food insecurity and the canadian temporary farm labour...
TRANSCRIPT
Food insecurity and the Canadian temporary farm labour migration regime: to what end?
Photo: Laura Elizabeth Pohl
Donald C Cole at PROOF on behalf of Anelyse Weiler, both University of
Toronto, & Janet McLaughlin, Wilfrid Laurier University. 2016 Nov 17
MFW Workforce & Context
•Every year, hundreds of thousands of temporary
foreign workers come to Canada – 567,977 (2014, Farraday 2016)
•About 38,000 are in agriculture
–Seasonal Agricultural Program (SAWP) ~ 1966, through Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services (FARMS).
–“Low Skill Pilot Program” (LSPP) ~ 2002
–Current name being used, Primary Agriculture Stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (Standing Committee report 2016)
Over a decade of research – qualitative, quantitative and clinical – in Ontario, Canada
• 450 hours of participant observation with migrant workers in Canada, including farm work (Hennebry, 2006), and spanning several years in Mexico, Jamaica and Canada (McLaughlin, 2009)
• Quantitative survey on health issues with nearly 600 migrant workers in Southern Ontario (2008-2009) (Hennebry, Preibisch, McLaughlin)
• WSIB Research Advisory Council-funded on MFW health issues and access, & involving health care professionals (Hennebry, McLaughlin, Pysklywec, Tew, Haines, Cole 2012 & 2014)
• Stakeholder, farmer and worker interviews in British Columbia (Weiler, 2014-15)
• Hundreds of interviews with additional stakeholders: • Canadian and sending-country country representatives • Employers • Civil society, labour and community groups, national and international • Health care providers, public health officials
A. Poverty as a Driver of Migration •Approx. 9.8% of Mexico’s population live in extreme poverty
(CONEVAL, 2013, p. 1), and 23.3% experience deprivation due to a lack of access to food (p. 15)
“We used to be able to live off of the land, but not anymore. .... All prices have increased, and the prices of
food grown in the campo [field] haven’t changed, so ... we can buy less with our money. So for what we produce we can get very little money, but what we need to buy is very expensive. In every family at least one person must go; in
many families many members must go.”
- Interview with village leader and former migrant, Mexico, 2006, JM
Migrant workers supporting Canadian food production – food sovereignty?
“We're to a point now really where it would cripple [sic] agriculture to remove the [SAWP] program. We ... can't be without it anymore” British Columbia Grower, 2013
Similar to concerns expressed in the UK around closing the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (Migration Advisory Cttee, 2013)
MFW supporting diversity of crops produced in Canada
“On my little road, within four miles, we've lost 2500 acres of horticultural crops, horticultural crops, in the last 20 years. It's all grain now. If all you want to eat is corn flakes, that's wonderful, but you know, it doesn't take much labour to grow grain.” -Ontario Grower, 2015
B. Principle Uses of MFW Remittances
•SAWP employment reduces the severity of migrants’ household’s immediate poverty, but their dependence on extremely precarious employment circumstances persists (Binford 2013).
•Providing for basic family needs, such as educating children, building and improving homes, maintaining the basics of life (food, clothing, etc.) and medical expenses (Binford 2013; Hennebry 2006; McLaughlin 2009; Wells et al. 2014). Similar to Barbadian households where remittances for food & utility bills (Wood & Watson, 2015)
Remittances, Food & Nutrition Security
•With migrant salaries, most families diversify their diets, include more nutritious food, and purchase food with more regularity, thus reducing or eliminating their previously experienced periods of hunger or malnutrition (McLaughlin 2009; Rosser 2011;Wells et al. 2014)
• Recent systematic review (Thow et al 2016) found remittances “reducing households’ vulnerability and leading to improved food security and reductions in underweight. However, remittances appear to have little effect on markers of chronic undernourishment[and]…that the extra income from remittances may compound trends toward purchasing less healthy (non-traditional) foods that are associated with the nutrition transition”
So MFW remittances may support sending household food security…
But what of MFW situation where they are working?
C. Agrarian Exceptionalism & Structural Conditions of Inequity
• ‘State of exception’ now the norm (Agamben, 2005; Hennebry & McLaughlin, 2012)
• Unfree labour regimes justified on basis of food security for high income country, preserving rural life, ‘international competitiveness’
• In Canada, Visas ‘tied’ to employers with dependence on employers for housing, transport, navigating health care - barriers to reporting or leaving abusive jobs
• Like MFW in the UK with labour intensification and low wages (Rogaly 2008) though not as extreme as ‘Gang’ labour in the horticultural and agricultural sectors (Strauss 2015)
John Lehmann
Poor and dependent…MFW Food Insecurity
• Studies in multiple USA regions indicate significantly greater food insecurity i.e. a lack of secure access to sufficient food through dignified means among migrant /seasonal farm workers, compared to general population • 82% of 100 sampled farm workers in Texas and
New Mexico exhibited food insecurity, including 49% food insecure with hunger (Weigel et al. 2007). • Low income, long working hours, limited access
to transportation, and inadequate food preparation and storage space (Quandt et al. 2014) can lead farm workers to adopt diets focused on lower-cost, energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods that are less prone to spoilage than fresh produce and more readily available in a new cultural context (Cason et al., 2006)
Food Access & Preparation •Limited access to usual foods:
–“There are no nopales [cactus] to make you a smoothie…. we brought ourselves our tortillas and all that we can, we make tamales and pozole “(Interview, female migrant worker, Mexico, 2006, JM)
•Time for cooking: –The guys … get off late from work and only have one stove, so they can’t all use it, so some of them have to cook the night before to make sure they can eat (Interview, Canadian migrant volunteer, Ontario, Canada, 2007, JM)
•Skills for cooking: –“you don’t know how to cook or wash or anything. It’s very difficult….I have to cook, wash, iron, everything. There is no help. (Interview, Mexican migrant worker, Ontario, Canada, 2007, JM)
Health Consequences
•Food insecurity can generate and exacerbate other health issues e.g. weight loss/overweight, negative mental health outcomes (Kilanowski 2012;
Kiehne and Mendoza 2015; Weigel et al. 2007; Ip et al. 2015)
–“All of us lose weight…, because we work a lot and we don’t eat what we should eat” (Interviews with Mexican workers, 2007, Ontario, JM)
–“When I get nervous I want to eat. I get this because of tough work, missing Mexico, and problems in house,” remarked Patricia, a clinically overweight Mexican worker who gained over ten kilos in Canada
Health Outcome Data
•Limited fruit and vegetable intake, large fluid requirements in hot weather, result in gastrointestinal system health problems – acid reflux, constipation, and associated hemorrhoids.
•Norfolk Hospital Emergency room visits (2006-2010) by diagnosis/system
–Gastrointestinal disorders 13.8% of visits
• Medical Repatriation data on MFWs (2000-2011) (Orkin et al 2014)
–Digestive or gastroenterological disorders reason for repatriation in 11% (86/787)
D. Agenda for Future Research
1. Quantifying household food insecurity for migrant farm workers in Canada and sending-countries (longitudinal)
2. Better understanding of workers’ food security skills, knowledges and assets
3. Assessing extent to which migrant labour supports domestic food security vs. export-oriented profit
Policy Opportunities
1. Supporting more dignified livelihood alternatives and immigration pathways for sending country households E.g. Duany 2010 suggests that better social protection in Puerto Rico means less remittances sent home.
2. Promoting food security for farm workers’ in Canada
3. Considering other ways to achieve Canadian food sovereignty (Desmarais et al 2011, NFU 2012)
In the meantime….food-relevant responses
• Employers & community health centres provide nutrition lessons and cooking classes to small groups of workers
• Employers at larger operations pay one worker to cook for the others, providing workers with healthy, culturally appropriate meals from a more experienced cook.
• Local immigrant entrepreneurs generate informal businesses selling culturally familiar ‘home-cooked’ meals to workers.
• Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples Food Bank provision
• Farm employers provide small garden plots for growing vegetables or share farm produce with employees.
Acknowledgements & Contacts
•Migrant farmworkers
•Practitioner colleagues serving them
•Funders
• - Workplace Safety & Insurance Board of Ontario,
• -Social Sciences and Humanities - Research Council of Canada & Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
•Co-researchers
Photo by Janet McLaughlin, courtesy of migranworkerhealth.ca
References – Resources (i)
• Agamben, 2005. “The State of Exception.” In Politics, Metaphysics, and Death. Essays on Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer. Chicago: Duke University Press.
• Barrientos A, Ware Barrientos S. Extending Social Protection to Informal Workers in the Horticulture Global Value Chain. Social Protection Discussion Paper Series No. 0216. Human Development Network, The World Bank. June, 2002
• Binford L. 2013. Tomorrow We're All Going to the Harvest: Temporary Foreign Worker Programs and Neoliberal Political Economy. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Consterdine E, Samuk S. Closing the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme: a triple loss. University of Sussex Centre for Migration Research Working Paper No. 83. November 2015
• Crush J. 2013. "Linking food security, migration and development." International Migration 51 (5): 61-75.
• Desmarais AA, Roppel C, Martz D. Transforming agriculture: Women farmers define a food sovereignty policy for Canada. Ch 4 in Wittaman H, Desmarais AA & Wiebe N (eds). Food Sovereignty in Canada. Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems. Halifax & Winnipeg, Canada: Fernwood Publishing, 2011, pp 59-79
References (ii)
• Duany J. To send or not to send: migrant remittances in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. ANNALS, AAPSS, July 2010, 630, 205-223
• Gertel J and Sippel SR. Seasonal Workers in Mediterranean Agriculture. The social costs of eating fresh. Abingdon, Oxon & NY, NY: Routledge, 2014
• Hennebry JL. 2006. "Globalization and the Mexican-Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program: Power, Racialization & Transnationalism in Temporary Migration." Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario.
• Hennebry J and McLaughlin J. 2012. The Exception that Proves the Rule: Structural Vulnerability, Health Risks and Consequences for Temporary Migrant Farmworkers in Canada. In C. Hughes and P. Lenard (eds.), Legislating Inequality: Canada's Temporary Migrant Worker Program (81-124). Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
• McLaughlin J. 2009. “Trouble in Our Fields: Health and Human Rights Among Mexican and Caribbean Migrant Farm Workers in Canada,” University of Toronto PhD Dissertation, 1–676. http://hdl.handle.net.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/1807/24317
References (iii)
• McLaughlin J, Hennebry J, Cole DC and Williams G (2014). The Migrant Farmworker Health Journey: Identifying Issues and Considering Change across Borders IMRC Policy Points, Issue VI. http://imrc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/IMRC-Policy-Points-VI.pdf
• Migration Advisory Cttee (UK) May 2013. Migrant Seasonal Workers: The impact on the horticulture and food processing sectors of closing the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme and the Sectors Based Scheme
• National Farmers’ Union (NFU). 2012. Farmers, the Food Chain and Agriculture Policies in Canada in Relation to the Right to Food. …to the Special Rapporteur On The Right To Food, Mr. Olivier De Schutter, Mission to Canada, May 2012* http://www.nfu.ca/story/farmers-food-chain-and-agriculture-policies-canada-relation-right-food
• Orkin AM, Lay M, McLaughlin J, Schwandt M, Cole D. Medical repatriation of migrant farm workers in Ontario: a descriptive analysis. PMID:25295239 CMAJ OPEN June 2014; 2(3): E192-198; doi:10.9778/cmajo.20140014
• Rogaly B. Intensification of Workplace Regimes in British Horticulture: The Role of Migrant Workers. Popul. Space Place (2008), 14, 497–510
References (iv)
• Ezra Rosser. Children’s Consumption of Migration: Remittances and Food Security. Border-Lines, 2011, Vol. 5, p. 181-203
• Strauss K. Unfree again: social reproduction, flexible labour markets and the resurgence of gang labour in the UK. Antipode 2015 Vol. 45 No. 1 ,pp 180–197
• Thow AM, Fanzo J, Negin J. A systematic review of the effect of remittances on diet and nutrition. Food and Nutrition Bulletin 2016, Vol. 37(1) 42-64
• Weiler A, McLaughlin J, Cole DC. Food security at whose expense? Under review International Migration
• Weiler, A.M. et al. 2015. “Food Sovereignty, Food Security and Health Equity: a Meta-Narrative Mapping Exercise.” Health Policy and Planning 30 (8) 1078-1092.
• Wells, D. et al. 2014. Sustaining North-South Migrant Precarity: Remittances and Transnational Families in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Program. Just Labour 22: 144-167.
• Wood A, Watson S. An Exploratory study of the use of migrant remittances at the household level in Barbados. Journal of Economics and Development Studies June 2015, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 19-30