Producing and Contesting "Unfree Labour" through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

Mark Thomas

Recent news media reports have drawn attention to the presence of "temporary foreign workers" in the Canadian labour market. With much criticism directed at the decision of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) to displace employees who are Canadian citizens with noncitizen labour contracted through an outsourced employment agency, these reports have largely focused on the "scandal" of replacing Canadian workers with non-Canadians at a time of employment insecurity (CBC 2013). Through these reports, awareness of the significant recent expansion of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) has brought scrutiny to bear on how the federal Conservative government had designed this program to enable employers to seek alternative sources of labour to Canadian workers. Less consideration was given to understanding the underlying sociological and political-economic conditions that drive the demand for workers who are not Canadian citizens. Specifically, these include the differential treatment experienced by migrants employed in Canada, the predominance of migrant workers in precarious and low-wage jobs, and the ways in which these two conditions are legitimated by both employers and the state.

These experiences are set in a much broader context of global labour migration. The social processes that shape the dynamics of labour migration and the wide range of ways in which migrant workers are integrated into "host" labour markets have received growing scholarly attention in recent years (Castles and Miller 2003; Freeman 2004; Hollifield 2004; Sharma 2006). With the differential social, economic, and political rights of migrants as they cross borders and enter "host" societies a central question (Schuster and Solomos 2002; Balibar 2004), the expansion of temporary foreign worker programs may be seen as one of the most significant contemporary developments in global migration.

This chapter examines Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), which regulates the entry of agricultural workers from Mexico and the Caribbean for seasonal employment on Canadian farms, and which was used as a model for the TFWP's expansion. With attention to both the political economy of labour market incorporation and the role of nationalist discourses in legitimating differential treatment of those categorized as "foreigners" within a nation-state, the chapter outlines the general conditions of employment experienced by workers in the SAWP, which include long hours and low wages, as well as exemptions from many basic labour standards. While primary attention is given to the ways in which the program constructs relations of "unfree labour" and exploitation, the chapter also briefly touches upon how these relations are contested through forms of labour organizing. It concludes by situating the SAWP within the broader context of the expansion of temporary foreign worker programs, arguing that the principles established in the SAWP have served as a model for this more general expansion of "unfree labour."

Global Capitalism, "Unfree Labour," and Labour Migration

While conditions of "free" wage labour were central to Marx's (1967) understanding of the uniqueness of capitalism, and despite free wage labour being the predominant condition of labour within capitalist economies, free wage labour may coexist with conditions of "unfree" wage labour in contemporary capitalist labour markets (Miles 1987). As this chapter outlines, "unfree" wage labour is particularly present through the organization of temporary labour migration programs.

Contemporary manifestations of unfree wage labour emerge through the political economy of global migration, which is organized in relation to the uneven geographic development of global capitalism (Stasiulis 1997; M. Thomas 2010). Currently, there is a global crisis of employment. By 2012 the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that approximately two hundred million people were unemployed (ILO 2013). In this context, migration patterns are often driven by the search for employment, with half of the world's 214 million people who live outside their country of origin being economically active (ILO 2012). Patterns of labour migration are also driven by demands for both "high-skilled" and "low-skilled" workers, particularly though not exclusively, in high-income labour markets. Moreover, since the 1990s, as nation-states have sought to tighten the connection between immigration policies and labour market needs, bilateral agreements that regulate the entry and labour market incorporation of labour migrants have proliferated. There has been dramatic growth in forms of temporary labour migration, with the numbers of temporary foreign workers entering OECD countries increasing by 4 to 5 percent a year since 2000 (D. Thomas 2010).

Contemporary dynamics of "unfree labour" are often conceptualized through the framework of the International Labour Organization's (ILO) definition of "forced labour," as articulated in its Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), which includes "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself [sic] voluntarily" (Article 2(1)) (see also ILO 2005). This conceptualization directs attention toward what are perhaps the most egregious forms of "unfreedom" in the organization of labour; for example, forms of trafficking, indentured/bonded labour ("modern slavery"), and child labour (Lerche 2007; Strauss 2012). However, the ILO definition of forced labour that frames many current debates is actually a subset of much broader conditions of "unfreedom," which rather than being anomalous, are in fact systemic to the organization of capitalist labour markets. For example, Phillips (2011) argues that conditions of freedom/unfreedom should not be understood as a simple dichotomy, as this binary approach occludes many of the conditions of "adverse incorporation" experienced by workers in the global economy. Rather, as Strauss (2012, 141) argues, unfreedom occurs "as a continuum of exploitation to which any worker might be subject, but to which particular groups and individuals have particular vulnerabilities." "Unfreedom" more broadly conceived and understood in the context of capitalist labour markets thus needs to be seen in relation to a wide range of conditions that may restrict or constrain one's capacity to sell one's labour power.

Within this framework, Phillips (2011, 13) argues that contemporary conditions of "unfreedom" often involve the exchange of labour for money through "varied forms of coercion and manipulation designed to make workers work harder, for longer [hours] and for less money." This may be established through a range of employer practices and government policies, which themselves vary by spatial context and reflect the uneven geographic development of global capitalism (Rogaly 2008). In the context of labour migration, conditions of "unfreedom" are often established through the denial of citizenship and residence rights, thereby maintaining connections between labour migrants and their home country (Burawoy 1976). More specifically, the political economy of migration directs attention to processes of incorporation, the term used to refer to the manner in which migrants are integrated into the dominant relations of production of the host society. Satzewich (1991) argues that there are at least four primary forms of incorporation of foreign-born labourers, the specifics of each being reliant upon: (i) the ability of the workers to circulate in the labour market; and (ii) the nature of their citizenship status. Migrant workers (noncitizens) constitute a form of unfree wage labour as their ability to circulate in a labour market is limited by the temporary labour contract, which curtails their right to seek alternate employment.

In addition to these dynamics of labour incorporation, the organization of unfree labour in the migration context is also connected to the discursive construction of nationalism and national identity, the regulation of borders and citizenship rights, and the normalization of the differential treatment of citizens and foreigners that stems from these processes (Sharma 2012). The production of borders is key to the organization of unfree labour in this context. Sharma (2012) argues that borders are sets of institutional relationships shaped by the law, government policies, the market, and social relations. They regulate how people can move across space defined as "national territory" and, moreover, are connected to the construction of different levels of status that have profound impacts on peoples' lives. With regards to the organization of labour, borders are connected to class relations in that not all are equally affected by the laws and regulations that govern mobility. Borders are also connected to discourses of race and racialized hierarchies, which are reflected in immigration policies that have historically restricted entry on racial grounds. Thus, borders are not so much absolute barriers to mobility as they are mechanisms of social, political, and economic control. Thus they play a key role in securing and reproducing low-wage and "unfree" labour.

Nationalist discourses are central to these processes. Specifically, nationalist discourses legitimize differential treatment and rights between those constructed as "citizens" and those who are "noncitizens." Sharma (2012, 323) states, "the result is not necessarily the exclusion of all those who are seen as being 'foreign,' but rather their subordination in Canada." Thus, these discourses are directly linked to the production of the "other," understood in relation to membership in a national community. Moreover, as Sharma (2012) argues, these discourses construct an understanding of "national" versus "foreigner" that normalizes different sets of rights.

While nationalist discourses are constructed in relation to notions of membership in a national community, they may not necessarily take the form of constructing simple dichotomies of inclusion and exclusion. Instead, they may be framed around notions of desirability, with the "other" deemed "undesirable" in terms of their potential membership in the national community and then defined as a threat that must be regulated, policed, and contained, even as they live and work within the respective nation-state (Sharma 2012). "Outsiders" who are defined as threats that need to be regulated are then subject to forms of incorporation that construct differential treatment. As will be discussed below, in this way "outsider" groups are contained politically and at the same time integrated into a labour market in ways that address the imperatives of capital accumulation.

These discourses are often constructed in racial/ethnic terms, producing racialized hierarchies of inclusion, exclusion, desirability, and undesirability. In Canadian immigration policy, which historically was developed to promote white (Anglo/British) settlement of Canada, nonwhite immigrants were categorized as "nonpreferred races" or from "nonpreferred nations" prior to 1967. Before the late 1960s, there was a great deal of public opposition to the granting of Canadian citizenship to those applying for entry to Canada from nontraditional (i.e., non- Western/European) source countries (Satzewich 1991). Underlying this sentiment was the belief that non-Western European and particularly nonwhite immigrant populations were incompatible or inassimilable with the Canadian population as it existed at that time. As immigration policy changed to allow for much greater diversity, there began to be a shift toward the increased emphasis on temporary labour permits, something that has grown significantly in recent years, indicating that the framing of "desirable citizen" in racialized forms is still a powerful organizing force in constructing the national community and legitimizing the subordination of racialized "foreigners" within it.

Returning to questions of political economy, nationalist discourses are institutionalized through the regulation of citizenship, as citizens hold a privileged standing within the nation-state in relation to noncitizens. The regulation of citizenship is supported by nationalist discourses that legitimize the subordination of those who are "foreigners" to the nation-state; "denying the rights, entitlements, and protections that citizens have to those made into noncitizens is a crucial feature of how dominant ideas of nations-as-homes operate within today's world" (Sharma 2012, 332). These discourses then both legitimize and contribute to the reproduction of relations of unfree labour. The chapter now turns to examine the ways in which the temporary status of workers in the SAWP shapes dynamics of unfree labour.

The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

The prevalence of labour shortages in Canadian agriculture has historically placed pressure on the Canadian state to undertake initiatives to ensure an adequate supply of agricultural labour (Thomas 2009). As one solution to agricultural labour shortages, the state has sought to make use of racialized immigrant and migrant labour. Through much of the twentieth century, difficulty in ensuring a continuous supply of seasonal labour persisted due to the tendency of agricultural workers to leave agricultural production for industries that offered more permanent employment. The solution to these labour shortages came in the form of the SAWP and the incorporation of workers from Mexico and the Caribbean as unfree migrant labour.

The use of foreign labour became a primary means to compensate for shortages of domestic labour following World War II. Between 1946 and 1966, 89,680 immigrants entered Canada destined for seasonal agricultural production in Ontario (Satzewich 1991). These were primarily immigrants from European countries, many of whom were leaving Europe as a result of the war. Three of the major groups of immigrants destined to agricultural production in Ontario were Polish war veterans, displaced persons (as a result of the war), and Dutch farmers. All three groups were accorded the right to apply for permanent residence and citizenship. While providing temporary relief to the employment shortages faced by agricultural growers, none offered the potential for a permanent source of seasonal agricultural labour, as they tended to seek forms of employment that would provide greater security and monetary benefits than provided by seasonal agricultural labour, which was viewed as a stepping-stone to employment in other industries or as a means to lead to the establishment of one's own farm (Haythorne 1960). This meant that growers continued to face labour shortages.

The solution came in the form of the SAWP, a federal government program that facilitates the entry of foreign workers for temporary employment in the agricultural industry. In 1966, following intense lobbying pressure from growers, the federal government established an agreement with the Commonwealth Caribbean to import farm labourers on a seasonal basis. In its initial year, the program brought 264 Jamaican workers into Canada. In 1967, Trinidad-Tobago and Barbados became participants in the program. It expanded rapidly in ensuing years, and within a decade it was incorporating approximately 5,000 workers. In 1974, Mexico negotiated a similar agreement to allow Mexican workers into Canada on a temporary basis. In 1976, the program expanded again to facilitate entry of workers from Grenada, Antigua, Dominica, St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Monserrat. By 2012, the SAWP employed over 20,000 workers a year (Faraday 2012).