Abstract

MONTOYA ZEPEDA, Iván. Spatial capital among Mexican agricultural workers in contexts of unfree labour in Canada. Estud. front [online]. 2020, vol.21, e063.  Epub Dec 17, 2020. ISSN 2395-9134.  https://doi.org/10.21670/ref.2021063.

The article examines the spatial capital acquired by Mexican agricultural workers in Canada as an asset that can give them power of influence in contexts of unfree labour. It proposes to think about agricultural labour markets as fields, after Bourdieu. A qualitative approach is used, and the text is based on five individual and two collective interviews conducted in 2011 on farms and in public spaces in the peripheral area of the Montreal Region, Quebec. Fragments of the interviews allow us to observe the space as a site of conflict and as a capital that gives workers the capacity for agency which allows them to confront relations of domination and subordination in the “field of migrant agricultural seasonal work in Canada”, and to confront socio-spatial isolation and exclusion. Other forms of capital are also observed, such as linguistic and social, which allow spatial capital to be to generate and increased.

Keywords : agency; field; citizenship; labour migration; unfree labour.

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