Tomorrow We're All Going To The Harvest: Temporary Foreign Worker Programs And Neoliberal Political Economy (joe R. And Teresa Lozano Long Series In Latin American And Latino Art And Culture)

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-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, "From its inception in 1966, the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) has grown to employ approximately 20,000 workers annually, the majority from Mexico. The program has been hailed as a model that alleviates human rights concerns because, under contract, SAWP workers travel legally, receive health benefits, contribute to pensions, are represented by Canadian consular officials, and rate the program favorably. Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest takes us behind the ideology and examines the daily lives of SAWP workers from Tlaxcala, Mexico (one of the leading sending states), observing the great personal and family price paid in order to experience a temporary rise in a standard of living. The book also observes the disparities of a gutted Mexican countryside versus the flourishing agriculture in Canada, where farm labor demand remains high. Drawn from extensive surveys and nearly two hundred interviews, ethnographic work in Ontario (destination of over 77 percent of migrants in the author’s sample), and quantitative data, this is much more than a case study; it situates the Tlaxcala-Canada exchange within the broader issues of migration, economics, and cultural currents. Bringing to light the historical genesis of “complementary” labor markets and the contradictory positioning of Mexican government representatives, Leigh Binford also explores the language barriers and nonexistent worker networks in Canada, as well as the physical realities of the work itself, making this book a complete portrait of a provocative segment of migrant labor."--Publisher's website From its inception in 1966, the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) has grown to employ approximately 20,000 workers annually, the majority from Mexico. The program has been hailed as a model that alleviates human rights concerns because, under contract, SAWP workers travel legally, receive health benefits, contribute to pensions, are represented by Canadian consular officials, and rate the program favorably. This book takes readers behind the ideology and examines the daily lives of SAWP workers from Tlaxcala, Mexico (one of the leading sending states), observing the great personal and family price paid in order to experience a temporary rise in a standard of living. The book also observes the disparities of a gutted Mexican countryside versus the flourishing agriculture in Canada, where farm labor demand remains high. Drawn from extensive surveys and nearly two hundred interviews, ethnographic work in Ontario (destination of over 77 percent of migrants in the author’s sample), and quantitative data, this is much more than a case study: it situates the Tlaxcala-Canada exchange within the broader issues of migration, economics, and cultural currents Agricultural crisis, migration, and contract labor: Tlaxcala, Mexico, and Ontario, Canada The dual process of constructing Mexican contract workers "Tomorrow we're all going to the harvest": case studies of contract labor migration Interrogating racialized global labor supply: Caribbean and Mexican workers in Canada's SAWP (by Kerry Preibisch and Leigh Binford) The seasonal agricultural worker program and Mexican development The political economy of contract labor in neoliberal North America: cheap labor and organized labor Globalization and temporary migrants: post-national citizens, realpolitik, and disposable labor power. This exceptional study examines the experience of Mexican workers in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), widely considered a model program by the World Bank and other international institutions despite the significant violations of labor and human rights inherent in the terms of employment.