Rights and Restrictions: Temporary Agricultural Migrants and Trade Unions’ Activism in Canada and Spain

Abstract

In the last two decades, temporary worker programs have experienced an unprecedented expansion as instruments of what is defined as the migration management approach. Various migrant rights activists have voiced concerns about the treatment of temporary migrants in these programs and taken initiative to advance their rights. For some migrant rights advocates, it is the temporary nature of migration that is primarily responsible for the rights deficit. Yet, other migrant rights activists accept the temporariness of labour migration while trying to ensure that migrants receive legal protections for their work rights and that these protections are enforced. Trade unions are among the actors who try to protect and advance temporary migrants' labour rights, but their role in supporting or challenging the principles of temporary migration governance has been neglected in the scholarly literature. The article addresses this gap by highlighting the divergent position of Canadian and Spanish Unions on temporariness of this type of migration. As the article argues, the difference is related to the following four factors: (1) the degree to which the unions in question are institutionally embedded in immigration policy-making, (2) the social environment (that is, discourses on temporariness advanced by other unions and grassroots organizations), (3) the degree of protectionism unions express vis-à-vis new immigrant flows and (4) whether regulated temporary migration is contrasted with permanent or unauthorized migration.

The impact of government regulation on recruitment process, rights, wages and working conditions of labor migrants in the Israeli construction sector

“…The need to pay back the money invested in migration (high recruitment fees) may prevent migrant workers from claiming their rights in the host society's labor market; consequently, migrant workers become more vulnerable to exploitation (Bélanger, 2014;Kemp and Raijman, 2014;Basok and López-Sala, 2015). Sometimes migrants have to pay high recruitment fees for a work permit and usually they have to take loans to finance their trip.…”

“…Most studies discuss certain elements of the migrant workers' precarious employment, focusing separately on their social rights and employment conditions (Castles, 2006;Ruhs and Martin, 2008;Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014;Basok and López-Sala, 2015), or recruitment fees paid by migrant workers (Ellman, 2003;Kemp and Raijman, 2014;Fernandez, 2013). However, studies on the intersection of these core dimensions of the taxonomy of labor migrants' precarious employment are scarce.…”

“…The precarious character of migrant workers' employment is widely discussed in the literature, with the focus mainly on what happens to the migrants once they have entered the host-society labor market (Castles, 2006;Ruhs and Martin, 2008;Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014;Basok and López-Sala, 2015). There is ample evidence that migrant workers are paid lower wages than locals would accept for the same kind of work; sometimes they are even below the wages stipulated by the laws of host countries (Attas, 2000;Bartram, 2004;Wickramasekara, 2006).…”

“…In the taxonomy of precarious employment most studies include social rights, employment conditions and wages; they often omit recruitment fees paid by migrant workers for the opportunity to work in another country as an additional component (Basok and López-Sala, 2015;Castles, 2006;Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014;Ruhs and Martin, 2008). This disregard is surprising because high recruitment fees and the need to take loans to finance migration also make migrant workers more vulnerable to exploitation (Bélanger, 2014;Kemp and Raijman, 2014;Platt et al, 2017).…”

Induced circularity for selective workers. The case of seasonal labor mobility schemes in the Spanish agriculture

“…First of all, it promotes a kind of flexible mobility that adapts to changing economic conditions and labor demands (López-Sala and Sánchez-Montijano, 2014;López-Sala and Godenau, 2015). Second, the temporary nature of their stay affects the ability of the migrants to obtain permanent legal status, as well as some social and labor rights (Basok and López-Sala, 2015). Finally, it entails the creation of a regime to regulate migration that operates within the territory (rather than at the borders), employing mechanisms to monitor the workers during their stay that determine if the workers are eligible to circulate in the future.…”