"Exploitable and deportable by design: Why migrant workers’ housing is harmful to their health,"

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When we speak with racialized, low-wage migrants from the Global South, they often tell us their greatest concern is overcrowded and substandard housing. In our latest study, we interviewed over 150 migrant agricultural workers in Ontario and BC about how their housing impacted their health. 

These workers explained that because their boss is typically also their landlord, they felt obligated to silently tolerate poor housing conditions. Consequently, workers have little choice but to live amid such things as rodent infestations, a lack of cooling and ventilation during extreme heat and nearby pesticide storage. Complaining could not only cost them their job, but could lead to eviction, deportation and loss of future employment in Canada...

Yet farmworkers in our study did not see themselves as passive victims and they didn’t want charity. They wanted the practical ability to reject substandard housing and dangerous working conditions.

However, they are up against well-organized industry lobby groups that refuse to treat migrants like their peers or equals and prevent them from having a collective voice on decisions like contract negotiations.

Ontario farmworkers cannot legally join a union. And in BC, farmworkers who were seen as being ‘union sympathizers’ have historically faced backlash. That said, a recent wave of unionization at BC mushroom farms is a promising sign of change for workers who contribute vitally to Canadian food security.

Farmworkers also can’t count on government officials to support their rights. In our research, workers told us bosses were sometimes alerted in advance about inspections, which gave them time to generate the façade of decent housing...