Landscape and scale in media representations: the construction of offshore farm labour in Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Thousands of migrant workers travel from Mexico and the Caribbean to Ontario every year to assist Canadian farmers in their horticulture operations. These migrants have become a structural necessity to the industry, ensuring growth and profits. I propose that exploitative and coercive labour practices are legitimated and sustained through cultural representations which identify migrants not only as outsiders to the community and a cultural threat, but also as economic assets and subordinate labour. A content analysis of the Ontario daily newsprint media between 1996 and 2002 reveals that the construction of offshore workers relies on coexisting dualisms created on different geographical scales. These dualisms work in tandem to produce a powerful and pervasive discourse of subordination.