Abstracts/Résumés
SUSTAINING PRECARIOUS TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF REMITTANCES FROM CANADA'S SEASONAL AGRICULTURAL WORKERS PROGRAM
| Don Wells Professor, School of Labour Studies and Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada |
Janet McLaughlin Assistant Professor, Department of Health Studies, Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada |
André Lyn Manager, Community Investment, United Way of Peel Region, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada |
Aaraón Díaz Mendiburo Professor, School of Social Work, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Temixco, Morelos, México |
Accelerating flows of remittances are dwarfing global development aid. This study deepens our understanding of remittance impacts on the families of workers who come to Canada annually for several months under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Interviews with SAWP workers, their spouses, adult children and teachers in Mexico deepen our understanding of the impacts of these remittances. They demonstrate that the remittances are often literally a lifeline to transnational family survival, allowing them to pay for basic needs such as shelter, food, and medical care. Yet, at the same time, the remittances do not allow most of these workers and their families to escape deep poverty and significant precarity, including new forms of precarity generated by the SAWP. Instead, SAWP remittances help reduce poverty, at least temporarily, to more moderate levels while precarious poverty expands through global neoliberal underdevelopment.
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