ABSTRACT
While seasonal agricultural labour migration programmes may be seen as a stable and positive contribution to the global marketplace, and to international labour migration governance, in reality, these programmes come at a significant cost for migrant workers. This chapter discusses the costs attached to migrant agricultural labour through the full cycle of labour migration, and in relation to each of the following: recruitment and travel; housing and transportation; wages and deductions; occupational health and safety; family separation; and, remittances and development. Contrary to the “triple win” promise of labour migration as facilitating global development, this chapter illustrates how agricultural labour migration programmes entrench a position of financial inequity for migrants, and exact significant costs, both monetary and otherwise, from agricultural workers. Although seasonal agricultural work provides migrant workers with a long-term, stable job opportunity, the wages and working conditions, in practice, minimize the benefits of that opportunity. Workers earn low wages compared with the average wages for citizen workers in a variety of occupations, but often face addition deductions, such as for housing and transportation. Agricultural workers are also at risk of injury or illness on the job, with an equally high risk that such a consequence will cause job loss, and that the worker will have to pay the costs of medical treatment independently once returned to their origin country. Coupled with the many direct financial costs detailed in this chapter, migrant agricultural workers may also spend decades regularly living apart from their families, contributing to deeper costs associated with family separation. Finally, the positive benefits related to remittances and development put forth in relation to agricultural labour migration programmes, like with all low-wage labour migration, are not being adequately realized by workers in their origin countries.
