DOCUMENTARY FILM AND THE PLEA FOR JUSTICE: TEMPORARY MIGRANT WORKERS IN CANADA

DOCUMENTARY FILM AND THE PLEA FOR JUSTICE: TEMPORARY MIGRANT WORKERS IN CANADA

The objective of this article is to introduce the main problems of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program between Mexico and Canada which takes place, still, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis relies on documentary films, presenting the activists’ struggle, pointing out SAWP’s problems in the constitution of the families affected and with regard to “citizenization” of the “temporary” workers in order to present a contemporary context in which these works were produced and disseminated. Once that context is established, five films were analyzed produced over the last fifteen years to find out the participation of workers in the programs, signed by Mexico and Canada. This brief commented filmography has served to put forward the points of view of each documentary and what it seeks to communicate to their audiences. The contributions of this article follow two different lines. The first is that documentary film can be presented as a useful tool to denounce unfair situations when proposed as an activist weapon. The second is to underline how, in the third decade of the 21st century, the condition in which SAWP members work and live still has not changed and how the COVID 19 epidemic has brought to the fore the paradoxical conditions in which the program operates.