GG102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Unintended Consequences, Free Trade, North American Free Trade Agreement
Document Summary
In canada, there is a government program to bring seasonal agricultural workers for a 4-8 month period. It is lauded as one of the best in the world. Gabriel and macdonald claim that citizenship rights can be divided into 3 categories: political, civil and social. Yet the workers who come here are regularly denied some substantive social rights. The temporary foreign workers are flexible, disciplined, unfree, and reliable . It has fallen to non-state local news to advocate and intervene on behalf of the workers to ensure rights since they are vulnerable to workplace abuses. They lack voice while dialogue and advocacy are being implemented, the legal challenges are the most effective way to ensure social rights for non-citizen migrant agricultural workers. According to otero, nafta has been bad for mexico because it has caused the loss of both food self-sufficiency and thereby labour sovereignty.
