Law Commons^™

The Bunk House Rules: A Materialist Approach To Legal Consciousness In The Context Of Migrant Workers’ Housing In Ontario, Adrian Smith

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In this article, I tackle the controversy surrounding an application to convert an abandoned school into housing for migrant agricultural workers in Ontario. I examine how the written reactions of community residents to a proposed municipal zoning by-law amendment convey and invoke understandings of the legal regulation of temporary labour migration. Viewed through a legal consciousness analytical lens that has been reconstituted to attend to the material practices and contexts underpinning residents’ responses (a materialist approach to legal consciousness), the submissions intervene in the organization and regulation of agricultural labour. While rehearsing well-worn, racist colonial tropes, these responses (re)produce material …