Law Commons^™

The Bunk House Rules: Housing Migrant Labour In Ontario, Adrian A. Smith

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

The paper tackles the recent controversy surrounding an application to convert an abandoned school into housing for migrant agricultural workers in Ontario, Canada. It examines 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. When viewed through a legal consciousness analytic lens, reconstituted to attend to the material practices and context underpinning residents’ discursive and ideological responses, what I term a ‘materialist legal consciousness studies’, it is evident that the residents’ submissions intervene in the organization and regulation of agricultural production. While framed …