Temporary Migrant Farm Workers in Canada: Struggles for Unionization and Legal Status

This paper will discuss preliminary results of a Marie Curie project titled ‘Mig. Pro. – Migrants’ protests: How the borders of citizenship are conceived, mobilized and constructed by migrants’ farm workers protests’. It aims at exploring labour activism, protests, practices resistance, as well as networks’ of supporters to claim fundamental rights, in particular the rights to a secure legal status, unionize and collective bargaining.

Its rationale embraces the main topics proposed in RC 44 and RC 48, such as: the role of unions and non-union organizations; non/coalitions between other movements/campaigns and unions; the role of gender and racial historical relations in a settler country such as Canada with sending countries ‘nationals; the role of context in a the wider global trends related to both migrant working force in precarious and dangerous sectors and their actions on the other side.

By taking a critical feminist standpoint, this paper is grounded on empirical research in Canada and takes the province of Ontario as main study case. Additionally, with the aim of democratizing research it is inspired by situational analysis’ principles and choses a triangulation of instruments, such as: participant observations, semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and policy analysis. While participants to research are activists, trade unions’ representative, scholars, policy analysis is focused on: temporary and seasonal working programs; the right to unionize; the debate at the parliamentary level for a secure legal status.

Lastly, this contribution aims to be interdisciplinary by looking at, in particular but not limited to, potential cross-fertilization among migration studies, labour studies and social movement studies. The main research question this paper raises is: What the Canadian model(s) of temporary foreign workers programs in agriculture can teach to the European context, and/or those contexts, that look at Canada as an example of a multicultural democracy that protects human rights?