After the International Organization for Migration: recruitment of Guatemalan temporary agricultural workers to Canada

ABSTRACT

The global agricultural industry is increasingly supported by transnational migrant labour. The experience of this precarious workforce in receiving states has been the focus of intensified scrutiny by policy-makers and academics at the global and national scale. Drawing on field research we examine how the International Organization for Migration was involved in the development of a transnational labour migration corridor from Guatemala to Canada, and how the organisation’s activities are associated with new forms of migration governance. This story, while unique in some ways, illustrates the increased complexity of the international management of migration. For instance, destination states such as Canada continue to play key roles in the management and recruitment of temporary labour migration but other actors have also entered the picture. This development, as this case illustrates, places migrant workers in increasingly vulnerable positions, while states can disclaim responsibility for their plight.

KEYWORDS:

• IOM
• Guatemala
• Canada
• agricultural migrant labour
• TFWP
• recruitment

Acknowledgements

We thank Christine Hughes and Paola Ortiz Loaiza for their research assistance for this article, and Antoine Pécoud and Martin Geiger, as well as an anonymous reviewer, for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This said, Canadian immigration history is marked by the importation of labour migrants such as Chinese men for railway construction in the nineteenth century and the recruitment of migrants thought the activities of actors such as land companies, railway and shipping agents (see Knowles 1997).

2 The name of CIC was changed to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in 2015 under the new Liberal government.

3 The National Occupational Classifications (NOC) is the method used by Canadian immigration to categorise jobs based on skill levels and types of duties.

Skill Level C – intermediate jobs  …  [and usually] these jobs need high school or job specific training. Examples – truck drivers, butchers, and food and beverage servers. Skill Level D – labour jobs – on the job training usually given. Examples – cleaning staff, fruit pickers …  http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/noc.asp

4 This rule was scrapped by the new Liberal government in December 2016.

5 See Gesualdi-Fecteau (2014) for a description of the criteria used in worker selection in Guatemala.

6 For example, COMAGUATE, an agency which workers with FARMS to place Guatemalan workers in Ontario, works with a small Chimaltenango NGO that supports the children of migrants. COMAGUATE aspires to carry out development projects, particularly to help returning workers to help them invest their earnings in a way that will have a positive long-term social impact (Interview, Guatemala City, 2016).

7 One man stated, ‘I signed up my son and a nephew to travel to Canada. They paid Q9,000 each, which included training, food and housing’. They claimed that while the owner of the agency Daniel Cutzal said, he would repay the fee once a work placement was found, he was still waiting. Cutzal stated to the press that former employees of Acadec had charged this money using the name of his agency (Morales 2014).

8 See Muir (2015) for more detailed testimony from Guatemalan workers about the effects of recruiter practices.

9 See Global Workers Justice Alliance (2015) for a discussion of the legal framework for recruitment of migrant workers in Guatemala.

Additional information

Funding

We also thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial assistance.