Research Catalog

Harvesting labour : tobacco and the global making of Canada's agricultural workforce

Title

Harvesting labour : tobacco and the global making of Canada's agricultural workforce / Edward Dunsworth.

Author

Dunsworth, Edward

Publication

Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2022]
©2022

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	HD8039.T62 C23 2022	Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xvi, 350 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm.

Summary

"In recent decades an increasing share of Canada's agricultural workforce has been made up of temporary foreign workers from the Global South. These labourers work difficult and dangerous jobs with limited legal protections and are effectively barred from permanent settlement in Canada. In Harvesting Labour, Edward Dunsworth examines the history of farm work in one of Canada's underrecognized but most important crop sectors--Ontario tobacco. Dunsworth takes aim at the idea that temporary foreign worker programs emerged in response to labour shortages or the unwillingness of Canadians to work in agriculture. To the contrary, Ontario's tobacco sector was extremely popular with workers for much of the twentieth century, with high wages attracting a diverse workforce and enabling thousands to establish themselves as small farm owners. By the end of the century, however, the sector had become something entirely different: a handful of mega-farms relying on foreign guest workers to produce their crops. Taking readers from the leafy fields of Ontario's tobacco belt to rural Jamaica, Barbados, and North Carolina and on to the halls of government, Dunsworth demonstrates how the ultimate transformation of tobacco--and Canadian agriculture writ large--was fundamentally a function of the capitalist restructuring of farming. Harvesting Labour brings together the fields of labour, migration, and business history to reinterpret of the historical origins of contemporary Canadian agriculture and its workforce."--

Series Statement

Rethinking Canada in the world ; 12

Uniform Title

Rethinking Canada in the world ; 12.

Alternative Title

Harvesting labor

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-343) and index.

Additional Formats (note)

Issued also in electronic format.

Contents

Green Gold Rush -- Moving Up and Fighting Back -- Controlling Migrants -- Hippies, Frenchies, and Girls -- Global Guest Workers -- Boys Like These -- Tobacco Transformed.

ISBN

0228011248
9780228011231
022801123X
9780228011248

OCLC

1277278020
on1277278020
SCSB-14388917

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library