Four Decades of the Mexico-Canada Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program: 1974-2014

Rosa María Vanegas García

Four Decades of the Mexico-Canada Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program: 1974-2014 examines four decades of operation of the SAWP — the only binational temporary labor migration agreement between Mexico and Canada, signed via a Memorandum of Understanding in Ottawa on June 17, 1974. The book is structured in four chapters. The first provides a historical overview of the internationalization of agricultural labor, and migration policies in both countries from the 19th century onward. The second — the core of the work — analyzes the SAWP in depth: the bilateral MOU, the structure of the Agreement for Temporary Employment (ATE), the program's statistical evolution (from 264 workers in 1974 to nearly 20,000 in 2014), real housing and working conditions, labor control mechanisms, the practical impossibility of unionizing, the insufficient role of Mexican consulates, and a dedicated section on female agricultural workers (admitted since 1989) with a gender-based analysis. The third chapter documents the program's social effects: workers' geographic origins, individual cases, and the religious dimension of migration. The fourth offers a critical evaluation based on citizen monitoring conducted by the INAH team in collaboration with Mexico's STPS. Based on over two decades of fieldwork in Mexico and Canada, the author concludes that the SAWP — presented by both governments as a model of orderly migration — structurally benefits Canadian agribusiness while perpetuating conditions of inequality and injustice for Mexican workers.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• I. Migration and work
• II. The Mexico-Canada Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program
• III. Social effects of the Seasonal Agriculture Workers Program
• IV. Critical evaluation of the Seasonal Agriculture Workers Program
• Bibliography
• Annexes
• Annex 1
• Annex 2.
• Annex 3
• Annex 4
• Annex 4.1
• Annex 5