The bittersweet aftertaste of strawberries: Territorial issues and insecurity among migrant farmworkers in the Quebec City Region
This article presents an analysis of the experiences of a group of migrant farmworkers in the Québec agricultural sector. Drawing on an ethnographic study carried out in 2011 and 2012 among farmworkers and key stakeholders on the Island of Orleans near Quebec City, we show how territory, in both social and geographic terms, conditions the daily life experiences of migrant farmworkers engaged in temporary work programs in Canada. We use the concept of precarity as the basis for our examination of how the very mechanisms and sources of this precarity are closely tied to particular territories. Our analysis focuses on how paternalism functions as the basis of the relationships established between migrant workers and employers on family farms on the Island of Orleans. We also analyze the strategies used by the migrant workers to reduce their levels of precarity. Our article considers both the geographical and sociological dimensions of the relationships that exist between territory and job precarity.