Migrant Workers in Ontario's Tobacco Belt: An Examination of Workplace Dynamics

Abstract

Recent critiques by scholars conducting research on the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program and labour geographers assert that there has been a lack of emphasis in the academic literature on the relevance of the formal workplace for developing an understanding of the social relations between capital and labour. In this article, I address these critiques through an empirical examination of workplace dynamics on two small-scale tobacco farms in Delhi, Ontario, Canada. My analysis draws upon original empirical evidence from interviews with three Mexican and nine Jamaican workers, two union representatives, and two farm owners. I argue that the farm is not simply a site for producing tobacco with economic efficiency, but an arena of struggle in which workers confront their employers, and a place of critical contests in the politics of production.