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Journal article

The Other Side of el Otro Lado: Mexican Migrant Women and Labor Flexibility in Canadian Agriculture

Date

2010

Authors

Kerry Preibisch and Evelyn Encalada Grez

Abstract

Global

restructuring is dramatically reshaping how women and men around the

world relate to agriculture. While gender analysis has been central to

research on labor‐intensive, corporate agriculture in the global South,

it is rarely invoked in the literature exploring these trends in the

North. Moreover, research on gender in agriculture in high‐income

countries has tended to focus on women in family farms, despite

extensive restructuring of the sector that has increased demands for

waged laborers. This article speaks to these limitations by tracing the

incorporation of Mexican women into the Canadian agricultural sector as

temporary migrant workers. In exploring the lived realities of these

women, it reveals workplaces characterized by highly gendered,

racialized employment relations and illustrates how temporary migrant

worker programs further entrench existing structures of labor

segmentation in agriculture. While temporary migrant worker programs

have brought greater flexibility into the Canadian agricultural labor

market by enabling a particular set of employment practices that rest

on gendered, racialized subjectivities, these processes are by no means

uncontested by the actors they seek to command.

Journal title

Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Volume

35

Issue

2

Page numbers

289-316

Publisher

University of Chicago

Place published

Chicago

File Attachments

Links

Economic sectors

Agriculture and horticulture workers

Content types

Policy analysis

Target groups

Researchers, Unions, and NGOs/community groups/solidarity networks

Geographical focuses

Canada, Ontario, Alberta, México, Manitoba, Quebec, British Columbia, Other provinces, Federal, Nova Scotia, and National relevance

Spheres of activity

Economics, Gender and sexuality studies, and Sociology

Languages

English