Does Citizenship Status Matter in Canadian Agriculture? Workplace Health and Safety for Migrant and Immigrant Laborers

This article explores how precarious legal status circumscribes differential inclusion in the agricultural labor market and affects workers' lives through a comparative study of workplace health and safety among temporary migrant guest workers and immigrants in Canada. Original, multimethod research with South Asian immigrant and Mexican migrant farmworkers examines employment practices, working conditions, and health‐care access. We find that both groups engage in precarious work, with consequences for their health and safety, including immigrant workers with citizenship. Nevertheless, migrant guest workers are subject to more coercive forms of labor discipline and a narrower range of social protection than immigrants. We argue that while formal citizenship can mitigate some dimensions of precariousness for farmworkers racialized as non‐white, achieving a more just, safer food system will require broader policies to improve employer compliance and address legislative shortcomings that only weakly protect agricultural labor.     

Mexico's Political Future(s) in a Globalizing World Economy*

Dans cette étude, nous cherchons à démontrer que le devenir économique et politique du Mexique est étroitement liéà l'évolution du capitalisme mondial. Nous utilisons le concept de «réseaux ascen-dants>> pour analyser les processus qui se développent à l'échelle mondiale et nationale ainsi que leurs interactions. Notre objectif est précisément de théoriser sur ces interactions à l'échelle de l'État-nation et de décrire, en présentant plusieurs scénarios, les diverses façons dont le Mexique pourrait évoluer sur les plans économique et politique. Le Mexique s'intégrant de plus en plus au marché nord-américain, il est capital d'étudier la façon dont cette intégration va influer sur les processus à venir et sur les forces sociales susceptibles de lui faire prendre une direction plus souhaitable.
This paper proposes that the patterns of economic and political outcomes in Mexico are intimately related to global processes taking place in world capitalism. It develops a "bottom-up linkages" approach that takes into account both global and country-level processes and their interrelationships. The author's specific purpose is to theorize about the interaction of national and global processes on the political outcomes at the level of the nation-state, and to generate some future scenarios representing different combinations of more or less feasible political and economic outcomes in Mexico's future. Because Mexico is becoming increasingly integrated economically into North America, it is critical to specify the ways in which such integration affects such future processes, and to identify the social forces that might steer developments in more desirable directions.     

Atencingo Revisited: Political Class Formation and Economic Restructuring in Mexico's Sugar Industry1

Abstract Sugarcane growers have had a close relationship to the state since the 1940s when a series of decrees established a heavy state intervention in the sugar industry, which then became highly regulated. Growers became loyal to the state in exchange for low but secure incomes and other social guarantees. After the introduction of economic liberalism in Mexico during the mid-1980s (called "neoliberalism" in Mexico), the sugar industry became largely de-regulated, and sugar mills were reprivatized. This article explores the process of political class formation in the sugarcane region of Atencingo, in the state of Puebla. Whether cane growers posit peasant, proletarian, or peasant-entrepreneurial demands is examined, as is the character of organizations and alliances that direct producers have established since the 1930s (oppositional, popular-democratic, or bourgeois-hegemonic). This paper documents the emergence of a peasant-entrepreneurial class and presents initial results from a survey questionnaire administered in 1995. Rather than offering an economic argument based on a narrowly defined class position, this explanation emphasizes the prevailing regional cultures, the forms of state intervention, and the types of leadership-the crucial mediating determinations that explain political outcomes in Atencingo and other regions of rural Mexico.     

Bayer reorganizes in response to growth

In this article the Head of Strategic Planning at Bayer AG describes the new corporate structure which was introduced into the company in 1984, and the considerations which led to its development and implementation.     

The coming revolution of biotechnology: A critique of Buttel

Frederick Buttel was one of the pioneers in studying the social impacts of biotechnology, claiming originally that it will involve profound changes in social structure. Recently Buttel turned around his argument proposing that, rather than revolutionary, biotechnology is more a substitutionist technological form to be applied to declining sectors of the economy than an epoch-making technology. This paper provides both external and internal critiques of Buttel's new position based on the concept of the third technological revolution, looking at the impact of new technologies as a global and interrelated phenomenon, and not on an individual case-by-case basis. The concluding section suggests the necessity of bringing into the analysis those living in the Third World: 60% of this population lives from agriculture and will be affected by the deployment of agricultural biotechnologies, whether through substitutionism or through totally new products.     

The use of formal inventory control models: A preliminary survey

Of the many papers and texts on the subject of inventory control, relatively few report the successful implementation of systems based on formal mathematical models developed with specific objectives in mind. This could be considered rather strange in the light of the relatively high number of papers reporting the development of models for dealing with a multitude of different hypothetical situations, and the widespread availability of computer systems capable of exploiting such models. Various reasons for this anomaly can be put forward. This paper reports the results of a preliminary survey designed to investigate this more deeply, and draws some necessarily tentative conclusions relating to factors contributing to the successful application of such systems.     

The effects of seasonal demand on depot location

Many of the cost functions associated with depot location algorithms assume an overall demand for a fixed period, usually one year. This paper describes an investigation into the effect of high seasonality within such demand figures on the optimal location of storage facilities. The preliminary results indicate that a more flexible approach for certain products could be worthwhile.     

Procedures in the biochemical estimation of age of vertebrates

Summary The most accurate method known to data for estimating age of wild vertebrates involves biochemical assay of eye lens proteins. Laboratory procedures that may be unfamiliar to many ecologists are described in detail. The method is based on precise changes in the amount of insoluble lens protein, and consists of two procedures: obtaining the appropriate lens fraction, and quantitatively analyzing its protein composition. Lenses are homogenized, and the insoluble fraction isolated by centrifugation. Protein content is measured colorimetrically by using the Lowry test. Instructions are given for single and double-beam spectrophotometers.