Nerves as Embodied Metaphor in the Canada/Mexico Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

Abstract

This article examines nerves among participants in the Canada/Mexico Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (C/MSAWP). Based on in-depth interviews with 30 Mexican farm workers in southwestern Ontario, we demonstrate that nerves embodies the distress of economic need, relative powerlessness, and the contradictions inherent in the C/MSAWP that result in various life's lesions. We also explore their use of the nerves idiom as an embodied metaphor for their awareness of the breakdown in self/society relations and, in certain cases, of the lack of control over even themselves. This article contributes to that body of literature that locates nerves at the “normal” end of the “normal/abnormal” continuum of popular illness categories because, despite the similarities in symptoms of nerves among Mexican farm workers and those of anxiety and/or mood disorders, medicalization has not occurred. If nerves has not been medicalized among Mexican farm workers, neither has it given rise to resistance to their relative powerlessness as migrant farm workers. Nonetheless, nerves does serve as an effective vehicle for expressing their distress within the context of the C/MSAWP.

Key Words:

• embodied metaphor
• Mexican farm workers
• nerves

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was approved by the Research Ethics Board at Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia and was funded by two Research Policy Committee Grants and two Spring/Summer Research Awards. The authors wish to thank Shirley Lee, Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, and the four anonymous reviewers for Medical Anthropology for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this work.

Notes

The Government of Mexico chose to terminate the U.S.-Mexico Bracero Program (1917–1921, 1942–1964) and to replace it with the C/MSAWP due to ongoing allegations of farm worker abuse. As then-President Luis Echeverría (1979:125) diplomatically explained, “the conditions proposed [by the U.S.] were not compatible with the interests of Mexico.”

The return flights are non-stop between Mexico and major Canadian cities such as Toronto. According to Basok (2002:96–98), Mexican farm workers prefer legal migration to Canada over illegal migration to the U.S. because the C/MSAWP is safer, their hours are guaranteed, and their cash remittances are constant. Their partners have the added security of knowing where their husbands are, how they are faring, and when they will come home.

The background characteristics conform to the requirements of the C/MSAWP.

All names are pseudonyms.

The life's lesions listed here derive from common themes that reoccurred in the interviews. It must be kept in mind, however, that the life's lesion or combination of life's lesions that might preoccupy one individual might not preoccupy another or, at least, not to the same degree.

In the men's absence, agricultural work may go undone and debts may remain unpaid; in addition, family members may fall ill, elderly parents may pass away, children are born (and, indeed, die) and/or grow up without their fathers. Keeping in touch with their families by telephone is very important to participants in the C/MSAWP, but it cannot replace being with them in Mexico.

H-2A is the visa classification for temporary farm workers to the United States.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Avis Mysyk

AVIS MYSYK is an anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Cape Breton University, Sydney, Nova Scotia. Her research and publications center on the political economy of social relations in Mexico and Canada, including the C/MSAWP in Manitoba. She may be reached at: [email protected]

Margaret England

MARGARET ENGLAND is a nurse scientist at the University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario. She conducts research on stress and mental health symptoms of vulnerable populations. Her previous publications have focused on caregiver strain and decisions of adult children caring for a parent with dementia, as well as hallucinations and coping of individuals who hear voices. She may be reached at: [email protected]

Juan Arturo Avila Gallegos

JUAN ARTURO AVILA GALLEGOS teaches classes in human resource development and business administration in the Escuela Superior de Psicología, Ciudad Juárez, México. He may be reached at: [email protected]