14 pages., via online journal., This article addresses a stated need within the food justice movement scholarship to increase the attention paid to the political socialization of hired farm hands in industrial agriculture. In Canada, tackling the problem of farm worker equity has particular social and political contours related to the Canadian horticultural industry’s reliance on a state-managed migrant agricultural labour program designed to fill the sector’s labour market demands. As Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) produces relations of ‘unfree labour’, engaging migrant farm workers in social movement initiatives can be particularly challenging. Critical educational interventions designed to encourage migrant farm workers’ contribution to contemporary social movements in Canada must therefore confront the socio-cultural obstacles that constrict migrant farm workers’ opportunities to participate as full members of their communities. In this article, I argue that social justice oriented approaches to community-based arts can provide a means for increasing the social movement contributions of farm workers employed through managed labour migration schema such as Canada’s SAWP.
9 pages., Via online journal., Using an agent-based model we explore the model of slavery in modern business developed by Crane (2013). Taking the Spanish agricultural sector—specifically the area of Campo de Dalías in Almería where much of Europe's vegetables are grown—as a case, we find that labour exploitation flourishes in communities of like-minded companies that do not care about mainstream norms. We confirm which socio-economic aspects of labour demand/supply lead to slavery, while challenging the assumption that markets which are dominated by few employers are more prone to exploiting workers. We find that, regarding isolation and connectedness of employers, cluster effects and intense inter-employer communication are particularly effective drivers of underpayment if the cluster is homogenous in terms of wage level and if it is isolated from law-abiding employers. This means that employers tend to confirm and reinforce each other in their illegal behaviour, thus creating enclaves in which non-standard norms prevail and worker exploitation is regarded as legitimate. On the other hand, we see that breaking the isolation of employees among each other only increases pay levels if there are law-abiding employers, pointing to the potentially beneficial role social business and entrepreneurs, state-owned companies, or public entrepreneurs could play for transforming labour conditions of entire markets.
