Every year, over 25,000 people from Mexico and the Caribbean migrate to Canada through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) to work on a Canadian farm. To what extent does the SAWP, as an institution, impact the vulnerability of migrant agricultural workers? The insights and explanations provided by neo-institutional theory’s three streams help to better account for the complexity of the economic and socio-historical SAWP-generated factors that affect the situation of migrant workers. It is shown that this program has created and continues to perpetuate a context in which it is difficult for migrant workers to have control over their working conditions.
