Mexican tomato pickers in Canada,... new kind of slavery???

Few weeks ago in a seminar that ran every monday organised by Hazel at UEA, a video of Mexican tomato pickers in Canada was screened. At first, I thought that,.. ok, Canada was (in my mind) a country with relatively low incidents of human right violations. Then I went to watch the docuementary, expecting a general description of the labour Mexicans do in Leamington, Canada.

Instead, the video show a group of mexicans trying to do the living the best they could, meaning seasonal labouring in Canada was only that: a job. In addition, a group of Canadians trying to get the most out of cheap labour force. And finally, some Mexican government representatives more concern in looking after the contract with the greenhouses than the workers human rights.

here is the video,...




What is happening with labour conditions? was the question I had in my mind as the video continued. Later in the open discussion, the theme of the chinese slaves who died working at the beach in England arose, along with some other examples,.. So I though maybe it is a pattern now,... globalisation needs of these new kind of slavery arrangements to keep going, to make profits.

Then another question came to me, is this globalisation what we want? Are these the migratory agreements our governments will set up? What about human rights? What about people? Is there any place for people (apart from being consumers) in globalisation?