Abstract

Labour migrants have been routinely categorised within social scientific thought as either abstracted economic entities or as victims of global processes beyond their understanding. A striking majority of attempts to understand processes of migration, especially in regards to "unskilled" Mexican migrant workers, have been informed primarily by macro-level economic approaches, while the social and individual factors at play have been largely pushed to the side. As such, the social lives and individual diversities of these migrants have received meagre academic attention. In acknowledgment of this gap, this current thesis focuses on the lived experiences of Hector-Alberto and Durango, two individuals engaged in a cycle of migration as participants in Canada's managed migration program, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers' Program. Through an ethnographic description of the everyday experiences of Hector and Durango, three relevant themes are explored: their individual relations to their work, their family, and their co-workers. As such, the present work aims to explore the varied experiences of migration and frame labour migrants as significant social actors rather than abstracted units or victims of social forces. The author encourages an engagement in a broader investigation of the "migrant experience"; to look beyond the idea of transnational migration as simply physical movements across national boundaries, but rather as groupings of processes with profound and diverse meanings to those involved. Perhaps such a perspective would play a role in revealing the complex myriad of interacting processes which combine under the umbrella term of "migration".