Janet McLaughlin

Doctors within borders: meeting the health care needs of migrant farm workers in Canada

See related analysis article by Preibisch and Hennebry on page [1033][1] and at [www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/cmaj.090736][2]. Jose, a migrant farm worker from Mexico, presents with a one-month history of low back pain. Through broken English and Spanish, he tells you that he has been in Canada for

Strengthening the Backbone: Local Food, Foreign Labour and Social Justice

Increasingly social-justice oriented food movements have been paying attention to a long-neglected and largely invisible aspect of “local” food production—the lives and wellbeing of the “imported” workers who make labour intensive agriculture possible, and profitable, for many operations. Indeed, many farmers acknowledge that migrant workers are the backbone behind their industry. This chapter explores the contemporary use of migrant workers in agriculture and the social and community movements aimed at improving their conditions, rights and health. The chapter first outlines the use of migrant workers globally, with a focus on Europe and the United States, including an examination of both guest worker and visa programs as well as undocumented work. It then delves into the case study of Mexican and Caribbean workers in Southwestern Ontario agriculture. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic and interview-based research, it highlights some of the key issues (both positive and negative) facing this population—including economic and livelihood gains, living and working conditions, family separation, health, rights, and social integration—highlighting recent controversies and struggles, as well as the social and rights-based movements that have arisen to address these challenges. The use of migrant workers in Canada is only growing amid a climate of intense competition in which flexible and reliable migrant agricultural labour has become ubiquitous in the global agri-food system. Rather than pitting farmers/employers, workers and social justice advocates as serving oppositional purposes, the chapter argues that improving workers’ health and rights can benefit not only migrant labourers, but also strengthen the integrity of a food system that has become dependent on their use.

Fresh fruit, broken bodies: migrant farmworkers in the United States, with a foreword by Philippe Bourgois, California series in public anthropology

were able to take advantage of the new markets and the better and more stable prices. Chapters 4 and 5 take up the task of explaining how the regulating process works. Here we are introduced to two different worlds of production and pesticide regulation and control. On the one hand, in an effort to obtain better and more stable prices, agro-exporters are willing to complywith the United States’ regulations concerning pesticide use. On the other hand, Costa Rican regulations are much more lax, pesticide residue inspections are much less rigorous, and production for the domestic market is barely monitored. However, the prices for the domestic market are lower and not guaranteed, which means that all the risks of production fall on the producers. The result is that poorer farmers, who are barely able to keep their heads above water, are forced to use cheaper and more toxic pesticides. In this sense, one of Galt’s central conclusions is that, at the end of the day, it is the off-farm capital, embodied in this case in the form of the pesticides suppliers, that is the real winner. In general, this is a very rich, thoroughly documented, and well-written book that illustrates very effectively the advantages of using a political ecological approach to understanding pesticide use. Furthermore, as a Costa Rican, I highly appreciate scholarly analyses that go beyond the nationally enshrined ideology of the “green republic” and tease out some of the contradictions present in the development model that has been followed since the 1980s. However, I feel that some arguments are insufficiently explained. For instance, in Chapter 6, Galt argues that “the double movement to create state power over food safety has been much stronger in the industrialized world” (175) without substantiating his claim. Throughout the book, and particularly in Chapter 6, the author adamantly insists that “state intervention, including regulation, is often the best way to address many pesticide problem” (169). The readers are thus left with an impression of an overarching state, hovering above society, deciding (or not) or being able (or not) to regulate markets in favor of their citizens. Further, by not historicizing the relation between the political ecology of pesticides and the state, this narrative comes close to reproducing the modern (good)/traditional (bad) divide. As a possible way to move out of this conundrum, it would have been useful for the author to explore in more detail the history of pesticide regulation in both the United States and Costa Rica, thus giving a more rounded view of the political ecology of pesticide use and pesticide control.