Citizenship Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2004

Human Rights and Citizenship: The
Case of Mexican Migrants in Canada
T.BasokCentre for Studies Social JusticeUniversity of Windsor401 Sunset AvenueWindsor, OntarioN9B 3P4Canadabasok@uwindsor.caTANYA BASOK

In the past few decades, migrants residing in many European and North
American countries have benefited from nation-states’ extension of legal rights
to non-citizens. This development has prompted many scholars to reflect on the
shift from a state-based to a more individual-based universal conception of
rights and to suggest that national citizenship has been replaced by post-na-
tional citizenship. However, in practice migrants are often deprived of some
rights. The article suggests that the ability to claim rights denied to some groups
of people depends on their knowledge of the legal framework, communications
skills, and support from others. Some groups of migrants are deprived of the
knowledge, skills, and support required to negotiate their rights effectively
because of their social exclusion from local communities of citizens. The article
draws attention to the contradiction in two citizenship principles—one linked to
legal rights prescribed by international conventions and inscribed through
international agreements and national laws and policies, and the other to
membership in a community. Commitment to the second set of principles may
negate any achievements made with respect to the first. The article uses Mexican
migrants working in Canada as an illustration, arguing that even though certain
legal rights have been granted to them, until recently they had been unable to
claim them because they were denied social membership in local and national
communities. Recent initiatives among local residents and union and human
rights activists to include Mexican workers in their communities of citizens in
Leamington, Ontario, Canada, are likely to enhance the Mexican workers’
ability to claim their rights.

In the last decade discussions on international human rights regimes and
‘post-national citizenship’ (Sassen, 1996, p. 89) have been gaining popularity.
The emergence of supra-national human rights institutions, such as the United
Nations and the European Court of Justice and such documents as the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and other international covenants and conventions,
including the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All
Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, are cited as examples of this
trend. Several authors, including Turner (1993b), Soysal (1994), Jacobson

Tanya Basok, Centre for Studies Social Justice, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue,
Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada; e-mail: basok@uwindsor.ca

ISSN 1362-1025 Print; 1469-3593 Online/04/010000-00  2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1362102042000178409

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Tanya Basok

(1996), Yuval-Davis (1999) and Cohen (1999), view these developments as
indicative of a shift from a state-based to a more individual-based universal
conception of rights, or from national citizenship to post-national citizenship.

While limitations of the ‘post-national citizenship’ thesis have been pointed
out by various researchers (Schuck, 1998; Bhabha, 1999; Castles and Davidson,
2000; Glenn, 2000; Schuster and Solomos, 2002), it remains true that migrants
in many European countries and in North America have gained certain legal
rights which coincide with the moral principals prescribed by the international
conventions. However, as has been pointed out by several researchers, the
existence of legal frameworks defining rights do not guarantee that these rights
will be exercised (Hall and Held, 1990; Turner, 1993a; Winer, 1997). Migrants,
similar to other groups of people, suffer human rights violations despite the
existence of laws to protect them. It is therefore important, as some researchers
(Stasiulis and Bakan, 1997; Isin, 2000) have suggested, to analyse citizenship not
as a status but as a process which involves negotiation over access to and the
exercise of rights. The ability to claim rights requires knowledge of the
appropriate laws, agreements, policy statements, and other legal documents,
communication skills, and/or support from others. Some groups of migrants lack
the necessary knowledge, skills, or support to be able to claim their rights. The
degree to which members of the host community make this knowledge available
to the newcomers, train them to acquire the necessary communication skills,
and/or extend support to them, depends on whether migrants are viewed as
members of the local communities of citizens.

The article draws attention to the contradiction that exists in two principles of
citizenship. The first one advocates principles of inclusion in an international
community that shares a commitment to legal principles. The second advocates
exclusion from national and/or local communities. Commitment to the second
set of principles may negate any achievements made with respect to the first. In
this article, based on research on Mexican migrant workers in Canada, I argue
that even though legal access to some economic rights may be extended to
non-citizens residing on the national territory of sovereign nation-states, the
exercise of these rights may be precluded by the denial of social membership in
the national community to these non-citizens which hamper the migrants’ ability
to negotiate respect for their legal rights and adherence to legal principles
governing their employment and residence in the host society.

Post-national Citizenship: From Citizenship Rights to Human Rights

In her seminal work on migrants in Europe, Soysal develops an argument that
national citizenship is losing ground to a more universal model of membership
rooted in universal notions of human rights. She suggests that rights that used to
be granted solely to nationals are now extended to the foreign population and
that we are witnessing a transition from national to post-national citizenship. The
thesis that human rights discourses have displaced discourses of rights based on
the sovereignty of nation-states is supported by a number of authors. Jean Cohen
(1999) contends that ‘human rights discourses are now a pervasive feature of
global public culture. Their effectiveness goes well beyond moralistic exhor-

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Human Rights and Citizenship

tation: they constitute an international symbolic order, a political-cultural frame-
work, and an institutional set of norms and rules for the global system that
orients and constrains states’ (p. 26). Yuval-Davis (1999) acknowledges that no
international agency has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of states. Yet
she insists that even this accepted rule is crumbling (p. 128). Focusing on the
rights of foreign residents, various authors (for example, Layton-Henry, 1990;
Jacobson, 1996; Sassen, 1996; Bloemraad, 2000) have maintained that there is
no longer a sharp distinction between the rights enjoyed by citizens and those of
non-citizens (or denizens, as permanent foreign residents in Europe have been
coined). Sassen (1996), for instance, points out that immigrants have accumu-
lated social, civic, and even some political rights in countries of residence and
that legal citizenship status is of minor importance with respect to entitlements
to such social services as education, health insurance, welfare, and unemploy-
ment benefits in the United States and Western Europe (pp. 95–6). Some
countries have extended voting rights to resident non-citizens (Layton-Henry,
1990; Sassen, 1996). Legal resident immigrants are guaranteed full civil rights
either constitutionally or by statute (Sassen, 1996, p. 96). Brubaker (1992),
although critical of the ‘post-national citizenship’ thesis, acknowledges that ‘the
marginal advantages conferred by citizenship over and above those conferred by
the status of long-term foreign resident are of modest import. From the point of
view of the immigrants concerned, citizenship status as such does not decisively
shape life chances’ (Brubaker, 1992, p. 180). Thus, according to the supporters
of the ‘post-national citizenship’ thesis, what matters most is residence and not
the legal immigration status.

Legal Citizenship versus Citizenship as Practice

Researchers associated with the ‘post-national citizenship’ thesis have been
criticized for minimizing the nation-state’s control over citizenship and citizen-
ship rights1 and for their failure to acknowledge that not all citizenship rights are
equally applied to all migrant workers.2 In addition, various authors have pointed
out temporal and geographic variations with respect to the rights enjoyed by
migrants. Drawing on the experience of resident aliens in the United States,
Schuck (1998) identifies different policies towards resident aliens through time.
He notes that between the late 1960s and early 1990s the treatment of aliens in
the United States was brought in line with the treatment of citizens in many
respects, yet in the 1990s alien residents’ access to public benefits was ques-
tioned. The 1996 welfare reforms, for instance, have significantly limited the
eligibility of alien residents to virtually all federal cash assistance programs.
Violations of the civil rights of some groups of immigrants in the post-Septem-
ber 11 climate is another illustration of the deterioration of the rights of some
foreign residents in the United States. Stasiulis and Bakan (1997) point out that
by focusing on European guest workers, Soysal ignores less permanent forms of
migration and the fact that people participating in them are often denied human
rights. Based on an analysis of transnationalized female labour—migrant dom-
estic workers—they insist that national, territorially-based sovereignty continue
to restrict rights to individuals originating from outside a nation-state’s border

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Tanya Basok

(p. 131). The fact remains that many migrant workers have benefited from the
legal extension of rights previously reserved for the national population. There-
fore, from a legal perspective, migrant workers have become ‘post-national
citizens’.

When citizenship, however, is viewed not merely in relation to legal rights but
as a ‘set of practices that lead to the establishment of rights, access, and
belonging’ (Winer, 1997, p. 535) that ‘shape the flow of resources to persons and
social groups’ (Turner, 1993a, p. 2), the picture becomes considerably different.
Hall and Held observe that ‘rights can be mere paper claims unless they can be
practically enacted and realised, through actual participation in the community’
(Hall and Held, 1990, p. 175). As Winer points out, the exercise of legal rights
may be denied because ‘the means to use citizenship rights, including adequate
education, means of communication, and access to transportation may not be
sufficiently established’ (Winer, 1997, p. 535).

Under neo-liberal policies, many people throughout the world have experi-
enced deteriorating social rights, even though these rights continue to exist in
law (Falk, 2000; White, 2003). Women, racial minorities, immigrants, people
with disabilities, the elderly, gays and lesbians, and other disadvantaged groups
continue to face marginalization and the denial of equal treatment despite the
presence of such international instruments as the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and its national counterparts, such as the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.

It is therefore important to see citizenship not only in relation to a set of legal
entitlements but as ‘practices through which individuals and groups formulate
and claim new rights or struggle to expand or maintain existing rights’ (Isin and
Wood, 1999, p. 4; also see Stasiulis and Bakan, 1997; Wiener, 1997, p. 535; Isin,
2000, p. 5). To claim new or extant rights individuals and groups require the
knowledge of oppression (McLaren and Lankshear, 1994) and effective com-
munication skills. To formulate claims individuals and groups need to under-
stand that they are denied legal rights and that extant legal or human rights
frameworks make it possible for them to seek redress. These individuals and
groups also require communication skills to translate their understanding of the
oppression into demands for justice using the language that is understood and
accepted by those who deny them equal treatment. Yet, at times, having the
knowledge of oppression and skills to communicate the demands is not sufficient
if the costs of political participation are too high for members of a disadvantaged
group to bear. In this case, support by the sympathizers who can effectively
present the claims for equality to those in power on behalf of the disadvantaged
group can be just as crucial. Some groups of migrants, by virtue of their
exclusion from the host society, may lack linguistic skills, knowledge of their
legal entitlements, mechanisms required to access benefits, or support from
sympathizers, to be able to claim their rights.

International migrants are often caught in the contradiction between two
citizenship principles. The first principle refers to access to rights and the second
to membership in a community or identity (Kratochwil, 1994). Soysal (1994,
2000) contends that there is a clash between two elements of modern citizenship:
rights and identities. She observes: ‘In the postwar era, these two elements of

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Human Rights and Citizenship

citizenship are decoupled. Rights increasingly assume universality, legal unifor-
mity, and abstractness, and are defined at the global level. Identities, in contrast,
still express particularity, and are conceived of as being territorially bounded. As
an identity, national citizenship—as it is promoted, reinvented, and reified by
states and other societal actors—still prevails’ (Soysal, 1994, p. 159). As
Brubaker (1992) observes, ‘The politics of citizenship today is first and foremost
a politics of nationhood. As such it is a politics of identity, not a politics of
interest (in the restricted, materialist sense)’ (p. 182). In other words, foreign
residents may be simultaneously offered membership in an international com-
munity of citizens when defined in terms of legal rights and denied citizenship
in the national and/or local community when defined in terms of belonging and
identity. These two aspects of citizenship are not distinct (as Soysal and others
seem to portray them); they are interconnected. The central argument of this
article is that the denial of social membership in a community of citizens to some
categories of migrants deprives these migrants of the opportunities to acquire
knowledge, learn skills, or secure support to claim the legal rights to which they
are entitled. The article traces changes in Leamington from a virtual exclusion
of Mexican workers from the local community to recent attempts on the part of
the Canadian labour movement and some sectors of the Leamington community
to include them and discusses the implications of this change for the ability of
Mexican migrant workers to claim their rights.

Leamington: A Rural Community

Leamington is a rural community in Essex County located some 45 km southeast
of Windsor, in Southwestern Ontario. Its climate and soils are ideally suited to
agriculture. Located in close proximity to the Great Lakes and at the most
southerly latitude within Canada, Essex County enjoys early springs, warm
summers and the longest growing season in Eastern Canada. In addition, the
region is known for its variety of productive soils. This combination of
favourable climate and rich soils permits Essex growers to produce a wider
range of crops than elsewhere in Canada. The leading crops produced in Essex
County are corn, soybeans, fall wheat, canning crops, fruits and vegetables,
including early potatoes and greenhouse crops. But it is tomato production that
has occupied a central place in the Leamington economy in the twentieth
century. The growth of the tomato industry received a major boost from the
establishment of the Heinz food-processing plant in 1909.

The greenhouse industry has been growing since the 1940s (Snell, 1974,
p. 94). It has supplied domestic and US markets not only with tomatoes but with
other vegetables, such as cucumbers and peppers. The greenhouse industry has
undergone significant growth in the last 15 years. In 2001 the Leamington
greenhouse industry was bigger than the entire US greenhouse industry. With its
987 acres under production it had the largest concentration of greenhouse
vegetable production in North America (Whitfield and Papadopoulos, 2002).

The Leamington greenhouse industry has benefited from the establishment of
the Experimental Station at Harrow (located between Windsor and Leamington).
Researchers working at the Harrow station have developed improved technolo-

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Tanya Basok

gies which have considerably reduced production costs for greenhouse growers.
A shift from glasshouses to double polyethylene houses has permitted growers
to reduce their heating costs and advances in plant pathology and entomology
have resulted in pesticide reduction (Whitfield and Papadopoulos, 2002). Perhaps
more than technological improvements the availability of foreign seasonal
workers from Mexico and the Caribbean has contributed to the rapid growth of
the industry.

Mexican workers are employed in field crops and in greenhouses. But it is the
Leamington greenhouse industry which has grown particularly dependent on
Mexican labour. Extremely hot temperatures discourage many local farm work-
ers from working in greenhouses in the summer months, although these workers
are more willing to work there once the summer heat subsides. Mexican seasonal
workers constitute some 40% of the workforce in the greenhouse industry. Many
Leamington greenhouse growers consider the contribution of Mexican seasonal
workers vital to their industry and claim that without them the industry would
collapse. At the same time, the expansion of the greenhouse industry has made
it possible for more Mexican workers to be employed in this region.

The Study

My qualitative research on the exercise of rights by Mexican migrant workers
grew out of a research project on the impact of Canada-bound seasonal
migration on migrants’ households. For the original research project I conducted
interviews with officials at the Mexican Consulate in Toronto, the Mexican
Ministry of Labour and Social Planning, the Foreign Agricultural Management
Services (FARMS), and last, but not least, with 254 Mexican seasonal workers.
I used an interview schedule to survey 154 Mexican migrants employed in the
Leamington area. Although this survey focused mainly on economic aspects of
the migratory experience, the interview schedule included some open-ended
questions on the ‘cultural capital’ transfers from Canada to rural Mexico.
Participants of the survey were asked to reflect on the new ways of thinking and
behaving they might have acquired in Canada and how these changes might have
affected their interaction with their household members and other villagers in
their home communities. Most workers claimed that they had not changed and
explained their answers by the isolation they experienced within Canadian rural
societies and the lack of interaction between themselves and the host society
members.

Soon after this research project began, Mexican workers surrounded my
research assistant, Nicole Noel, and me at the soccer field (where many
interviews were conducted on Sunday afternoons), bombarded us with questions
about their rights, and told us stories about abuses they had experienced on
Canadian farms. The following Sunday we held an information session on
migrant workers’ rights in Canada in the basement of a Catholic church. About
200 workers attended this session. The following week I invited representatives
of the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers to present information
to the Mexican migrants on pesticides and health and safety issues. Both
information sessions were followed by numerous complaints by the workers

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Human Rights and Citizenship

about their working conditions in Canada, work-related accidents they had
suffered without compensation provided either by the growers or the Canadian
government, and other problems. In the months that followed, other workers
volunteered this type of information to us, in some cases, expecting our
assistance. When possible, we assisted the workers to access information and fill
out application forms for their workers compensation claims.

We also gave a few English lessons to the workers, obtained English as a
Second Language tapes and books for them (or at times, provided information
on where they could purchase them), took some Mexican workers shopping,
attended Sunday masses with them, and participated in their festivities. The data
presented in this article were collected in part through these informal discussions
with Mexican workers and participant observation.

At the second stage of this research project, we travelled to Mexico where we
conducted interviews with 100 Mexican participants of the Canadian Seasonal
Agricultural Workers program in San Cristóbal, a Mexican village in the State
of Guanajuato. Many research participants from this village had worked in
Leamington. The revised interview schedule used at this stage included ques-
tions on the migrants’ living and working conditions (including questions on
work-related accidents and ailments).

Finally, I gathered much valuable information used in this article when in
2001 and 2002 I became a volunteer with the Global Justice Care Van Project
and a chair of the Migrant Workers Committee, a coalition of community
agencies and activists. I helped to gather information on living and working
conditions among Mexican workers, accompanied an injured worker to a
hospital, and provided information and assistance to the workers at the Migrant
Workers Support Centre in Leamington. I regularly receive information on
migrant workers in Canada circulated by a grassroots organization, called
Justicia for Migrant Workers, through the listserve (‘Justicia’
� justicia@justicia4migrantworkers.org � ) or posted on their website (http://
www.justicia4migrantworkers.org).

Mexican Migrant Workers

Mexican seasonal workers have been a part of Leamington for several decades.
Starting in 1974 they have been employed to work in the Leamington horticul-
ture industry through a government-regulated program. The Seasonal Agricul-
tural Workers Program (known commonly as the ‘offshore program’) was
launched in 1966 but until 1974 it had applied only to workers from Common-
wealth Caribbean countries. The program was introduced to ease the severe
labour shortage problems that many Ontario growers experienced. The seasonal
migration from the Caribbean did not entirely solve the labour shortages and in
1974 the Canadian government extended this program to include Mexico. Since
1974 the number of Mexican workers employed in Canada through the ‘offshore
program’ has been climbing steadily. Whereas at the beginning some 200
Mexican men were recruited to participate in it, today well over 7000 Mexicans
are admitted.

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Tanya Basok

The Mexican Ministry of Labour and Social Planning (Secretarı́a de Trabajo
and Provisión Social) selects Mexican workers for the Canadian Seasonal
Agricultural Workers Program. The vast majority of the participants are men,
although the number of female participants has been slowly rising to comprise
about 3–4% of the total labour force (FARMS, 2003). Committed to assisting the
most needy Mexican workers, the Secretarı́a prefers participants who support
large families, have low levels of education, and are landless and underem-
ployed. Since Canadian growers wish to recruit experienced agricultural work-
ers, the Secretarı́a gives strong preference to applicants from rural communities.

Ninety percent of the program participants work in Ontario and the Leaming-
ton area alone receives close to 3000 Mexican workers annually. Since the
program permits growers to nominate their workers and many growers prefer
receiving the workers who have already proven to be efficient, loyal, and
obedient, many program participants are return migrants.3 Some workers em-
ployed in the Leamington area today have been coming to this region for some
20 years. Workers leave their families behind and are expected to return home
at the end of the season. They are sent to work on farms in rural areas where
there are very few, if any, Spanish-speaking immigrants.

Although Canada has not signed the UN Convention on migrant workers, it
adheres in part to the spirit of this international document. The Canadian state
has extended certain rights to migrant workers—a right to a minimum wage (or
prevailing wage), workers’ compensation, access to Medicare, and some provi-
sions of the Employment Standards Act. The Agreement for the Employment in
Canada of Seasonal Agricultural Workers from Mexico stipulates that the
workers are to receive weekly wages calculated as the greatest of:

• the minimum wage for workers provided by provincial legislation;
• the rate determined annually by Human Resources Development Centre to be

the prevailing wage rate for the type of agricultural work being carried out;
and

• the rate being paid by the employer to his Canadian workers performing the
same type of agricultural work.

Mexican workers employed in Ontario are covered by the provincial Employ-
ment Standards Act. As harvesters, these workers are entitled to vacation pay
and public holiday pay if they have been employed for at least 13 weeks.
Vacation pay is to be calculated at the rate of 4% of total gross earnings
(FARMS, 1999, p. 20). Employers are required by law to carry Workers’
Compensation and workers make contributions to Unemployment Insurance and
the Canada Pension Plan through regular deductions from the salary. Therefore,
Mexican workers are entitled to receive benefits deriving from these plans and
coverages.

However, in practice Mexican workers do not exercise several of these rights.
At times they are unaware of their entitlement. Even when they know their
rights, they find it extremely difficult to navigate within the Canadian social
protection system because they are deprived of the knowledge necessary to
access the benefits. Until recently Mexican workers had very little contact with
the host society. Due to this limited interaction with the host society, Mexican

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Human Rights and Citizenship

workers were limited in their knowledge of the English language or ways of
operating in a new society and thus were virtually denied the knowledge they
needed to claim their rights.

Social Exclusion

Mexican workers stay in Canada for up to eight months each year. They are
housed by the employer, usually on the premises. It is not unusual for the
workers to live in a house or a trailer next to the grower’s house. The grower
is responsible for providing furniture, dishes, utensils, and appliances to the
workers. The workers cook their own meals but the grower is obligated to take
them shopping for food (or pay the taxi fare to the store and back) once a week.
The grower is also expected to take an ailing worker to a physician. In Ontario
seasonal workers are covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

In many respects Mexican workers play an important role in the economic life
of this rural community. They shop in local stores, buy food from fast food
places, use taxi services, consume in bars, conduct financial transactions in local
banks, and buy second-hand merchandise at garage sales, and in some communi-
ties, such as Leamington, they constitute a significant part of the labour force.

But while Mexican seasonal workers participate in the community life as
producers and consumers, until recently they had been insulated from the rest of
the community. In Leamington, which receives close to 3000 workers, Mexican
workers are highly visible yet even now (despite the changes discussed below)
very few people take an interest in them. Due to the language barrier, Mexican
workers do not attend regular church services. Instead, a Spanish-speaking priest
offers them a separate Sunday service at a local Roman Catholic church. Their
cultural celebrations (such as the Mexican Independence Day celebration or
Fathers’ Day) draw very few local residents.

Workers find it extremely difficult to attend public English as a Second
Language classes because they work long hours during the harvest season.
Furthermore, in order to enrol in public English classes one needs to pass a
tuberculosis test. For most Mexican workers this requirement poses a problem
since their employers are not required to take them to a physician for any reason
other than illness or injury. Without their employers’ help, Mexican migrant
workers find it extremely difficult to communicate with the physicians. Further-
more, the workers are reluctant to take time off work to take this test. Therefore,
until recently, only a handful of Mexican workers took English classes in the
basement of the Catholic church.

Some migrant workers told us that they experienced social rejection in
Leamington. As one worker commented: ‘There are many people who look
down on us, don’t think we are worth anything. Some of them don’t want us to
work here’. An older worker, who had been coming to work in Leamington for
15 years, reflected:

Even though they used to be nicer before, people in Leamington
never really liked the Mexicans. They think we are all thieves.
Perhaps, some of us are. And in Mexico even our president is a

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Tanya Basok

thief. But you know how it is in small towns. People trust each
other. And in ranchos [rural communities] even more so. Here we
go to Zeller’s [‘and Canadian Tire’, adds his roommate] and they
stare at us to make sure we won’t steal. The same when we go to
yard sales. Because I speak some English, I chat with them
sometimes. But they all stare at others with fear. There are some
pubs where we are not allowed. Because I like dancing I used to
go to pubs when I first came over but women don’t even want to
dance with you. And they are rude. I understand it when a guy is
drunk and he does not take ‘no’ for an answer. But when you
approach a girl and ask her to dance with you politely there is no
reason for her to be rude. One woman even punched a Mexican
guy in his nose when he asked her to dance with him. His nose
bled.

To a certain degree Mexican workers interact with some Spanish-speaking
immigrants in Leamington: they play soccer with some of them and purchase
food from others. According to the 2001 Census, there were only 445 Latin
American immigrants in the Leamington area. Most of them were new immi-
grants who were hardly in the position to extend assistance to the Mexican
seasonal workers.4

Since the 1970s Leamington has been a home for Mexican Mennonite
immigrants. Mexican Mennonite men can speak Spanish, but because of the
cultural differences separating them from Mexican seasonal migrants there is
very little interaction between them. Following their migration to Mexico from
Canada in 1922, Mennonites formed isolated farming communities in Chi-
huahua, a northern Mexican state (Sawatzky, 1971). These social boundaries
between Spanish-speaking Catholic Mexicans and mostly Low-German-speaking
adherents of the anabaptist faith from Mexico are reproduced to a large degree
in Leamington.

Living apart from the rest of the community, Mexican migrants limit their
social interaction mainly to others within the Mexican community, although, as
discussed below, this pattern has started changing. They visit each other in the
evenings or on Sunday and congregate outside a grocery store. Mexican migrants
attend the same bars and the same Catholic church (except for those who have
converted to Protestantism) and play soccer with each other (and with a few
Salvadoreans).

Similarly, until recently the Canadian labour community had not expressed
much interest in the working and living conditions of migrant workers. The
Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) played a vital role in the establishment of
the Mexican Seasonal Workers Program. In 1974 the OFL lobbied the federal
government to expand the already existing Caribbean Seasonal Workers Program
to include Mexico, fearing that without a federally administered program,
growers would continue to employ undocumented workers whose deplorable
working and living conditions had been exposed by the Special Task Force
established by the Department of Manpower and Immigration in a report that
came out in 1973 (Sanderson, 1974). Between 1974 and 2001, however, the

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Human Rights and Citizenship

labour community showed little concern for the conditions under which
Caribbean and Mexican workers were employed.

Until a few years ago, Mexican seasonal workers employed in Leamington
were viewed by Leamington residents and the broader Canadian society as
sojourners whose temporary stay in the country did not necessitate investment in
their language training and/or cultural orientation. While Mexican migrants
played an integral role in the Leamington economy, in social and cultural terms
most were not viewed as citizens of the Leamington community which had
grown to depend heavily on their economic contribution. Their interaction with
the local population was extremely limited. Mexican workers knew very few
people who could serve as cultural interpreters for them. Existing on the social
margins of Canadian society, Mexican migrants were often unaware of their
rights. But even when they were aware of their entitlements, they were unable
to follow the procedures to receive the benefits to which they were entitled
because their language skills were insufficient and hardly anyone wished to
assist them.

The Inability to Claim Rights

Every Mexican worker is entitled to receive the Canadian pension upon reaching
the age of 65. Until recently, however, most Mexican workers in Leamington
were unaware of the procedures they needed to follow in order to claim it.
Similarly, a lack of knowledge of entitlements and procedures prevented migrant
workers from receiving compensation for the prescription drugs purchased in
Canada even though all were required to contribute to a drug plan. While all
migrant workers in Canada are covered by provincial health plans, workers
tended to underutilize health services because of the language barriers they
encountered in rural hospitals which lacked trained Spanish-language practi-
tioners. A worker interviewed by Zwarenstein (2002) commented, ‘The patron
doesn’t send us to the hospital. Or if they do, they don’t send anyone to translate
for the worker’ (p. 18).

Even though all Mexican migrant workers are entitled to receive workers
compensation from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (formerly known
as the Workers’ Compensation Board) if injured at work, in practice very few
claim it. Among the 100 farm workers we interviewed in San Cristóbal 20 had
suffered accidents at work. Yet only one of them had received compensation
(although on a previous occasion, involving a cut, he continued working).
Among the rest, three were compensated by their employers for the missed days,
seven who had suffered lacerations or allergic reactions to pesticides continued
working, four took unpaid days off, and five were sent back to Mexico because
they were no longer fit to work in Canada. Even though physicians treating
injured workers are required by law to report their accidents to the Workers
Safety and Insurance Board, in practice, because of the language barriers,
English-speaking physicians often fail to understand the cause and location of
the accident. And even when compensation forms are filed by the physician and
the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board sends out the forms to the injured

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Tanya Basok

workers, the workers find it difficult to fill them out because of their ignorance
of the two Canadian languages.

Seasonal migrant workers experience other violations of their rights as
workers including the failure by the growers to offer their workers days of rest,5

vacation and public holiday pay,6 and decent living conditions,7 as well as
exposure of the workers’ to occupational hazards. Even if the workers could
speak English they would still find it virtually impossible to claim their rights.
The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program grants an enormous degree of
power to the employers over their workers. At the end of the season growers fill
out evaluation forms for their workers. Workers are required to report to the
Mexican Ministry of Labour and Social Planning upon their return to Mexico
and to hand in the evaluation forms in sealed envelopes. To a large degree, the
decision taken by the Ministry of Labour on whether to re-admit the worker into
the program in the following years hinges on these evaluations. Therefore
Mexican workers are afraid that if they speak out they will lose the opportunity
to return to work in Canada. While migrant worker themselves are afraid to
challenge these violations, until recently neither labour nor community human
rights organizations have raised objections to any of the conditions under which
migrant workers tolled and lived. By excluding migrant workers from their
communities of citizens, labour and community organizations failed to represent
these workers’ concerns to the policy makers.

Towards Inclusion in the Community of Citizens: The Leamington Story

The relationship between Mexican workers and the Leamington community
described above started to change in 2002. It took a series of articles published
by a Windsor labour journalist, Mary Agnes Welch, to make some community
residents recognize the social barriers that the community had erected. Conse-
quently, the Migrant Worker Coalition was formed. The Coalition organized an
orientation meeting in February 2002 at which workers were introduced to local
banks, police, transportation routes, and Leamington recreational activities. The
Coalition has representatives from the business community, growers, the Mexi-
can consulate, and the Town Hall. With funding obtained from the United Way,
the Coalition launched a ‘Bridges for Bicycles’ project to assist Mexican
workers in fixing their bicycles, the major mode of transportation among
Mexican workers. In addition, the Coalition set up an office at the South Essex
Community Centre. The Centre made interpreters available—working for pay or
as volunteers—to accompany sick workers to local hospitals or to provide them
with translation over the phone. Local growers employing Mexican workers also
occasionally use the Coalition interpreters. In order to avoid conflict with the
growers on the committee, the Coalition denied membership to organized labour
representatives. Because of this lopsided composition, the Coalition stays away
from any discussion of migrant workers’ rights.

By contrast, workers’ rights are of central concern for the Migrant Workers
Support Centre, established in the summer of 2002. The history of the Migrant
Workers Support Centre dates back to April 2001, when the United Farm
Workers of America–Canadian Office was contacted with regard to the case of

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Human Rights and Citizenship

some 20 migrant farm workers in Leamington facing repatriation to Mexico.
This action was precipitated by a walk-out of some 50 Mexican workers
protesting against their working conditions. Having visited Leamington several
times, UFWA–Canadian Office launched a project, called the Global Justice
Care Van Project. Funded by the Canadian Labour Congress, United Steel
Workers of America, United Food and Commercial Workers and Canadian Auto
Workers Union, the project aimed to document working and living conditions of
the seasonal guest workers in Ontario and to formulate policy recommendations
to the Canadian government (Zwarenstein, 2002). The findings and the recom-
mendations of the Global Justice Care Van Project were presented in a docu-
ment, entitled ‘National report: status of migrant farm workers in Canada’
(United Food and Commercial Workers, 2002). On the basis of the findings of
the Global Justice Care Van Project, Canadian labour organizations decided to
open an information and assistance centre in Leamington. The Centre was
inaugurated on 2 June 2002. Originally committed to funding the Centre as a
pilot project, in August 2002 the United Food and Commercial Workers and the
Canadian Labour Congress reaffirmed its commitment to funding the Centre.

Working together with such community agencies as the Occupational Health
Clinics for Ontario Workers and the Bilingual Legal Aid Clinic, the Centre
provides information to the workers on workers’ compensation and the Canada
Pension Plan. The Centre’s paid staff and volunteers assist injured workers in
following the necessary procedures to receive compensation. If compensation is
denied to the workers or if the compensation is viewed by them as inadequate,
workers are directed to the Bilingual Legal Aid Clinic.

In addition, the Centre provides information on occupational hazards to the
workers. In 2002 Spanish-language manuals on health and safety issues were
produced and distributed not only in Leamington but in other communities in
Ontario as well. The manual, prepared by Occupational Health Clinics for
Ontario Workers (OHCOW), discussed occupational hazards such as heat stroke,
back injuries, respiratory diseases, pesticide poisoning, and others. OHCOW
nurses offer assessment to ailing workers who suspect that their illnesses are
linked to their working conditions. If OHCOW specialists (argonomists or
hygienists) can prove the connection between working conditions and the
workers’ illness, workers are invited to submit a workers’ compensation claim.
In addition, volunteers from the Support Centre accompany workers to the local
hospitals.

The Migrant Workers Support Centre in Leamington has also provided
placement opportunities to Frontier College volunteers who offer evening
English classes to migrant workers and provide other types of assistance at the
Centre. Most Frontier College Labourer–Teacher volunteers are placed to work
side-by-side with migrant workers on farms and processing plants throughout
Ontario.8 Employed during the day as temporary help, in the evening Frontier
College volunteers teach their co-workers English and share with them their
knowledge of Canadian society.

Finally, workers’ rights are of central concern for a grassroots organization,
Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW), formed in the summer of 2002 by some
volunteers who had been initially associated with the Global Justice Care Van

59



Tanya Basok

project. Comprised of students, labour and human rights activists, and re-
searchers, this organization is committed to advancing the rights of migrant
workers and building ties between all agricultural workers. J4MW activists
engage in community outreach in migrant communities in rural Ontario, raise
awareness of the plight of migrant workers, document workers’ complaints about
their working and living conditions, and educate workers about their rights and
try to solve their employment and housing problems. They also lobby the
government to improve the workers’ conditions.

All these initiatives play an important role in educating the workers about
their rights, providing some language and cultural training to the workers, and
establishing an infrastructure which includes translation services, referrals, and
assistance in application procedures for workers’ compensation, pension, and
other benefits. Yet as important as it is for the migrant workers to know their
rights, knowledge alone may not be sufficient for them to confront the employers
who deny workers their rightful breaks, days of rest, paid holidays, or decent
housing. Growers wield an enormous amount of power over their workers.
While the workers themselves are unlikely to challenge their employers whose
approval is instrumental to their continued participation in this program, labour
and human rights groups have recently voiced their concerns to the Canadian
government and have demanded the establishment of mechanisms to monitor the
compliance of the growers with the rules and regulations governing this
employment program.

While these initiatives promise to significantly improve the exercise of rights
by the migrant workers, it is important not to be overly optimistic. Union and
human rights activists still confront serious challenges in the face of the
reluctance of most Canadian provincial governments to provide coverage to
agricultural workers under the Health and Safety Acts and the denial to these
workers of the right to bargain collectively.9

It is also important to recognize that the Leamington situation is uncommon.
Two other Ontario regions receive large numbers of migrant workers from
Mexico and the Caribbean—the Bradford/Newmarket and the Simcoe areas. To
service these workers UFCW opened two additional support centres in Ontario—
in Bradford on 4 May 2003 and in Simcoe on 29 June 2003. However, for many
migrant workers employed in remote communities located far away from these
centres these initiatives are of little use. They continue to experience social
isolation which prevents them from claiming some of their basic rights.

Multiple Layers of Citizenship

As Yuval-Davis (1999) observes, ‘Citizenship needs to be understood as a
multi-layered construct, in which one’s citizenship in collectivities in the
different layers—local, ethnic, national, state, cross or trans-state and supra-
state—is affected and often at least partly constructed by the relationships and
positionings of each layer in specific historical context’ (p. 122). It is important
to realize, however, that these layers may be interconnected and that the exercise
of rights associated with citizenship at one scale may be precluded by limitations
on citizenship at another scale.

60



Human Rights and Citizenship

As global citizens Mexican workers are entitled to the rights spelled out by
international conventions and recognized by the Canadian state. Yet they do not
exercise some of these legal rights because of their lack of knowledge or skills
to claim them. Being denied membership in local communities, Mexican
migrants are also deprived of opportunities to learn the language and skills or
gain support from members of the local community that would make it possible
for them to exercise these rights. Until recently, hardly any efforts had been
made to include Mexican workers in the social and political life of the local
residential communities which received the workers. Living on the social
margins of the local communities, Mexican migrants remained ignorant of their
rights and/or of the ways they could exercise them. The recent initiatives on the
part of Leamington residents, labour, and other community agencies for the
‘offshore’ workers in their communities of citizens may transform the ability of
the migrant workers to exercise the rights to which they have been entitled.
Many migrant workers have benefited from language training, workshops on
workers’ compensation, health and safety protection, the Canada Pension Plan,
translation services, and other forms of support. These initiatives furnish the
necessary knowledge and skills to the workers to enable them to access the
benefits to which they are entitled and challenge those who deny them their
rights.

The link between the ability to claim some rights and inclusion in the local
community of citizens can be illustrated in the case of female domestic workers.
The participation of women in international migration is rapidly expanding
(Hayzer et al., 1994; Sassen, 1998; Sharpe, 2001). The Pacific Rim region in
particular has experienced a rise in female migration over the past few decades
(Lindio-McGovern, 2003). Female migrant domestic workers are recruited either
by private agencies (Heyzer et al., 1994; Lindio-McGovern, 1997, 2003) or
through government-regulated programs, such as the Canadian Live-in Caregiver
Program (Cohen, 1991; Daenzer, 1991; Bakan and Stasiulis, 1994). Abuses
suffered by these workers are widely documented (Cohen, 1991; Daenzer, 1991;
Giles and Arat-Koc, 1994; Bakan and Stasiulis, 1997; Lindio-McGovern, 1997).
Many domestic workers throughout the world find it difficult to challenge the
abuse (Chin, 1998; Andall, 2000). Some of these female workers have adopted
individual coping mechanisms to counteract the abuse they experience (Cohen,
1991; Chin, 1998). Yet others have pursued legal challenges (Stasiulis and
Bakan, 2002), and/or have engaged in organized protest (Alcid, 1994; Barber,
2000). At least two features distinguish government-recruited female domestic
workers in Canada from seasonal Mexican migrant workers. First, because of the
job requirements, domestic workers speak English and therefore they are able to
seek information and support from feminist organizations and other human rights
organizations that make it possible for them to claim their rights in the host
society. Second, destined mainly for urban households, domestic workers, many
of whom are from the Philippines, often find themselves in ethnically diverse
communities where they establish ties and seek support for their cause from their
compatriots both individually and through NGOs with links in their home
country. The comparison between the seasonal agricultural and domestic work-
ers in their ability to claim their legal rights needs to be further explored.

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Tanya Basok

Notes

1. Brubaker (1992) contends, ‘Viewed against the backdrop of the loss of sovereign control over admission
to the territory and access to civil and socioeconomic rights, state’s continued sovereign control over
admission to citizenship stands out’ (p. 180). Canefe (1998) recognizes the importance of the International
Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families as a
significant human rights instrument with some international dictate. He acknowledges that the UN and ILO
support the rights of migrant workers in terms of the provision of fair wages in conditions of equal pay
for equal work, decent living and working conditions, equal opportunity in the work place, and availability
of rest, leisure and periodic holidays. Yet he points out that these provisions are primarily recommenda-
tions for the states hosting migrant workers and they do not possess an obligatory nature. Castles and
Davidson (2000, p. 19) seem to be even more sceptical of the impact that the UN Convention on the Rights
of Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families can make on international migrants since it has been
signed only by a handful of emigration countries.

2. Schuster and Solomos (2002) point out that national citizenship ‘remains the single most important means
of protecting migrants and minorities within Europe from being excluded or expelled from a European
state’ (p. 49). Brubaker (1992) remarks that citizenship would add complete protection against expulsion,
access to public sector employment, and eligibility for those few social services and benefits that are
limited to citizens (p. 180).

3. In 1996, for instance, 2934 out of the 4187 Mexican workers selected to participate in the Canadian
program had been requested by their employers (FARMS, 1999).

4. According to the 1996 Census, carried out by Statistics Canada, there were only 75 Spanish-speaking
immigrants residing in Leamington.

5. The ‘Agreement for the Employment in Canada of Seasonal Agricultural Workers from Mexico’, signed
by the employer and the employee, stipulates that ‘for each six consecutive days of work, the worker will
be entitled to one day of rest’, although it does make it possible for employers to request ‘the worker’s
consent to postpone that day until a mutually agreeable date’. In practice, during the peak season, many
Mexican farm workers are asked to work seven days a week (including half a day on Sunday) and they
feel compelled to comply with the request.

6. No Mexican worker interviewed in the Leamington area has been offered a paid holiday by the employer
and the payment of the vacation pay has been subject to the employer’s whims. The application of the
Employment Standards Act is complicated by the distinction it makes between ‘harvest’ and ‘farm’
workers. Only harvest workers are entitled to paid public holiday and vacation benefits and only if they
have been employed for 13 weeks as harvesters. Most Mexicans work in Canada for more than 13 weeks
but during the term of their employment they perform numerous tasks, some related to harvesting and
others to preparation of the soil, packaging, and some post-harvest activities. It requires accurate
book-keeping on the part of the growers to establish whether the workers have been employed as
‘harvesters’ for the specified period. Most growers in Leamington chose not to bother making the required
calculations. They deny paid public holidays to all Mexican workers and the amount of vacation pay varies
from one grower to the next. Some growers also use vacation pay as a reward and therefore some workers
receive the full vacation pay; some workers claim to receive only 2% and some none at all.

7. Growers are required to have the migrants’ living quarters examined by provincial ministries of health
prior to receiving an approval to hire migrant workers. Some workers, however, complain of deplorable
working conditions, including overcrowding, extreme heat or cold, substandard sanitation, and a shortage
of appliances.

8. A small number of placements are also available in Quebec and Manitoba.
9. In most Canadian provinces agricultural workers are denied the right to organize. In the early 1990s the

Ontario New Democratic Party government of Bob Rae granted agricultural workers the legal right to
organize under the Agriculture Labour Relations Act. In 1995 Bill 91 was repealed by the Conservative
Party. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which had started unionizing workers in a
mushroom plant near Leamington, launched a lawsuit. In December 2001 the Supreme Court of Canada
found that the denial of the right to organize to agricultural workers was unconstitutional. The Supreme
Court requested that the Ontario government change the law (Hill, 2002; Schmitz, 2002). The law that
came out in Fall 2002 gave agricultural workers the right to form and maintain associations but not to
strike or bargain collectively (Hill, 2002). The bill also denied the right to organize to migrant workers
who, according to the provincial legal experts, fell under federal rules (Windsor Star, 8 October 2002, p.
A5).

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