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Structured Exclusions, Partial Inclusions: Transnational Care Chains and Temporary Foreign Workers in Atlantic Canada
Resource type
Authors/contributors
- Bryan, Catherine (Author)
- Fitting, Elizabeth (Author)
Title
Structured Exclusions, Partial Inclusions: Transnational Care Chains and Temporary Foreign Workers in Atlantic Canada
Abstract
This paper explores the transnational practices of migrant workers who access short-term employment in Atlantic Canada’s food production sector via two streams of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP): the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) and the low-waged stream. Based on interviews with migrant workers—SAWP farmworkers from Jamaica and Mexico and low-waged fish plant workers from the Philippines—we explore their differential rights in Canada corresponding to the different parameters of each immigration stream. Reflecting the livelihood strategies and reproductive efforts of our interviewees and the extent to which these have been transformed in response to the conditions and limited opportunities afforded by Canadian immigration policy, we advance the concepts of “agricultural care chains” and “citizenship care chains”. In doing so, we suggest that the consideration of work and outcomes not conventionally understood as “care” reflects an important analytical and political contribution to the care chain scholarship as well as draws attention to how care scholarship and social reproduction theory can be more closely aligned. Central to our efforts is Tungohan’s argument (2019) that in considering transnational circuits of care, we must recognize the asymmetry that characterizes peoples’ relationships and the social locations they occupy—asymmetry that, in the context of our participants’ lives, is reinforced through the differential rights and opportunities afforded to migrant workers by Canadian immigration policy.
Publication
Dialectical Anthropology
Date
2025
Language
English
ISSN
1573-0786
Accessed
3/19/25, 2:18 PM
Citation
Bryan, C., & Fitting, E. (2025). Structured Exclusions, Partial Inclusions: Transnational Care Chains and Temporary Foreign Workers in Atlantic Canada. Dialectical Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-025-09765-z
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