario the UFCW has focused its attention almost exclusively on Mexican workers, whose inability to speak or understand English makes them the weakest members of the SAWP consortium. This strategic decision will reveal its underlying flaw if fear of unionization proves sufficiently powerful to provoke employers to suppress racialized ideologies and substitute Caribbeans for Mexicans, reversing a two decades-long tendency toward Mexicanization. Second, the UFCW did not arise from the grassroots, as did the UFWU, the FLOC and, in British Columbia, the UFW, but involves the sectorial expansion of a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-member organization. The concentrated economic and political power of the UFCW gives the union the ability to pursue expensive and drawn out court cases and to negotiate with the Canadian state on behalf of migrant workers, but this power can also deter the organization from compromising with other progressive groups whose agendas differ somewhat from its own. Such appears to have been the case with J4MW. According to Encalada, “Most members of J4MW are young organisers of colour who have not found

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a place or have been expelled from the labour movement due to radical politics. We have been basically told this is how it is going to be and this is how it is going to be done.” She wonders whether “a Canadian— predominantly white and hierarchical—union [can] serve the interests of migrant farm workers,” and asks, “should a new union be formed by migrant workers to better reflect their diverse backgrounds and experiences? Would it be a union that is based in their home countries or can this union be more transnational in scope while bound to the SAWP?” (2006: 25). Encalada’s critique leads logically to my third point, which is that Stan Raper, the leader of the UFCW organizing campaign, is not a Baldemar Velásquez. Raper claims, like Velásquez, to have been inspired by the figure of César Chávez. Also like Velásquez he is a dedicated worker and tireless advocate on behalf of migrants. But he’s also a union “lifer” who knows how to toe the official line, and as a European Canadian he possesses neither the internalized cultural habitus nor the linguistic skills— lamentably Raper does not speak Spanish—that contributed so much to Velásquez’s (and FLOC’s) success. On 7 September 2003, following a Spanish-language mass at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I found myself, somewhat embarrassed, translating for Raper as he distributed literature related to parental leave benefits and responded to questions about income taxes. As a result of his linguistic shortcomings, Raper must rely heavily on bilingual staffers. Given the small size of the Mexican community and the leading role European Canadians play in the struggle, the lack of grassroots appeal may mean little right now because the workers are, as Preibisch observed, “recipients rather than leaders of the advocacy organizations that have emerged” (2007b: 113). It may mean more in the future, at which point the identification and cultivation of an endogenous leadership from among the workers themselves will be important, lest they remain dependent on the largess of another powerful patrón. Gabriel and Macdonald concluded their discussion of the role of civil society actors in the SAWP in a similar fashion: “Canadian civil society actors do not necessarily reflect the priorities or perspectives of the migrants themselves, and are an inadequate substitute for migrant-led agencies, even though they do provide valuable services” (2011: 64). Finally, the UFCW lacks a single “target,” comparable to a Campbell Soup (Ohio) or Mt. Olive Pickle (North Carolina), upon which to focus public attention, for which reason its campaign is necessarily more complex and diffuse. The UFCW is attempting to organize workers involved in a wide variety of crops (apples, greenhouse tomatoes, tobacco, open-

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field vegetables, etc.) with different destinations (processing plants, domestic fresh market, export). Unlike regions that are dominated by one or two crops tied to large processors—sugar in South Florida in the 1980s (H-2) and cucumbers in contemporary North Carolina (H-2A) come to mind—agriculture in southwest Ontario has been characterized by “more of a fragmentation between different commodity producers, with each of these groups linking their interests with the industries that buy their products” (Shields 1992: 256). Whereas the UFCW differentiates between small (“family”) farms with a few SAWP employees and large (“commercial”) farms with many SAWP employees, and it emphasizes the need for lower hourly wage rates among the former, it remains questionable whether the remaining small farmers, squeezed in most cases between rising costs of production and stagnant market prices, will accept the UFCW’s argument that collective bargaining on the part of TFWs will not affect the precarious economic equilibrium that many struggle to maintain.50 Finally, the UFCW aims “higher” in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada than did the FLOC in North Carolina, since the latter organized only a small portion (15–20 percent at most) of the H-2A workforce— that portion contracted through the NCGA in North Carolina—while the UFCW targets most if not all SAWP workers.

Conclusion TFWs form a vulnerable sector of the agricultural (and nonagricultural) labor forces of developed capitalist economies of the north, so vulnerable that they have little hope of altering their circumstances without external assistance. Workers originating from different countries, regions, and communities find themselves thrown together in groups of varying size on farms scattered over thousands of square miles. While many contract workers live and work near important rural commercial centers, such as Leamington or Simcoe, others reside in remote areas with little or no access to public transportation; they must depend on employers and their representatives for rides into town. Historically, resistance has taken the form of wildcat work stoppages, with workers protesting poor working conditions, decrepit housing, and/or low wages. And that resistance has been met with the indiscriminate “roundup,” deportation, and blacklisting from future participation in the SAWP of those thought to have led or participated in the protest. While such collective protests sometimes make the news, individual protests can be, and are, resolved in a quieter

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but equally efficient fashion by dismissal or, more commonly, a negative end-of-year report to the Mexican MOL. Similar ways of weaning the labor force of those whom growers consider troublemakers and deficient workers characterize the H-2A program and marked its earlier (pre1986) incarnations. Such structural constraints are not new; they have been present in TFWPs throughout history (Hahamovich 2003) and are unlikely to be abolished as long as such programs exist. Furthermore, the persistence of contract labor programs can also negatively influence the potential collective organization of all agricultural workers, the localized (and perhaps transitory) successes of the FLOC notwithstanding. Butovsky and Smith maintain that while the conditions facing migrant agricultural workers are uniquely onerous, they are also constitutive of more general conditions in what has become a split labour market. By topping up the agricultural labour pool, the SAWP serves to keep wages for all farm workers low. In a structural, if not an immediate day-to-day sense, Canadian workers compete for employment with racialized, migrant workers. The resulting dynamics of this split labour market discourage unionization in the agricultural sector as a whole. (2007: 80)

Butovsky and Smith conclude by asking, “Can agricultural workers in Canada mount a serious struggle for union organization so long as the SAWP remains in place?” (80). I take up that question, among others, in Chapter 7.

CHAPTER 7

Globalization and Temporary Migrants: Post-National Citizens, Realpolitik, and Disposable Labor Power

This last chapter takes up the future of Temporary Foreign Worker Programs (TFWPs) in general and the SAWP in particular. What might be in store for the SAWP and the Mexican and Caribbean workers whose labor power forms the highly valued currency that keeps the program running? Can civil society actors, perhaps drawing on global human rights discourse, the law, and the courts, contribute to the erosion of the power of organized growers in Ontario and elsewhere? Might such struggles on behalf of Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) eventually transform them into post-national citizens with the same or almost the same rights as Canadians? Or is difference—social, economic, and ethnic/racial—so much the raison d’être of TFWPs that these programs can make little or no contribution to the creation of a more just and equal world? Would there even be a place for them in such a world? My interest in this matter derives from my reading of writers whose strong, convincing, and empirically substantiated criticisms of the SAWP have been accompanied, usually in other articles written at later points in time, by more optimistic assessments of the potential good that can come out of civil society struggles involving the SAWP (and perhaps other TFWPs as well). To take one example, Tanya Basok, the first student of the SAWP to develop a detailed analysis of the unfree character of SAWP labor, later characterized SAWP workers as “post-national citizens” (1999, 2004). Both Basok and Kerry Preibisch, an astute analyst who has written about both labor flexibility and the role of women in the SAWP, penned articles in which they followed discussion of workers’ social exclusion with civil society efforts directed to secure their social inclusion (Basok 2004; Preibisch 2004, see 2007b). Given that these articles are heavily informed by post-national citizenship theory in which the State

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retreats before the forces of global human rights discourse and practice spread by supranational institutions and promoted by national, regional, and local actors, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the main tendency in Ontario and elsewhere is toward progressively less social exclusion and progressively more social inclusion (but see Preibisch 2010).1 The consummation of the promise of global citizenship can be imagined after all—and within the dominion of capitalism no less! In what follows, I discuss these possibilities and suggest a different denouement.

Post-National Citizenship and the SAWP Writing in the context of the post–World War II welfare state, T. H. Marshall defined citizenship as “a personal legal status that is bestowed on full members of a political community and endows the man with a set of common rights and duties” (quoted in Cohen 1999: 250, emphasis in the original). At the time, “full members” referred to people either born into a political community, and thus citizens by birth (“natural” citizens), or assimilated into the political community through a process of “naturalization” whereby a foreign noncitizen becomes naturalized, i.e., accorded most if not all the rights of natural citizens. Marshall thought that whether natural or naturalized, citizens enjoyed the right to political participation (the political principle of democracy), rights under the law (a juridical status of legal personhood), and social rights as members of a constituent community (identification) (Cohen 1999: 248). He conceived these rights as smoothly mapping onto one another and as diffusing across the globe with the spread of capitalist modernity, one bundle of rights establishing the foundation for the next. However, he held out no expectation that migrant workers—as full political, juridical, and social members by birth of one country—would enjoy the same or similar rights in the country in which they worked and resided temporarily. They fell outside the immediate domain of his place-specific citizenship theory. Proponents of post-national citizenship assert otherwise. They argue that with the advance of globalization, nation-states cede control over internal economic, political, and social affairs to supranational organizations and institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice.2 For Castles and Miller “a key indicator of globalization is a

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rapid increase in cross-border flows of all sorts, starting with finance and trade, but also including democracy and good governance, cultural and media products, environmental pollution and . . . people” (2009: 51). It should be possible to extend many citizenship rights to noncitizens through the global usurpation of governability functions previously monopolized by nation-states. In other words, the post-national citizenship thesis acknowledges a “rights gap” between citizens and noncitizens and goes on to argue that noncitizens’ struggles, institutional support, and weakened nation-states gradually reduce the gap by according to noncitizens rights previously restricted to citizens. The rights gap would be reduced, for instance, if TFWs were, like citizens, allowed to choose employers and circulate freely on the labor market, select their living sites, and organize in order to struggle collectively for higher wages and more and better benefits—though one must wonder what, if this occurred, would remain of employers’ incentives to seek out TFWs. Second, social exclusion of one kind or another can prevent or impede individuals and groups from converting de jure rights into effective rights, i.e., rights as exercised or practiced, which is to say de facto ones.3 While many groups are vulnerable in this sense, suffering some form of social exclusion, noncitizens are particularly so; hence, another reason for moving to post-national citizenship is to reduce or eliminate extant social, cultural, and institutional barriers that impede the exercise of those rights to which people are legally entitled, whether that involves the full complement of citizenship rights (as in the case of natural and naturalized citizens) or a more limited rights bundle (for TFWs, tourists, foreign bureaucrats, and so on). The literature on social inclusion/social exclusion has it that poor people, most women, ethnic minorities, disabled people, and others are but partial de facto citizens (citizens-in-practice). Putting aside juridical status for a perspective of social construction/ negotiation, citizenship becomes reconfigured from a fixed status to a “social relation of power [that] undergoes constant change and (re)negotiation” (Preibisch 2007b: 99), which is to say it is a “set of cultural, symbolic and political practices through which individuals and groups claim new rights or struggle over existing rights” (Ku 2002, quoted in Preibisch 2007b: 99). Many struggles undertaken on behalf of participants in the SAWP have involved efforts both to extend to them rights previously accorded only to citizens and to remove the barriers to the exercise of their rights by law. The following two sections illustrate these efforts.

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Claiming New Rights (de Jure Citizenship) Chapter 6 demonstrated how the initial UFCW challenge to the Ontario Supreme Court drew on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to argue for the extension of the right to organize and bargain collectively to all agricultural workers in Ontario, regardless of citizenship status. A later (2001) UFCW suit used the same argument against the provincial government’s effort to limit agricultural workers’ rights through the Agricultural Employees Protection Act, which granted TFWs the right to form associations but not to join unions or bargain collectively. That act was struck down by the Ontario Supreme Court. When the court gave the government until 19 November 2009 to provide farmworkers with the legislative protection needed for them to engage in collective bargaining, the provincial government appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. Meanwhile, UFCW Canada filed a formal complaint with the International Labour Organization (ILO), arguing that the government was violating ILO Convention 87, Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize, to which Canada is a signatory. In effect the UFCW exerts pressure on the Canadian state to force Ontario’s government to bring provincial law into line with international law. The UFCW has yet to win a decisive victory in the Ontario courts, but it has organized seasonal farmworkers on select farms in Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, where farmworker unions and collective bargaining are legal (United Food and Commercial Workers 2009: 1–2). The UFCW’s Stan Raper believes that the union affiliation of SAWP participants would produce a win-win-win situation for employers, workers, and participating governments. I limit discussion here to workers’ purported gains. The union would organize workers, oversee the election of local representatives (the farm equivalent of shop stewards), negotiate wages and benefits on their behalf, and even invest in off-farm housing so as to reduce contract workers’ dependence on employers. TFWs would also benefit from a path to citizenship for those interested in making Canada their future home. The UFCW goal of growing the rights of TFWs and reducing the gap between their rights and those accorded to Canadian citizens situates the UFCW within the field of post-national citizenship, even if the extreme case of the “global citizen,” where personhood usurps geopolitical location, does not figure in its plans. That is to say that the union accepts that TFWs will not become citizens en masse,

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for which reason they will remain ineligible for all the rights that citizenship confers (see Butovsky and Smith 2007). But, in Ontario at least, they will enjoy for the foreseeable future many fewer rights than were sought by the UFCW. On 29 April 2011 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against the union and for the provincial government in denying the union’s argument that equal treatment under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms implied that agricultural workers, migrant and otherwise, should have the right to join unions and bargain collectively. As Kerry Preibisch noted in a brief analysis, this decision “can only perpetuate and legitimize their [agricultural workers’] marginalisation in the labour force.” It also means that the UFCW will have to retool its nationwide strategy and perhaps reduce its exposure in Ontario (2011).

The Struggle Over Existing Rights (de Facto Citizenship) Concurrent with the court challenges, the UFCW and other organizations struggle to reduce SAWP workers’ exclusion and increase their inclusion in Canadian society. This struggle was initiated with the Global Justice Care Van Project, discussed in Chapter 6, and picked up steam with the creation, in 2002–2003, of Migrant Worker Support Centres in Leamington, Bradford, and Simcoe. According to Mize and Swords, worker centers were introduced in the United States in the late 1980s and the 1990s “to serve basic needs as well as to offer legal representation for enforcing the limited labor protections that are on the books” (2011:80). By 2011 the number of Canadian centers had reached nine and had expanded to British Columbia (3), Quebec (2), and Manitoba (1). In Ontario, Spanish-speaking staff workers advise SAWP participants of their rights under the law; translate for them during medical appointments; assist them with tax and other forms; arrange English lessons; teach classes on food, health, and bicycle safety; and occasionally advocate on workers’ behalf with employers and/or Mexican consular personnel. In 2008 the Agriculture Workers Alliance (AWA), “the first-ever Canadian national advocacy and support network for domestic as well as foreign workers in Canada” (United Food and Commercial Workers 2009: 9), assumed day-to-day operation of the support centers in association with the UFCW. Finally, the UFCW joined with the AWA to sign a cooperation agreement with the Michoacán state government “to ensure that the human and labor rights of agricultural workers from the state of Michoa-

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cán, Mexico are recognized and enforced while they work in Canadian fields and greenhouses” (United Food and Commercial Workers 2009: 9, 15, 19). The work of the UFCW is supplemented, or perhaps better stated, is “paralleled,” by a broad but dispersed and loosely coordinated civil society involvement that provides Spanish-language church services; English classes; safety instruction; translation assistance; sponsorship of musical groups, fiestas, and other programs; and activities designed to reduce the alienation and sense of estrangement that many SAWP workers experience and integrate them more closely into daily life in the communities in which they live and work (Carr 2002; Basok 2004; Preibisch 2003, 2004, 2007b; Encalada 2006; Fuchs 2007; Gabriel and Macdonald 2011; Mize and Swords 2011). Would it be going too far to describe these developments as indicative of a process of post-national citizenship, where limits to migrants’ de jure rights are being challenged and the gap between their existing de jure rights and the de facto implementation of those rights is being reduced through migrants’ progressive inclusion in Canadian society?

Citizenship and the State The question becomes whether the globalized processes that enabled the creation and especially the expansion of the SAWP and other TFWPs will also provide the bases for resolving some of the contradictions between desperate, transnational proletarians from the Global South and capitalist agro-entrepreneurs of various degrees of wealth in the Global North. Proponents of post-national citizenship believe that they will and for the reasons discussed above. Beginning in the 1970s, globalization came to be linked to accelerated and relatively open movements of capital, information, and goods articulated to a progressive neoliberalization of domestic political economies that was characterized by market opening, privatization, and the reduction of state welfare and assistance programs, where they existed. As noted above, proponents of the post-national citizenship thesis describe a world in which state power over “internal” affairs retreats with the advance of the forces of globalization and will continue to diminish as supranational institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and other organizations representing those forces establish the framework for global governance.

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This scenario appears implausible. First, supranational organizations do not always agree on the kinds and limits of rights. Second, such organizations depend on nation-states to enforce international treaties that extend and protect the human rights of migrant workers; in the current xenophobic, anti-immigrant climate, most governments lack the will or interest to do so, even in those cases in which they are signatories to international laws and treaties. It follows that weakened state control over macroeconomic matters (interest rates, money supply, foreign investment, export of profits, etc.) has not meant an erosion or disappearance of what Ellen Meiksins Wood (2003a) referred to as the “state system” that, according to her, secures the extension and deepening of capitalist relationships and the channeling of surplus value in geopolitical domains beyond the immediate reach of hegemonic capitalist forces. According to Meiksins Wood, The more universal capitalism has become, the more it has needed an equally universal system of reliable local states. . . . neither the imposition of economic imperatives nor the everyday social order demanded by capital accumulation and the operations of the market can be achieved without the help of administrative and coercive powers much more local and territorially limited than the economic reach of capital. (2003a: 154)

In this manner she resolves the apparent paradox that “the more purely economic empire has become, the more the nation state has proliferated” (Meiksins Wood 2003a: 154; see 2003b: 65–68). Insofar as the world continues to be organized along the lines of a state system—and it is difficult to imagine capitalism without one—then TFWs, legal residents, visitors, and other noncitizens will depend on states to establish and enforce rights. As observed by Sharma, national borders remain “integral to the material, existential, and ideological practices that organize the contemporary exercise of power” (2006: 3), a point reiterated by Griffith in his observation that “continued local legal assaults against Latinos (in the United States) dovetail with federal immigration policies to remind us that the state, at all its levels, plays a critical and complex role in the welfare of immigrants, either supporting or undermining their human rights” (2007: 82). The growing recourse to flexible models of accumulation (globalized capitalism) throughout the state system extends and deepens economic and social precarity, which varies in type and form from one social, geographical, and historical setting to another. In a 2009 article, I noted how

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Alejandro Canales (2000) contrasted the “orthodox” application of neoliberal policy instruments in Mexico with a more flexible, “heterodox” application in the United States (see Binford 2009). The U.S. government carefully selects which among the possible neoliberal policy instruments it implements domestically, as evidenced by continuing farm subsidies, high trade deficits, and budget shortfalls (Wise 2011). Public instrumentation of privatization of public enterprises, budget restrictions, regressive tax policies, and market opening, among other policies, have been and are being applied in a more orthodox manner in Mexico (and other countries), and with disastrous results for rural and urban workers, petty traders, peasants, and artisans. One estimate has it that between 1997 and 2005, U.S. dumping of surplus agricultural commodities on the Mexican market cost Mexican farmers more than $12.8 billion in lost revenue (Wise 2011). Collectively the privatization of public enterprises, loosening of controls on foreign investment, destruction of collective land holdings, and termination of cheap credit for small farmers have helped transform Mexico into “a nation of emigrants” (Fitzgerald 2009) forming a disposable labor force for U.S. agriculture, construction, meatpacking, services, and light industry (Mize and Swords 2011, Ness 2011). That few Mexican migrants returned home in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse and ensuing recession evidenced the perception, widely shared, of the dire conditions in Mexican communities of origin, as well as migrants’ concern over the high monetary cost and physical risk they would incur if they went home and then wanted to come back to the U.S. (Passel and Cohn 2009; Alarcón et al. 2009).4 Meanwhile, in the historic capitalist centers, what Pierre Bourdieu referred to as the Right Hand of State (punitive) grows while the Left Hand (beneficent or social welfare) dwindles (Bourdieu 1999: 12, 49–50). Loïc Wacquant (2009) provides a wealth of statistical information supplemented by documentary evidence of how the effective end of welfare for the poor in the United States coincided with a massive expansion of the carceral complex, now swollen by Latinos and African Americans handed lengthy sentences for petty and often victimless crimes. Low-skilled agricultural, industrial, and service sector jobs are increasingly being filled by immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants, as one element of what anthropologist John Gledhill referred to as “the Mexican contribution to the restructuring of U.S. capitalism” (1998; see Wilson 2000 and Mize and Swords 2011). Neoliberalism then has been less about the size or reach of the State than the domains in which it intervenes. Documented and undocumented immigrants in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere

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have been caught up in the vortex of a transformation which has meant fewer rather than more rights and a decline in rather than the enforcement of those to which they are legally entitled.

The United States In the United States the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) provided a path to legalization for more than three million undocumented immigrants, about two-thirds of whom originated from Mexico. When Mexican immigration picked up in the 1990s—responding to a combination of high U.S. demand and a spreading Mexican domestic crisis, the U.S. government adopted a hard line, beefing up border enforcement and passing laws that restricted migrant access to public programs. Federal law has been supplemented by state and local government initiatives that further constrain immigrant rights and criminalize undocumented migrants. California’s Proposition 187, passed in 1994, denied the undocumented access to public schools and health facilities but was declared unconstitutional in the courts. But the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act limited immigrants’ access to public services and contained provisions for local law enforcement to act as immigration officers by checking the immigration status of people arrested for minor crimes. Despite charges of racial profiling, hundreds of local police forces are now collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2010, Arizona’s SB 1070 authorized police to check the immigration status of anyone they “reasonably” suspect of being in the country illegally; the statute also makes it a crime for undocumented persons to work. Despite the patent unconstitutionality of SB 1070, the enforcement of which is currently blocked by an injunction in the courts, similar initiatives have been introduced or are under discussion in many other states. Even when unsuccessful, such legislation drives undocumented migrants further underground, making them more vulnerable to unscrupulous employers, greedy landlords, and myriad forms of abuse and exploitation. In sum, there exists no evidence of a progressive expansion of de jure rights in the United States. On the contrary, both de jure rights (rights on paper) and de facto rights (rights in practice) are being rolled back.

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Canada Supposedly migrants enjoy a more receptive environment in Canada’s self-declared multicultural nation than they find in the United States, characterized by its long history of white animosity toward blacks and racialization of new immigrants in an “in between” state: not black but determinately not white (Roediger 2005; see Ignatiev 1995 and De Genova 2005). Until recently, few Canadians perceived a problem with undocumented immigration. Yet the Canadian government concedes landed immigrant status mainly to highly educated and skilled people and imports semiskilled and unskilled workers through TFWPs that offer no path to residency.5 According to Sharma, 57 percent of non-Canadian workers entering the Canadian labor market in 1973 received permanent status, compared to 30 percent in 1993 and 35 percent in 2004. Eliminating “family class” (family reunification) and similar immigrant categories and restricting analysis to “independent class” migrants reduces to 22 percent those granted permanent status in 2004 and raises to 76 percent those recruited through the Non-Immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP). NIEAP programs, the SAWP being one, provide temporary work visas but scant possibility of converting to landed immigrant status for mostly semiskilled and unskilled workers (Sharma 2006: 20; see Gomez 2011). Recently introduced NIEAP programs have taken several steps backward compared to the SAWP (created in 1966) and the Live-in Caregiver Program (introduced in 1955 as the Caribbean Domestic Scheme). Wages tend to be low, contractual guarantees minimal, and government oversight of recruitment, employment conditions, and abuse lax or nonexistent (Preibisch 2010). Currently, responsibility for managing the programs falls to provincial governments, which lack the personnel and experience to protect workers against superexploitation. For instance, in 2003 the International Organization for Migration (IOM) developed the Foreign Workers Program (FWP), another TFWP, for poor, rural Guatemalans to work in Quebec horticulture, already subscribed to the SAWP through the Fondation des Entreprises en Recrutement de Main-d’oeuvre agricole Étrangère (Enterprise Foundation for the Recruitment of Foreign Agricultural Workers, FERME), a Quebec employer organization similar to Ontario’s FARMS. Participating growers can hire Guatemalans more cheaply than they do SAWP Mexicans and Caribbeans because FWP participants pay for their own housing (see International Organization for Migration Guatemala 2006).6 This temporary labor force of Guatemal-

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ans increased in size from an initial 215 in 2003 to 1,323 in 2006, 1,778 in 2007, and 3,750 in 2009 (for figures see Pellecer 2007:19–20; International Organization for Migration 2006; Martin 2007: 46; Hennebry 2011: 7). During the same period the number of Mexican SAWP participants in Quebec stagnated at around 3,000 (Preibisch 2010: 419), an indication that some former employers of SAWP labor were switching to the IOM-sponsored program. By collaborating with the IOM, FERME both complicates SAWP country representatives’ efforts to improve conditions for their nationals and undermines UFCW plans to unionize foreign agricultural contract workers in Quebec, since the potential exists for employers to play off one program against the other.7 Recently, the IOM program was allowed into Ontario as well (Hennebry 2011). The IOM program is but a small part of the much larger Low-Skill Pilot Project (LSPP) created in 2002.8 The LSPP grew rapidly in response to employer complaints of shortages of domestic workers in a broad range of jobs: worm pickers on golf courses (who provision bait shops), counter clerks and line cooks in fast food restaurants, exotic dancers, and experienced trades people (Alberta Federation of Labour 2007; Díaz Barrero 2007). According to a report issued by the Alberta Federation of Labour (henceforth AFL), in 2006 Canada admitted more TFWs than the United States did (over 171,000 to Canada and 160,000 to the U.S.) and under the following conditions: scant or nonexistent administrative control; widespread illegal recruitment practices, including unauthorized payments and misrepresentation of Canadian jobs, wages, and working and living conditions; and underpayment, rent gouging, and abusive treatment (Alberta Federation of Labour 2007).9 As in the case of the SAWP, LSPP workers are tied to a single employer for the duration of their contract and repatriated (deported) if dismissed, though unlike the SAWP there exists no systematic oversight on the part of government officials, consular agents, or watchdog organizations. A six-month investigation in the Edmonton, Alberta, area by an AFL “Advocate” documented numerous abuses that went uninvestigated, largely because “Alberta’s employment standards system is complaintdriven.” The Advocate found that “foreign workers are often at a disadvantage because they are not aware of their rights, do not know how to access these protections and can be dissuaded by employers from seeking due compensation.” The Advocate also stated, “Neither provincial nor federal government officials appear to have knowledge of which workplaces TFWs are physically located. If government does not know where TFWs are, there is no way to protect them” (Alberta Federation of Labour

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2007: 7; see Preibisch 2010). This is the future of TFWPs, and it is very much at odds with the post-national citizenship thesis, which might, optimistically, be viewed as a normative basis for struggle or, as Bosniak (2000: 490) put it, “an act of political advocacy . . . a demand for recognition.” In short, post-national citizenship is not an inevitable product of the globalization process, as maintained by Urry (1999), Cohen (1999), Tambini (2002) and others.

Realpolitik and the Rebirth of Temporary Foreign Worker Programs Returning to the introduction of this book and Hahamovich’s discussion (2003) of the “perfect immigrant,” conditions would seem to be ripe for a recrudescence or rebirth of TFWPs: in the Global North, high structural demands for flexible, low-wage labor that cannot be met by rapidly aging domestic populations is unfolding in an ideological climate of widespread public xenophobia directed against migrants; in the Global South, declining wages and scarcely checked, neoliberal-based economic precarity drive people to seek alternatives outside the formal geopolitical confines of the nation-state. Inspired by this apparent complementarity of northern and southern interests and justified by an unshakable confidence in the benefits of open markets, the International Organization for Migration, the World Bank, the United Nations, and other organizations are dedicating resources to the study and design of TFWPs that will purportedly correct the mistakes of earlier programs and produce win-win-win situations for temporary workers, employers, and involved governments (International Organization for Migration 2006; World Bank 2006; Global Commission on International Migration 2005; Ruhs 2005; Martin 2003). Against the skepticism that ruled the 1980s, TFWPs are seen now, variously, as a means to reduce poverty and unemployment in the Global South; generate hard currency remittance streams that stabilize macroeconomic indicators and, when appropriately channeled, contribute to domestic development; transfer technology and technological know-how from North to South; provide economic opportunities to southern nationals without swelling the ranks of permanent migrants or taxing the resources of northern governments; compensate for sectorial shortages in northern workforces, particularly in seasonal agriculture, low-wage service industries (hospitality industry, construction, food processing, and others), and select skilled industries (software development); and enable

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northern enterprises to adapt to highly competitive, globalized markets. The TFWPs form a key element of “managed migration.” And as suggested above, programs of managed migration, such as Canada’s SAWP and LSPP and the U.S. H-2A and H-2B programs, claim benefits for parties up and down the line, from the rural Mexican or Jamaican household to the Leamington, Canada, greenhouse tomato grower or North Carolina cucumber farmer, and with ancillary benefits to producers, consumers, and governments in all source and destination countries through job retention, secondary job formation, hard currency remittances, and cheap commodities. Warnings that TFWPs produce labor market “distortion” and worker overstays—the latter captured by the phrase “there is nothing more permanent than temporary foreign workers”10—have done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for these programs. Labor market distortion, a transparent fact in the case of Ontario’s horticulture industry, is of little concern as growing sectors of 3-D jobs (Dirty, Dangerous, and Demeaning) are being ceded to migrant workers, whether documented or undocumented (Binford 2005b; Levine 2004, 2005; Kandel and Parrado 2005; Mize and Swords 2011). As noted in Chapter 4, overstays and settling out of Mexican SAWP workers have been infrequent to date in Canada because of the careful regulation of the SAWP, the absence of extensive networks of resident Mexicans, and (perhaps) the country’s extreme climate. Overstays and settling out may become more common for participants in Canada’s LSPP, who cannot recuperate the often thousands of dollars they pay private recruiters for helping them obtain jobs that frequently bear little resemblance to the ones for which they applied (Alberta Federation of Labour 2007; Preibisch 2010). In the drive toward deregulation of business practices, neoliberal governments have been reticent to create or maintain large, expensive bureaucracies, institute complex rules, and establish and enforce the checks and balances necessary to protect the human rights of temporary foreign workers, whose numbers, poverty, and desperation render them facile victims of abuse and superexploitation and who are easily discarded and replaced when they protest. The dominant view is one of realpolitik, whereby capitalist governments in the Global North limit the rights—and thus the cost of labor—of TFWs from the Global South in order to ensure high domestic employer demand for their services. For some analysts, governments must choose between small, relatively expensive TFWPs with substantial rights and mass, lowcost programs that provide workers low wages and few rights (Ruhs and Martin 2008).11 The Canadian government’s creation of the LSPP and

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repeated statements that the government will sign no more Memoranda of Understanding with individual countries, as it did (and does) in the SAWP, make clear its preference in this matter. The United States is close behind, although undocumented migration, cheaper yet, historically took precedence over TFWPs, the 1942–1964 Bracero Program being an exception. Recent U.S. government interest in TFWPs is a response to post9/11 security concerns and public anti-immigrant hysteria ramped up by right-wing media and politicians (see Gonzalez 2006, Ness 2011).12 Given the analysis here and elsewhere in this book, it becomes all the more surprising that the UFCW seeks to organize participants in these programs instead of opposing the programs outright (as the United Farm Workers opposed the Bracero Program). Union intervention may be envisioned as an effective short-term political and humanitarian strategy that makes small gains in the working and living conditions of a highly vulnerable workforce and brings the plight of that workforce to the attention of a broad Canadian public. Yet the present and future survival of programs like the SAWP (and in the United States, H-2A and H-2B) will depend on their utility to capital, and that utility is now and will be in the foreseeable future tied to participating workers’ unfree status. One need not subscribe to conspiratorial intimations that TFWPs represent “a calculated plan by capital to lower labor costs by intensifying work and reducing wage costs in a growing number of labor markets” (Ness 2007: 452, emphasis mine)—even if they do have that effect—in order to conclude that they undermine the collective organization of domestic workforces (Butovsky and Smith 2007).13 Moreover, unions such as FLOC in the United States and the UFCW in Canada dedicated to organizing TFWs are structurally predisposed to supporting rather than opposing the programs (H-2A and the SWAP, respectively) that require the foreign workers’ presence (Griffith 2009: 63; Butovsky and Smith 2007). Alison Guernsey stated this well: “By entering into agreements with FLCs [Farm Labor Contractors such as NCGA and FARMS] . . . unions . . . cannot dodge accusations that they are, in part, perpetuating the harmful impact of the H-2A [SAWP, etc.] program on the local workforce” (2007: 318). Raper has stated repeatedly that, despite employers’ claims, the UFCW is not interested in destroying the SAWP but in improving it. Yet how might the UFCW represent both SAWP and non-SAWP (landed immigrant and citizen) workers equally given that the two groups are endowed from the start with such a different bundle of rights? In the United States organized labor has overcome its antipathy for undocumented workers and begun to welcome them into its ranks. Yet,

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[a]t the same time, organized labor deems temporary foreign worker programs detrimental to both workers and the union movement because they undermine both migrant and native-born workers. Put simply, guest workers generally cannot be organized along traditional lines because of the temporary nature of their work without a broader transnational labor union representation. (Ness 2011: 56–57)

As noted repeatedly in this book, SAWP workers are tied to a single employer who must positively evaluate their performance in order for them to continue in the program. Knowing this, employers can and often do drive SAWP workers harder, faster, and longer than citizens or landed immigrant workers, whose mobility in the labor market gives them the option of seeking employment elsewhere. On average, Mexican and other SAWP employees (and TFWs elsewhere) harvest more tomatoes, pick more apples and peaches, weed more rows of carrots, and so on each workday than do domestic workers and often at inferior hourly wages as well. By laboring so intensively they lower the unit cost of production— the labor invested in each unit of product—and generate more surplus value.14 Canadian horticultural employers have anecdotally stated that one Mexican worker does the job of two, three, or even four Canadians, evidence that for those footing the wage bill, the marginally higher hourly cost of SAWP labor compared to domestic labor—factoring in employers’ contributions to transport, housing, recruitment, etc.—is more than compensated for by SAWP workers’ superior productivity. More than any other single factor, this accounts for employers’ growing dependence on guest workers and the resulting labor market distortion; when a critical mass of employers adopts the SAWP, others are economically compelled to do so as well. It also suggests, and strongly, why such programs undermine domestic worker organization and why Canadian employers, rather than wanting to do away with the SAWP and similar programs, wish to see them cheapened, deregulated, and made even more employer friendly. With the LSPP, Canadian employers got their wish.15

Conclusion Gary Cooper, president of FARMS, acknowledged the difficulty of the work when he told journalist Lisa Marr that he was “surprised at how well they do handle it mentally,” and that he “[didn’t] think many Canadians

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could do it.” But in an abrupt bow to choice and the market, he went on to insist that however difficult the conditions, the workers were free to return to their countries of origin: “There are planes that leave every day. They don’t have to stay” (quoted in Marr 2002j). In his impulsive cynicism, Cooper embodies many of the contradictions that mark this system of labor exploitation. He acknowledges that SAWP participants work harder and under more difficult conditions than most Canadians do or could, yet he is unable or unwilling to surmount the conceit, generalized among employers, that SAWP workers are voluntary recruits, detached neoliberal subjects whose social being and social consciousness is unconstrained by prior positioning on larger fields of power. I have argued otherwise in this book. And I have argued that the win-win-win strategy that policy makers and some academics claim as characteristic of TFWPs dissipates once those programs are closely scrutinized.

APPENDIX

The SAWP: Saving the Family Farm or Feeding Corporate Enterprise?

It is frequently claimed that contract labor systems such as the SAWP play important roles in the survival of the family farm, which is taken to be a keystone of rural Canadian community life. Over two decades ago, Larkin characterized offshore labor as “part of the small Canadian farmers’ power to fight against the huge corporate businesses.” “In Canada,” she said, “where the family farm still prevails, 843 farmers employ 5,947 West Indian men who are housed in small groups almost exclusively on the farms of the families for whom they work; and these men interact with the family members on a daily basis” (1989: 13). Larkin portrayed the family farm as a close-knit unit based in agnatic and consanguineal relationships through which honesty, hard work, endurance, and respect for self and other are inculcated and generationally reproduced (81). The local preacher, the general store, barn raisings, and so on are nostalgic images that city dwellers retain of rural life, though few urbanites would wish upon themselves the physical drain, long work hours, subordination to nature, and lack of urban amenities documented by Haythorne (1941: 58).1 In Canada, much as in the United States, the popular imagination conceives of the farm as a (or the) site of preservation of family values and a reminder that there do exist alternatives to the vices of urban life, even if most people are more interested in contemplating than in pursuing them.2 The “corporate farm” and “agribusiness” offer less attractive images. Wall notes that replacing the term [family farm] with agribusiness signifies a change to conducting farming affairs with more emphasis on rational, economic efficiency. In popular terms, the main aim of agriculture is to serve the community, while the main goal of agribusiness is to increase profit margins. . . . Agribusiness . . . refers to the complex of farms, industries, government departments, and financial and research organizations that have an interest in food production. (1992: 25)

The corporate farm and agribusiness index exploitation, labor conflict, and an emotionally cold, streamlined, bureaucratic approach to food production that subordinates the work of crop cultivation and animal husbandry to the economic bottom line promoted by partners, board members, and shareholders. The popu-

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larity of food cooperatives (which buy locally) and weekend farmers’ markets in Canada and the United States—thought of as ways of securing access to better, more nutritious food and of helping small farmers survive—evidence public opinion in this area. Larkin contrasted the two as follows: The “family farming” mode of existence as opposed to that of “business farming” presents a moral stance which categorizes the good and the bad aspects of producing one’s living. “Business farming” is a way of making a livelihood. It is conducted according to the rules of a capitalist economy where the main goal is to make as much profit as possible. Within the “business” sphere of values, it is relationships between commodities that are important. In direct contrast, “family farming” is thought to be a “clean,” “wholesome,” “back-to-basics” way to live, in which farmers are the ones who have “stuck it out” on the farms, while others around them, including their brothers and sisters and often even their own children, have “thrown in the towel” and left for the city. The business of “family farming,” then, is the triumph of a moral system based on family principles over an amoral system based only on economic principles. (1989: 80–81, emphasis mine)

But such dichotomous images—family farm vs. corporate farm—oversimplify a complex reality, particularly in southwest Ontario. Even before the Second World War, the Erie-Niagara region employed more wage workers than the whole of Quebec province (Haythorne 1941: 220). The scale of horticultural operations steadily increased after the Second World War, and the role of wage labor expanded (Wall 1996: 517). Currently, acre-for-acre, southwest Ontario horticulture uses more labor power, at least on a seasonal basis, than any other Canadian region; at the turn of the millennium almost half that labor power was being supplied through the SAWP (Weston and Scarpa de Masellis 2003). In a reversal of the stereotype, Anthony Winson (1996) argued that most Ontario fruit and vegetable producers are, if not full-time capitalists, then at least part-time capitalists, a point that I elaborate on below. The family farm/corporate farm dichotomy also elides the fact that most farming operations, regardless of size and the surface appearance of independence, are integrated into agribusiness operations. If most southwest Ontario horticulturalists are neither noncapitalist nor independent, then much of the historic justification for provision of cheap SAWP labor evaporates.3 In what follows I address these issues. The Social Character of the “Family Farm” The family farm is portrayed as a cooperative household enterprise in which the use of “hired help” is an occasional, i.e., seasonal, practice and supplements rather than substitutes for unpaid household workers. On the family farm, value results overwhelmingly from the labor of the joint owners-operators, that is to say, the family. Such a representation is probably not far from the truth among grain farmers in both the Canadian and U.S. plains, where large tractors and combines— working on a uniform, durable product—make it possible for a single household to work hundreds or even several thousand acres with minimal assistance. But

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with exceptions—tomatoes destined for processing into tomato paste would be one—in horticulture the substitution of machinery for people power has lagged far behind grain farming, especially where the harvest is concerned (Wall 1992: 99–100). Twenty years after Wall made this observation, the situation remains pretty much the same. As Winson noted, “The characteristics of the commodity are essential in determining the technology employed on the farm, especially the harvesting technology, and this latter is what then determines the growers’ final demand for wage labour” (1996: 105). The growing dependence of horticultural growers on hired labor raises an interesting question: How do you characterize enterprises in which the solar year neatly divides into the following two periods: (1) a short, four- to five-month growing season during which hired labor swamps household-based labor; (2) followed by a longer, seven- to eight-month period of farm maintenance, repair, and preparation for the next growing season (reproduction of the means of production) in which household labor predominates? Farm relations “look” pretty capitalist during the first period, in the sense that growers spend much of their time playing the role of “powerful, plantation-like managers” (Larkin 1989: 84); by contrast, relations “look” pretty noncapitalist during the second period, when most hired workers have departed and the owners-operators have no one to manage but themselves! Such an approach to the characterization of household agricultural enterprises is more sensitive to ebbs and flows in labor utilization than are methods based, say, on the year-round ratio of full-time workers to family workers (see Ghorayshi 1987).4 Many fruit and vegetable growers that would be noncapitalist on the basis of the latter method can be categorized as part-time capitalists on the basis of the former approach (Winson 1996). Winson has shown that labor is seasonal on 98 percent of fruit and vegetable farms and that 79 percent of such farms hire six or more seasonal workers (a mean of twenty-two workers and a median of twelve). Despite important differences in the use of hired labor from one commodity or commodity mix to another, the overall result of Winson’s study was clear: The volume of seasonal labour employed to produce these [horticultural] commodities, together with the extended period of its use, would indicate that these should be defined as capitalist enterprises. Here the farm operator’s role in the productive process is necessarily more one of manager and supervisor of labour. The grower here is a capitalist farmer, albeit arguably only a “part-time capitalist,” as his/her counterpart in the food processing industry, where the production process is highly seasonal in character, traditionally was. (1996: 106).

Data from this project reinforce Winson’s results. Half the interviewees claimed to work on farms with more than twenty employees. (The median number of employees was twenty as well.)5 Given that some interviewees probably worked for the same employer—more likely in the case of larger enterprises—it is not possible to determine the percentage of farms in different labor force categories.6 But it does show the enormous heterogeneity within a sector publicly represented by FARMS and others as being small scale and family/household based. Mexican consular personnel claimed in a 2003 interview that of eight hundred Ontario

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farms with Mexican workers, twenty employed more than one hundred workers, accounting for about a quarter of the eight thousand migrants.7 This and other information make it clear that a number of farms inscribed in the SAWP are large, corporate entities with separate headquarters buildings, office staffs, unit divisions, and specialized workers (drivers, mechanics, agronomists, and others). Yet they gain access to an unfree Mexican and Caribbean labor force under the same conditions as do struggling “petty commodity” family farmers. Agribusiness and the “Family Farm” A second image of family farming entails independence and toughness. Farmers rise early in the morning and bed down late at night; they battle the elements and wage war against plant pests; and they are subject to prices over which they have little or no control. This pioneering image, in which farmers poise precariously between disaster and success, is not wholly incorrect. But it elides the manner in which more and more crop production has come to be positioned within a hierarchy of relationships that exert upward and downward pressures on farming enterprises. Most horticultural growers have limited space for the exercise of independent decision making. Take field tomatoes, most of which are processed into tomato paste. Canneries appeared in Ontario in 1881 and by the turn of the century had become widespread in the south of the province. Consolidation began when Canadian Canneries purchased small operations early in the twentieth century. By 1956, when Del Monte bought out Canadian Canneries, Ontario contained around six thousand tomato growers, working an average of fewer than six acres each. Over the next thirty years, most small canners disappeared, victims of a cost-price squeeze that saw farm-gate prices decline 15 percent as processors’ prices rose 47 percent. New high-yield tomato varieties contributed to a more than 200 percent rise in productivity per acre but required ever heavier applications of agro-chemicals. According to Wall, “thousands of farmers were unwilling or unable to continue producing tomatoes under these conditions” (1992: 93). By 1986 only 870 tomato growers had survived to supply a reduced number of canneries “running lines of a continuous process system” (Wall 1992: 97). Like other food processors, the canneries have gained enormous control over day-to-day farm operations: For systems such as this to run efficiently, there can be no delays in delivering the raw product. As the harvest season approaches, processors, whose field agents have been closely monitoring the crop, tell growers when their shipments are due. The grower then has a schedule for spraying ripening agents, for organizing labour and for hauling the crop. Although growers have always had agreements with processors about when to deliver tomatoes, it is only in recent years that scheduling has been so rigid. (Wall 1992: 98)

Tomato processors—indeed, processors of most fruits and vegetables—dictate contracts, despite the negotiating powers of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Marketing Board (OFVMB). Small growers are given low priority by large food pro-

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cessors and find refuge in the increasingly vulnerable small processors. When the small processors go out of business, the small growers often follow (Winson 1990: 392–393). Over the last couple of decades the processors themselves have become increasingly subordinated to retail food chains that use their control over shelf space (and thus retail sales) to squeeze supplier profit margins (Winson 1993). In the United States, Walmart is renowned for using its commercial fire power to bully suppliers into providing merchandise at cut-rate prices, but Loblows and other Canadian retailers pursue the same strategy (1993: 160–183). More recently, supermarket chains have developed and marketed cheaper in-house brands that compete successfully with better-known national brands. Barndt (2008: 141) explains, “Before supermarkets made money by selling the best shelf space to the low- cost national brands; now store-brands get eye-level shelves and account for a quarter of supermarket sales in Canada.” According to Winson, the power of retailers “is probably greatest on products such as processed fruits and vegetables, which are seasonally processed and then carried on inventory for the rest of the year” (1993: 176). Growers are pressured from above by retailers, food manufacturers, and processors to reduce farm-gate prices. However, growers are also being squeezed from “below” by the rising costs of land, machinery, and agro-chemicals (Shields 1992).8 In one of their few remaining options, growers seek access to the cheapest, most productive (i.e., most exploitable) sources of labor power available. In this they have been assisted by the Canadian state. One Ontario farmer made the following point to Sherry Larkin: “ ‘We don’t get paid for the product what we should . . . with the government policy of cheap food and everything else, so therefore our prices are subdued, so we, as a rule, pay a lower wage. So therefore, you tend to deal with the “low lifes.” ’ ” (1989: 57).9 The SAWP was developed so that farmers could continue to pay low wages without having to deal with a transient, unreliable rural work force. But as Weston notes, “In terms of distributional equity, it is not clear why foreign farmworkers and their families should pay for the competitiveness of Canadian farm produce” (2000: 10). The SAWP may contribute to the survival of some small growers who would otherwise succumb to the cost-price scissors.10 But small growers, aka “family farmers,” have not been the program’s main beneficiaries. If, indeed, commercial (and financial) capital now dominates industrial capital, then low farm-gate prices—underwritten in part by cheap immigrant labor—serve as the means through which surplus value is transferred from direct producers to processors/manufacturers and thence to retailers and financial institutions (see Winson 1993).11 The situation turned more difficult for Canadian farmers with the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (1989), the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994), and the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture (1994). Deregulation, reduced government spending and support, privatization of state industries that service the farm sector, emphasis on attracting foreign investment, and the trade and corporatization of agriculture have led some commentators to conclude that “Canada no longer has an agricultural policy; it now has a trade policy” (Roppel et al. 2006: 2, see 14–17). The number of farms continues to fall (a 10.7 percent decrease between 1991 and 2001), the cropped area of the average farm

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keeps increasing (from 147 to 168 hectares between 1991 and 2001), and the capital investment of surviving farms has been rising (Roppel et al. 2006: 19–21). Butovsky and Smith state that farm transformation was especially rapid during the last five years (1996–2001) of that ten-year period, as “the number of farms appraised at less than $100,000 decreased by 58 percent . . . (from 4,730 to 1,995), while the number of farms worth more than a million dollars increased by 38 per cent from 15,050 to 20,580” (2007: 76 n15). Preibisch reported a further 7 percent decline in the number of farms between 2001 and 2006 (2010: 430). Trade is up, as are gross receipts from the sale of agricultural products, but this has not translated into higher net income for farmers. Farm debt reached forty-one billion Canadian dollars in 2001, some 150 percent higher than in 1996 and 224 percent higher than 1984 debt (Roppel et al. 2006: 19–21). Cumulatively, the developments have grave consequences for the health of individuals, infrastructure, and social relationships in rural communities (Roppel et al. 2006: 21–30).12

Notes

Introduction 1. By contrast, illegal, or better said, undocumented, migration, particularly between Mexico and the United States, has been the subject of numerous firstperson studies, likely because of the multiple dangers that undocumented migrants must negotiate in order to enter the United States and the difficult working and living conditions they experience once there. The genre includes works by Mexican and U.S. academics (or academic-adventurers), who accompany migrants on their journey (Bustamante 1997; Conover 1987) as well as exposés focusing on a single migrant’s experiences (Breslin 2002; Thompson 2006). 2. Dependency and distortion—and it seems to me that northern employers become as habituated to, and thus dependent upon, foreign workers as the latter do upon them—represent processes through which migration shapes labor markets as opposed to merely responding to them (Bauder 2006). 3. In evaluating the possible relevance of a program like the SAWP for Australia, the World Bank noted, “The Canadian scheme has been operating for almost four decades and has been subject to extensive study and critique. Canada is a traditional ‘immigration’ country with a legal and political system comparable to Australia and New Zealand. And the Canadian scheme began with the importation of labour from small island states in the Caribbean, providing a useful reference point for the Pacific” (2006: 117). Recent reports refer to “better practices” rather than “best practices” (Fairey et al. 2008). 4. According to Muñoz (1999a: 104), “The increase in the number of petitions made by Canadian farmers for Mexican labour proves that they are satisfied with the Mexican workers. After all, the program responds to the demand for Mexican temporary agricultural workers by the Canadian employers.” 5. Together Alberta and Manitoba never had more than five percent of SAWP workers. The other 95 percent were sent to Ontario (roughly 80 percent) and Quebec (15 percent). As more provinces entered the program, Ontario’s numerical domination has declined to its current level of approximately 65 percent of all participants.

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6. The inland provinces of Alberta and Manitoba and the maritime provinces of New Britain, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia have small horticultural industries with limited growth potential. By contrast, British Columbia is home to a large, dynamic industry that by 2008 competed with Quebec as the number two employer of temporary foreign workers in Canada. Since the SAWP was introduced in British Columbia in 2004, the number of Mexican workers has climbed from an initial 50 to 700 (2005), 1,253 (2006), 2,615 (2007) and 3,765 (2008). The numbers fell slightly to 3,405 in 2009 before recovering somewhat to 3,540 in 2010. In 2008 and 2010 the number of SAWP workers in British Columbia exceeded the number in Quebec; Quebec employed several hundred more SAWP workers than British Columbia in 2009. The six other provinces (discounting Ontario) that participate in the SAWP employed a total of only 2,640 workers in 2010, and no province employed as many as one thousand (Fairey et al. 2008: 16; Human Resources and Skills Development Canada 2011). 7. For a small per-worker fee, FARMS gathers requests and files paperwork with source-country consulates on the growers’ behalf; it also arranges transport for workers between the Toronto airport and participating farms, maintains records, and manages the program on a day-to-day basis. Also, FARMS plays an active role in contract negotiations. 8. Robert Leiken claims that a study from the Investigative Center for High Studies in Social Anthropology in Guadalajara (CIESAS- Guadalajara) showed that “15 percent of the workers fail to return home every year” and that “for those participating five years or more the number climbs to 50 percent” (2002: 21). Such a high rate of workplace abandonment and visa violation would surely have captured the attention of Canadian authorities. Kerry Preibisch and I argue in Chapter 4 that few Mexicans go AWOL, fail to complete their contracts, or attempt to remain in Canada once the contract terminates. Even in the case of Caribbean workers, who are far more likely than Mexicans to have network contacts in metropolitan areas of Canada, the combined cases of “breaches of contract” and “absent without leave” (AWOL) seldom exceed five percent annually. 9. Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) is equivalent in concept to unemployment insurance in the United States. 10. Much work that draws on public documents is on the superficial side and ignores the program’s historical context. On the other hand, several very good theses, both M.A. and Ph.D., have yet to be fully mined for their contributions (see especially Wall 1992 and Larkin 1989, 1998). 11. One recognizes here a very precise formulation of Marx’s dictum that humans make their history but not necessarily as they want. 12. By way of comparison, some communities in Puebla, Veracruz, and elsewhere register migration indices (the proportion of the living adult population with migratory experience) to the United States of 40 percent or more (Massey, Goldring, and Durand 1994; Binford 2010, 2005a; Binford, ed. 2004). Migration to the United States, usually undocumented, has become something of a rite of passage for young males in many areas of Mexico. 13. According to Verduzco and Lozano, the program office in Mexico City has a database containing information on twenty-three thousand nine hundred workers, “those who were active in the year 1993 and those who have been join-

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ing the Program as of that year and are still active, i.e., it does not include workers who entered the Program prior to 1993 and who by that year had left it” (2003: 126). Despite repeated attempts, I was unable to gain access to information in the Mexico City office. 14. I interviewed one person inside a large, broken-down, intercity bus, where he formed part of a small crew replacing the overhead lighting system. 15. None of the interviews were tape recorded. 16. Since the 2003 research, the number of Migrant Worker Support Centres in Ontario has increased and others have been established in British Columbia, Quebec, and Manitoba. The support centers are now staffed by persons from the Migrant Workers Alliance, of which the UFCW is a member. 17. In Canada I did meet one Tlaxcalan migrant whom I later interviewed informally in a restaurant near Puebla’s main bus terminal. 18. Griffith reported that US H-2 workers (contract workers) were much more open and candid when interviewed in Mexico than when they were interviewed at their U.S. living sites: Indeed, he states that “during the course of a single weekend [of fieldwork in the U.S.], I interviewed an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, who freely volunteered the information that she was without legal documentation and a couple carrying H-2 visas from whom extracting information approached a form of ethnographic dentistry . . . The reticence of the H-2 workers reflected the level of control, and concomitant fear, under which they live in the United States, afraid that their interactions with outsiders could get them fired” (2009: 61). Chapter One 1. Most chemical testing of pulque between 1858 and 1909 revealed an alcohol content of around 4 percent (Ramírez Rancaño 2000: 308). 2. Sánchez Bringas notes, “At the beginning of the century, the San Nicolás el Grande hacienda, located in the municipality of Nanacamilpa, produced an annual average of twenty-thousand loads [more or less two thousand tons] of barley, five thousand loads of corn [seven hundred twenty-five tons] and forty thousand barrels of pulque; it also sustained fifteen thousand head of ganado menor [sheep and goats]” (1974: 35). Nanacamilpa is one of three northwest Tlaxcala communities discussed in this study. 3. In 1927 haciendas paid resident workers some .25 centavos, provided them with a cuartillo of corn, and each year distributed a “borrega,” literally a “sheep,” but in this context a coat, shirt, and pair of pants for the man and a lienzo de manta (piece of cloth) for the woman to make her clothing. Weekly workers received the same salary but without the borrega and with the addition of pulque. The main difference between the two groups was that the peón acasillado was landless, while the part-time semanero usually possessed land nearby. But Sánchez Bringas noted that the latter often became transformed into the former if unable to repay loans taken out with the hacienda owner, for which his property had served as collateral (1974: 37). 4. Between 1940 and 1970 Mexican presidents (mainly Ávila Camacho and

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Miguel Alemán) issued 230 certificados de inafectabilidad agrícola for 28,457 hectares, equal to 7.0 percent of Tlaxcala’s total area, “which demonstrates that the remaining haciendas dedicated to grain production did not concentrate as much land as in the twenties” (“lo que demuestra que los residuos de las haciendas dedicadas a la producción de cereales ya no concentraban tanta tierra como en los años veinte”) (Ramírez Rancaño 1991: 166, see figures on 167). 5. After the agrarian reform, 62.9 percent of the cultivated land remained private property, but 57.8 percent of maguey plants grew on agrarian reform land, the reason for the discrepancy being that an inordinate proportion of the maguey grew in tierras de agostadero (grazing land) and cerril (mountainous land) distributed to the ejidos (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 93–94). After 1940 the haciendas altered their strategy by working “a medias” (literally “at halves”) by purchasing maguey plants cultivated by the ejidatarios, then dividing up the aguamiel: half for the hacienda or ranch and the other half for the ejidatario. The hacendado, or rancher, then purchased the ejidatario’s share at prices that he/she determined (94–95). 6. One hectare is equal to ten thousand square meters or 2.48 acres. 7. Around 1970 Tlaxcala had a population density of 107 persons per square kilometer, the fourth highest among Mexican states and the Federal District (Farrell 1977: 83). 8. Ramírez Rancaño dates the closure of Tlaxcalan textile factories as follows: La Trinidad (1968), Santa Elena (1969), La Estrella (1972), San Manuel (1974), San Luis Apizaquito (1961), El Valor y Tenexac (1968) and La Tlaxcalteca (1968) (1991: 206–211). 9. Only about 5 percent of Tlaxcala’s arable land is irrigated. Until it was privatized in the 1990s, the state’s only national irrigation district, District No. 56 Atoyac Zacualpan, contained a mere 6,029 hectares, of which 5,679 lay in Tlaxcala and 350 in Puebla (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 16). 10. According to Ramírez Rancaño (1991: 174), between 1942 and 1948 some 3,017 Tlaxcalans worked in the United States under the First Bracero Agreement, but only 1,486 returned to their communities; the remainder settled in El Norte or relocated to urban centers outside the state. Many Tlaxcalans also participated in the Third Bracero Program, beginning with an estimated two thousand persons in 1957. The figures are probably unreliable, but Ramírez Rancaño recorded three hundred applicants to the Program for 1958—though there were probably more—rising to one thousand two hundred by 1961, one thousand seven hundred in 1962, about two thousand two hundred in 1963, and at least four hundred in 1964. An additional one thousand five hundred persons applied to be Braceros in 1965 (1991: 189). As part of a government-to-government agreement, they were obliged to return to Tlaxcala; yet during their stay in the United States, some of them may have made contacts and remained there. 11. However, the evidence is growing, as students and teachers in and beyond Tlaxcala take a greater interest in international migration to the United States and Canada. With the cooperation of other institutions, the Colegio de Tlaxcala convened the first “Regional Seminar on Tlaxcalan Migration to the United States and Canada” on 5–6 June 2008. A hundred attendees listened to two keynote speeches and twenty-four presentations. It became clear in the course of the seminar that,

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however insignificant international migration may have been historically, since the 1980s it has come to incorporate many households and communities in most of the state’s sixty municipalities. In some communities, such as San Pedro Tlacuapan (municipio of Santa Ana Chautempan) and San Francisco Tetlanohcan, U.S. migration has reached extremely high levels with the consequent production of intense transnational relationships and, in one case, a joint community-civil society effort to develop a Center for Assistance to Migrant Families (Castillo Martínez 2008; García Herrera 2008; Romero Hernández 2004; González Romo 2008, 2007). 12. Nutini and Murphy’s 1959 survey indicated that the average household in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley had tenure rights to about two acres (.81 hectare) of land, upon which it produced an average of two thousand pounds of corn annually, meeting less than half the household subsistence need (1970: 86–87). More recently, one author estimated yields of barley (90-day vegetative cycle) in northern Tlaxcala at about one ton per hectare, local barley (cebada criolla) at 550–750 kilograms per hectare and corn (120-day vegetative cycle) at 550 kilograms per hectare, equal to 865 pounds per acre and thus in line with, if somewhat lower than, Nutini’s 1959 estimate (Sánchez Bringas 1974: 14). 13. The authors define their concepts as follows: Daily migration involves a daily commute to the place of work; weekly migration entails “the worker’s residing for five or six days of the week in or near his place of work”; and seasonal migration “is entirely to places outside the valley, for periods varying from as little as three weeks to as much as a year” (Nutini and Murphy 1970: 91–93). 14. Farrell (1977: 19) stated that when the Bracero Program ended in 1964, “Urban industrial and service employment in the metropolis . . . became the major and almost exclusive pattern of migration.” 15. For instance, the flow of Dutch immigrants to Canada peaked at over twenty thousand in 1952 and 1953, declined for a few years, then rose to twelve thousand in 1957 before diminishing permanently (Schryer 2006: 92). 16. The resource concentration and productivity of horticultural farms becomes clearer when compared with provincial averages: 190 acres of improved land and CAN$75,800 in gross annual sales. While, on average, horticultural farms contained 23.7 percent more improved land than other farms in Ontario, their gross sales were an eye-popping 372 percent higher (Winson 1996: 97). 17. Cucumbers led with 55.5 percent, followed by cherries (38.5), asparagus (34.2), tobacco (34.1) and tomatoes (33.6). Only in the cases of apples (27.1) and peaches (22.2) did wage labor account for less than 30 percent of production cost (Satzewich 1991: 60). 18. Bartra states that between 1970 and 1973 four types of struggles characterized rural areas: the land struggle, agricultural workers’ struggles for higher wages, the struggle for democracy and against political imposition, and the struggle for higher product prices. Overall the struggle for land predominated (1986: 103). Indeed, in Tlaxcala it prevailed to the exclusion of the other three forms of struggle. 19. For example, the Empresa Comunal de Herrería Industrial (Community Enterprise of Industrial Ironworking), inaugurated in San Lucas Ticopilco on 21 November 1972, was designed to train and employ one hundred persons. The plant suspended operations in 1976, reinitiated them in 1982, and closed for good

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in 1988 (Coloca-Rivas 1999: 83–84). Currently, Ticopilco is a major contributor of migrant workers to the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. 20. Indeed, at the time the Canadian government signed the Memorandum of Understanding with Mexico, one Canadian official stated that Ontario farmers were very pleased with the first group of Mexican recruits; he predicted a demand for between three thousand and four thousand five hundred Mexican workers in 1975 (Satzewich 2007: 272)! 21. The story of Tranquilino in Chapter 3 provides one example. 22. No historical study of Mexican government deliberations around the SAWP has been carried out, nor do I know whether the relevant documents are available to researchers. But seen in historical perspective, several features of the program must have seemed attractive to Mexican bureaucrats: First, the Mexican government retained control over labor recruitment; second, Mexican consular personnel maintained an active presence as watchdogs and advocates for Mexican workers, a role they were unable to perform during the Bracero Program; third, the SAWP began small and by virtue of the distance between the two countries did not compromise Mexico’s northern border; and fourth, the program was unlikely to lead to large numbers of undocumented migrants, as did the Bracero Program. To sum up, the SAWP offered a small economic and political advantage without subordinating the government to its Canadian counterpart or diminishing the nation’s international image—or so it must have seemed at the time. See Satzewich (2007: 265–273) for a brief discussion. Chapter Two 1. Wolf discussed four “modes” of power: personal power, interpersonal power, tactical or organizational power, and structural power. Structural power is “power that not only operates within settings or domains but that also organizes and orchestrates the settings themselves, and that specifies the distribution and direction of energy flows” (1990: 586). 2. More than three-quarters of the interviewees in northwest Tlaxcala who answered the question stated that they would return for another season of work with their current employer. More than half (56.4 percent to be precise) of those cited the “good treatment” they received; another quarter opined that they had a “good job.” More ominously, around 10 percent stated that they had “no alternative.” Sixty-five percent of the workers also claimed that they had been invited back for the following season. Any critical analysis of the SAWP must account for these positive evaluations. 3. I thank Marcus Taylor for this phrasing. The previous chapter offered a necessary point of departure for the present one. 4. On Barkin’s views see Barkin (2002) and Hamilton, DeWalt and Barkin (2003). For a summary of the impact of government reforms on rural areas, see Bacon (2008). 5. I will not discuss the recruitment process further except to note that it has been streamlined and decentralized since 2003. McLaughlin (2010, 2009) provides a detailed discussion and analysis of SAWP recruitment in Mexico and

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Jamaica. According to McLaughlin, government recruiters in both countries pursue the “ideal worker.” Yet different histories and social forms dictate significant differences in recruitment strategies: married or in monogamous relationships and usually with dependent children in the case of Mexicans; politically connected, physically strong, lacking a criminal record, and adaptable to Canadian conditions in the case of Jamaicans. McLaughlin observes that many rural peasants/workers from both countries become savvy to the gatekeepers and their demands and seek to satisfy them. They toughen up their hands, lower their heads, and dissimulate about their pasts in order to conform to perceived institutional expectations. 6. This amnesia also contributes to the racialization of Mexican contract workers, essentialized culturally and compared favorably to Canadian workers judged less capable (subjectively if not objectively) of performing stoop labor. See Chapter 4 here and Basok (2002) on employers’ evaluations of workers’ reliability. 7. Innumerable variables may affect the outcome: enterprise size, its economic situation, the depth and valence of personal relations between employer and employee, etc. 8. According to Janet McLaughlin, “In my experience some workers who have surpassed this 3-year limit are still stuck with the same employer, even when they have requested a change, because the employer wants that particular worker to return. I should say that I have noticed this more with women; perhaps their more limited numbers make transfers more difficult” (personal communication to author, 21 June 2008). 9. “Caught between a rock and a hard place.” 10. Mexican consular official, interview with the author, Mexican Consulate, Toronto, Ontario, 29 August 2003. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. 11. See International Organization for Migration Guatemala (2006), Preibisch (2010, 2008) and Brem (2006). The International Organization for Migration sponsored Foreign Workers Program (FWP) pays for housing, which SAWP employers provide cost free (Valarezo 2007). 12. I have changed the name of the farm and of all persons involved, with the exception of Carlos Obrador. By July 2007 Obrador had been transferred up to the Mexican Embassy in Ottawa. 13. The phone conversation took place on a Tuesday afternoon at approximately 5:00 p.m., meaning that the workers, not yet informed of the grower’s decision, would be leaving the farm within ten hours for the morning flight to Mexico City. 14. Davis’s claim that Jesús Antonio ate weeds was apparently intended to boost his contention about irresponsibility, although it also has the effect of infantilizing (and thus subordinating) both the individual and his culture, i.e., “He doesn’t know enough not to eat weeds.” That those “weeds” might have been highly valued herbal medicine in Mexico—and perhaps effective to boot—never occurred to Davis. Mexican migrants to Canada and the United States often arrive with natural remedies or request that they be sent to them. 15. According to Obrador’s records, Davis employed six Mexican contract workers and had used contract workers in the past without having experienced problems of this nature, which is to say that neither Davis nor his employees had previously called upon the Consulate’s services.

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Notes to Pages 56–60

16. There exists a substantial class divide between urbane and educated consular officials on the one hand, and poor, rural workers and peasants on the other. At several points during an interview, a high-ranking career bureaucrat referred to migrant workers as “little children” (niños chiquitos) who were unable to protect themselves, and noted that, “They even call the Consulate when their fingernail hurts” (Aunque les duele una uña, llaman al consulado). He attributed this protective attitude toward contract workers in Canada to a Mexican government effort to assuage the guilt resulting from its inability to provide domestic employment opportunities, for which reason Mexicans have been compelled to look for work beyond the nation’s borders. But characterizing the migrant workers, most of whom are responsible married adults with children, as niños chiquitos may also be a discursive move to legitimize the Consulate’s right to represent them. (Mexican consular official, interview with the author, Mexican Consulate, Toronto, Ontario, 10 September 2003). 17. Carlos Obrador, interview with the author, Mexican Consulate, Toronto, Ontario, 29 August 2003. 18. These examples are taken from field notes in Ontario and northwest Tlaxcala. 19. According to Larkin, Caribbean workers experience the same situation: “Confined to the farms with little time off and no transportation, the West Indian men say they are unable to maintain any control over what they do while they are in Ontario. The liaison officers usually side with the farmers when there are disputes between employers and employees, and the West Indian men have only the farmers to intercede for them if they have problems with people in the community” (1989: 89). 20. Mexican consular official, interview with the author, Mexican Consulate, 29 August 2003. Jamaica’s six liaison officers attended five thousand workers in 2003, making it possible for them to personally meet each contingent of new arrivals at the airport, provide in-house tax return services, and carry out a friendly, i.e., noncrisis-driven, visit to every farm employing Jamaicans, during which officers often resolved simmering conflicts before they boiled over (see Preibisch 2003: 26–7). Some Mexican workers have become aware of the higher level of attention rendered by Caribbean liaison staff. They are less aware that Jamaican consular services are financed by an obligatory 6 percent deduction from workers’ salaries. 21. Mexican consular official, interview with the author, Mexican Consulate, 10 September 2003. 22. Migrant Support Centre, Simcoe, ON, 3 September 2003. 23. I discuss this point in Chapter 7. 24. The story gets more complicated. Enrique claimed that he eventually learned that the money had not been stolen by Víctor but by another employee who escaped detection, but who admitted as much to another worker when inebriated. According to Enrique, “Children and drunks don’t lie” (Los niños y los borrachos no mienten). Enrique also noted that the social turbulence resulting from these incidents convinced his employer to not request him by name the following year, for which reason he was transferred to the farm of La Chinita. Discussion with Enrique (a pseudonym) at the Migrant Workers Support Centre, Simcoe,

Notes to Pages 61–76 209

ON, 3 September 2003. See Mysyk et al. (2008) for other, generally less serious, examples. 25. Griffith documents more generally the prevalence of personal labor relations in agriculture in the U.S. South: “Almost every farmworker we spoke with described ways that they dealt with problems at work on a daily basis with comments that illustrated their propensity to work up through the hierarchy individually rather than join arms with their fellow workers to deal with problems” (2004: 25). 26. A wildcat strike broke out in Leamington in May 2001 in protest of abusive treatment, poorly maintained housing, and a paucity of banking and transport services. About two years later, in April of 2003, a second group of wildcat strikers protested the introduction of a computerized piecework system by a large greenhouse corporation. In each case suspected ringleaders were quickly rounded up and sent back to Mexico. See Basok (2002) and Becerril (2007, 2008). Wildcat strikes and work stoppages may have been more common in the past, especially among Caribbean workers (Satzewich 2007). I deal in greater detail with worker organization and the limits to it in Chapter 6. 27. Kingsolver explains strategic alterity as “a dimension . . . of capitalist logic and practice—through which the paying of low wages or no wages to members of specific groups was justified . . . the practice of shifting between strategic assertions of inclusion and exclusion for the purposes of both devaluing a group of people and of masking that very process of devalorization” (2007: 88, 89). 28. On the material benefits experienced by some long-term participants in the SAWP, see Chapter 5. 29. See Preibisch 2010 and Alberta Federation of Labour 2007. Chapter Three 1. It bears mentioning that Atotonilco was the only community in the sample with irrigated land, a prerequisite for growing vegetables in the dry altiplano. 2. In 1998 Joel worked in Mexico City for several months. 3. In Mexico informal-sector workers, which would include the majority of SAWP recruits, are paid in cash without deductions; they are accustomed to receiving 100 percent of the agreed-upon wage. Although workers received instruction in the program’s rules and regulations, many still seemed confused about paycheck deductions for travel (4.5 percent of gross), income taxes, Canada Pension Plan (CPP), and Employment Insurance (EI). Employers sometimes loan workers food money when they arrive and then deduct this amount from the first checks. 4. Maquiladora wages varied greatly, but three hundred fifty to five hundred pesos weekly for a five-and-a-half-day week (thus roughly sixty-five to ninety pesos daily) represented a reasonably accurate range in 2001–2002. However, between 10 and 30 percent of weekly income goes to pay for transportation and cafeteria lunches, leaving a net daily return of forty-five (minimum) to eighty-one (maximum) pesos. 5. I discuss the Adverse Effect Wage Rate in Chapter 6. 6. According to Griffith, the cost of entering the H-2 program, which encom-

210 Notes to Pages 77–83

passes H-2A and H-2B, varies greatly. He notes, “Several works have shown how labor contractors and subcontractors in general often charge workers for accessing and maintaining employment” (2006: 169). Durand believes that “There are honest contractors who receive their payment from the [contracting] enterprise and only charge for the costs of the visa transaction and travel tickets. But many others collect large sums of money for ‘the favor’ that they do the migrants” (2006: 58). 7. Miguel never considered illegal migration to the U.S. as a viable personal alternative due mainly to the risk of being apprehended by the migra and losing the fifteen thousand pesos charged by coyotes for smuggling Mexicans into the United States. The U.S. dollar underwent steady erosion vis-à-vis the Canadian dollar after 2003, to the point that by 2011 the latter had attained parity and then some with the former. 8. Rural Mexicans refer generically to evangelical Christians as los Hermanos. 9. Thirty to forty pesos daily (for picking corn) was the lowest figure for agricultural day labor recounted by interviewees. Domatilo gave a higher figure of sixty to eighty pesos, comparable to what a person might earn working in assembly plants located in Tlaxcala’s industrial corridors. Even so, field labor is less dependable than factory work and provides none of the benefits, the most important being enrollment in the Mexican social security system. 10. Loading and unloading tobacco kilns is the only agricultural job in Ontario for which SAWP workers are normally paid by the task. Whereas work in tobacco involves tolerating high levels of heat and humidity, especially during the peak harvest season, some seasonal contract workers prefer it because by working at a high level of intensity, a work team can harvest and load a kiln of tobacco and earn a day’s pay in six or seven hours. If the grower has additional work available in open-field tomatoes or ginseng, for instance, contract workers earn additional hourly income. According to Verduzco and Lozano, piece wages are also customary in the harvest of strawberries, but this is not mandated by the contract signed by the workers (2003: 87). 11. Similarly, Domatilo complained that the employer offered more hours to experienced contract workers with whom he (the employer) was familiar. Domatilo viewed such favoritism as an injustice, arguing, “We’re all equal, whether we have worked sixteen years or one year. The work wasn’t distributed evenly” (Somos iguales, los con dieciséis años y los con un año. No fue parejo el trabajo). Whether a worker is newly arrived or a grizzled veteran of many years of Canadian agricultural contract work makes no difference with respect to the hourly wage, given that at the time of these interviews, the contract did not reward seniority. However, returning workers are sometimes offered more hours than newer recruits, especially when work is in short supply and a small percentage receive slightly higher wages in return for their experience, hard work, and loyalty. 12. Marx’s “floating,” “latent,” and “stagnant” subcategories of the reserve army of labor do not translate easily from the conditions of nineteenth-century England to those of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Mexico, in large part because the “general law of capitalist accumulation”—which operates at a global scale—has differential consequences in the centers and peripheries of capitalist development. Corona et al. (2007: 132) estimate that in 2002 Mexico con-

Notes to Pages 85–89 211

tained more than seven million “trabajadores inestables” (precarious workers) selfemployed or working in family enterprises and earning less than one minimum salary monthly) and six hundred twenty thousand “trabajadores temporales” (casual workers) employed a few months annually. 13. It is important to note that the farmer did not force all his employees to work fifteen to sixteen hour days, and according to Manolo only three of the six elected to do so. This is not to say that he did not exert subtle pressure upon them. Some who accepted the “offer” may have believed that turning it down would be punished by a negative end-of-year report to the Mexican MOL. 14. I emphasize—and not for the last time—that what counts as “a dignified life” in material terms has changed over time, even in rural, rainfed agricultural zones of Mexico (see Rothstein 2007: 133). From 1950 to 1980, millions of rural Mexicans relocated to urban areas, where they hoped to gain access to electric power, running water, schools, health care, and other services and secure employment at a decent salary. Now open markets, communications media, and migration itself drive consumer desire, although domestically, reasonably well-paid formal sector employment with benefits is becoming increasingly scarce. Reygadas believes that globalization has contributed to a sense of “disconnection” among poor Mexicans, a sense that “one is outside the highly modern world and all of the realities and fantasies of wealth, prestige, power, diversion, and social relations associated with it” (2005: 500). 15. Macías Gamboa and Reyes Vergara make a similar point in their discussion of the results of a study focusing on international migrants to the United States from communities in Puebla and Tlaxcala: “The findings of the investigation carried out in distinct zones of Puebla and Tlaxcala show that the families of most recent young, married male migrants with children . . . are either in the phases of preschool family (with the oldest child between three and six years of age and the youngest with fewer than three years) or of school-age family (with infant, pre-school and school age children who may reach thirteen years of age). This configures a setting of strong economic needs, especially if one takes into consideration the socioeconomic context and weak job creation in the rural and semiurban localities from which the migrants originate” (2004: 200–201, n. 20, emphasis in the original). 16. In Chayanov’s rural political economy the number of consumers (C) provided a general measure of household need, which had to be balanced against the number of working members (W) contributing to meet that need. The household demographic cycle, which has significant implications for household economy, can be tracked over time via changes in the Consumer-Worker ratio (C/W). The C/W ratio increases with the birth of children, placing added pressure on active workers, who must increase the intensity of their labors in order to provide the product required by a larger number of consumers. Chayanov maintained that first one then another child would be incorporated into household production, resulting in a gradual easing of pressure on resident adults (Chayanov 1966). The economic impact of demographic transformations is indisputable, but the ratio, as calculated by Chayanov, failed to take into account the enormous economic pressures generated by the entry of young children into state educational systems,

212 Notes to Pages 89–91

which in Mexico and other Latin American countries entail expenditures for materials (pens, pencils, notebooks, etc.), school uniforms (which are often changed annually), and various quotas (fees and “voluntary” contributions for school maintenance and repair, patriotic festivities, and so forth). A combination of economic crisis, the extension of basic and secondary education, and lifestyle issues is leading parents in many rural communities to keep their children in school longer than in the past, with obvious economic implications for the households’ direct producers and wage earners (see Verduzco and Lozano 2003: 108–112). Finally, Chayanov thought that peasants have a subjective inclination toward simple reproduction that rules out capital accumulation. They will work long and intensively when productivity is low, but reduce effort under conditions that enable acquisition of basic needs at a lower level of effort. Whereas Chayanov’s C/W ratio serves as a useful complement to Marxist political economy, his theory of peasant equilibrium and antithetical attitude toward capital accumulation has been rejected by Marxists and is not sustained by the economic anthropological literature treating peasant and petty-industrial household-based enterprise (Cook 1984; Cook and Binford 1990). 17. The purchase and installation of materials of the acabado can easily equal or exceed the cost of materials and labor for erecting the basic structure. In rural Puebla, Tlaxcala, and elsewhere, people occupy unfinished structures once they become minimally habitable; in a process that can last years, they finish the interior as their economic situation permits. 18. I studied undocumented Mexican migration to the United States in a longterm (2001–2005) collective project carried out mainly in rural and peri-urban communities in Puebla and Veracruz (see Binford, ed., 2004; Binford and Churchill 2007; Binford 2010, 2005a; Cordero Díaz 2004a, 2004b, 2006; Garrido de la Calleja 2004). 19. Since the summer of 2003, when one Canadian dollar bought seventythree U.S. cents, Canada’s currency has strengthened. By July of 2007, one Canadian dollar exchanged for approximately ninety-five U.S. cents. The revaluation of the Canadian dollar should increase the attractiveness of the SAWP vis-à-vis alternatives. 20. Griffith estimated that H-2A tobacco workers paid recruiters an average of U.S.$126 plus $25–35 for an interview and other money for travel within Mexico. He noted that the use of private recruiters allowed the H-2A program to draw from a broader catchment area than the SAWP but that the private recruitment system was plagued by “bribery and kickback schemes” (2003: 30–31). 21. By 2010 the total cost (Mexican community to U.S. destination) charged by smugglers ranged between two thousand and two thousand five hundred U.S. dollars. 22. In 1997, nine of thirty-two Mexican states (counting the Federal District) each provided one hundred or more contract workers to the SAWP and thirteen states had zero participants. Seven years later in 2004, the number of states with a hundred or more participants had risen to sixteen and every state but Baja California Norte was involved in the SAWP. The SAWP has grown in recent years, in large part due to the program’s expansion to previously nonparticipating provinces. Mexicans have benefited more than Caribbeans from the growth. In par-

Notes to Pages 93–96 213

ticular, Mexico was the sole supplier of the more than three thousand one hundred SAWP contract workers sent to British Columbia in 2008 (McLaughlin 2009). Chapter Four 1. This is the rationale for dividing the labor force in dichotomous fashion between “Caribbean workers,” regardless of their country of origin, and “Mexican” workers. Some growers do differentiate between Jamaicans and Barbadians or Trinidadians, but it is our impression that most employers and practically all nonemployers see only “black” Caribbeans and “brown” Mexicans among the contract worker population. Therefore, our use of “Caribbean” is emic (from the dominant Canadian view) as opposed to etic. Where Caribbean workers see difference— between, for instance, Barbadians and Trinidadians, Afro- and Indo-Caribbeans, etc.—most Canadians of European descent see sameness (see Larkin 1989). According to Ganaselall, “Caribbean people view themselves in national as opposed to racial terms. . . . The farm workers who come to Ontario represent descendants of African slaves, Indian indentured laborers, a mixture of these two races and a mixture of other races. The follow-up research in Trinidad and Tobago emphasized the racial diversity of these men. Men who may look physically Indian or African are not necessarily solely of that racial origin” (1992: 24). See note 7 below for implicit criticism of Ganaselall’s use of the term “race.” 2. The reader will recall from Chapter 1 that Portugal turned down Canada’s offer to join the SAWP. 3. Mexico reached the one thousand mark in 1987, thirteen years after it entered the program. By that year Mexico accounted for 20 percent of workers, indicating gradual erosion of Caribbean labor market domination. 4. Exceptions of employers who draw their workers both from Mexico and one or more Caribbean nations abound. This seems to be more common on large farms where workers of different national origins and, perhaps, sexes, are assigned different tasks. For instance, on some fruit farms in the Niagara–St. Catherines region, Caribbean men pick fruit that Mexican women grade and pack. 5. According to FARMS president Ken Forth, the Canadian government became increasingly unwilling to subsidize the SAWP and intended to phase it out gradually during the early 1980s (personal communication to the author, Kingston, Ontario, 22 March 2007). 6. Southwest Ontario has one of the highest concentrations of golf courses in North America, and many growers avidly practice the sport on a recreational basis. Also, many growers are the descendants of Dutch immigrants and active members of the Dutch Reformed Church (see Schryer 2006). 7. How to talk about this racialization process without insinuating complicity with it poses some problems. The workers are of different national origin though they may vary in terms of self-identified ethnic identity (mestizo vs indigenous, etc., in the Mexican case). They become racialized when they enter a racialized social field, if not before, and they may adopt and act on the racialized identities attributed to them, either because they accept them cognitively or for strategic purposes. For critical social science, races do not exist, though racializa-

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Notes to Pages 97–100

tion as a social process certainly does. It is the effects of that process that we analyze here. In any case, by discussing the ethnic/racial/national dimensions of labor market segmentation, we point to the complexity of this process and the ways it is conceptualized differently by people differentially located within and outside this social field of power. 8. The same belief appears in the literature on contract labor in the United States in the case of a New York apple grower who shifted to Jamaican H-2 (contract) workers in 1996 to avoid an INS raid, and then to Mexican H-2s a year later. The grower explained, “‘From the walk-ins we were getting, we thought the Mexicans were better at stoop labor. The Jamaicans were more suited to fruit’” (Griffith et al. 2002: 55). 9. On average, Caribbean SAWP workers probably are taller and heavier than Mexican SAWP workers. However, mean height and weight merely measure the central tendency of complex distributions. 10. The recruitment of “mixed” groups generally occurs on large farms with substantial numbers of workers. Usually, Mexican and Caribbean workers reside apart rather than sharing a house, trailer, or dormitory. 11. Bourgois treats ethnicity as “an ideological phenomenon: a set of symbolic markers that have been created—or have escalated—into a means of structuring power relations” such that occupational and ethnic hierarchies “feed upon and mutually define one another.” He notes, “The local populations have ‘essentialized’ the ‘objective’ characteristics of the various cohorts of workers in a racial idiom” (1989: x). 12. What is the laboratory situation through which one might hold constant the historical, social, and cultural differences among distinct groups of workers in order to ascertain each group’s natural capacity and propensity to perform specific kinds of tasks? It may be that Mexicans are more efficient at some tasks than Caribbeans, but demonstrating that fact, and more importantly, sorting out the influence of different potential explanations (prior experience? motivational factors? historically based cultural disposition? natural proclivity?) is something else entirely. 13. Most work in greenhouses and much in nurseries takes place indoors and is unaffected (or less affected) by the weather, for which reason contracts tend toward the maximum (average of 6.7 months in greenhouses, 7.1 months in nurseries). These are commodity sectors dominated by Mexicans. Among all the commodity sectors included in the SAWP, tobacco, where Caribbean workers predominate, offers the shortest mean contract season (3.9 months). Binford discusses the implications of these differences in Chapter 5. 14. According to an industry representative, total tobacco production cannot exceed 300 million pounds (136.4 metric tons), although a Tobacco Advisory Committee generally establishes a much lower annual production figure. Each of about nine hundred tobacco growers has the right to grow a certain proportion of the total, but farmers can sell part or all of their quota to others. For instance, in 2003 the Advisory Committee set total production at 94 million pounds, a bit less than a third of the maximum. A farmer holding a maximum quota of 300,000 pounds (.1 percent of the total) was permitted to grow 94,000 pounds, equivalent to 42.7 tons. These numbers simultaneously set tobacco acreage and determine

Notes to Pages 101–105 215

the industry’s overall labor needs (Representative of the Ontario Tobacco Board, telephone interview with the author, 9 September 2003). 15. The number of vacancies represents employer requests for workers. They exceed the number of worker arrivals because some workers, currently around 14 percent, transfer from one grower to another once they have completed their contract. The rules governing transfers are described in the FARMS information booklet (see FARMS 2007: 14). Recently, FARMS has sought to increase the use of transfers in order to provide more workers with longer contracts. Transferred workers represent a slight cost savings to those who hire them since the two employers split the cost of one airfare. 16. That is to say, such beliefs are not “doxic” in Bourdieuian terms. Bourdieu defined doxa as “that undisputed, pre-reflexive, naïve, native compliance with the fundamental propositions of the [social] field” (1990: 68). The social field in this case is an economic field, and among the propositions that mark it out as such are those referring to different factors of production: land, labor, and capital. 17. Overall, 52 percent of Tlaxcala interviewees reported that their last employer spoke Spanish either “very well” (muy bien) (15 percent) or “a little” (un poco) (37 percent); the remaining 48 percent reported that their employer spoke no Spanish at all (nada). Employers able to communicate only basic work commands would be unlikely to be able to follow the complex double meanings and elusive references of colloquial peasant speech. For one example of this speech in action in Mexico, see Torres (1997: 168–192). 18. The breadth and depth of these networks may have been overestimated by both officials and researchers. One of Ganaselall’s informants stated that, “‘Ah here since March. Ah feel like ah going crazy is only from de field to home to bathe, cook and sleep. If somebody could get us a bus we could make our food de night before and pay we own way, say to see de Niagara Falls or something like dat. It not human mon, to treat people like dis; it real hard.’” The author comments that, “This man’s sentiments about alienation and cabin fever were acknowledged by the majority of farm workers, except those who had other friends or relatives living in Canada” (Ganaselall 1992: 172). The average Caribbean migrant may live further from towns than the average Mexican and, despite some evidence to the contrary (Wall 1984), most do not appear to travel much beyond the immediate area or develop social relations that transcend those with other SAWP farm workers (Russell 2003: 92–94; Larkin 1989: 36). While AWOLS are proportionately higher among Caribbean workers, the majority likely return home as opposed to slipping into Toronto or another large city (see Ganaselall 1992: 157). Still, many more Caribbeans than Mexicans possess the network contacts required to remain in Canada. 19. The 2006 Canadian census registered a Mexican-origin population of 49,925, which did not count 13,933 temporary foreign workers, basically SAWP participants (cited in FOCAL 2009: 8). 20. Statistics Canada registered 4,370 Mexicans in Toronto, 4,330 in Quebec, 3,785 in Vancouver, 535 in Hamilton (ON), 480 in St. Catherines–Niagara (ON), and 405 in London (ON) among urban areas in proximity to rural and peri-urban areas with critical masses of SAWP employees (Mueller 2005: 41, Table 6). (It is worth noting that the Mennonites arrived in Mexico from Canada following

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Notes to Pages 105–111

an earlier, original migration from Germany, making their return to Canada a kind of reverse migration—albeit several generations later. In Mexico they reside mainly in Chihuahua and other northern states.) Another way to get a handle on the issue is to note that of every ten thousand native residents in the home country, 460 Jamaicans compared to 4 Mexicans resided in Canada in 2001. The Canada-dwelling Jamaican population was numerically about three times higher than its Mexican counterpart in 2001, but more than one hundred times greater in relation to domestic population. This gives a rough idea of the difference in likelihood—and this without taking class, ethnic/religious (Mennonite) or spatial (rural-urban origin) factors into consideration—that a Mexican as opposed to Caribbean SAWP worker would have a family member, relative, or friend, etc. living full-time in Canada. 21. Whereas we emphasize comparative differences in AWOL rates of Mexican and Caribbean workers, it is important to keep in mind that overall rates are low, particularly compared to other TFWPs (see Preibisch 2010: 415). 22. The effect of a rising number of AWOLS or contract breaches depends on the total number of foreign workers. The number of Caribbean AWOLS grew 225 percent between 1994 and 2001, but for that same period the percentage increase relative to the total number of Caribbean employees was a lower 121 percent. 23. A few Tlaxcalan SAWP participants might have migrated to work in irrigation districts in northern Mexico or to the United States, but their principal domestic destination (for those with domestic migratory experience) has been the Federal District and its environs, and the main occupational sectors have involved construction-related employments, factory work, and service provision. Tlaxcalan interviewees mentioned 29 periods of migratory work as jornaleros (agricultural day laborers), representing only 20 percent of 145 migratory episodes. But Becerril notes that female SAWP workers assigned to cultivate and harvest strawberries in Ontario and Quebec were recruited from Irapuato, Guanajuato, an important strawberry-growing area (2003: 8; 2007: 163). 24. Once the employer has decided to recruit from one or more countries, he/ she may then troll for workers by strategically using the evaluation system to retain “good” workers—the ones judged to be the fastest and most reliable—and discard the rest. Over several seasons the grower attempts to assemble an ideal work force (Larkin 1989: 86). The workers are treated like fish: the large (i.e., fast, reliable) ones are “keepers” and remain on the boat (farm); the small ones (less productive, less tractable) are thrown back into the ocean. 25. Even before the recruitment of SAWP Jamaican workers in 1966, government officials were expressing a preference for Mexican over Caribbean workers. Satzewich speculates that “[I]t is possible that they saw the latter [Mexicans] as being less visible and ‘racially’ closer to the majority of the dominant Canadian population than Caribbean workers. It may also have been based on the belief that ‘Spanish’ [i.e., ‘Mexican’] workers were better able to withstand the autumn weather. According to the Assistant Deputy Minister of Labour ‘a considerable number of these people come north to Michigan every year and . . . they perform on the whole quite satisfactory work’ ” (1991: 172). 26. This employer metes out better treatment than most. She pays veteran workers above the program minimum and dispenses annual bonuses, which can

Notes to Pages 112–114 217

reach several thousand dollars when the business does well. The workers reside in a small trailer at the back of her portly, two-story Tudor house, but in 2003 she was planning to construct a bunkhouse in order to recruit a larger number of Mexican workers in the future. These workers are aware that they have it better than most. Perceptions of and beliefs about racialized difference make it possible for her to rationalize the partial inclusion of Mexican workers—she allowed one worker to live in her house in 2003—with the exclusion of Caribbean ones. 27. Many rural towns are less ethnically homogeneous than in the past, particularly those located near important regional cities such as Toronto, Hamilton, and others. Rural areas in Ontario and elsewhere have been subject to an in-pouring of former city dwellers on a quest for peace in a bucolic rural countryside or, alternatively, seeking affordable housing. On the other hand, some European-Canadian migrants, at least in the case studied by Barrett, stated that they left Toronto in order to avoid contact with Africans, Asians, and other minority groups. Barrett unexpectedly found that in contrast to the long-term residents or “the natives,” who tended to be ethnocentric (“a condition that sometimes evaporates when exposed to the objects of one’s imagination”), “[s]ome of the white newcomers . . . tended to be racists, their attitudes already hardened by their previous experiences in the city” (1994: 19). 28. Bauder notes how SAWP workers are differently represented in the Ontario news media according to whether they are inserted in “the space of the farm” or “the space of the community.” In the former, “Workers are depicted as desirable, even irreplaceable, labor,” while in the latter case they are often represented as “social misfits and criminals” (2006: 180, 181). Bauder concludes that “[a]t the farm/community scale, the economic contribution of offshore workers as labourers and consumers is valorized. At the same time, the media express concerns about the threat to the community from the presence of foreign workers. This local scale facilitates an ideology of economic exploitation and social exclusion” (182). 29. Wall recorded a similar set of beliefs in the Flamborough area during the 1980s: “Mexicans are thought to be ‘safer’ than Caribbeans in terms of possible sex with producers’ wives and daughters. Rumour has it that more than one producer has lost his wife or daughter to black farmworkers. . . . There appear to be no accounts or rumours about similar events with Mexican farmworkers” (1984: 82). 30. Caribbean SAWP workers married a Canadian resident or citizen in one of every 233 contracts over the course of the nine-year period. By contrast only one of every 16,902 Mexican contracts led to matrimony. In order to avoid social activity on the shop floor or in the field, some growers mix Spanish-speaking Mexican women with English-speaking Jamaican men to head off “the simple fraternization aspect” (Preibisch and Hermoso 2006). 31. The historical relativity involved in these discriminations (docile Mexican homebodies vs. aggressive Caribbean “sex machines”) is suggested by the shift in the eastern United States in the 1970s to “ ‘docile and diligent’” Jamaican contract farmworkers from Puerto Ricans, whom employers believed insisted on “onerous contracts” and formed a “difficult workforce.” Lurking beneath the racial/ethnic characterizations was the fact that Jamaicans (but not Puerto Ricans) were deport-

218 Notes to Pages 117–120

able and arrived in the United States exclusively as single, male workers (Cohen 1987: 182–183). Chapter Five 1. As Callinicos notes, Sen, along with other representatives of egalitarian liberalism, argues implicitly from within the world capitalist system (2000: 132); critics of development discourse themselves, analytically at least, argue from outside that system, from the perspective of a world that has yet to be made. Sen manifests an optimism about the possibilities of reducing various forms of unfreedoms (and the generally positive implications of such reductions for development), while the latter seem unable to imagine that good might come out of any development project. Finally, Sen has a broad conception of development as part of a more general social process, as opposed to discourse analysts’ focus on actors’, agencies’, and institutions’ declared development agendas. 2. This means that whereas I acknowledge the relevance of the critical position adopted by Escobar (1991, 1988), DuBois (1991), Ferguson (1994), and others, I also agree with Edelman’s assessment of the discourse-oriented approach: “Recognition of this vast human tragedy need not imply uncritical acceptance of the accuracy or validity of much of the quantitative data that has become ‘naturalized’ and serve to justify the existence of the entire ‘development industry.’ But what is striking about the post-modernist critics of ‘development’ is how frequently they exclude from view both the affected people and the relevant macroeconomic and social indicators. They thus end up trivializing the day-to-day experience and aspiration of those who suffer by either ignoring their grinding poverty, by carping about the bureaucrats and social scientists who attempt to measure it, or by locating it and all efforts to reverse it at the level of an elite discourse. Despite these scholars’ frequent exaltation of ‘civil society’ as a panacea for the ills wrought by ‘development,’ a discourse-centered approach to power can lead to blanket cynicism about even innovative efforts for change” (1999: 9). 3. I am decidedly not arguing that capitalist development is a zero-sum game, as much as that may seem to be the case sometimes. Furtado’s (1961) conception of “dependent capitalist development” is preferable to Frank’s “development of underdevelopment” (1967). “Development,” at least the capitalist form of it, occurs within capitalism, and according to contemporary social relations, broad swaths of the population may (or may not) benefit. Such a perspective does not deny the social contradictions that accompany that process and that sooner or later contribute to crises that erase or erode earlier gains. 4. About two-thirds of the interviewees remained active in the program, which is to say that they migrated during 2001, the contract year immediately prior to the interview. A small proportion of the 18 percent of interviewees who made their latest migration in 1999 or 2000 may have received permission from Mexican authorities to step down for a year or two. 5. In calculating these figures I eliminated three extreme cases from either end of the distribution. 6. When work on the farm to which they have been assigned winds down,

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some SAWP workers obtain transfers to other farms in need of workers in order to extend their contracts and earn more money (Verduzco and Lozano 2003: 70). Transfers must be approved by HRSDC, FARMS, and the Mexican representatives. According to Ken Forth, FARMS has been seeking to increase the number of transfers so as to extend the work period of those with short contracts (personal communication to the author, Kingston, Ontario, 22 March 2007). 7. Corn is the principal crop in all three communities, usually sold for cash, consumed by the household, and/or used to fatten livestock. The degree of commercialization may vary from one community to another. Reyes Guzmán reports that 60 percent of the corn produced in Atotonilco is sold as nixtamal (corn dough) or to regional tortilla factories (2006: 139). He estimates that on average a hectare of rainfed land there yields two tons of corn—higher than the estimated one thousand two hundred to one thousand six hundred kilograms per hectare average yield in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley (Eakin 2006: 107)—valued at fifteen hundred pesos per ton or three thousand pesos total at local prices. But the monetary investment in corn production averages 3,571 pesos per hectare. This results in a net monetary loss of 571 pesos per hectare, or 286 pesos per ton. According to Reyes Guzmán, the Procampo government subsidy of 975 pesos per hectare reverses the situation, generating a net positive return of 202 pesos per ton (Reyes Guzmán 2006: 181). However, Reyes Guzmán did not valorize the estimated fifty-seven days of unpaid household labor that go into producing a ton of corn there. Doing so puts corn production well into the red, even with the government subsidy. Residents of Atotonilco and most other highland areas of Tlaxcala produce corn (1) to secure access to tasty, high-quality cornmeal; (2) to protect the household against unpredictable market scarcity and price inflation; (3) to provide employment for a household labor force which has a low opportunity cost given depressed local and regional labor markets; and/or (4) for forage (stalks and leaves) sold in local markets or fed to farm animals (see Eakin 2006: 110). Much of the field labor in Atotonilco is carried out by females and, when available, children. For a discussion of “NAFTA, Corn and Mexico’s Agricultural Trade Liberalization,” see Henriques and Patel (2004) and Zahniser and Coyle (2004). Many articles in the two-volume work edited by José Luis Seefoo offer detailed discussions of the dilemmas confronted by contemporary Mexican corn growers (2008a, 2008b). 8. Because the households of older workers with more trips to Canada tend to be large, the difference declines somewhat when household size is taken into account. Thus the households of workers with fewer than six trips contained an average of 2.4 persons per room compared to 2.1 persons for the households of migrants with six or more trips. 9. Currently (May 2011), cell phone ownership and use is ubiquitous in rural Mexico. 10. Nursery owner, interview with the author, St. Catherines, Ontario, 27 August 2003. 11. Underpayment for officially recorded work hours is rare. Employers are required to provide workers with a precise accounting of hours worked, gross pay, and itemized deductions each payday. A copy of the pay slip must be forwarded to the Mexican Consulate. Employer theft of minutes, common in industrial situa-

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Notes to Pages 124–128

tions (see Marx 1967: 239–243), also occurs in agriculture when timekeepers start the clock late and stop it early (see DeWind et al. 1977). But I have no information suggesting systematic time theft in the SAWP. Most complaints about payment have to do with the large number and amount of deductions, some of which workers claim not to understand (or to agree with). 12. There exists no obvious justification for using six trips as the point for differentiating the categories. The precise division is intuitive and based on evidence that early trips are used to pay off debts, make up deficits, and secure basic needs and that saving and, especially, productive investment become increasingly possible later on. 13. It remains to be seen whether in Mexico portions of remittance income are “drained off ” into other households with which the remittee sustains strong social and economic obligations, as Griffith (1986b) documented for Jamaican H-2 workers cutting sugarcane in Florida. 14. Speaking of the value of labor power, Marx stated the following: “If the owner of labour-power works today, tomorrow he must again be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been formed. In contradistinction, therefore, to the case of other commodities, there enters into the determination of the value of labour-power a historical and moral element. Nevertheless, in a given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer is practically known” (1967: 171). The last statement is much more problematic now than it was in the midnineteenth century. 15. Based on his study of Caribbean H-2 contract workers cutting sugarcane in Florida in the 1980s, McCoy concluded that the evidence “confirms that the opportunity to seasonally migrate, even on a repeated basis, raises the migrant’s standard of living but it fails to improve his earning capacity in his own society. The only means for maintaining the higher standard of living is to remain in the migrant stream. . . . In analyzing the effects of employment in the Florida sugar industry on the West Indian migrants and their societies, one is struck again by the inherent contradictions of seasonal labor migration. On the one hand, it is important to the welfare of the individual worker, his family, and the larger sending society; yet, it does not seem to constitute for them, individually or collectively, a path out of underdevelopment” (1985b: 43–44). 16. This result suggests a certain level of desire on the part of landless rural workers/peasants to obtain secure access to a minimum amount of land but little drive to accumulate additional amounts. Griffith (1983) made a similar observation in his analysis of Jamaican sugarcane harvesters working in the U.S. H-2 program in South Florida in the 1980s.

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17. Land can also be leased out in rental or sharecropping arrangements. 18. Only 11 percent of cultivable land in Tlaxcala was irrigated in 2000 (Eakin 2006: 25). 19. Over the last decade, substantial funding has been made available to researchers by U.S. foundations and Mexican government bureaucracies interested in knowing how remittances can be used to stimulate rural economic development. Posing the question this way discourages examination of the full range of obstacles to productive investment of remittances and encourages a focus on the full range of available opportunities. Governments, foundations, and others in North, Central, and South America manifest a fascination with the large and growing (until the recent global financial crisis) amount of annual remittances which could, according to those governments, foment rural development throughout the Americas—if only the proper combination of carrots and sticks is put in place. 20. According to Basok, 51.3 percent (79 of 154) of migrant workers interviewed in Leamington, Ontario, and 34 percent (34 of 100) interviewed in San Cristóbal, Guanajuato, “reported having invested money in their children’s education” (2002: 132–134; 2000: 86). Because males answered the questions and females were charged with managing remittance monies, Basok thought that the figures probably underestimated the reality (2002: 133–134). 21. Currently the story is being played out by Mexican migrant parents in New York and other cities, albeit under much more difficult economic circumstances than those confronted by Europeans who immigrated to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. For a discussion of the complexities of analyzing migrant economic prospects in a changing urban economy, see Smith 2006. 22. As a result, Mexico is transformed into a primary site of reproduction, and Canada becomes the primary site of production, insofar as most of the income used to maintain the Mexican household is generated there. However, it must be kept in mind that the work of stay-at-home household members is indisputably productive and may be critical to the survival of the household in its given form, especially in those cases in which contract workers remit less than the mean amount, whether because of a lack of work; illness; expenditure on personal needs, wants, and desires (alcohol, prostitutes); or some other reason. Finally, Canada is also a site of reproduction, economically speaking, because a significant portion of a worker’s net income goes for the purchase of food, clothing, recreation, and perhaps other items required to ensure the daily replacement of labor power expended at the point of production. The general logic of the human capital position was stated clearly by Acosta, Fajnzylberz, and Lopez, the last two of whom worked at the World Bank: “Through its effects on human capital, remittances can have lagged effects on household income and consequently on monetary defined poverty indexes. For example, if children in recipient households accumulate more (or better) human capital than otherwise similar kids, then remittances can also be expected to positively affect long run growth and hence long run poverty levels” (2007: 23). 23. They note that workers with nine or more seasons in Canada included “a greater proportion of workers who did not go to school” and that “more than half the workers who have only three years of schooling belong to this group” (Ver-

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duzco and Lozano 2003: 108). Migrants with less migratory experience tend to be younger and to have had access to educational opportunities that were not available at the time older migrants attended school. 24. There exist many noneconomic benefits to education that are not taken into consideration here. 25. The first-order literal meaning of palanca is “lever.” The social extension retains the mechanical sense of a pole, stick, crowbar, etc. used to pry open something resistant to unassisted effort. Thus in this context I have translated the word as “leverage.” Socially speaking, palanca can be employed to obtain access to resources as varied as employment, bank loans, prompt treatment of bureaucratic matters, cancellation of fines, dinner reservations in exclusive restaurants, etc.— even admission to graduate programs. 26. Exceptions abound. In his magisterial Casi Nada, John Gledhill (1993) discusses how rural ejidatarios in Michoacán mobilized contacts with state functionaries in the ejido sector when they later relocated to Mexico City. Gledhill analyzes these contacts and the resulting palanca as one of the more enduring benefits of ejido membership. 27. The information was supplied by Jonnie Lucero, a sociology student in the M.A. program of the Social Science and Humanities Research Institute, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Lucero was given access to social, demographic, and economic information on all 734 regional employees of the chain store. 28. The figures are deceptive, given that very poor and poorly educated people cannot afford not to work, whereas many college graduates remain with their parents for an indefinite period. Moreover, the fact that the article was titled “Áreas humanas son semilleros de taxistas” (Humanities and social studies are seedbeds of taxi drivers) cannot be divorced from the Education Secretariat’s (SEP’s) campaign to channel college students away from anthropology, history, law and civil engineering and into physics, biology, computer science, etc. 29. Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn of the Pew Research Center report that the U.S. economic crisis was accompanied by a reduction in the number of Mexicans immigrating to the United States but that there is “no evidence of a recent increase in the number of Mexican-born migrants returning home from the U.S.” (2010: iii). 30. For a poignant example, see Álvarez (2006: A20); also see Fitzgerald (2009). 31. Indicative of the U.S. dispersion of Mexicans was the recent opening of a Mexican consular office in Little Rock, Arkansas. As of late 2011, the Mexican government had forty-five consulates in the United States. 32. According to Preibisch, “Attempts by growers to physically separate migrant workers from the community are accompanied by intentional avoidance by residents. On Fridays, merchants ‘warn the shoppers in town not to come in on those nights because it’s going to be time for the agricultural workers’” (2004: 218). 33. Formerly SAWP workers began to trickle into Ontario in February and returned home by the end of October or early November. In recent years, some

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have arrived as early as January, while others have departed as late as December 15 (Verduzco and Lozano 2003: 56), presumably in the greenhouse vegetable and flower sectors, where work continues year-round. Still, the late summer–early fall fruit and vegetable harvest registers the peak SAWP employment. 34. Wage workers are both free and unfree: free to move about the labor market, seeking employment where and with whom they will; unfree because their lack of ownership of means of production mandates that they sell their labor power to someone (Marx 1967: 167–176). H-2A and SAWP contract labor are special cases of the general principal. In them the wage worker (or small peasant caught up in a process of proletarianization) “voluntarily inscribes” him/herself in a contract labor program and “accepts” to work for the person to whom he/she is assigned for the duration of the contract. The social complexity of their situation arises when we problematize concepts such as “voluntarily inscribes” and “accepts” (see Chapter 2 and Cohen 1987). 35. Psychological stresses are particularly great in the case of single and divorced mothers whose ability to work in Canada depends on their having someone trustworthy in Mexico to care for their children (Preibisch and Hermoso 2006). 36. The results reported here were confirmed in a 2004 study of the same communities (Arana Hernández and Rodríguez Maldonado 2006: 28–29). 37. Interview with the author, St. Catharines, Ontario, 5 September 2003. 38. Hennebry recounts the example of a grower who gave a Mexican worker permission to return to his community in order to attend to his ill spouse, in danger of dying following a difficult childbirth. Unable to contact FARMS in time, the grower made emergency arrangements and sent the worker on his way. In retrospect, he stated that he got “an earful from FARMS, and the Consulate too,” which claimed that he was in breach of contract. “But what was I supposed to do, keep the guy here while his wife dies?” (quoted in Hennebry 2007: 6). 39. Hirsch observes that rural social relations in Mexico respond to more than migration: “Mexico is a moving target,” she notes, “and those very values that are so often cast as traditional, in contrast to the modern United States, are in fact highly contested and in the process of profound transformation” (2003: 208). Schooling, mass media, and a rising age at marriage have played important roles in these changes (82). What Raymond Williams referred to as “emergent” practices and subjectivities are present in the domestic sphere (1977: 123–124). These may be eventually suppressed or co-opted or coalesce into conscious alternatives to currently hegemonic models of male dominance in rural areas (see Churchill 2004). Hirsch is careful to point out that the companionate marriage remains just as socially constructed as respect-based marriages, which is to say that it should not be conceived as “liberating” in any general, ahistorical sense. Rather, companionate marriages represent different ways in which women and men struggle over and perform gender inequalities. They are forms of relations that, even as they offer women the prospect of greater emotional pleasure, may also be more fragile, since men who have bought into the companionate ideal may feel justified in breaking off a relationship that no longer provides the high level of emotional satisfaction that they have come to expect. 40. Twenty percent of the subjects in the sample worked in Quebec during

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their last migration (which may have been earlier than 2001 if they had previously retired or been expelled from the program), i.e., 5 percent higher than the average percentage of contract workers sent to Quebec during the 2000–2001 season. 41. Raymundo mentioned that it is very difficult to remain in Canada and that those who wish to do so must find a Canadian citizen willing to marry them. The most expensive manner involves a pact with a Canadian woman in which the migrant pays her a fee of between two thousand and four thousand Canadian dollars for the service. Later they divorce, but this does not affect the migrant’s right to stay in the country. It is possible that Raymundo was contemplating precisely such a step at the time of our interview. 42. Recall that Atotonilco, Nanacamilpa, and Sanctorum were selected for study precisely because they were among the principal sources of SAWP participants in Tlaxcala. 43. Verduzco and Lozano reported 207 workers from Sanctorum registered in the SAWP for 2002. The same calculation for Atotonilco (population of fortyeight hundred and an estimated 165 participants) and Nanacamilpa (eleven thousand inhabitants with 188 participants) gives much lower per capita remittance figures of $115.16 and $57.25, respectively. 44. Participants must accumulate 120 months of work in Canada in order to be eligible for a pension; this is equivalent to twenty-four years of five-month contracts. Canada Pension Plan contributions are registered only in those cases in which workers file income tax returns, whether they owe taxes or not. Once retired—or having been retired—from the SAWP, a worker can claim 70 percent of the pension at age sixty and a full 100 percent at age sixty-five. (Field notes, Migrant Workers Support Centre, Simcoe, Ontario, 3 September 2003). 45. The seventy million cell phones in use in Mexico in mid-2008 swamped the country’s twenty million land lines. 46. I offered critical assessments of the migration-remittance debate in Binford 2008, 2003 and 2002b. 47. Of course exceptions exist, and the Canadian press makes far too much of them (see Bauder 2006). 48. Among other requirements, Ontario Ministry of Health guidelines stipulate that bunkhouses contain a minimum usable floor space of eighty square feet per person, that bunks must be at least twelve inches above the floor and separated from one another by a minumum of eighteen inches, and that each bunk must be provided with thirty cubic meters of air space (Ontario Ministry of Health 1999). Legally, then, a grower can accommodate as many as fifteen workers in a twelvehundred-square-foot bunkhouse, the size of a “starter home” in the United States. Given that workers with long contracts may spend six months or more in such crowded conditions—albeit not considered crowded by the provincial health ministry—one should not be surprised to find that personal conflicts sometimes get out of control, as noted in Chapter 2.

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Chapter Six 1. The epigraph is from DeWind, Seidl, and Shenk 1977: 25. 2. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) separated the H-2 program of temporary unskilled workers into H-2A (agricultural workers) and H-2B (nonagricultural workers). The programs differ most fundamentally in that H-2B workers, many of whom are employed in the hotel and hospitality industries, crab picking, tree planting, etc, receive lower wages, out of which they must pay for their own housing (see Griffith 2006). 3. Griffith explains that the weak union movement among southern farm workers contributed to the survival of the British West Indies (BWI) program in the wake of the termination of the Bracero Program: “Part of the success of the BWI program was that labor union organizing in southern agriculture had been weak since the decline of the Southern Farmers’ Tenant Union, which was most influential during the years prior to World War II but lost ground during the war years. With the exception of one successful campaign in Florida citrus, United Farm Workers had little success in organizing southern farm workers, many of whom were African American . . .” (2003: 16). 4. Carl Hiaasen develops a trenchant critique of the politics of “Big Sugar” in Florida, with passing mention of TFWs, in his entertaining novel Strip Tease (1985). 5. Malkin (2007b) reports a decline to 650 member growers in 2007, probably a response to a combination of federal elimination of tobacco subsidies (see Kingsolver 2007) and the successful organizing campaign of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (discussed in this chapter). Eury has made no effort to recruit in the Caribbean. 6. Between 1988 and 1998, the number of Caribbean H-2A workers declined from 14,145 to 4,365, while the number of Mexicans increased from 2,499 to 21,969. Mexicans increased their participation from 15.0 percent (1988) to 83.4 percent (1998) (Durand 2006: 56). By the 2007–2009 period, total H-2A numbers had grown to fifty to sixty thousand, with Mexicans filling 90–95 percent of the positions; Jamaica was not even among the top ten participating countries (Global Justice Alliance 2010). 7. The numerous steps involved in obtaining certification (application, recruitment of domestic workers, housing inspection, INS assessment, etc.) are summarized in United States General Accounting Office (1997: 40–41). As of 1988 the “H-2A Program Handbook” was ninety-six pages long and contained eleven appendices (United States Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration 1988; also see Martin 2007: 37–40). Griffith (2003) compares H-2A and SAWP recruitment procedures. 8. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was dissolved on 1 March 2003 and its functions dispersed among three agencies of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, one of which is U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 9. In a lengthy 1999 article published in the St. Petersburg Times, journalist Anne Hull stated that Del Alamo had twelve satellite offices “scattered across Mexico” and that each Mexican paid a US$120 recruiting fee, of which $85 went

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to Del-Al Associates and $35 to the local recruiter (Hull 1999a). U.S. labor law prohibits charging workers for these services, but Del Alamo collects the fees in Mexico where U.S. law does not apply. Most of the small number of H-2A workers whom I interviewed in rural Tlaxcala stated that recruiters charged five thousand pesos (around five hundred U.S. dollars at the time) but that a portion of the money was reimbursed midway through the contract. 10. Guatemala offers North American employers an apparently ideal workforce. The rural population is overwhelmingly composed of Mayans who speak any one of more than twenty languages and are attempting to recover from a thirty-six-year-long civil war (1960–1996) that resulted in more than two hundred thousand deaths. Despite the Mayan’s active protagonism during the war, the writings of David Stoll (1998, 1993) and others present indigenous Guatemalans, incorrectly (see Manz 2004), as a relatively peaceful lot who became caught “between two armies”—the army of the left (urban ladino guerrillas) and that of the right (the Guatemalan State). 11. The three recruiters identified by informants as operating in Tlaxcala likely form part of the network of enganchadores organized by Del-Al Associates, Manpower of the Americas, or both. 12. Until recently, most discussion of H-2A in the public domain was heavily weighted toward journalistic and Internet sources about the North Carolina Growers Association, which has been investigated by human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, 2000; the Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid of North Carolina 2002, n.d.) and journalists (Hull, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c; Glascock, 1999; Ward, 1999). Eury (1999) crafted an acerbic reply to a series of articles published in the Charlotte Observer in late October and early November of 1999. 13. Previously two clauses in the contract limited tenancy rights. Following vociferous protests in 2000 by the Farmworker Justice Project of the Institute for Southern Studies, DOL lawyers ordered the elimination of one of these clauses but left the other in place. Hence contract workers still lack tenancy rights (see SmithNonini 2002: 78). The SAWP contract contains no such clause, but it doesn’t have to. In Canada, proprietors have extraordinary control over their property and those dwelling upon it, and they exercise that control at their discretion. 14. I have attempted to systematically identify this legal assistance organization as the Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid of North Carolina, or LANC for short. Different actors refer to it as “Farmworker Legal Services,” “Legal Services” (or “Servicios Legales” in Spanish) and perhaps other names. 15. LANC has lost cases too. They sued to terminate male-only housing on farms employing H-2A workers, but lost when the courts decided that family housing was not the “prevailing practice” as defined under H-2A program regulations (Glascock 1999: 6). Also, the NCGA and the conservative National Legal and Policy Center brought a complaint against LANC for sending a team to Mexico to advise H-2A workers there (National Legal and Policy Center 1999, 1998). 16. A copy of LANC’s booklet, titled “Cómo Sobrevivir el Contrato H-2A en Carolina del Norte” (How to Survive the H-2A Contract in North Carolina), can be found on the Internet at http://www.Isnc.org/Programs/FWU/pdf%20files/ H-2A2002.pdf. The forty-page, Spanish-language handbook is written in large

Notes to Pages 153–154 227

print. It informs H-2A workers of their rights and provides some basic guidelines by means of which they can determine whether they are being paid properly. A dozen pages are taken up with calendars listing the days of the month and a series of columns in which the worker can record the time he/she entered and left work and calculate the number of hours of labor less mealtimes. It also lists LANC’s tollfree telephone number and promises, “All calls and consultations are confidential” (Servicios Legales de Carolina del Norte 2002). 17. In the next chapter I note how a similar anti-union message was issued by Guatemalan embassy personnel to Guatemalan workers laboring in Quebec. 18. Photographs of the interior of the warehouse and the mock façade appeared in Yeoman (2001: 42) and the New York Times (Malkin 2007b: A3). 19. Fear threads its way through the entire history of H-2A and H-2B, as well as predecessor programs. Wilkinson records how tightly knit knots of Caribbean sugarcane workers quickly dissolved at his approach in the early 1980s (Wilkinson 1989: 32–33, 108–109, 116, 157–159); two decades later, Griffith found that some workers were reticent to speak about their experiences even in their home villages because a Del-Al contractor had told them that they would be replaced if they did so (Griffith et al. 2002: 124–125). 20. In 2001 the AEWR varied from a low of $6.60 per hour in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee to a high of $8.17 per hour in New York and the New England states (Connecticut, Rhode Island, etc.) (United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Labor Affairs, Office of the Chief Economist 2001). During 2001 North Carolina’s AEWR of US$7.06 per hour was about 35 percent higher than Ontario contract wages when exchange rate differences were taken into account. However, by 2007 the real difference had been reduced by half as a result of a weakened U.S. dollar. As of 2009 the AEWR was substantially higher compared to eight years earlier: $9.34 per hour in North Carolina (32.3 percent above 2001 levels) and $9.41 per hour in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee (up 42.5 percent compared to 2001) (United States Department of Labor 2009). In 2008 the Occupational Employment Statistics Survey replaced the USDA Farm Labor Survey as the basis for setting the AEWR, resulting in a one dollar average reduction in worker wages. Under the Obama administration, the government returned to the USDA Farm Labor Survey in September 2009 (United States Department of Labor 2010). 21. The three-quarters guarantee is applicable only to employees who remain on the farm through the end of the contract. This sets up a Catch-22 for the workers because it presumes that workers can support themselves through several weeks or even months of idleness with the expectation of a big check at the end of the contract. But what happens if the employer refuses to settle accounts and pay for the downtime? And how are dependents in Mexico, who count on remittances, supposed to survive while this drama unfolds far to the north? Finally, the calculation of the three-quarters guarantee leaves much to be desired. My reading of the handbook, which is still in effect, has it that three-quarters refers not to days so much as to hours worked during the contract period. Hence, if the worker is contracted for eight weeks at 40 hours per week, the total is 320 hours, of which the employer must pay for at least 240 hours, whether or not they are actually worked. If workers obtain a lot of weekly hours during the peak of the contract season, the

228

Notes to Pages 154–160

“excess”—those above the average of 40 hours weekly in the above example—can be held over and used to “fill in” the missing time during slack or idle periods. The regulation reads that “. . . the worker may volunteer to work more than the specified hours for a day or to work on his/her Sabbath or to work on a federal holiday. In such cases, the hours actually worked may be counted toward meeting the three-fourths guarantee” (United States General Accounting Office 1988: I-83). The scission between seasonal accounting mandated by the U.S. government and the strategies that rural Mexican migrants use to manage their household economies makes it possible for employers to fulfill the letter of the regulation and yet “churn” the H-2A population. 22. A larger study of H-2A workers revealed that they tend to live in trailers or decrepit farmhouses: “In general, the housing seems to differ little from much of the housing we have encountered among farmworkers across the country, despite the more rigorous rules applied to employer-provided housing for H-2A workers. The primary difference is in its guaranteed availability” (Griffith et al. 2002: 93; see Hahamovich 2011: 236). 23. Due to a shortage of inspectors, only sixteen thousand of North Carolina’s one hundred fifty thousand agricultural workers reside in inspected housing. But twelve thousand of those sixteen thousand are in the H-2A program. However, “The housing standards are minimal, and despite having stove and beds, I have collected many histories of workers who slept on the floor and cooked over a wood fire” (Smith-Nonini 2002: 69). She notes that in 1996 the North Carolina Department of Labor (NCDOL) received only 198 complaints alleging chemical exposure, of which 61 resulted in write-ups for noncompliance and 41 in fines. The average fine was $370, well below the $500 maximum that the NCDOL is allowed to mete out under the law. By contrast, homeowners faced a maximum fine of $5000 for misuse of pesticides (1999: 15). 24. Griffith et al. observe that the same fear led Caribbean-origin workers to collude with Florida sugar producers in the underpayment of wages. The level of productivity required to earn AEWR salaries was so high that few workers, if any, would have been capable of obtaining them. Workers allowed timekeepers to reduce reported work hours so that the recorded hourly income would fall within government guidelines (2002: 23). 25. Smith-Nonini (2009) provides an excellent example of workers who phoned in a complaint to the LANC office one day in September 1999 only to withdraw it shortly thereafter because “ ‘the rest of our companions arrived and they don’t agree and now everyone is against us.’ ” 26. In 1978 Campbell Soup wielded this argument in response to FLOC calls for meetings with growers and food processors “to discuss the farmworkers’ conditions” (Barger and Reza 1994: 61). When FLOC initiated a strike action against tomato farmers supplying Campbell and picketed their fields, Campbell ordered farmers to mechanize the harvest, evidence of direct intervention in the growers’ operations (64–65). 27. Wall offers a precise discussion of the transformation of production in the Ontario processed tomato industry during two decades from 1970. Writing in the early 1990s, she noted that “virtually all elements in the labour process are manipulated to suit the needs of processors who profit from this additional control

Notes to Pages 161–165 229

on their input costs,” for which reason “the function of capital is taken up by the processor rather than the growers/employers who become part of both collective labour (when they drive the harvesters, they add to the surplus value component of the product) and collective capital (they carry out the processor’s demands).” Wall concluded that the processor’s ability “to manipulate activity on the farm site throws into question the designation of ‘capitalist’ for the tomato grower” (1992: 191, 192). 28. Transnational organizing can be dangerous, particularly where it threatens the livelihoods of those involved in human trafficking. On 9 April 2007, unidentified persons broke into FLOC’s Monterrey office and bound and beat to death Santiago Rafael Cruz, who was monitoring the recruitment practices of Manpower of the Americas, which supplies workers to the NCGA (Malkin 2007a). 29. Internet sources from 1999–2000 mention between one thousand and one thousand one hundred growers affiliated with NCGA (Ward 1999; The Common Sense Foundation 2000). Recently some growers have dropped out of the NCGA because of declining tobacco acreage linked to the phase-out of federal price supports; others, unwilling to absorb the visa and transportation costs negotiated by FLOC, are shifting to H-2A contractors based in Virginia with no links to NCGA (Smith-Nonini 2009) or to non-H-2A workers contracted through farm labor contractors (Griffith 2009: 65, n. 8). Hill reports that the NCGA is charging farmers about $950 per worker (2008: 328–329; see Griffith 2007: 84). 30. Mexican migrant workers in British Columbia pay 6 percent of their gross pay for housing, up to a maximum of CAN$450 per season, although employers pay the full cost of return airfare (Brem 2006: 17). The British Columbia portion of the program has expanded rapidly, overwhelming the local Mexican Consulate, which is inexperienced, understaffed, and generally unsympathetic to contract workers. For a critical examination of the situation of immigrant and migrant farmworkers in British Columbia, see Fairey et al. 2008 and Hanson, Otero, and Preibisch 2006. 31. Farmworkers in British Columbia were not covered by the provincial Labour Relations Act until 1975 (Shields 1992: 250). 32. The Agricultural Relations Act passed by the NDP “gave year-round farm and horticultural workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, but it prohibited strikes or lockouts. It also provided for a structured process of negotiations and, as a last resort, arbitration to resolve disputes” (Mann 2002; see Wall 1996). 33. In 2003 the UFCW brought additional court cases: first, on the basis of “equity under the law,” it challenged the exclusion of Ontario agricultural workers from the Occupational Health and Safety Act; second, the UFCW challenged the Unemployment Insurance Act, which required contract workers to pay into Employment Insurance (EI) but denied them benefits (because they become “unemployed,” their work visas expire, and they are returned to their home country when the contract terminates). The UFCW withdrew the first case when the provincial government agreed to rewrite the Occupational Health and Safety Act to include agricultural workers; it withdrew the second on discovering that many migrant workers were able to apply for and receive parental leave benefits under EI, and that the amount disbursed on their behalf was roughly equivalent to the amount

230 Notes to Pages 165–172

paid in (TML Daily 2004; Stan Raper, personal communication with the author, Kingston, Ontario, 22 March 2007). From a few hundred thousand Canadian dollars at the beginning of the decade, claims approached the ten-million-dollar mark in 2007, with accumulated claims equal to twenty-two million Canadian dollars (United Food and Commercial Workers 2009: 10). 34. In Appendix 1, “The SAWP: Saving the Family Farm or Feeding Corporate Enterprise?” I argue that the SAWP provides little or no targeted relief for Ontario’s remaining family farmers. 35. According to Preibisch: “The [Global Justice] Care Van is a coalition of community and labour groups committed to supporting and enhancing the rights of migrant agricultural workers [that] began operations in 2001 with funding from the Canadian Labour Congress and three unions: UFCW Canada, the Canadian office of the United Steel Workers of America, and the Canadian Auto Workers. The group’s initial activities entailed organizing a campaign involving staff and volunteers across the province to document the working and living conditions of migrant agricultural workers in Canada, presenting their findings to the Minister of Labour in the 2001 National Report on Migrant Farm Workers in Canada” (2004: 227). 36. The information on hours of operation refers to the fall of 2003. 37. The Simcoe staff knew all Mexican consular officials by name as a result of multiple dealings with them. 38. Raper portrays the Support Centres as “educational and advocacy based” and claims, “We have not tried to sign one union card with migrant workers” (TML Daily 2004). 39. The information refers to the summer of 2003. Some centers may have changed location since. 40. The UFCW does not place all its “organizing chips” into the Support Centres, which are, despite their strategic locations, inaccessible to many migrants. UFCW organizers also go where migrants congregate in order to hand out information and advertise the centers. That means churches (such as St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake) and flea markets (e.g., the market known as “Las Segundas” located in Jordan Station). 41. Ken Forth, personal communication with the author, Kingston, Ontario, 22 March 2007; Mexican consular personnel, interview with the author, Mexican Consulate, Toronto, Ontario, 29 August 2003; Carr 2002; Raper 2007. 42. Mexican consular personnel, interview with the author, Toronto, Ontario, 29 August 2003. 43. I visited centers on the following dates: 22 August and 3 September 2003 (Simcoe), 29 August and 11 September 2003 (Bradford), and 14 September 2003 (Leamington). 44. Former Frontier College volunteer, interview with the author, Puebla, Mexico, summer of 2005. Some Frontier College volunteers conduct literacy classes in UFCW Migrant Worker Support Centres. 45. Some efforts at inclusion have clear ulterior motives. A few Dutch Reformed churches, such as Vineland Free Reformed Church (Vineland, Ontario) and the Heritage Reformed Congregation (Jordan, Ontario), located in the Niagara fruit belt, have also developed outreach activities, but principally as a step

Notes to Pages 172–181

231

toward religious conversion. Hence, the distribution of Bibles following a soccer game and barbecue at the Vineland Church demonstrated to one of the organizers that “fields ripe for harvest are closer to home than one might think. . . . For the members of the local church who have organized the outreach, it’s a first-time opportunity to see their missionary in action. It’s a small glimpse of what it might be like on the frontlines in the mission field in Latin America” (Zwiep n.d.). As Preibisch notes, “Churches that have made special efforts to reach out to migrant workers have a variety of motivations” (2004: 224, see 2007b). 46. Mexico is decidedly not the site of a singular “Mexican culture” (nor is it clear what might be meant by “Canadian culture”), particularly in a region with a significant population of Mexican Mennonites, who are Canadian citizens but speak low German and Spanish but often not English. 47. Mexican Independence Day is September 16, but in 2003 the sixteenth was a workday. 48. The master of ceremonies encouraged the assembled throng to dance, but few workers elected to boogie in public. I counted a handful of female migrants in attendance, compared to around four hundred males. 49. Fieldnotes, Leamington, Ontario, 14 September 2003. By 2004 St. Michael’s, apparently under pressure from Leamington growers and the municipal government, canceled the UFCW lease and, despite a UFCW offer to purchase the property, tore down the house and constructed a parking lot (Gabriel and Macdonald 2011: 63). 50. During an informal interview with the author in 2003, Raper suggested that thirteen workers might distinguish small (family) from large (corporate) farms (St. Catherines, Ontario, 6 September 2003). But as I discuss in Appendix 1, most Ontario fruit and vegetable farms, including those employing, say, eight to ten seasonal workers for an average of five months each during the growing season, fall into Winson’s “part-time capitalist” category (Winson 1996), and many of these farms are positioned toward the lower end of commodity chains dominated by corporate processors and retailers, whose control over the process of production enables them to rake off most of the surplus value (see Barndt 2008). Chapter Seven 1. Preibisch has recently produced astute analyses of the growing flexibilization of farmwork and the use of TFWPs to spread labor flexibility to nonagricultural sectors (2008, 2010). I discuss some of these programs in this chapter. 2. Some transnational connections, such as those established and nurtured by migrants in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere, entail limited influence and reach. These migrants participate at a distance in social, political, and economic affairs in their communities of origin, even as they claim rights previously limited to citizens in their places of destination (Smith 1998; Coutin 2007; Goldring and Krishnamurti, eds. 2007). 3. The social exclusion/social inclusion approach developed as an alternative to exclusively economic constructions of poverty. European social scientists in France (first) then elsewhere in the European Union argued that poverty is

232 Notes to Pages 186–189

but one among many forms of social exclusion (Silver and Miller 2003). The approach has gained increasing attention in Latin America (Saravi, ed. 2006). By placing economic poverty as one among other forms of social exclusion, none of which is ascribed precedence over the others, the social exclusion/social inclusion approach parallels New Social Movements theory, for which social class becomes one among many sites of positionality and struggle. Indeed, social exclusion could be viewed as the basis for many if not most such movements, for women, people of color, the poor—anyone but middle class white people in the United States— might feel in one or another sense and to a greater or lesser degree excluded from full participation in society and organize themselves on the basis of that exclusion. 4. “Before undertaking a sudden return because of a loss of employment, Mexican migrants in the United States seek other work, whether in the same economic activity in the same sector or in another, and whether in the same regional labor market or whether they migrate to the labor market of another region. The costs of returning are high” (Alarcón et al. 2009: 205). A 2009 Pew Hispanic Center study recorded a large decline, from 2006 to 2009, in the number of Mexicans crossing into the United States and a relatively constant reverse flow (Passel and Cohn 2009). By 2010 the total number of Hispanic migrants dwelling in the U.S., two-thirds of whom come from Mexico, had declined (Passel and Cohn 2010). 5. Highly educated doctors, engineers, teachers, and others receive significant concessions to immigrate and a fast track to regularization. However, professional gatekeeping organizations tend not to validate foreign degrees and work experience (Shakir 2007), for which reason landed immigrants are often denied the opportunity to practice their specialties without lengthy retraining and internship. 6. In British Columbia, SAWP employers are allowed to deduct from workers’ paychecks up to CAN$550 to cover the cost of housing workers (Preibisch 2010: 415). 7. A 2006 report on the state of the IOM program, issued by the Guatemalan Embassy, highlighted the anti-union bias of government consular authorities and the strategies employed to warn workers away from associating with UFCW organizers: “Canadian labor unions in Canada have tried to persuade Guatemalan workers to join them. They trick workers by telling them that if they join the union they will receive increased benefits from the employers. In some cases, workers pay up to CAN$40.00 for their membership in labor unions. The intervention of the Consulate with regard to this issue is very important. When workers arrive in Canada, the Consulate has to inform them of the existence of labor unions, warning them with regard to the fact that these organizations will invite them to join them and will charge workers for paperwork the Consulate would carry out free of charge. A constant communication between workers and the Consulate is the best way to prevent workers from being tricked and from joining labor unions” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guatemala, C.A. et al. 2006: 26). 8. The Low-Skill Pilot Project is also known as the Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training (NOC C and D). NOC stands for National Occupation Code, with NOC C referring to “Level C—Intermediate and Clerical” and NOC D to “Level D—Elemental and Labourers.” Multiple and changing terminologies that refer to the same empirical referent sow confusion, and perhaps that is the object. In any case, HRSDC reports that the three low-

Notes to Pages 189–193 233

skilled Canadian TFWPs—LSPP (NOC C and D), the Live-in Caregiver Program, and the SAWP generated 92,431 TFW positions in 2007, rising to 129,423 in 2008, then declining to 79,003 in 2009, doubtless a consequence of the economic crisis. The many different occupations included in NOC C and D give the LSPP enormous potential scope for expansion. Indeed, the LSPP accounted for more than half of all low-skill TFW positions in 2008 (66,460 of 129,423) (see Hennebry 2010: 64). 9. Managerial, professional, and skilled TFWs accounted for 35 to 40 percent of all Canadian TFWs between 2007 and 2009 (calculations from figures in Hennebry 2010:64, table 1). 10. See Martin 2001b & Martin and Teitelbaum 2001 on this point. 11. According to the “rights versus numbers” argument, policy makers confront a choice of large-scale programs that restrict workers’ rights or small ones in which the rights more closely approximate those of citizens (Ruhs and Martin 2008). The message is clear: “You can’t have it both ways.” H-2A and especially the SAWP exemplify relatively small programs that offer TFWs an array of rights and protections: contract guarantees, free housing, subsidized transportation, and in the case of the SAWP, direct source country involvement in recruitment and providing (a degree of) oversight of working and living conditions. The Canadian LSPP, recently renamed the Pilot Program for Occupations Requiring Low Levels of Foreign Training, and various proposals put forth during George W. Bush’s second administration to provide visas to several hundred thousand Mexican workers on one-time, three-year work permits exemplify the high numbers-low rights approach which synchronizes with neoliberal efforts to reduce government involvement in the economy and reduce or eliminate most regulatory standards in order to incentivize private investment, production, and job creation. 12. The ever-pragmatic Jorge Castañeda, foreign minister for several years under President Vicente Fox (2000–2006), argues that any new amnesty program will have to be accompanied by a large, heavily restricted TFWP in order to garner the required votes in the U.S. House and Senate (2007: 168–194). 13. Butovsky and Smith argue that “social unionism” as advocated by Canada’s UFCW and Chávez’s United Farm Workers Union presents no challenge to the capitalist system, predicated as it is on “bourgeois trade union consciousness,” defined as “an ‘economistic’ outlook which limits workers’ struggles to an incremental improvement in the terms and conditions of the sale of labour power within the framework of capitalism” (2007: 73). 14. If the use of cheap, foreign, temporary labor is generalized in an industry, then competition drives down the cost of the product to the benefit of consumers. In such cases, SAWP workers subsidize the reproduction of the Canadian working class, softening the impact of wage stagnation or reduction in nonagricultural sectors. In short, they play an important role in the Canadian government’s domestic cheap food policy. 15. Whereas the evidence remains anecdotal in the case of the SAWP, it is more solid for H-2B tree planters in the U.S. Southeast studied by Saratly and Casanova, who noted the following: “In interviews, many forest labor contractors stated that they themselves had been tree planters when they were younger. Most stated that in a given day they could plant 600–800 trees on an hourly wage. H-2B guest

234 Notes to Pages 195–197

workers plant as many as 4,500 trees per day on a piece-meal basis. Some companies have implemented a 2,000 tree per day minimum. If a worker does not meet this quota within 2 weeks, he is fired and sent back home. The productivity level has been raised to a bar so high that all the contractors stated that they could never hire American workers again” (2008: 107). The authors concluded, “With increased productivity, it is much cheaper, even with the expense and paperwork associated with applying for H-2B visas, to hire guest workers” (107). Finally, in a trenchant analysis in Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism, Immanuel Ness states that “U.S.-born workers contend that guest workers erode working conditions for all by speeding up the process of work and contributing to higher levels of unemployment” (2011: 8). Appendix 1. Haythorne remarked, “Most people who have lived on farms have experienced at least one or another of the attractions of the country. It may be the feeling of independence, the health-giving qualities of the open air, the pleasure of products from the field or the cow, the satisfaction of manual work.” But he also notes that “it is easy to overemphasize these elements in farm life: to forget the long hours of labour, the weary stretch of winter, the frantic efforts to save hay from rain or fruit from frost, the lack of household comforts, and most of all the formidable difficulty of marketing cash crops so as to ‘make the farm pay’” (1941: 57–58). Mechanization and the extension of urban amenities to rural areas have alleviated many discomforts for contemporary Canadian growers, but weather and price fluctuations remain concerns, and for most family farmers long hours of hard, physical work remain the norm. Indeed, SAWP contract workers from Tlaxcala often commented admiringly on the strength and perseverance of employers who labored beside them in the fields. 2. Today it is common in the United States for African American parents in Chicago or New York to send troubled children to live with relatives in small-town Mississippi or North Carolina, but many small, rural towns in the U.S. South now harbor urban-style gangs. Escape, it seems, is nowhere to be found. 3. That is not to say that other justifications have not been offered or cannot be found. It has also been argued that without the SAWP, Canadians would have to pay more money for their fruits and vegetables and that absent the SAWP many Canadian farms would go under and unemployment would grow both among farming populations and among employees of upstream (e.g., equipment supply firms, fertilizer companies, and the like) and downstream (e.g., food processors) industries. 4. Based on materials gleaned from the 1981 census, Ghorayshi argued that 93.7 percent of Canadian farms were petit bourgeois, based on their hiring fewer than five person-years of labor annually. For Ghorayshi’s petit bourgeoisie employer, “The organization of the farm is not bureaucratized and there is no intermediary between employer and employee. They interact on a personal basis and control is exerted through formal face to face interaction” (1987: 361). This may

Notes to Pages 197–199 235

be the case, despite the fact that petit bourgeois farms are integrated into the market through their participation in commodity production, which “gives the petit bourgeois farms a capitalistic dimension even if no labour is employed on these units” (1987: 367). Capitalist farms were most common in fruits and vegetables (3.3 percent) and poultry (2.0 percent), where they accounted for 30.7 percent and 27.1 percent of sales, respectively (364). She concludes, though, that the growing scale of farming does not mean capitalist domination (367). 5. Ten workers laboring for five months each (the average contract) translates to 4.2 person-years of hired labor, usually compressed into a six- to seven-month season. Fifty SAWP workers with the same average contract accomplish 20.8 person-years of labor time during the contract season. Even with three-month contracts, twenty workers accomplish more work during their limited time in Canada than the annual work carried out by all but the largest farming households. Where more than 50 percent of the value generated by a production unit derives from wage labor, that unit should be treated as “capitalist,” even if it does not appear as such to the naked eye (Cook and Binford 1990). 6. If one hundred contract workers labored on one farm and another hundred were divided equally among twenty farms (five seasonal workers on each), then fully half the workers would report working for a large, probably corporate enterprise, despite the fact that said enterprise would represent less than 5 percent of all production units. Thus Becerril reports that 43 percent of Leamington-area Mexican SAWP workers were employed in just twelve of the largest greenhouses (2007: 162). 7. Mexican consular official, interview with the author, Mexican Consulate, Toronto, Ontario, 29 August 2003. Of course, one hundred workers is a very large number. The interviewee did not offer a more detailed breakdown. It would be interesting to have information on the total number of hired personnel, including Canadian residents and citizens, working on farms involved in the program. 8. Land prices have skyrocketed in recent years in the climatically mild and rich-soiled Niagara-St. Catherines area, where fruit orchards, nurseries, and wine groves compete for land with real estate interests promoting vacation homes and tourist markets. 9. By “low-lifes” the farmer was referring to Canadians, many of whom apparently move in and out of agriculture and between rural and urban areas; he was not referring to Mexicans and Caribbeans on SAWP contracts. 10. It is possible, however, to overestimate the contribution of low SAWP wages to the survival of small farms. Ellen Wall used the Whole Farm Survey database to estimate changes in the distribution of Ontario farms under two wage increase scenarios: a 10 percent increase in wages and a 20 percent increase in wages. She concluded that “despite the claim that farmers cannot afford pay increases for their workers, we find that substantial raises have a minor effect on changing the numbers of farms in each income category. The main exception to this is for the two smallest groups—those with net farm income of CAN$50,000 or less. For them a twenty percent wage increase would mean that six to fourteen percent of the farms would disappear from their original category” (1996: 523). 11. It seems questionable, therefore, that SAWP wages “are set to a large extent

236 Note to Page 200

by commodity prices observed in international markets” (Greenhill and Aceytuno 2000: 8). How would the authors explain the uniformity of SAWP wages across commodity sectors? 12. Because they refer to the national level, the statistics cited should not be taken as precise indicators of either the overall situation in southwest Ontario or any particular commodity sector. Greenhouse production of cucumbers and whole-pack tomatoes, the nursery industry, and other sectors in which the product that comes off the farm is ready for consumption (as opposed to requiring additional processing) have considerable room to maneuver. Some growers in these areas have done quite well over the course of the last decade, as their rapid expansion indicates. They probably have more bargaining power with wholesalers and retailers, for which reason they may retain more of the surplus value generated by paid and unpaid labor.

References

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate photos, t indicates table, and f indicates figure. abuse, 4, 7, 40, 51, 56, 115, 148, 156, 171, 187, 189, 191; by Yals Beard, 78, 156 academics, 10, 17; and criticism of SAWP, 45 accidents and injuries, 8, 51, 52, 54–55, 58, 77, 84, 87, 91, 170, 174 accumulation, 33, 117, 118, 132, 185, 210–211n12; by dispossession, 5 Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), 76, 153, 156, 227n20, 228n24 African Americans, 235n2; incarcerated, 186; workers, 147, 148, 149, 225n3 agostadero (grazing land), 24, 204n5 Agrarian Reform Ministry, 36 agribusiness, 195, 196; and family farm, 198–200. See also business farming Agricultural Employees Protection Act (AEPA), 165, 182 agriculture, 41; commercial, 160; corporatization of, 199; decapitalization of, 163; rain-fed, 35, 42, 72, 211n14, 219n7; small-scale, 35, 42, 128, 129, 163, 196 Agriculture Workers Alliance (AWA), 183 agro-chemicals, 198, 199

aguamiel, 22, 23, 204n5 Alberta, Canada, 189–190, 202n6; and grain farming, 27; and Labour Relations Act, 164; SAWP in, 1, 8, 201n5; and stock raising, 27; unions in, 163 Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), 189 alienation, 63, 91, 184, 215n18. See also boredom; SAWP workers, exclusion of, from Canadian society anthropology, 11, 14, 20, 170 antidevelopmentalists, 117 anti-immigration, 2, 185, 192 apples, 44, 147, 150, 205n17, 214n8; and Caribbean workers, 96, 97t, 100, 101f, 114; and Mexican workers, 102, 129; and stagnation, 100, 114; and UFCW, 176 Arón, 79–80; as favoring undocumented U.S. migration, 90, 156 asparagus, 205n17 Atotonilco, Tlaxcala, 14, 38, 56, 68, 69, 70, 74, 76, 80, 120, 142; and corn, 219n7; and family relationships, 139; and irrigated land, 209n1; SAWP participants from, 91, 92, 99, 224n43; undocumented migrants from, 90

264 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

Australia, 7; and competition for migrant labor, 34; and H-2A, 151; and SAWP, 201n3 AWOLs, 56, 104, 105, 106t, 107, 202n8, 216n18, 216nn21,22. See also H-2A program, and abandonment; SAWP, and contract violations Barbadian workers, 111, 213n1 Barbados, 7, 39, 111; and competition for SAWP, 52, 93; and H-2 program, 148; limited opportunities in, 63 barley, 22, 203n2, 205n12 Basok, Tanya, 171, 172, 179 beans, 23, 28, 48, 108; price controls of, 35 Beard, Yals (“El Pájaro” [the Bird]), 77–78, 90, 156. See also abuse Beet Workers Industrial Union, 163 Bell, Mike, 151, 152 best practices, 7, 18, 45 better practices, 18, 45 Bill 91 (“An Act Respecting Labour Relations in the Agriculture Industry”), 164 Border Industrialization Project, 42 boredom, 91, 105. See also alienation Bourdieu, Pierre, 11, 186; and doxa, 215n16 boycotts, 151, 157, 160, 161, 170 Bracero Program, 3, 4, 27, 31, 41, 68, 138, 192, 204n10, 205n14, 225n3; contract provisions of, 45; demise of, 9, 41, 148; problems with, 202n8; Tlaxcalans in, 29, 204n10, 206n22; and violations, 45 Bradford, Ontario, 16, 105, 137; and Migrant Worker Support Centres, 165, 166, 183 British Columbia, 7, 9, 119, 136, 163, 202n6, 212–213n22, 229n30; and Labour Relations Act, 229n31; and Migrant Worker Support Centres, 165, 183, 203n16; and UFCW

worker organization, 182; wildcat stoppages in, 10 British West Indies, 4, 147, 148 British West Indies Temporary Alien Labor Program, 148, 225n3 broccoli, 44, 129, 165 Bush, George W., 5; and Mexican workers, 233n11 business farming, 196. See also agribusiness; corporate farm cabbage, 44, 84, 87 California, 4, 9, 170, 187 Campbell Soup Company, 159, 160, 176, 228n26 Canada, 10, 41, 43, 160; and highly skilled TFWs, 233n9; historical view of immigrants, 99, 110; Jamaican population in, 215– 216n20; Mexican population in, 215n19, 215–216n20; migration to, compared to U.S., 77, 79, 90, 134–138; as site of production, 221n22 Canada-earned income, 123–125, 129; and children’s education, 132, 143, 221n20; and expenditures, 124t, 143; and lifestyle improvement, 127, 143; limited impact of, 141– 142; and productive investment, 125–130, 128t. See also remittances Canada Pension Plan (CPP), 8, 119, 142, 166, 209n3, 224n44 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 164, 182, 183 Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU), 163; and community unionism, 170 Canadian government, 10, 17, 18, 109, 170; and cheap food policies, 199, 233n14; and contemporary discomfort, 110; and helping farmers, 68; and horticulture employers, 38; and human rights, 57; and immigrant status, 40, 188; immigration policy of, 39; and non-SAWP

Index 265

programs, 20, 64; and opposition to worker organization, 20; and oversight, 188; post–World War II, 99; and protecting the family farm, 165, 195; and quotas, 94; and worker preference, 216n25; and worker protection, 64 Canadian Labour Congress, 230n35 canning, 96, 97t; and canneries, 76, 198 capability deprivation, 145, 158 capital accumulation, 3, 185, 210– 211n12, 211–212n16; urban, 33, 47 capitalism, 11, 18, 31, 102, 117, 180, 185; and development, 19, 210– 211n12; globalized, 185; Mexican, 63; neoliberal, 62; restructuring of, in U.S., 186; and social unionism, 233n13; in Tlaxcala, 24 capitalists, 63, 184, 196; v. noncapitalists, 196, 197; part-time, 83, 196, 197, 231n50 capital-labor relationship, 91, 138 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 41; and agrarian reform, 23, 27 Caribbean countries, 44, 201n3; and competition for SAWP, 52; exclusion of immigrants, 38–39; and job market entrants, 5; and SAWP, 7, 8 Caribbean workers, 10, 16, 18, 39, 44, 93, 94, 95, 99, 188, 208n19; compared to Mexicans, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 112, 113, 114, 213n1, 214n8, 214n9, 214n12, 215n18, 216n21, 216n25, 217n29; and contract violations, 105, 106t, 107f, 113, 215n18, 216n21, 216n22; and deportability, 50; description of, 104; displacement of, by Mexicans, 19, 57, 96, 111, 146–147, 148, 169; and domination of specific commodity sectors, 96–97, 97t, 101f, 102–103, 214n13; and fear, 227n19, 228n24; in H-2 program, 148; in H-2A

program, 151, 225n6, 227n19; and limited space, 58; and loss of jobs, 101; and marriage to Canadians, 113–114, 217n30; and networks, 103, 107, 114, 202n8; prejudice toward, 57; racial diversity of, 213n1; racialization of, 95, 97; and relationship to employers, 61; and return to home country, 215n18; and sexuality, 109, 113, 217n29, 217–218n31; and social commitments, 105; views on, 112, 113; and wildcat strikes, 157. See also Caribbean countries; Jamaican workers carrots, 44, 77, 193 cerril (mountainous land), 204n5 César, 91; case study of, 87–92 Chávez, César, 162, 233n13 Chayanov, Alexander, 35; and consumer-worker ratio, 211–212n16 cheap food policies, 27, 35, 41, 95, 158, 199, 233n14 cheap labor, 5, 9, 27, 38, 95, 146, 233n14; demands for, 2 cherry industry, 16, 44, 205n17 child labor, elimination of, 159 churches, 159, 166, 230n40; and ulterior motives, 230–231n45 citizenship, 2, 114, 180, 182; global, 180; reconfiguration of, 181; and rights, 146, 181, 183, 231n2, 233n11; and the state, 184–187 civil society, 176, 179, 184, 204– 205n11, 218n2; and efforts, 147, 179 Cohen, Robin, 46, 62, 147 collective bargaining, 175, 177, 182; prohibition of, 10, 44, 164, 165, 182 commodity chain, 160, 231n50 complementarity, 5, 6, 18, 21, 62, 129, 141, 158, 190; between Canada and Mexico, 18, 21, 128; functional, 91 conjugated oppression, 98

266 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

construction, 5, 71, 79, 186, 190, 216n23; job growth in, 149 consular officials, 8, 11, 18, 52–57, 61, 91, 109, 206n22, 230n37; and abusive growers, 53; and class divide, 208n16; complaints of, 170; criticism of, 46, 53; distrust of, 73; and emergencies, 139, 169; and labor conflicts, 52–53; and Migrant Worker Support Centres, 183; and participation in research, 17; and relationship with employers, 52, 53; and siding with employers, 52, 92; and UFCW, 166, 175; and worker disagreements, 60; and workers’ rights, 49 Cooper, Gary, 9, 193–194 corn, 48, 108, 128; as household crop, 120, 219n7; investment in, 219n7; as payment, 203n3; and price controls, 35; in Tlaxcala, 22, 28, 203n2, 205n12, 219n7; uses of, 219n7 corporate farm, 195; v. family farm, 196, 231n50. See also agribusiness country surfing, 19, 98, 109, 114, 115, 148 coyotes, 79, 156, 210n7 cucumbers, 100, 122, 146, 148, 160, 177, 205n17, 236n12 decapitalization, 163 de facto citizenship, 181, 183–184; and de facto rights, 187 de jure citizenship, 181, 182–183, 184; and de jure rights, 187 Del Alamo, Jorge, 150, 225–226n9 Del-Al Associates, 150, 225–226n9, 226n11; and instilling fear, 227n19 Del Monte, 198 democracy, 180, 181, 205n18 Department of Agrarian Affairs and Colonization (Departamento de Asuntos Agrarios y Colonización; DAAC), 37 Department of Homeland Security, 225n8

Department of Labor and Social Welfare, 55 Department of Manpower and Immigration, 40 dependence/dependency, 3, 4, 5, 201n2 deportability, 50, 62, 136, 189, 217–218n31; and productivity, 233–234n15 deregulation, 191, 193, 199 development, 19, 42, 116, 117, 118, 130, 142, 190, 218n1, 218n2, 221n19; capitalist, 40, 210–211n12, 218n3; cost of, 117–118; different rates of, 117–118; household, 89, 142; industrial, 40, 42; transgenerational, 20 dismissal/nonrenewal, 17, 46, 50, 53–56, 58, 59, 62, 74, 92, 105, 136, 148, 157, 178; as deportability, 50–51, 189 distortion, 3–4, 5, 191, 201n2; of horticultural labor market, 14 Domatilo, Norberto, and Joaquín, 89, 91, 210n9, 210n11; case study of, 80–82; compared to Raymundo, Heriberto, and Joel, 80 Dominica, and H-2 program, 148 dual frame of reference, 46, 63, 64 Dunlop Commission, 159 Dutch immigrants, 205n15; descendants of, 213n6; farmers, 33 Dutch Reformed Church, 213n6, 230–231n45 Economic Commission on Latin America, 41 economic strategies, 8, 35, 74, 76, 120, 123, 128, 129, 227–228n21 Edelman, Mark, 117, 218n2 education, 69, 222n24, 222n28; of children, 8, 82, 84, 88, 126, 130, 131, 133, 139, 211–212n16, 221n20; formal v. informal, 135; and H-2 workers, 133–134; and Mexico’s job market, 132–133, 143; and salaries, 133

Index 267

ejidatarios, 23, 24, 27, 35, 222n26 ejidos, 23, 37, 42, 80, 204n5, 222n26 El Contrato (The Contract), 10, 174 El Salvador, 6; and job market entrants, 5; and postwar economic expansion, 27; and SAWP, 7, 8 Employee Insurance (EI), 9, 10, 202n9, 209n3; and claims, 229–230n33 employers, 19, 93, 114, 123, 139; abusive, 51; complaints of, 44, 189; as contract violators, 123; and control, 136; differences in, 51, 56, 122; empathetic, 51, 84, 216–217n26, 223n38, 234n1; and evaluation of workers, 49; fears of, 113, 175; and mistreatment, 53, 91; and mixing labor forces, 94, 213n4; and naming system, 94, 96, 102; and opinions on workers, 58, 98, 99, 103, 193, 194, 206n20; and overhiring, 86; as paternalistic, 123, 207n14; and paying above minimum, 122, 216–217n26; power of, 2, 50, 52, 56, 59, 61, 64, 193; and racialization, 95, 98, 99, 102, 103, 216–217n26; and racist hiring practices, 110; and recognition of good work, 122; and recruitment, 108, 109; rights of, 92; satisfaction of, with SAWP, 8, 201n4; and selective retention, 58; and self-reinforcing beliefs, 115; and speaking Spanish, 215n17; and time theft, 219–220n11; and tolerance, 158; and underpayment, 122. See also abuse; country surfing; growers; mistreatment; overwork enganchadores. See H-2A program, and recruitment Enrique, 60, 91, 208–209n24; case study of, 70–71 Escobar, Arturo, 117, 218n2 ethnicity, 114, 214n11 ethnic/racial/national segmentation, 19, 50, 96, 98–99, 100, 102, 114, 147, 213–214n7, 217–218n31; of

commodity sector, 97t; competition among, 99; and heterodoxy, 103 Europe, 4, 5; and competition for migrant labor, 34; and H-2A participation, 151; postwar recovery of, 34 Eury, Stan, 149, 150, 152, 155, 160, 225n5, 226n12 expenditures, 118, 124, 143, 221n22. See also Canada-earned income; remittances exploitation, 7, 19, 57, 59, 90, 114, 158, 187, 195, 217n28. See also superexploitation expropriations, 23, 36, 42 exterior conditioning, 46, 47, 146 family farm, 139, 145, 165, 177, 234n1; and agribusiness, 198–200; as capitalist, 197, 234–235nn1,4, 235n5; v. corporate farm, 196, 231n50; and family values, 195; and hired labor, 235n5; image of, 195, 196, 198; as myth, 25–26; and SAWP, 195–198, 230n34; social character of, 196–198 Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), 20, 147, 152, 158, 159– 162, 174, 175, 178, 192, 225n5, 229n29; and Campbell Soup, 228n26; and community unionism, 170; compared to UFCW, 175–177; and cucumber pickers, 160–161; and downward redistribution of value, 160–161; and H-2A workers, 151; and Spanish, 176 farms, 199, 200; capitalist, 234– 235n4; disappearance of small, 34; family, 195; petit bourgeois, 234– 235n4; sizes of, 34, 177. See also corporate farm; family farm Farmworker Justice Project of the Institute for Southern Studies, 226n13 Farrell, Michael Scott, 29, 30, 31

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FERME (Enterprise Foundation for the Recruitment of Foreign Agricultural Workers), 188, 189 fields of power, 11–13, 47, 165, 194; social, 62, 213–214n7 Flamborough, 169, 217n29 Florida, 4, 147, 157, 177, 220n13, 220n16, 225n3, 225n4, 228n24 flower industry/floriculture, 86, 100, 222–223n33; and Mexican workers, 96, 97t, 100, 101f Foreign Area Resource Management Services (FARMS), 9, 16, 17, 53, 56, 94, 100, 107–108, 152, 170, 188, 192, 193, 197, 202n7, 213n5, 223n38; and AWOLs, 105; and opposition to worker organization, 20; and recognition pay, 134; and transfers, 218–219n6; and UFCW, 166 Foreign Workers Program (FWP), 53, 136, 188, 207n11 Forth, Ken, 17, 165, 213n5, 218–219n6 freedom, 223n34; in capitalism, 117; deprivation of, 145; gains in, 118; kinds of, 117, 118. See also unfreedom frequency of trips, 124, 124t, 125t, 126, 219n8, 220n12; and children’s education, 131; and goods and services, 127; and home ownership, 121. See also household well-being Frontier College, and laborer-teachers, 171 fruit and vegetable processors, 228–229n27; and dictating contracts, 198, 199; and profit, 160, 228–229n27 General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, 47 General Assembly of the United Methodist Church, 161 Germany, 41; and Mexican Mennonites, 215–216n20; and TFWPs, 3

ginseng, 210n10; and Mexican workers, 96, 97t Gledhill, John, 186, 222n26 global citizenship, 180, 182 globalization, 12, 95, 100, 180–181, 184; and disconnection, 211n14; and globalized markets, 191; and post-national citizenship, 190. See also neoliberal globalization Global Justice Care Van Project, 165, 172, 183 Global North, 4, 184, 190; and limiting rights, 191 Global South, 184, 190; and limited rights, 191 grain, 196; in Canada, 40; in Mexico, 22, 23, 27, 47, 203–204n4 Great Depression, 24, 32, 34 greenhouse sector, 100, 102, 222– 223n33; criticism of, 174; and Mexican workers, 96, 97t, 99, 100, 101f, 114, 214n13 greenhouse tomatoes, 44, 129, 236n12; and UFCW worker organization, 176 growers, 19, 171; beliefs and practices of, 96, 217n30; and bonuses, 122; and country selection, 96; and fear of SAWP future, 112; on Jamaican workers, 104; and Mexican Mennonite workers, 40; on Mexican workers, 50; and Portuguese immigrants, 40; power of, 109; pressure on, 199; and “purifying” workforce, 175, 178; racialized views of, 97, 98; and relationship to workers, 13; in U.S., 156. See also employers Guanajuato, Mexico, 3, 60, 216n23; El Bajío region of, 128; supporting UFCW, 174 Guatemala, 17, 53, 226n10; as antiunion, 227n17, 232n7; and H-2A program, 151 Guatemalan workers, 175, 188– 189, 227n17; displacing Mexi-

Index 269

can workers, 136, 188; as ideal, 226n10; and unions, 232n7 guest workers, 2, 3, 5, 233–234n15. See also Mexican workers; SAWP workers; TFWs H-2 program, 146–147, 203n18, 225n2; and Caribbean workers, 220n15; cost of participation in, 209–210n6; and Jamaican workers, 214n8, 220n13, 220n16; and Mexican workers, 214n8 H-2A program, 15, 19, 20, 65, 76, 79, 87–88, 89, 107, 126, 146, 147, 149, 150, 153, 178, 223n34, 225n2, 225n6, 226n12; and abandonment, 79, 154, 156; and blacklisting, 153, 154, 161; and bureaucracy, 149–150, 225n7; compared to H-2B, 76, 77; compared to SAWP, 86, 89–90, 134, 146– 147, 151, 156, 157, 158, 212n20, 223n34, 226n13; and education, 133; employers of, 77, 154; and entry requirements, 74, 155–156; exemptions of, 154; and fear, 227n19; and FLOC, 147; future of, 192; guarantees of, 153; and lack of oversight, 90, 158, 175; living and working conditions of, 77, 154, 155, 156, 226n15, 228nn22,23; and Mexican labor force, 147–151, 225n6; and network hiring, 52; and noncompliance, 228n23; in North Carolina, 151–157; origin of, 147–149; participant cost of, 90, 150, 225–226n9; participating countries in, 151; and protections, 155, 158, 233n11; and recruitment, 150, 156, 157, 158, 161, 212n19, 225–226n9, 226n10; and tenancy rights, 152, 153, 226n13; and three-quarters guarantee, 154, 227–228n21; wages of, 77, 86 H-2B program, 76, 77, 89, 126, 225n2; and bureaucracy, 233–

234n15; contrasted to H-2A, 76, 77; and fear, 227n19; future of, 192; and productivity, 233– 234n15; and tree planting, 233–234n15 haciendas, 26, 41, 203n3; conversion of, to ejidos, 23; and debt peonage, 26; and hacendados, 205n5; post-1940, 204n5; in Tlaxcala, 22, 203–204n4 Hahamovich, Cindy, 1–2, 190 Harris, Mike, 164 hegemony, 11–13; and counter hegemony, 13; political, 171 heterodoxy, 103, 186, 215n16 horticulture, 5, 7, 8, 16, 34, 58, 94, 101–102, 202n6; revenues of, 14, 205n16 horticulturists, 11, 14, 193; and dependence on hired labor, 197; and labor shortages, 9, 38; requests of, for Caribbean workers, 39; and SAWP, 8; strictness of, on workers, 158 household-based accumulation, 33–34 household labor, 197 household production, 211–212n16 household reproduction, 69, 82, 124, 126, 127, 163 household well-being, 121–122, 127, 211–212n16, 219n8, 221n22; and development, 119. See also remittances, uses of housing, 7, 224n48; as concealed, 112; as substandard, 46, 56, 62, 86, 91 human capital, 65, 126, 143, 221n22; and SAWP, 130–134; strategy of, 89. See also education human freedom, and development, 116 Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), 53, 170, 218–219n6 human rights, 57, 159, 161, 174, 179, 183–184. See also rights Human Rights Watch, 152

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ILO Convention 87, Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize, 182 Immigration Act (1917), 148 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 187 Immigration and Nationality Act (1996), 187 Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), 149, 214n8, 225n8 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), 187, 225n2 Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI), 27, 31, 41, 47, 48 Independent Peasant Central (Central Campesino Independiente; CCI), 36 industrialization, 30, 117; and reindustrialization, 38 Inocencio, 56, 74, 76, 90, 91, 150 Institutional Revolutionary Party, 42 interior conditioning, 46, 47, 146 International Court of Justice, 180 International Labor Management Corporation, 149 International Labour Organization (ILO), 182 international migration, 29, 42, 128, 204n11 International Monetary Fund, 180, 184 International Organization for Migration (IOM), 188, 189, 190, 207n11, 232n7 Italian workers, 99, 110; as immigrants to U.S., 132 Jamaica, 6, 7, 93; and competition for SAWP, 52; and H-2 program, 148; limited opportunities in, 63; and Memorandum of Understanding, 39; and Ministry of Labour Liaison Service, 109 Jamaican Ministry of Labour, 107 Jamaican workers, 4, 14, 39, 97, 107, 112, 114, 213n1, 216n25; compared to Mexican workers,

214n8, 220n16; and H-2 program, 220n13, 220n16; and household problems, 140; as poor workers, 104; racialized views of, 97, 98; replaced by Mexicans, 57, 73, 111 Jesús, 91, 123; case study of, 85–87 job markets, 143; limited choices of, 5 journalists, 10; and criticism of SAWP, 46 Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW), 10, 64, 123, 172, 174; members of, 175–176 Kingsolver, Ann, 63, 209n27 labor demand, 18, 34, 91, 95, 100, 102 labor force, 3, 4, 34, 49, 83, 93, 94, 96, 100, 102; disposable, 186; exploitable, 19, 114, 148, 199; and marginalization, 183; weaning of, 178 labor markets, 31; migration-shaped, 5, 201n2 labor migration, 30, 128; and economic development, 129 labor mobility, 134; lack of, 49 labor rights, 49, 174, 183–184 labor shortages, 9, 32, 33, 94, 189, 190; and immigration strategy, 34 labor supply, 7, 19, 34, 40, 91 labor supply countries, 58, 108; and competition, 109, 115, 175; weak position of, 158 Labour Relations Act, 164, 175; and British Columbia, 229n31 landed immigrants, 40, 188, 192, 193, 232n5 landless peasants, 24, 35, 38, 142– 143, 220n16 landless workers (peones acasillados), 22, 36, 203n3, 220n16 latifundios (large private landholdings), 36, 42 Latinos, 149, 185; incarcerated, 186; migration of, 148–149 Leamington, Ontario, 16, 105, 109, 137, 157, 177; and consular offi-

Index 271

cials, 52; and greenhouses, 100, 174; and Mexican masculinity, 113; and Mexican workers, 109–110; and Migrant Worker Coalition, 171; and Migrant Worker Support Centres, 165, 166, 183 Lefebvre, Henri, 46 Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC), 152, 158, 161, 226n15, 228n25; and Farmworker Unit, 152, 226n14; NCGA stance against, 153, 226n15; and workers’ rights booklet, 226–227n16 liaison officers, 8, 103–104, 109, 208n20; and “good” workers’ characteristics, 104; and siding with farmers, 208n19; and workers’ rights, 49 Live-in Caregiver Program (Caribbean Domestic Scheme), 188, 232–233n8 Low-Skill Pilot Project (LSPP), 136, 175, 189, 232–233n8, 233n11; and lack of oversight, 189; and overstays, 191; and settling out, 191 low-wage labor, 5, 190. See also wage labor maguey cactus, 22, 23, 204n5; removal of, 81, 83 Manitoba, Canada, 202n6; SAWP in, 1, 8, 201n5; and Migrant Worker Support Centres, 165, 183, 203n16; and UFCW worker organization, 182 Manolo, 88, 89, 91, 211n13; case study of, 84–85 Manpower of the Americas, 151, 152, 226n11, 229n28 maquiladoras, 42, 98; Korean, 13; relevance to commercial agriculture, 160; and wages, 74, 209n4 marches, 36, 137. See also boycotts Maritimes, 41, 163, 202n6 Marshall, T. H., 180 Martin, Philip L., 5–6, 149–150

Marx, Karl, 83, 91, 126, 145, 202n11, 210–211n12, 211–212n16, 220n14 meatpacking industry, 5, 6, 186 mechanization, 26, 27, 34, 196, 228n26, 234n1 medical care, as inadequate, 46 Meiksins Wood, Ellen, 20; and the state system, 185 Memorandum of Understanding, 39, 63, 68, 192, 206n20 Mexican American workers, 148 Mexican Consulate, 17, 56, 60, 171, 223n38; and cost-cutting measures, 57; criticism of, 108; and negotiation strategy vs. advocacy strategy, 56; response of, to criticism, 109; and social exclusion, 169; and staff deficiencies, 56–57, 166, 229n30; in Toronto, 16, 52, 53; in U.S., 222n31 Mexican farmers, 23, 48 Mexican government, 18, 40, 45; and cheap food policies, 27, 35, 41, 47; and collusion in worker expulsion, 174; and dam and irrigation projects, 35, 37; and decentralizing SAWP, 136; and expansion of SAWP, 90, 212–213n22; and H-2A program, 151, 155, 175; and neoliberal policies, 47–48, 186; as not helping farmers, 68; and opposition to worker organization, 20; and oversight of SAWP, 92; and recruitment, 108, 206n22; response to peasant struggles, 35–38; and SAWP as low priority, 57 Mexican landowners, 22, 23 Mexican Mennonites, 40, 105, 113, 215–216n20, 231n46 Mexican Ministry of Labor and Social Planning (Secretaría de Trabajo y Previsión Social; MOL), 49, 50, 52, 87, 178, 211n13; and assignment to employers, 71, 73, 81; and matching skills to needs, 129, 132; and problems, 91; and punishment of SAWP workers, 50; and Tlax-

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cala, 90; and transfer/three-year rule, 51, 59, 81, 92, 207n8 Mexican peasants (campesinos), 1, 24, 48, 83, 116, 211–212n16; not helped by government, 68. See also landless peasants; Mexican workers Mexican Revolution, 22, 23, 26, 41 Mexican workers, 4, 10, 11, 16, 18, 23, 44, 48, 72, 75, 93, 94, 99, 155, 186, 191, 198, 201n4, 202n6, 208n20, 209n3; and abandoning families, 76, 92; and advocacy organizations, 176; and aguantar (withstand), 11, 51, 92; attributes of, 50; and attributes of SAWP candidates, 49; behavioral code of, 62; and boredom, 105; and cell phones, 127, 143, 219n9; and changing views on goods and services, 127, 211n14; and children, 69, 70, 71, 88, 119, 125, 139, 211n15; compared to Barbadians, 111; compared to Caribbeans, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 112, 113, 114, 213n1, 214n9, 214n12, 215n18, 216n21, 216n25, 217n29; compared to Jamaicans, 73, 97, 98, 104, 111, 114, 214n8; compared to Trinidadians, 57, 114; and competition among coworkers, 59; and competition for SAWP, 52, 93; complaints of, 18; and consular assistance, 53; and contract violations, 105, 106t, 107f, 113; and dependence on international labor migration, 127, 128, 129; and deportability, 50, 62, 136; and depression, 139; and deprivation of recreation, 121; and displacement of Caribbeans, 19, 57, 73, 96, 97, 111, 146–147, 148, 169; and domination of specific commodity sectors, 96–97, 97t, 101f, 114, 214n13; economic strategies of, 70, 72, 74, 76, 120, 123, 125–126, 128, 129, 221n17, 227–228n21; and employer ex-

pectations, 104; as exploitable, 19; as family oriented, 111, 113; and family relationships, 138–141; female, sexual practices of, 113; and freedom, 118; and frequency of migration trips, 125t, 126, 127; under George W. Bush, 233n11; in H-2A, 225n6; hopes of, 82, 83, 84; and housing, 89, 224n48; and investment in education, 126, 130, 131, 221n20; and isolation, 136, 137–138; and land ownership, 127–128, 221n17; and leisure time, 105, 166; and level of education, 69, 130, 221–222n23; and limited space, 58; on living in Canada, 72; and marriage to Canadians, 113– 114, 217n30, 224n41; and mexicanidad, 57; motivations of, 47, 51, 58, 61; and natural remedies, 207n14; and need of assistance and support, 20, 177; and networking, 19, 49, 52, 81, 90, 132, 191; in North Carolina, 149; occupations of, 119; as opportunistic, 82, 83; participation of, in study, 15–17, 118–119, 206n2; and personal transformations, 72, 76, 140; physical aspects of, 97; prejudice of, 57; racialization of, 95, 96–97, 98; and reasons for migrating, 88, 89; and relationship to growers, 13; and remittances, 8, 68, 69, 76, 83, 116, 129, 130, 141, 142, 220n13; replacement of, by Guatemalans, 136, 188; and respect of employer, 111; sacrifices of, 85; and satisfaction with SAWP, 18, 45, 71, 83, 84, 91, 206n2; and securing rights to land, 127; and settling out, 4, 6, 191; and sexuality, 113, 217n29, 217–218n31; and social transformation in U.S., 136; speech of, 215n17; strategies of, 62; and tensions, 59–60, 208–209n24; and tradeoffs, 19; and transfer of technology, 129; views on, 112, 113; as

Index 273

vulnerable, 103, 177; and wives in Mexico, 70, 71, 72, 92, 139, 141, 144; work ethic of, 51, 57, 98, 99, 105, 193. See also household wellbeing; SAWP workers; unfreedom Mexico, 6, 41, 43, 44, 132, 212– 213n22; average salaries in, 119; as backward (atrasado), 68; bribery in, 73; and education, 130, 133–134, 211–212n16, 222n28; entry of, into SAWP, 38, 93–94, 206n22; informalization in, 48; job loss in, 48; and job market, 5, 132, 133, 134, 143; labor force of, 186; limited opportunities in, 63–64; as nation of emigrants, 186; and neoliberal policies, 46, 134, 186; and post-agrarian reform, 204n5; post–World War II, 47; and rural social relations, 140– 141, 223n39; and rural struggles, 205n18; as site of reproduction, 221n22; and tomato-cucumber labor force, 175; and unemployment, 134, 222n28; and upward mobility, 133, 134 Mexico City (Federal District), 18, 22, 23, 29, 30, 37, 68, 174, 222n26; employment in, 28, 29, 30, 88; and SAWP bureaucracy, 76; and SAWP participation, 90, 212– 213n22; and support of UFCW, 174; Tlaxcalans working in, 30, 80, 86, 209n2, 216n23; wage work in, 24; worker migration to, 27, 28, 41, 71 Michoacán, Mexico, 156, 157, 222n26; and AWA, 183–184; and UFCW, 174, 183–184 Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (1983), 154 Migrant Worker Coalition, 171–172 Migrant Workers Alliance, 203n16 Migrant Worker Support Centres, 16, 165–170, 183, 203n16, 230n38; cost of, 170; and English lessons, 167; as inaccessible, 230n40; and

medical issues, 170; services of, 183, 230n44; and social inclusion, 169 migration, 2; Europeans to Canada, 33, 44; from farms to cities, 32–33, 34, 211n14; and housing, 89; legal v. illegal, 210n7; localregional, 30; managed, 191; as only alternative, 74, 88, 206n2; pattern of, 205n14; and retaining ties, 31; transnational and transgenerational, 130, 131; types of, 202n13; to U.S., 31, 134–138 Miguel, 90, 150, 156, 210n7; case study of, 76–78 miscegenation, 112, 113; fear of, 110– 111, 169; and labor replacement, 111 mistreatment, 18, 53, 62, 78, 90, 115, 156; and fear of responding to, 155 Morelos, Mexico, 30–31, 57, 60 Mt. Olive Pickle Company, 147, 151, 176; boycott of, 160; and NCGA, 161 Multiculturalism Act (1971), 110 multiracialism, 136, 188 Murphy, Timothy, 30, 31, 205n12; and types of migration, 205n13 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 10, 47, 48, 105, 199 named workers (nominales), 49, 85, 86, 91, 94, 96. See also employers, and naming system Nanacamilpa, Tlaxcala, 14, 22, 38, 57, 80, 81, 82, 87, 120, 129, 203n2; and corn, 219n7; and family relationships, 139; and H-2A program, 79, 87; land scarcity in, 83; limited opportunities in, 80, 83; and North-South Institute project, 130; SAWP participants from, 90, 92, 99, 224n42; workers return to, 80 National Basic Foods Company (CONASUPO), 35, 47

274 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

Native Americans, 41; and labor shortage, 32 neoliberal capitalism, 62 neoliberal globalization, 114 neoliberalism, 29, 53, 132, 134, 186, 233n11; and neoliberalization, 184; policies of, 46, 186; and reforms, 47–48, 88; and rights of TFWs, 191 neoliberal restructuring, 5, 47. See also dependence/dependency; distortion networking, 104, 215n18. See also Caribbean workers, and networks; Mexican workers, and networking; recruitment, and social networking; SAWP, and network hiring network of relationships, 11, 12, 142 New Britain, Canada, 202n6; SAWP in, 9 New Helots, The (Cohen), 147 New International Division of Labor, 3 New Latino South, 151. See also New South New Social Movements theory, 231– 232n3 New South, 149 New Zealand, 7, 201n3; and H-2A, 151 Niagara-on-the-Lake, 16, 105, 113, 176, 230n40 noncitizens, and rights, 181, 185; as vulnerable, 181 Non-Immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP), 40, 188 North, the, 5, 7. See also Global North North Carolina, 20, 148, 152, 155, 177; as agricultural powerhouse, 151; and H-2A program, 74, 77, 86, 90, 146, 150; and preference for undocumented Mexicans, 150; and wage and migrant housing laws, 154

North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), 78, 147, 148, 151, 155, 160, 175, 192; as anti-LANC, 152–153, 226n15, 229n28; and blacklisting, 154, 161; and control, 151; and decline in membership, 161, 225n5, 229n29; and FLOC, 161; and human rights investigation, 226n12; and worker complaints, 152; and worker orientation, 152, 153 North-South Institute, 112, 130 Nova Scotia, Canada, 202n6; SAWP in, 9 nurseries, 16, 75, 235n8, 236n12; and Mexican workers, 96, 97t, 99, 100, 101f, 102, 111, 122, 214n13 Nutini, Hugo, 30, 31, 205n12; and types of migration, 205n13 Obrador, Carlos, 55, 207nn12,15; and dispute resolution, 53–56. See also consular officials Occupational Health and Safety Act, 154, 229–230n33 Ontario, Canada, 9, 13, 14–18, 82, 83, 84, 119, 163, 177, 197–198, 201n5, 203n16; and codependence with Tlaxcala, 21; contrasted to Tlaxcala, 26; development of, 26–27; and European workers, 31, 33, 44; flower industry in, 86; industry growth of, 26; labor shortage in, 31, 32; and Labour Relations Act, 164; map of southwest, 67; patriotism in, 32; and postwar industry, 32–33; research in, 14–18; rural prosperity in, 41; SAWP in, 1, 7, 8; settling of, 25; southwestern, 13, 14–18, 21; and unstable agricultural labor force, 26; and urban population growth, 26; during World War I, 32; during World War II, 32 Ontario Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 39

Index 275

Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), 8, 166 Ontario Ministry of Health, 224n45 Ontario Supreme Court, 182 open-field vegetables, 44; and Mexican workers, 96, 97t, 129; and UFCW, 176–177. See also specific vegetables oppression, 59, 147. See also conjugated oppression organizing, 4, 13, 91, 146, 147, 148, 158, 163, 182, 193, 225n3; consequences of, 151; of Latinos, 149; opposition to, 20; prohibition of, 174; transnational, 229n28. See also civil society; unions/unionizing Osorio, case study of, 82–84 out migration, 28, 30, 31 overwork, 18, 46, 51, 56, 85, 91, 115 owner-operators, 25, 33 palanca (lever/leverage), 132, 222n25; and job competition, 133, 144 peaches, 16, 44, 88, 205n17 perfect immigrant, 2, 190; vs. slavery, 2 personal labor relations, 61–62, 63, 123; in U.S. South, 209n25 pesticide poisoning, 56, 74, 91 pickle industry, 159, 160 plura-activity, 48. See also economic strategies Poland, 41; immigrants from, 33; workers from, 99 Portugal, 40; and rejection of SAWP participation, 93, 213n2 post-national citizenship, 20, 179, 182, 184, 190; and future of TFWPs, 189–190; and globalization, 190; and SAWP, 180–181 poverty, 27, 63, 119, 144, 158, 191; as form of social exclusion, 231– 232n3 precarious labor, 47 precarious workers (trabajadores inestables), 210–211n12

precarity, 63, 185, 190 Prince Edward Island, Canada, 7, 9, 202n6 privatization, 37, 47, 155, 184, 186, 199 Procampo government, 219n7 PROCAMPO Program of Direct Support to the Countryside, 48 productivity, 98, 99, 102, 115, 129, 228n24, 233–234n15; as bottom line, 95, 140, 195; in SAWP, 58, 140, 193 Program for Agrarian Rehabilitation and Development in the State of Tlaxcala (Programa de Rehabilitación Agraria y Desarrollo en el Estado de Tlaxcala; PRADET), 37, 38 proletarianization, 42, 223n34; and minifundismos, 29 proletariat, 184; rural, 29, 49; and semiproletarians, 42, 49; transnational, 184 pro-migrant activists, and criticism of SAWP, 46 Proposition 187 (California), 187 protests, 13, 20, 36, 62, 162; reason not to, 62 Puebla, Mexico, 3, 22, 31, 42, 128, 135, 202n12; employment in, 28, 29, 74; and factory closings, 24; and housing, 212n17; and migration to U.S., 211n15; and textile industry, 28; Tlaxcalans working in, 29; worker migration to, 28 Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, 30, 205n12, 219n7 Puerto Rican workers, 146, 217–218n31 pulque, 22, 23, 81, 203nn1,2; as payment, 203n3 Quebec, Canada, 1, 8, 41, 53, 72, 81, 119, 136, 141, 202n6, 223– 224n40; agriculture in, 163; and Migrant Worker Support Centres,

276 Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest

165, 183, 203n16; and UFCW worker organization, 182 racialization, 57, 97, 98–99, 103, 112, 114, 188, 207n6, 213–214n7; impact of, on SAWP demand, 99; as price to pay, 116; and racism, 102; and SAWP, 95–96, 115, 178 racism, 39, 40, 57, 93, 110, 136, 148, 169; brown v. black, 110, 115, 213n1; “hard,” 19; and racial profiling, 187; and racist policy, 38; in rural areas, 113; “soft (neoracism),” 19, 109 Raper, Stan, 165, 166, 172, 182, 192; compared to Velásquez, 176; on farm sizes, 231n50; on Migrant Worker Support Centres, 230n38 Raymundo, Heriberto, and Joel, 88, 89, 91, 141, 209n2, 224n41; case study of, 71–74; compared to Domatilo, Norberto, and Joaquín, 80 realpolitik, 191; and TFWPs, 190–193 reciprocal construction, 61–62 recognition payment, 123 recruitment, 108, 189; flawed policy of, 107; and gender, 98; and mixed groups, 214n10; in SAWP, 7, 46, 49, 98; and schemes, 212n20; and social networking, 81, 103 redistribution, 23, 36–37, 41, 42 remittances, 8, 10, 57, 76, 83, 109, 190, 220n13; as bulk of income, 83; distribution of, 120t; and education, 130; as foreign aid, 9; impact of, 142; investment of, 68; and material well-being, 116, 119; and rural development, 221n19; and small-businesses, 130; uses of, 69, 70, 72, 77, 82, 89, 118, 123–125, 124t, 125t, 141, 142. See also expenditures; household well-being reserve army of labor, 83, 145. See also Marx, Karl resistance, 59, 62, 64, 147; consequences of, 177

restaurant industry, 5; job growth in, 149 rights, 11, 181, 187; denial of, and TFWPs, 3, 231n2; and laborers, 2; protection of, 44. See also human rights rights gap, 181, 184. See also citizenship Roberto, 88, 91; case study of, 68–70 Rodríguez, Domingo, 1, 51, 58 Roseberry, William, 11, 12; and hegemony, 13 rural labor shortages, in Ontario, 32, 39 rural proletariat, 29, 38 Sanctorum, Tlaxcala, 14, 81, 84, 86, 120, 142; and corn, 219n7; and family relationships, 139; and North-South Institute project, 130; and SAWP participants, 91, 92, 99, 224n42, 224n43 Saskatchewan, Canada: and grain farming, 27; SAWP in, 9; and stock raising, 27; and UFCW worker organization, 182 SAWP (Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program), 1, 6–11, 15, 80, 89, 90, 96, 138, 196, 207n11, 223n34, 232–233n8; appeal of, 48, 138, 212n19; bureaucracy of, 44, 74, 76, 94; and Caribbean monopoly, 39; compared to Bracero Program, 9, 45; compared to H-2A program, 86, 89–90, 151, 156, 157, 158, 212n20, 223n34, 226n13; compared to U.S. undocumented immigration, 8, 92, 134–138, 139; and complementarity, 158; and contract duration, 7, 46, 49, 68, 70, 81, 85, 86, 99, 119, 120, 122, 135, 139–140, 214n13, 218–219n6, 222–223n33; and contract violations, 105, 106t, 107f, 113, 215n18, 216n21, 216n22; creation of, 14, 38, 44; and criticism, 6, 10, 11, 45–46; decentralization of, 90–91;

Index 277

as demand driven, 120; and differential racialization, 95; disadvantages of, 134–136; earnings from, 83, 85, 87; and employer power, 52, 56, 59, 61, 64; etic critique of, 46; evaluation of, 7, 49; and family and household, 138– 141; and favoritism, 86, 210n11; and female participation, 10, 49, 98, 113, 207n8, 213n5, 216n23, 223n35, 231n48; and FERME, 188, 189; and freedom, 118; future of, 192; and growing attention, 10, 202n10; growth of, 9, 14, 163, 212–213n22; and hiring decisions, 103; and human capital, 130–134; and ideal worker, 206–207n5, 216n24; and impeding worker organization, 13; justification for, 196, 234n3; and living and working conditions, 59–60, 63, 72, 86, 214n10, 224n48; and lowering wages, 39; and material rewards, 63; Mexican participants in, 1, 2–3, 40, 58, 94, 108, 202n6, 202n13, 205–206n19, 212–213n22, 213n3; Mexico’s entry into, 38, 39–40, 42, 93–94, 206n22; as model program, 45; and molding recruits, 49; and naming workers, 49–50, 71, 85, 86, 91, 94; and network hiring, 52, 123; number of participants in, 46; as only alternative, 69, 206n2; and oppression, 59; and overstays, 9, 191; and participating Canadian provinces, 8, 9; participating countries in, 7; and paycheck deductions, 219–220n11, 229n30, 232n6; and post-national citizenship, 180–181; as poverty regulation program, 141–145; and problems, 60, 92; procedures of, 55; reasons for participation, 83, 84, 88, 89; and recruitment, 7, 49, 98, 206–207n5, 216n24; and rights and protections, 233n11; and settling out, 4, 6, 191; and

small growers, 199, 235n10; Spanish-language literature on, 10; structuration of, 20; and systemic exploitation, 59, 217n28; and wages, 8, 63, 119, 122, 123, 151, 210n10, 210n11, 235–236n11; and worker benefits, 8; worker evaluation of, 8; and worker provisions, 7, 49; and worker return rate, 8; worker satisfaction with, 18, 45, 51, 71, 83, 91; work schedules of, 85, 211n13. See also employers SAWP workers, 9, 157, 169, 173, 191, 193, 194, 233n14, 235n6; activities of, 16; attributes of, 44; characteristics of, 142–143, 206–207n5; and community support groups, 121, 184; compared to domestic workers, 58, 63, 178, 193, 194; compared to family farmworkers, 235n5; and complaints, 174; and discipline, 63; and emergency situations, 52; emic perspective of, 46; and end-of-year evaluation, 49, 58, 61, 165, 178, 211n13; exclusion of, from Canadian society, 112, 121, 166, 169, 179, 183, 184, 217n28, 222n32; expulsion of, 174; and feelings of discontent, 59, 64; and grievances, 59, 165; and household well-being, 219n8; “ideal,” 112; as ineligible for EI benefits, 10; infantilization of, 54, 207n14, 208n16; and lack of advocacy, 56; and leaving the program, 59; and living in poverty, 144, 158; as participants in study, 15, 118–119; and pleasing employers, 46–47, 51, 61; as postnational citizens, 179; rights of, 168; and self-identification, 213– 214n7; and spaces of negotiability, 59; and struggle for rights, 181, 182–184; and transfers, 215n15, 218–219n6; and transnationalization, 13; treated like fish, 216n25; and undermining esprit de corps,

278

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59; valued characteristics of, 103; views on, 217n28 SB 1070 (Arizona), 187 Scott, James, 20, 157–158 semaneros eventuales (waged laborers), 22, 203n3 Sen, Amartya, 19; and capability deprivation, 145, 158; on development, 116–117, 144, 218n1; and economic freedom, 118; on H-2A program, 152; optimism of, 117 sexual harassment, 111 sexuality, 109–110, 217n29, 217– 218n31 sharecropping, 221n17; elimination of, 159 Simcoe, Ontario, 16, 137, 177; and Migrant Worker Support Centres, 139, 165, 166, 183, 230n35 small businesses, in Mexico, 8 social amnesia, 50, 207n6 social differentiation, 24 social exclusion/social inclusion, 10, 169, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 231–232n3 social fields, 11–13, 18, 40, 45, 59, 62, 142; economic, 215n16; local, 12, 29; racialized, 213–214n7 social networks, 19, 90 social reproduction, 2 solidarity, undermining of, 95 South, the, 5, 158. See also Global South Southern Farmer’s Tenant Union, 225n3 Southern Poverty Law Center, 156 standard of living, 220n15 State, the, 12, 20, 33 state system, 185–186 stereotyping, 98, 113, 217–218n31. See also racialization; racism St. Lucia, 7, 104; and H-2 program, 148 St. Michael’s Catholic Church, 166, 172, 173; and canceling UFCW lease, 231n49 strategic alterity, 63, 95, 158, 209n27

strawberries, 87, 210n10, 216n23 strikes, 228n26; prohibition of, 165. See also wildcat strikes and stoppages structural adjustment, 47, 132 structural necessity, 14 structural power, 45, 206n1 structural violence, 63 structure-agency dichotomy, 20 subsistence farming, 28, 29, 35, 70, 72 sugar, 27, 147–148, 177, 220n15, 225n4; price controls of, 35; and underpayment, 228n24 sugarcane, 4, 148, 220n13, 220n15, 220n16 superexploitation, 92, 158, 171, 188, 191 supranational organizations, 180, 184, 185 Supreme Court of Canada, 182, 183 surplus value, 2, 27, 47, 49, 50–51, 58, 93, 102, 123, 158, 185, 193, 199, 228–229n27, 231n50, 236n12 technology, and cheap labor, 27; harvesting, 196, 197 Temporary Foreign Worker Programs (TFWPs), 18, 42, 44, 64, 178, 188, 191; and abuses, 4; and amnesty, 233n12; appeal of, 48; benefits of, 191; and calculated plan, 192; criticisms of, 5–6; and distortion and dependence, 5, 191; European, 4; expectations of, 7, 10; future of, 189–190; goals of, 190; history of, 1–2, 3; and labor flexibility, 231n1; and managed migration, 191; new generation of, 6; and organized labor, 193; and power imbalance, 151; and public outcry, 4; reasons for, 7; recrudescence of, 5–6, renewed interest in, 5; small v. large, 233n11; and trade-offs, 10 temporary foreign workers (TFWs), 2, 16, 166, 174, 175, 189, 215n19,

Index 279

225n4; as cheap labor, 4; contrasted to indentured laborers, 2; contrasted to slaves, 2; highly skilled, 233n9; and lack of protection, 189; living and working conditions of, 2, 56, 59–60, 63, 72, 77, 86, 189; as politically unorganized, 4; and reasons for migration, 4, 88, 89; and resistance, 177–178; and rights, 4, 181, 189, 191, 231n2; and standard of living, 220n15; and 3-D jobs (Dirty, Dangerous, and Demeaning), 191; and unionizing, 182–183; as vulnerable, 177, 191 tenancy rights, 152, 153, 226n13 tender fruits, 122; and Caribbean workers, 97, 97t; and Mexican workers, 102, 129 textile industry, collapse of, 35; and factory closings, 204n8; in Mexico City, 28; in Puebla, 28; in Tlaxcala, 22, 24, 204n8 Third World, 9; labor power of, 40, 64, 93. See also Global South Tlaxcala, Mexico, 3, 21, 30, 42, 128; and Canada-earned income, 141–142; and codependence with Ontario, 21; and cultivation of pasture lands, 24; as different from other Mexican rural areas, 29; and environmental degradation, 24; and factory closings, 24, 204n8; and H-2A program, 90, 225– 226n9; history of, 22–24; household income in, 143–144; households in, 13, 28, 30; and housing, 89, 212n17; industrialization in, 30; industry in, 129; irrigated land in, 28, 129, 204n9, 221n18; as labor supplier to Ontario, 40; land struggle in, 42, 205n17; map of northwest, 66; as migrant destination, 30–31, 37; migration from, 27, 204–205n11, 211n15, 216n23; and net migration loss, 30; and 1970–1973 land move-

ment, 36–37; and North Carolina, 151; peasant struggles in, 35–38; population growth in, 24, 204n7; and proximity to labor and product markets, 29, 31; and recruits for H-2A program, 74; reindustrialization of, 38; research in, 14–18; and SAWP participation, 14, 90, 136, 234n1; as technologically backward, 24. See also Atotonilco, Tlaxcala; Nanacamilpa, Tlaxcala; Sanctorum, Tlaxcala, 14 tobacco, 14, 34, 44, 69, 70, 81, 82, 102, 205n17, 210n10, 229n29; and Caribbean workers, 96, 97t, 99, 100, 101f, 102, 214n13; in decline, 100–101; and dwindling participation in SAWP, 100–101; and elimination of subsidies, 225n5; in Kentucky, 150; and Mexican workers, 102, 137; in North Carolina, 74, 77, 78, 86, 146, 148, 150; production limit of, 214–215n14; and shorter SAWP contracts, 122; and UFCW worker organization, 176; in Virginia, 150 tomatoes, 4, 160, 205n17, 210n10, 228–229n27; processing of, 197, 198; in Rio Grande Valley, 162 Toronto, Canada, 16, 40, 64, 121, 215n18; growth of, 26 tractorization, 34. See also mechanization Tranquilino, case study of, 65, 68 transnationalization, 13 Trinidad and Tobago, 7, 39; and competition for SAWP, 52, 93; workers from, 57, 114, 213n1 UFW, 175 underdevelopment, 40, 41, 132, 218n3; and migrant workers, 220n15; in South, 5, 53, 132, 158 underpayment, 122, 157, 189, 219– 220n11, 228n24 undocumented immigration: in U.S., 8, 13, 41, 74, 79, 88, 89, 128,

280

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149, 192, 201n1; consequences of, 135; costs of, 90, 92, 135, 210n7, 212n21; and duration of trips, 135; and freedom, 136–137; and legalization, 187; and risks, 90, 92, 135; vs. migration to Canada, 134–138; and vulnerability, 187 Unemployment Insurance Act, 229– 230n33 unfreedom, 10, 20, 33, 223n34; in H-2A program, 152; reducing of, 117, 118, 145, 218n1; in SAWP, 179, 198; and survival of TFWPs, 192 unfree labor, 20, 23, 41, 48–52, 62, 63, 91–92; and unfree immigrants, 33 unions/unionizing, 158, 163, 176; discouragement of, 178; and intervention, 192; in Ontario, 175–177; and outside support, 170; prohibition of, 44, 164, 182; purported gains of, 182–183; undermining of, 189 United Farm Workers Union (UFWU), 162, 175; and community unionism, 170; and opposition to Bracero Program, 192; and social unionism, 233n13; and southern farmworkers, 225n3 United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), 9–10, 16, 64, 123, 152, 158, 162–166, 169–172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 182, 183, 192, 203n16, 230n40; accusations of, 166; and AWA, 183; compared to FLOC, 175–177; and conflicts, 172; and court cases, 229–230n33; and FERME, 189; and fourth prong, 174; membership of, 164; and outside support, 171, 184; and organizing workers, 20, 147, 164, 176, 182, 192; and “sacrificing” individuals for greater goals, 172–173; and social exclusion, 183; and social unionism, 233n13; and three-pronged cam-

paign, 164–166, 169–172, 174; and wages, 177. See also Migrant Worker Support Centres United Nations, 180, 184, 190 United States, 41, 160; and economic crisis, 222n29; and Mexican migrant flow, 232n4; and migrant workers, 27, 48, 50, 222n29; migration to, compared to Canada, 76–77, 79, 90; and neoliberal policies, 186; and organized labor, 192–193; and TFWPs, 3, 10; and troubled children, 234n2; and worker centers, 183. See also H-2 program; undocumented immigration: in U.S. upward mobility, 33, 133, 134–135 U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (1989), 199 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 149, 225n8 U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), 149, 150; and Employment and Training Administration, 153; and tenancy rights, 226n13 U.S. General Accounting Office, 154 U.S. Sugar Company, 157 value of labor power, 126, 220n14 Vasconcelos, José, and pulque, 23 Velásquez, Baldemar, 159, 162; compared to Raper, 176; and social change, 161 Veracruz, Mexico, 22, 29, 135, 202n12 vertical mobility, 122–123 Vietnamese workers, 98 violence, 59, 62, 113, 139, 157; structured, 63 wage labor, 25, 26, 88, 123, 143, 196, 205n17. See also wage work wages, 8, 26, 32, 46, 62, 126, 135, 151, 159, 210n10; of day labor in Mexico, 81, 210n9; decline in, 48; of housepainters, 79; increase of, 159, 235n10; suppression of, 41

Index 281

wage work, 24, 30, 40, 120, 148; peasant dependence on, 42 wage workers, 18, 38, 41, 151, 196; as free and unfree, 223n34 Walmart, 13, 79; and bullying suppliers, 199 welfare, 5, 180, 186 West Indian workers, 61, 195, 208n19 wildcat strikes and stoppages, 10, 64, 157, 174, 177, 209n26 Williams, Terry, 77, 78, 156 Winson, Anthony, 162–163, 196, 197 Wolf, Eric, 11, 45; and modes of power, 206n1 work stoppages, 10, 62, 64, 137, 148, 177; consequences of, 157 worker disposability, 20, 50, 186 workforce stability, 45; and MOL transfer rule, 51

working conditions, 32, 59–60, 63 World Bank, 184, 190, 201n3; on human capital, 143, 221n22; on SAWP, 7 world capitalist system, 63 world historic processes, 11, 12 world system, 11. See also capitalism World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture (1994), 199 World War I, 3; and Ontario, 32 World War II, 23, 24, 41; and Canada, 32, 34; pre–, 196 writs of nonencumbrance (certificados de inafectabilidad), 23, 203–204n4; expiration of, 35 xenophobia, 5, 7, 185, 190