No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Gender Transformative Odysseys: Tracing the Experiences of Transnational Migrant Women in Rural Canada
... Women workers are found to live in crowded housing that may exacerbate tensions and limit social ties, fostering environments of distrust in enclaved areas, isolated from the greater community and highly conducive to monotonous, routinised lives (Preibisch and Grez, 2010). Preibisch (2005) also found that SAWP prohibitions and practical limitations on bringing children prompts mothers to leave children with relatives or neighbours, eliciting a feeling of failure amongst women who perceived their gender-based roles as unfulfilled while abroad. ...
... The act of permanently migrating is also itself a health risk for workers, where social exclusion alongside harsh living conditions pose increased risk to workers' health (Edmunds et al., 2011). Home-based and migrant community members are found to ostracise female temporary workers, stigmatising them simultaneously as poor mothers for choosing to leave and as sexually promiscuous, available women for working in a male-dominated environment (Preibisch, 2005;Preibisch and Santamaria 2006), which further marginalises their social embeddedness on the farm and at home. Now in its fourth decade with many lifelong migrant members, the largely unchanged SAWP has imbued a certain social order within workers' literal and theoretical field, and has normalised experiences of social difference, hierarchy and 'a sense of one's place' over time [Bourdieu, (1990b), p.131]. ...
... Women workers are found to live in crowded housing that may exacerbate tensions and limit social ties, fostering environments of distrust in enclaved areas, isolated from the greater community and highly conducive to monotonous, routinised lives (Preibisch and Grez, 2010). Preibisch (2005) also found that SAWP prohibitions and practical limitations on bringing children prompts mothers to leave children with relatives or neighbours, eliciting a feeling of failure amongst women who perceived their gender-based roles as unfulfilled while abroad. ...
... The act of permanently migrating is also itself a health risk for workers, where social exclusion alongside harsh living conditions pose increased risk to workers' health (Edmunds et al., 2011). Home-based and migrant community members are found to ostracise female temporary workers, stigmatising them simultaneously as poor mothers for choosing to leave and as sexually promiscuous, available women for working in a male-dominated environment (Preibisch, 2005;Preibisch and Santamaria 2006), which further marginalises their social embeddedness on the farm and at home. Now in its fourth decade with many lifelong migrant members, the largely unchanged SAWP has imbued a certain social order within workers' literal and theoretical field, and has normalised experiences of social difference, hierarchy and 'a sense of one's place' over time [Bourdieu, (1990b), p.131]. ...
... Exempelvis pekar data från södra Spanien på att den typen av växthus för grödor som är vanligast i södra Spanien är problematisk för hälsan, varför arbetsskift om högst 4 timmar föreslås för att göra verksamheten hälsosammare, och att de återstående arbetstimmarna till 8 timmar utförs inom annan, liknande verksamhet (Callejón-Ferreet al., 2009). Flera studier drog slutsatsen att de arbetsrelaterade hälso-och säkerhetsrisker som alla jordbruksarbetare utsätts för kan vara större för migrantarbetare eftersom de arbetar längre arbetspass och ofta väljer att inte rapportera sjukdomar/ skador för att undvika utvisning eller utebliven lön (Preibisch, 2005; May, 2009). Å andra sidan visar data från North Carolina att de flesta skador som drabbar lantarbetare inte är direkt arbetsrelaterade utan inträffar i samband med fritidsaktiviteter, där alkohol är en viktig riskfaktor (Steinhorst et al., 2007). ...
... Det är just denna egenskap hos programmet som gör migrantarbetare till en mycket utsatt arbetskraftskategori . Eftersom migrantarbetare är knutna till sina arbetsgivare och inte kan flytta till mer attraktiva anställningar, har de begränsade möjligheter att förhandla eller utöva påtryckningar vad gäller förbättrade arbets-eller levnadsförhållanden (Preibisch, 2005). SAWP innebär också att migrantarbetare förvägras rätten till kollektivförhandlingar och tvingas utföra hårt arbete under långa arbetsdagar för löner som är oattraktiva för de flesta inhemska arbetare. ...
I såväl media som inom myndigheter och organisationer har det under de senaste åren i allt högre grad uppmärksammats att migrerande arbetskraft inom den gröna näringen eventuellt används på ett sätt som kan strida mot arbetsrättsliga och sociala regleringar. Olika beskrivningar har pekat på levnads- och arbetsförhållanden som starkt avviker från de normalt förekommande i svenskt arbetsliv och inte uppfyller arbetsmiljölagens minimikrav. Det har dessutom påpekats att de bristfälliga förhållandena för den migrerande arbetskraften riskerar att påverka den gröna näringen i stort på ett negativt sätt där näringsidkare tvingas in i en nedåtgående spiral av underbudskonkurrens.
Avsikten med föreliggande kunskapsöversikt är att sammanställa den forskning som finns avseende olika arbetslivs- och arbetsmiljöaspekter på migrantarbete inom den gröna näringen inklusive juridiska aspekter och myndighetsutövning.
I den gröna sektorn finns arbetsmiljörisker förknippade med olycksfall, ergonomisk belastning, och exponering för t.ex. kemiska och biologiska bekämpningsmedel. Migrantarbetare inom den gröna sektorn i Sverige kommer ibland från länder där ‖arbetsplatskulturen‖ innefattar ett annorlunda säkerhetstänkande jämfört med i Sverige. Väl i Sverige kan språket vara ett hinder för arbetaren att tillgodogöra sig muntlig och skriftlig information om arbetet, miljön, skyddsföreskrifter och möjliga risker. Låg utbildningsnivå kan utgöra ytterligare problem. Undermåliga bostäder tillhandahållna av arbetsgivaren har beskrivits. En del av problemet utgörs av dolt arbete som utförs av papperslösa.
Projektledning och administration i projektet, som har tagit fram kunskapsöversikt- en, har legat hos Arbetsmiljöhögskolan (AMH) vid Lunds universitet, som är en nätverks- organisation som samlar kompetenser från universitetets olika fakulteter – vilket borgar för en mångvetenskaplig belysning av kunskapsläget på området.
Kunskapsöversikten utgörs till största delen av en litteraturstudie där relevant forskning på området har sökts i olika databaser; och av en uppföljning av referenslistor i artiklar och böcker. På grund av den flerdimensionella problematiken kring migrant- arbetet inom den gröna sektorn har en mångdisciplinär forskargrupp satts samman för uppdraget. Detta innebär att vi kan belysa problematiken utifrån många olika perspektiv. Redan på ett tidigt stadium stod det emellertid klart att det inte existerar någon mer omfattande svensk forskning på området vilket innebär att mycket av de resonemang som förs i den här skriften vilar på internationella erfarenheter.
För att trots allt kunna ge en bild av förhållandena i Sverige har vi valt att genomföra ett antal telefonintervjuer med aktörer på nyckelpositioner. Intervjuer har gjorts med rådgivare, intresseorganisationer, fackliga organisationer för anställda och arbetsgivare samt berörda myndigheter.
Genom den internationella litteraturen står det klart att det finns en rad arbetslivs- och arbetsmiljöproblem vilka är specifika för migrantarbete på säsongsbasis inom den gröna näringen. Ett av de främsta problemen har att göra med de uppenbara svårigheter- na att följa upp och kontrollera konsekvenser och effekter. Säsongsarbetet innebär att människor endast uppehåller sig i landet under en begränsad period. Därför är det svårt att slå fast långsiktiga effekter på arbetstagarnas hälsa.
Ett annat grundläggande problem är att incitamentet för värdländerna att vidta åtgärder för att minimera arbetslivs- och arbetsmiljöproblem är tämligen svagt. Ofta har de personer som lider skada på grund av bristfällig arbetsmiljö återvänt till sina hemländer då hälsoeffekterna blivit tydliga. Den här problematiken illustreras exempelvis av att de som har valt att ratificera FN:s konvention om migrantarbetares rättigheter främst är nationer varifrån migrantarbetarna kommer. Varken Sverige eller någon annan medlemsstat i EU har anslutit sig till konventionen.
Det går inte att utifrån befintlig kunskap avgöra antalet migrantarbetare som på säsongsbasis arbetar inom den gröna näringen. Intervjuer med företagare ger vid handen att det skulle kunna röra sig om omkring 2 000 personer per år inom trädgård och jordbruk. Men det finns anledning att misstänka att det verkliga antalet är större – inte minst på grund av att företagarna får antas dra sig för att rapportera om migrantarbetare som saknar nödvändiga papper och som är anlitade som svart arbetskraft.
Det finns god grund i den internationella forskningen att anta att många migrant- arbetare inom den gröna näringen i Sverige lever och arbetar under oacceptabla förhållanden - bortom rättslig kontroll och insyn. Det handlar bland annat om undermåliga bostäder och bristande hygien, ökad olycksrisk, exponering för hälsovådliga kemikalier, ergonomiska problem, risk för hot och våld, diskriminering, trakasserier, brist på stöd från samhället såsom sjukvård och rättshjälp, långa arbetstider och låg lön.
Intervjuerna som genomfördes med representanter för relevanta svenska organisationer och myndigheter antyder att vi har anledning att misstänka att migrantarbetare inom den gröna näringen i Sverige lever och arbetar med samma problem som migrantarbetare inom den gröna näringen i andra länder. Det faktum att problematiken potentiellt är svårartad gör att kunskapsbristen i Sverige blir särskilt allvarlig – ny forskning behövs. Dessutom torde behovet av insatser från myndigheter och organisationer vara stort.
... Studies indicate that the work--related health and safety risks all agricultural workers face may be greater for migrant workers, because they work longer hours, and often do not report illnesses/injuries to avoid deportation or losing pay (94,95). On the other hand, data from North Carolina show that most traumas affecting migrant farm workers are not directly occupational and happen in conjunction with recreational activity, where alcohol is an important risk factor (96). ...
... It is precisely this element that makes migrant workers a highly vulnerable labour force. Since migrant workers are tied to their employers and cannot move to more attractive work sites, they have limited bargaining power to press for improved working or living conditions (95). Under the SAWP, migrant workers are deprived of collective bargaining rights and subjected to long hours of hard labour at wages that are unattractive to most domestic workers. ...
Objective
This study provides the summary of current knowledge about migrant work in agriculture available from journal articles, books, reports and other relevant academic publications, focusing on political, economic, legal, social and medical aspects of migrant work in agriculture.
Methods
A systematic search was carried out on the LibHub and Google Scholar databases in order to compile the existing peer-reviewed publications, research reports, and policy papers concerning migrant work in agriculture. The literatures was selected through the following process: (1) reading the title and abstract in English for the period 1960 – 2011; (2) reading the entire text of selected articles; (3) making a manual search of the relevant quotations in the selected articles; (4) eliminating articles without a focus on migrant populations and the themes of central interest, and then reading and analyzing the definitive set of articles.
Results
In spite of their varying geographical focus, scope, unit of analysis and settings, most of the studies reviewed highlighted that migrant farmworkers work under very poor working conditions and face numerous health and safety hazards, including occupational chemical and ergonomic exposures, various injuries and illnesses and even death, discrimination and social exclusion, poor pay and long working hours, and language and cultural barriers. Many studies also reported poor enforcement of labour regulations and a lack of health and safety training on the farms, difficulty accessing medical care and compensation when injured or ill.
Conclusions
The studies have also pointed out the lack of research in relation to labour, health, psychosocial, and wage conditions of migrant farmworkers. The accumulated results of the study indicate that the issues and problems migrant farmworkers face are multidimensional, and there is a need for both policy development and further research in order to address migrant workers’ problems.
... Women's economic precarity under global patriarchy is another contributing factor (Jiggins 1998), as are labor and migration regimes that strategically recruit women due to their economic vulnerability (Chuang 2016;Deere 2005;Mannon et al. 2011;Preibisch 2005). As Kabeer (2012) notes, "evidence from a wide range of developing countries show widespread and increasing entry of women into work on a temporary, casual, seasonal or part-time basis" (15). ...
Agrarian distress—the experience wherein sustaining an agricultural livelihood becomes increasingly challenging—is well documented in South Asia. Another regional trend is the feminization of agriculture or an increase in women's work and decision‐making in agriculture. Scholars have recently linked these two phenomena, demonstrating that agrarian distress results in the movement of men out of agriculture, driving women into the sector. Yet what remains underexplored is the relationship between climate change, a contributor to agrarian distress, and the feminization of agriculture. To examine this, we link socioeconomic and demographic data from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal to high‐resolution gridded climate data. We then estimate a set of multivariate regression models to explore linkages between recent temperature and precipitation variability from historical norms and the likelihood that a woman works in agriculture. Results suggest that hotter‐than‐normal conditions in the year prior to the survey are associated with an increased likelihood of working in agriculture among women. This relationship is particularly strong among married women and women with less than primary education. While more research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms between climate change and the feminization of agriculture, our findings suggest a need for gender‐sensitive climate change adaptation strategies.
... Women's participation in the SAWP is gaining the attention of more researchers in Canada and Mexico (see Aleman and Preibisch 2005;Barndt 2001;Becerril Quintana 2003;Hennebry 2006;Preibisch 2005;and Preibisch and Santamaria 2006). ...
... Paternalistic and exploitative social relations have developed as workers' public and private lives are closely regulated by their employers (Basok 2002, Preibisch 2007, Paz 2008. These unequal social relations are framed by the structural inequalities involved in the construction of what it means to be a migrant labourer in Canada as per the regulations of the CSAWP (Preibisch 2004(Preibisch , 2005(Preibisch , 2007. ...
This article investigates how colonial attitudes towards race operate alongside official multiculturalism in Canada to justify the legally exceptional exclusion of migrant farm workers from Canada's socio-political framework. The Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program is presented in this article as a relic of Canada's racist and colonial past, one that continues uninterrupted in the present age of statist multiculturalism. The legal continuation and growth in the use of non-citizens to conduct labour distasteful to Canadian nationals has provided an effective means for the Canadian state to regulate the ongoing flow of non-preferred races on the margins while promoting a pluralist and ethnically diverse political image at home and abroad. In the face of a labour shortage constructed as a political crisis of considerable urgency, the Canadian state has continued to admit non-immigrants into the country to perform labour deemed unattractive yet necessary for the well-being of Canadian citizens while simultaneously suspending the citizenship and individual rights of those same individual migrant workers. By legislating the restriction of rights and freedoms to a permanently revolving door of temporary non-citizens through the mechanism of a guest worker programme, the Canadian state is participating in the bio-political regulation of foreign nationals.
El capítulo aborda, en primer lugar, algunas de las reflexiones enmarcadas en la teoría de los cuidados que han avanzado en la definición de esta naturalizada actividad como un trabajo, al tiempo que una relación social. Con ello queremos mostrar cómo esta complejidad genera un conjunto de desafíos para el análisis de prácticas y discursos en torno al cuidado. De ese modo, analizamos, en primera instancia, las tensiones que aparecen entre los componentes materiales y afectivos del trabajo de cuidados, visibilizadas en el carácter simultáneo de las tareas que se les asignan a las cuidadoras inmigrantes en el ámbito doméstico familiar. En segunda instancia, abordaremos la complejidad de intereses y motivaciones que se manifiestan al contratar/realizar el trabajo de cuidados en el espacio doméstico, de forma tal que el interés personal se esconde tras el altruismo que se espera/se actúa en el ejercicio de este trabajo cuando a la cuidadora doméstica se le significa como un miembro más de la familia y se le hace creer que se siente en su ‘propia’ casa. Finalmente, exploraremos las tensiones entre la lógica familista/maternalista y la profesionalización del cuidado, a través del modo en que se produce la asignación, transferencia y control de las funciones y tareas.
Drawing on the experiences of service providers supporting live-in caregivers and migrant agricultural workers in two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec), we explore how structural violence shapes the precarious conditions of female temporary foreign workers. Service providers emphasized how transnational social pressures on women to maintain employment, the captivity involved in women’s employment contracts, the limits on unionization, and women’s isolation and lack of privacy, act together to create an unbalanced relationship between the employer and female worker. In turn, this leads to precarious migration and work conditions that foster a vulnerability to violence and abuse while at the same time limiting access to and delivery of services and social support to female temporary foreign workers. Amid these restrictions, service providers focus on making a difference where they can through initiatives such as human rights education workshops, offering support, understanding Canadian regulation, and empowerment workshops. Greater Canadian national options for permanent residency status could provide a basis for adequate services to temporary foreign workers as part of their universal human rights. Temporary foreign workers contribute to Canadian society, making it encumbant upon the Canadian state to ensure the respect of their universal human rights.
Den här artikeln behandlar arbetsmiljöfrågor relaterade till migrantarbete inom den gröna näringen (jordbruket) och då särskilt säsongsarbete. syftet med studien är att utifrån internationella erfarenheter identifiera och beskriva centrala problemområden för framtida forskning. Fokus ligger på diskriminering och psykosocial ohälsa, två områden som har pekats ut som särskilt angelägna i den internationella forskningen om migrantarbetare i jordbruket.
For the last 40 years, migrant farm workers from the Caribbean and Mexico have been recruited to work temporarily on Canadian farms under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). In 2002, the pilot Foreign Worker Program (FWP) for low skilled migrant workers was initiated in the province of Quebec and under this program began the recruitment of Guatemalan migrant farm workers. Since the program's start, the number of Guatemalan migrants has nearly tripled and there seems to be a decline in the number of workers hired under the SAWP in Quebec. This paper examines the FWP's development, set-up, consequences and operation alongside the SAWP and shows how the Canadian state is expanding the number of flexibility and temporary worker programs. This paper draws attention to the neo-liberal context of migrant farm labour in Canada, pointing to the ways in which Canada's federal policies governing seasonal agricultural migrants and athe agricultural labour market are exploitative and racist.
The influences of gender and geography are increasingly being acknowledged as central to a comprehensive understanding of health. Since little research on rural women's health has been conducted, an in-depth qualitative approach is necessary to gain a better initial understanding of this population.
To explore the determinants of health and their influence on rural women's health.
From November 2004 to September 2005, 9 focus groups and 3 individual interviews were conducted in 7 rural southwestern Ontario communities. Sixty-five rural residents aged 26 years and older participated in the study. Semi-structured interview questions were used to elicit participants' perceptions regarding determinants of rural women's health.
Four Health Canada determinants (employment, gender, health services, and social environments) and 3 new determinants (rural change, rural culture, and rural pride) emerged as key to rural women's health.
Although health determinants affect both urban and rural people, this qualitative study revealed that rural women experience health determinants in unique ways and that rural residents may indeed have determinants of their health that are particular to them. More research is needed to explore the nature and effects of determinants of health for rural residents in general, and rural women in particular.
Development institutions saw their work challenged by those working on gender and development in the last third of the twentieth century. Ruth Pearson argues that the new century will witness an assertion of the global relevance of gender in development, and see gender analysis applied in new contexts, and to men as well as women.
As American women have entered the labour force in greater numbers, the traditional work of wives and mothers - cleaning houses and caring for children - has gradually moved into the global marketplace. Paid domestic work has largely become the work of disenfranchised immigrant women of colour. This volume highlights the voices, experiences, and views of Mexican and Central American who care for other people's children and homes, as well as the outlooks of the women who employ them in Los Angeles.
For 38 years, agricultural workers from the Caribbean and Mexico have spent extended periods working in Canada under a guest worker program. In this article I explore worker-community relations in the Canadian rural communities in which they live, examining the ties that have developed between non-citizen migrant agricultural workers and civil society. Although the integration of migrant workers as a social group into Canadian society is characterized by social exclusion, the nature of relationships between the migrant and permanent communities is undergoing transformations throught the development of personal ties, including the emergence of non-state actors who have become increasingly relevant in defending the rights of migrant workers before their employers, their home country government officials, and the Canadian state. The discussions presented here are relevant for debates on international migration, citizenship, civil society, and transnationalism.
Latina immigrant women who work as nannies or housekeepers and reside in Los Angeles while their children remain in their countries of origin constitute one variation in the organizational arrangements of motherhood. The authors call this arrangement “transnational motherhood.” On the basis of a survey, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic materials gathered in Los Angeles, they examine how Latina immigrant domestic workers transform the meanings of motherhood to accommodate these spatial and temporal separations. The article examines the emergent meanings of motherhood and alternative child-rearing arrangements. It also discusses how the women view motherhood in relation to their employment, as well as their strategies for selectively developing emotional ties with their employers' children and for creating new rhetorics of mothering standards on the basis of what they view in their employers' homes.
This paper argues that most conceptualizations of citizenship limit the purview of the discourse to static categories. 'Citizenship' is commonly seen as an ideal type, presuming a largely legal relationship between an inidividual and a single nationstate - more precisely only one type of nation-state, the advanced capitalist postwar model. Alternatively, we suggest a re-conceptualization of citizenship as a negotiated relationship, one which is subject therefore to change, and acted upon collectively within social, political and economic relations of conflict. This dynamic process of negotiation takes place within a context which is shaped by gendered, racial and class structures and ideologies; it also involves international hierarchies among states. Citizenship is therefore negotiated on global as well as national levels. This conceptualization is demonstrated by way of identifying one particular set of experiences of negotiated citizenship, involving foreign domestic workers in Canada. As non-citizens originating from Third World conditions, this is a case involving women of colour workers, highly prone to abusive conditions, and under the direction of employers who are more affluent First World citizens and predominantly white women. Original survey data based on interviews with Caribbean and Filipino domestic workers in Canada are used to demonstrate the varied, creative and effective strategies of two distinctive groups of non-citizens as they attempt to negotiate citizenship rights in restrictive national and international conditions.
The migration literature agrees on several key factors that motivate individual decisions to move: human capital investments,
socioeconomic status, familial considerations, social networks, and local opportunities in places of origin relative to opportunities
abroad. Yet further analysis of the social forces underlying these relationships reveals interwoven gender relations and expectations
that fundamentally differentiate migration patterns, in particular who migrates and why Data analysis of 14,000 individuals
in 43 Mexican villages reveals several mechanisms through which the effects of gender play out in the migration process. Results
suggest that migrant networks provide support to new men and women migrants alike, whereas high female employment rates reduce
the likelihood that men, but not women, begin migrating. Education effects also emphasize the importance of examining gender
differences. In keeping with the literature on Mexican migration, I find that men are negatively selected to migrate, but,
conversely, that higher education increases migration among women. My findings also question the narrow portrayal of women
as associational migrants that follow spouses, disclosing much greater chances of family separation than reunification among
migrants' wives and significantly higher migration risks for single and previously married women than married women.
This review highlights contributions made by scholars who have treated gender as a central organizing principle in migration and suggests some promising lines for future inquiry. Many significant topics emerge when gender is brought to the foreground, such as how and why women and men experience migration differently and how this contrast affects settlement, return, and transmigration. A gendered perspective demands a scholarly reengagement with those institutions and ideologies immigrants create and encounter in order to determine how patriarchy organizes family life, work, law, public policy, and so on. It encourages an examination of the ways that migration simultaneously reinforces and challenges patriarchy in its multiple forms. Several migration scholars have replaced early feminist frameworks in which gender hierarchy was privileged with more comprehensive and flexible models. These map the simultaneity of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and legal status on the lives of immigrant and native-born men and women.
This paper examines the state’s contradictory roles in globalising its workforce and transforming its regulatory capacities, and the implications these changes have for the human and citizenship rights of an increasing number of migrant workers. We investigate foreign workers’ protection and rights at both ends of the migration chain by using the specific examples of the Philippines and Japan. The discussion identifies areas for greater activism and mechanisms for the promotion of the rights of migrants from both ‘above’ and ‘below’. First, the highly aggressive role of the state in globalising labour markets is theoretically discussed. The paper then examines the role of the Philippine state in labour export and the implications of its embrace of neo-liberalism for its capacity to strongly pursue migrant worker welfare. The contradictory positions of the state in promoting globalisation, on the one hand, and discourses of human rights for migrant workers, on the other, are highlighted. In the Japanese case we examine the role of the state in both regulating and restructuring its labour market, and the structural dependence placed on the legal and illegal importation of migrant labour. Despite this dependence, we reveal the contradictory positions held within Japan’s state apparatus which result in a deliberate marginalisation of migrant workers. The important role of NGOs in disseminating information to migrant workers about their rights in Japan is highlighted. We explore the relationship between the individual and the state in the context of globalisation through the discussion of citizenship as a negotiated concept. We then examine the changing reality brought about by globalisation processes in terms of responsibility towards the protection of any worker (regardless of passport) but also with regard to activism on behalf of migrant labour. Finally, we emphasise the important future role to be played by NGOs in making the needs and rights of globalised workers more broadly recognised and attended to at both local, national and transnational levels.
This study analyzes the intersection of gender and production relations in small-scale contracting in nontraditional agriculture. The case of the processing tomato industry in the Dominican Republic exemplifies patterns found throughout the region. Building on a critique of unitary household models, I analyze the gendered relations mobilizing resources for contract farming. As appears common, contracting has heightened demand for women's farm labor. Contracting has simultaneously provided women with openings for contesting the appropriation of their unpaid labor and many women are claiming payment for work in contract farming. This case demonstrates the importance of gender issues in informing contract farming debates and policy interventions.
Codes of conduct covering the employment conditions of Southern producers exporting to European markets mushroomed throughout the 1990s, especially in the horticulture sector linking UK and European supermarkets with export firms in Africa. The majority of employment in this sector is “informal,” a significant proportion of which is female. This paper explores the gender sensitivity of codes currently applied in the African export horticulture sector from an analytical perspective that combines global value chain and gendered economy approaches. Through an analysis of these two approaches, it develops a “gender pyramid,” which provides a framework for mapping and assessing the gender content of codes of conduct. The pyramid is applied to codes that cover employment conditions in three commodity groups and countries exporting to European markets: South African fruit, Kenyan flowers and Zambian vegetables and flowers. It concludes that the gender sensitivity of codes needs to be greatly enhanced if they are to adequately address employment conditions relevant to informal and especially women workers.
Maid in theMarket: Women $ PaidDomestic Labour
- S Arat-Koc
- W Giles
Arat-Koc, S. and Giles, W. Maid in
theMarket: Women $ PaidDomestic
Labour. Halifax: Fernwood
Publishing, 1994.
Condiciones laborales de 10s inmigrantes regulados en Canadi
- A Barrbn
Barrbn, A.. "Condiciones laborales
de 10s inmigrantes regulados en
Canadi.' Comercio Exterior 50 (4)
(2000): 350-53.
Paper presented at the Primer Coloquio Internacionalsobre Migracidn y Desarrollo: Transnacionalismo y Nuevas Perspectivas de Integracidn, City of Zacatecas
- Becerril
Becerril, 0. "Relaci6n de gtnero,
trabajo transnacional y migraci6n
temporal: trabajadores y trabajadoras agricolas mexicanos en
Canadi." Paper presented at the
Primer Coloquio Internacionalsobre
Migracidn y Desarrollo: Transnacionalismo y Nuevas Perspectivas
de Integracidn, City of Zacatecas,
Mexico, October 23-25,2003.
Binford, L. "Social and Economic
Contradictions of Rural Migrant
Contract Labor Between Tlaxcala,
Mexico and Canada." Culture and
Agriculture 24 (2) (2002): 1-1 9.
Nuevas experiencias productivas y nuevas formas de organizacidn flexible del trabajo en h agricultura mexicana
- F S Lara
Lara F. S. Nuevas experiencias
productivas y nuevas formas de
organizacidn flexible del trabajo en
h agricultura mexicana. Mexico
City: Juan Pablos Editor, 1998.
Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico
- K Logan
Logan, K. "Women's Participation
in Urban Protest." Popular
Movements and Political Change in
Mexico. Eds. J. Foweraker and A.
Craig. Boulder: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 1990.150-159.