Migration in Film. Temporary Migrant Workers in Canada: Five Portraits in Two Decades

This article is a minimum filmography about the fundamental issue of mobility. The films reviewed here represent Mexican workers who travel to Canada as temporary workers, thus, who are legal economic migrants.

Documentary cinema has served as a medium to register the injustices that the binational government programs signed by Mexico and Canada commit against their participants. Depending on the aim with which they have been filmed, the documentaries that focus on the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and its workers present the topic either through a denunciation or via political advocacy, with a critical view that seeks a balance between the benefits the program represents for its participants (both men and women, workers, businesspersons, and governments) and its negative aspects (racism and labor rights violations). The SAWP is documented differently according to filmmakers’ intent.

This article seeks to introduce the main problems of SAWP in the framework of an approach that takes place in the 2020’s; presenting the activists’ struggle, pointing out SAWP’s problems for the families affected and with regard to the process of temporary workers soliciting Canadian citizenship. I analyze five films produced over the last 15 years and present them chronologically to discover how seasonal agricultural workers’ participation in the programs signed by Mexico and Canada is documented.

THE FILMS
El Contrato is a watershed: it is recognized for having contributed to making visible the exploitation of seasonal migrant workers in Canada’s agroindustry (Butovsky & Smith, 2007; Martínez-Zalce, 2016). It is also undoubtedly the most complex of the five films examined here because it focuses on very diverse actors: Canadian businesspersons, Mexican diplomats, activists, and centrally, the workers and their demands. Lee presents all this in the framework of the public sphere, interspersing and counterposing their expectations about the program. In an openly activist approach, Lee wants to use this document to denounce a series of offenses against those who sign the contract because they are at a disadvantage.

To achieve empathy with the workers —all Mexican in this case—, Lee focuses her story on a central character; in the beginning we see the paperwork done for the hiring and the departure from home; as the story develops we follow the worker during tomato planting and harvesting season; and as closure, his return home. This is complemented by opinions from academics and from another worker who, with his face covered, talks about the injustices they are subjected to.

What gives the story its strong impact is the counterposing of voice-over, which explains with figures and data the Canadian government’s motivation in picking this cheap labor force, with the spontaneity of the on-camera verbal exchanges that allow us to see the naked truth about the power relations established between the bosses— both men and women,—the Mexican government representatives, and the workers themselves (who, in the case of this particular film, are all men.) The result is shocking: racism, class prejudice, and abuses of power are displayed, while those who exercise them smile all the while. It is so shocking, in fact, that both the National Film Board and the director herself were sued for defamation by the greenhouses owners, who all on their own, had referred to the workers as their property, admitted to allowing the overseers to mistreat them, and had consorted with Mexican diplomats (Lee, 2019).

In this film, health issues are mentioned as a source of problems because the employers are not willing to solve them, and, in any case, their answer is to repatriate anyone who is ill.

The film’s title is fundamental for understanding the filmmaker’s intent. It is in Spanish and it refers to the instrument that ties the workers to their employers; it is what fixes the rules of their stay and sets the conditions in which they will live for their eight months of exploitation. And the contract is only in the title: it appears nowhere else in the film. However, it becomes clear to the audience that the proximity between the Mexican authorities (who do not defend the workers’ rights as is their obligation) and the employers (who should treat their employees fairly) is responsible for the precariousness of the seasonal migrant workers’ existence.

Perspectives delves into the same circumstances, but with a more moderate tone. From a multifaceted perspective, the film follows the traditional route of the documentary that alternates between interviews with those involved and the images that complement their words. Due to its structure, the documentary does not establish a specific story. However, the different voices that it introduces, like in a chorus, form a narrative that shows how seasonal workers—Mexican men and women in this case—leave behind a life rich in social relations and cultural expressions to insert themselves in another, rigid life that confines them both physically and symbolically, relating almost exclusively among themselves. The nuances (matices in Spanish) are in the multi-focused perspective which we could call horizontal, since none of those involved is more important than any other.

The chorus of voices unfolds as follows: a migrant describes his day’s work, which we see in images; academics put forward the racialization of the work and why Mexicans are considered the best choice for it, given that they have no family ties in the country, do not speak the language, cannot face up to the bosses, and are easier to control, all at the same time that the images of the men working in the fields continue flashing across the screen.

This documentary addresses the health issue, and the lack of recognition of the right to healthcare that leads to health clinics not having Spanishspeaking staff, as narrated by a migrant and an activist. This contrasts with the opinion of one nurse, who underlines the lack of communication between doctors and migrants and chalks it up to migrants’ timidity and incomprehension, who are afraid to fall ill, something previously noted in El Contrato. The lack of medical care, then, persists almost a decade after it was first exposed in that documentary. The second problem—which appears in the previous documentary, although there it is only shown and not commented upon—is the migrants’ dwellings.

Perspectives achieves expressiveness through the representation of a world whose inhabitants try to understand and welcome the others who arrive to contribute to the prosperity of the very same world that makes them invisible and excludes them. The film’s intent is that we understand the different ranges in the web of relationships that shape the space left behind, the destination, and the return of all the program participants. And the viewer responds to this chorus by exercising solidarity with the workers’ point of view and empathizing with those who relate to them without prejudices.


The Harvesters’ opening scene proves the hypothesis that author and what they want to narrate are vital. With a TV ad aesthetics: beautiful, bright green lettuces and celeries, hygienic and covered in clear plastic bags, are displayed in a Quebec supermarket. The antiseptic intertitles state that the province’s agricultural industry requires foreign labor to succeed.

The difference between this documentary and the other four is its point of view. Despite the fact that it begins in Guatemala, and that it introduces three male characters, the real story is that of the Forino family. Starting from the premise that everyone is a migrant, the film shows a cordial relationship that the employers apparently have with their workers. “Apparently,” because the reality that the viewers see does not jibe with the spectacle of efficiency and justice that the documentary attempts to communicate.

Of course, in contrast with the English-speaking businesspersons, Quebecois Mr. Forino makes an effort to communicate in Spanish with his workers and treats them with familiarity. However, we then see where they live: a storeroom partitioned into tiny cubicles in which the workers, half Mexicans and half Guatemalans, have their beds. The employers’ familiarity with the workers involves, for example, setting the Mexicans and the Guatemalans against each other in absurd games.

The director and the camera are there to bear witness, as if they were authorities, to the prosperity that certain migrants achieve by exploiting others, who will never be able to become citizens and enjoy that bonanza. The documentary has been filmed to show the program’s success story showing how participants have benefited from it, even though those who have had the opportunity to be informed about it discover the injustices covered over by the Forino company’s apparent benevolence. And, despite this not being its aim, Briceño’s film involuntarily reveals a subtext that many critics of the program have noted: the Canadian government’s refusal to allow foreign temporary workers to opt for citizenship. This means that there are different categories of migrants and that those who do unskilled work and are cheap labor force are not worthy of becoming citizens, as those who became entrepreneurs—and hired them—did.

In this full-length film, Min Sook Lee returns to Leamington, Ontario, but this time, the protagonists of her story are different: this time they’re women. The diegesis deals with their stay in Canada, with constant reference to the families they left behind in Indonesia.

This documentary’s activist perspective revolves not only around the discussion on citizenship based on the Canadian government’s perception that these people are more workers than migrants, but also around corruption generated for the program to continue to be successful.

The film organizes itself by following the protagonists’ day to day lives, except they are never portrayed at work. Three parts of their lives are documented: dwelling, family life, and their immigration status. Smart phones become instruments that allow the protagonists to intervene and participate directly in making the film, in order to tell the truths that disrupt their lives. Migrant men and women live in spaces so desolate that it seems they have been conceived that way so that no one would want to stay. They film the unhealthy conditions in which they live: filth and cockroaches prove that the bosses violate their rights. They are not free to choose where to live; the contract, written in English but signed by people who do not speak the language, stipulates that the employer must find them lodging that they will pay rent for. Moving out of the undignified dwellings is a challenge, and, even so, employers demand rent payments. A lawyer, a fundamental participant in the film, asses clearly that the procedures are not only unfair, but illegal.

Gender perspective through focusing on the female characters serves to underline the way that nuclear family relations are affected by the absence of the mother at home or by finding a partner abroad. Cultural considerations, religious practices, and the domination by families even from afar define the characters’ lives.

The film closes with powerful numbers: Canada hosts more than one million migrant workers with temporary status, from more than 80 countries. Since 2006, that number has been larger than that of those who are given residency status.

Migrant Mother attempts a different exercise: the director’s main objective is to give voice and put a face to Mexican women who are temporary migrant workers in Canada by telling their stories. He gets them to answer two questions: why did they decided to travel as a life choice, and what the costs and consequences of having made that decision are.

The documentary is divided in three chapters, one for each of the protagonists. Each chapter begins with a close-up of a woman wearing a beautifully decorated mask. All of them are the embodiment of the problems addressed by the previous documentaries, of the ambiguity underlying the expression “a better life,” and how that ambiguity has shaped their identities. What is the “temporary” situation for them, staying in Mexico or in Canada?

Above all, these are stories of loss, but without melodrama. They show the acceptance of the reality that everything has a cost, which, at the end of the day, has probably been very high.

By approaching these women in an intimate but not intrusive way, the film shows us how the program affects the subjectivities of its participants. Through expressiveness, control of the narrative is determined by the needs of the content itself, which is the individual perception of the program’s consequences in family life. Viewers can empathize with the protagonists if they understand their dilemma—or they cannot if they object that families are separated.

The stories in which the women explain their reasons unmask the emotional side of their participation in the program. In this sense, the ending makes literal what had been put forward symbolically: they take off their masks and give their full name, at the same time that they express a wish, thus completing their identities on camera, with their faces uncovered and with a first and last name.

EPILOGUE
How is the SAWP presented in these documentaries? It is paradoxical that, for more than 15 years, through changes in administrations, activist groups’ denunciations, academic analyses, and the documentaries themselves, some of the problems, like the excessively long workdays, the precarious dwellings, the lack of healthcare, and more, continue, while other, new ones, associated with the recruiters and extortionists, have come on the scene.

What balance sheet do the documentaries present about the program? An unfavorable one, which is paradoxical because this program has been called a model of international cooperation that seeks the wellbeing of all participants. If a documentary film must present its perspective as truth, offering proof and certification so that its story is not questioned, this is achieved convincingly through a variety of structures. The five films seem to conclude that, as long as the worth of temporary migrant workers is not recognized, injustices will continue to happen.

In each of the documentaries, workers detail how much they miss Mexico (or their country of origin) and their families. However, after more than a decade of going back and forth, even if almost all of them say that they will only return a few more times, there is always a next time. After the analysis, we can conclude that, as long as the governments fail to reform certain aspects of the workers’ stays, the labor relations will continue to be unfair, as the documentaries, fulfilling their purpose, have helped to make visible.

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