Title: Seasonal agricultural workers and the habitus of mobile precarity

Authors: Samantha Jackson

Addresses: McMaster University, 1280 Main St W, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L8, Canada

Abstract: This article uses habitus as a tool to unpack the transnational experience of workers who move between Canada and home through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Through disciplining regulations and annual forced exits, the SAWP engenders a particular form of transnationalism that is marked by precarity but also efforts to subversively carve out space at home and abroad. Habitus provides a unifying theory to understand workers' experiences while also locating the SAWP within broader systems of exclusion. This article moves in three parts: first, transnationalism and habitus are examined as tools to explore the experiences of SAWP workers. Then, the SAWP policy context is reviewed. It concludes with an analysis of migrant workers' renegotiations of the boundaries of habitus through subversive acts of citizenship.

Keywords: habitus; transnationalism; temporary worker; migration; border; seasonal agricultural worker; precarity; Canada.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2019.099706

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2019 Vol.5 No.1/2, pp.99 - 117

Accepted: 28 Jan 2019
Published online: 20 May 2019 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article