The question that orients this chapter is a straightforward one: What happens when largely Anglo- Canadian growers are confronted with two (or more) sources of non- Canadian, "Third World" contract workers from among whom they can choose? Neither the availability of the workers, nor the ease of contracting them varies by regional or national origin-which is to say that the employer can access as many or as few as required and for as much or little time as needed-and neither wages nor benefits nor the rights and obligations of the contracting parties vary in any significant way. Yet as is pointed out in Chapter 2, employers entering the program request workers by country. Through 1973 all such workers were of Afro- Indo- Caribbean descent, regardless of whether they came from Jamaica, Barbados, or Trinidad and Tobago.1 Complications arose in 1974 when the SAWP added a new, Mexican "brand" of worker to compete with the Caribbean brand(s) on the shelves of the contract labor supermarket frequented by surplus value- hungry Canadian horticulturalists. By that year the Caribbeans had a substantial five- Thousand- worker lead, most of which was accounted for by Jamaica. One has to wonder to what degree the invitations to Mexico (accepted) and Portugal (rejected) to join were inspired exclusively by the 1973 report of the abuses that accompanied uncontrolled contract labor migration, as some analysts maintain, as against the prospect of a lighter- skinned alternative labor force.2 After all, the program seemed to be working pretty well, if the rising number of early 1970s hires is any indication (Figure 4.1). Why was it deemed necessary (or desirable) to bring in Mexicans (but see Satzewich 2007)? Once placed "on display," the Mexican brand took some time to penetrate the market. The history here is murky. It seems to us, though, that Mexican participation remained at a relatively low level for the first dozen years after 1974 because the program was not growing-or was not growing very fast; few new employers joined, and most holdovers were electing to continue with the Caribbean workers with whom they began before 1974.3 In other words, employers were taking advantage of the "naming system" and rehiring the same people year after year. When they needed to replace one or more workers, most continued to draw from the Caribbean instead of Mexico because of a generalized belief that it was a bad idea to "mix" culturally and linguistically different labor forces, especially when they are housed in close quarters.4 Linked to this was the government's intentional use of quotas to limit the size of the program, which at the time was viewed as a stopgap solution to temporary domestic labor shortages in the horticultural sector that would be alleviated over time by the recruitment of Canadian resident- And citizen- workers. From 1980-1984 the number of contract workers actually declined. FARMS was formed in 1987 and breathed new life into the SAWP; the ensuing fifteen years saw several periods of rapid escalation in the number of participating growers and contract workers. For a small per "unit" fee, FARMS became an intermediary between employers and the government, relieving the former of much burdensome bureaucratic paperwork. Many previously unaffiliated growers signed on to the SAWP, and from 1987 to 1990 the program doubled in size, with Mexicans-only 20 percent of workers in 1987-accounting for almost half the growth. By 1990, 37 percent of all SAWP workers came from Mexico. After several years of stagnation, labor demand picked up again between 1994 and 2001. This time Mexico accounted for a whopping 70 percent of the increase as Caribbeans fluctuated narrowly between six thousand five hundred and seven thousand annually, well below the high point of eight thousand hires attained in 1989. By 2001, 51 percent of SAWP workers were Mexican (Figure 4.1). How do we account for this? We believe that the differential racialization of the SAWP labor force played a key role in the process. According to Miles, racialization involves "those instances where social relations between people have been structured by the signification of human biological characteristics in such a way as to define and construct differentiated social collectivities" (cited in Satzewich 1998: 32). In the SAWP, racialization defines a particular form of "strategic alterity" through which capitalist employers both devalue groups-thus justifying low wages-and mask that devaluation on the basis of ascribed social, physical, and cultural attributes. But whereas all Mexican and Caribbean contract workers are racialized by Canadian employers, they are not racialized in the same way. Indeed, differential racialization involving the specific biological and/or durable cultural characteristics ascribed to each group shape employers' recruitment strategies and employer- employee relations and contribute to reproduce and even intensify divisions among source country contract workers. Racialized discourses and practices undermine the potential for solidarity of workers sharing similar class positions. In this chapter we do not document the historical genesis and development of racialization as regards Mexicans and Caribbeans in Canada, which would be another project, but point to some of the contemporary forms that racialization assumes, the manner in which employers explain hiring decisions in racial terms, and some of the implications for racialization for the lives of temporary foreign workers. For many growers racialization is about the bottom line, which is to say it is about labor productivity. With farm- gate prices stagnant or falling and most input prices on the rise, cheapening the cost of labor power-i.e., extracting more value per labor dollar-remains one of the only strategies available to Canadian horticulturalists struggling to defend profit levels in a globalized marketplace. The acquisition of cheap labor is also one of the only areas in which Canadian growers might expect assistance from governments strongly committed to cheap food policies (see Appendix I). In the context of the SAWP, racialization entails sets of beliefs and practices that circulate in rural communities and inform growers' hiring de cisions. Whatever the rationale, those decisions matter. Collectively they play a role in shaping the SAWP labor market and workforce: The number of available slots (new and returning workers), as well as the ethnic/racial/ national groups called upon to fill them. Moreover, growers' beliefs and practices also influence workers' perspectives and contribute to divisions among workers that, however comparable in class terms, speak different languages, perform different cultures, and are bearers of different social histories. Copyright © 2013 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved.