Situated Learning and Transnational Labor Migration: The Case of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

Abstract

Grounded in an analysis of interviews with migrant farm workers in Canada, this article explores how learning in the everyday contexts of temporary transnational labor migration is implicated in both migrant identity formation and the social reproduction of an established and growing labor migration regime. The article focuses on thinking through how workers negotiate the intergenerational workplace tensions that permeate life in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. The findings suggest that through their sustained participation in the everyday social practices that develop through dormitory-living, transnational laborers learn to become migrant workers. This formation of migrant worker identities in turn contributes to the reproduction of the social relations that support the ongoing practice of circulatory labor migration in the Canadian agricultural industry.