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Drawing on insights from scholarship on contentious action frames, this article examines the framing of demands for social justice for migrant farmworkers in Spain, Italy and Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus particularly on how activists in each country aligned their action frames with prevalent public discourses on the essential contribution migrants make to agricultural production, the need to guarantee "health for all," and "increased vulnerability" of migrants' lives during the global health crisis. Using these diagnostic frames, activists in the three countries called for secure legal status for all migrants. Drawing on the literature on contentious action frames, we then analyze if action frames advanced by activists during the COVID-19 pandemic "resonated" with the understanding of these issues by policymakers. We challenge an approach to understanding resonance in binary terms as either present or absent. Instead, we introduce the notion of "ambivalent resonance" to draw attention to the fact that some frames are accepted only partially or only by some policymakers but not the others, as was the case in the three countries under study. We then situate this ambivalent resonance in the context of immigration priorities and recent trends in immigration policy development in these three countries and suggest that activists can build on ambivalences to advance migrant rights to status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant farm workers recruited under Canada's temporary employment programs work in difficult environments, under poor working conditions, and live in unsafe housing in remote rural communities. Fearful of repatriation or replacement, many accept their working and living conditions as part of a necessary sacrifice to improve their living conditions and those of their families in the countries of origin. At the same time, some migrant farm workers assert their agency by escaping from farms, subverting regulations, or challenging various forms of discipline used to control their bodies and activities. Following Isin and Nielsen (2008), we refer to these actions as "acts of citizenship." Drawing on research conducted among migrant farm workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the province of Quebec, Canada, we situate these acts, particularly the tendency to escape from abusive and exploitative working relationships, in a particular space and time shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, we demonstrate the link between these acts and certain conditions and opportunities that arose at that time, such as increased support for migrant farmworkers by a non-governmental organization and the facilitation of movement of migrant farmworkers across the Canada-U.S.-border by the "migration industry.". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rights to the City or mobility rights? Central American asylum seekers in urban spaces of waiting in Tijuana: Recent research has documented that migrants are actors who have the potential to challenge practices that contain their mobility and undermine their safety, security, and well‐being. Scholars working in the Rights to the City and Critical Citizenship Studies paradigms have documented that migrants make claims to citizenship (e.g., legal status or formal and informal claims to protections, space, recognition, and participation in the city). At the same time, scholars working within the Autonomy of Migration approach have drawn attention to migrants' unwavering determination to move across borders despite obstacles. Conceptualizing these two sets of actions as "acts of citizenship" and "acts of mobility," we analyze the relationship between the two in this article. Drawing on our fieldwork among Central American asylum seekers at the northern Mexican border city of Tijuana conducted in the summer of 2019, we demonstrate that migrants are forced to choose between pursuing their dreams of mobility to the United States and claiming citizenship claims in the border city of Tijuana. Messages clés: En raison de diverses politiques de contrôle de la mobilité, la ville de Tijuana s'est transformée en un territoire d'attente pour des milliers de migrant‐e‐s d'Amérique centrale, modifiant profondément la dynamique migratoire de la ville.Bloqué‐e‐s au Mexique, les migrant‐e‐s sont confrontés à un dilemme: revendiquer leur droit à la mobilité vers les États‐Unis (« actes de mobilité ») ou chercher une protection au Mexique (« actes de citoyenneté »).Dans certains contextes, comme celui de Tijuana, les « actes de mobilité » peuvent interférer avec les « actes de citoyenneté » et vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on border studies that recognise rebordering practices as ongoing performances of conflict between various actors including state authorities, border security agents, migrants, migrant supporters, smugglers, international organisations, lawyers, advocates and others. We draw attention to variable levels of intensity with which these conflicts are performed and the impact they have on migrants' ability to exercise their agency. We understand intensity to mean not merely the emotional discursive environment in which these conflicts unfold, and the pressure tactics used by at least some parties, but, more importantly, the speed of the responses by all actors involved in this border performance. Focusing on rebordering practices at the US--Mexico borderlands in 2018 and 2019 adopted in response to new forms of mobility, we characterise these years as a period of high intensity, when rapidly changing policies provoked immediate responses by migrants, and equally speedy counter-responses by other actors, particularly the US and Mexican administration. We suggest that the volatile architecture of border control in the US--Mexico borders has rendered many strategies employed by Central American migrants to overcome obstacles and create innovative solutions virtually ineffective. The article is based on an ethnographic study carried out between early May and mid-August 2019 in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian temporary migration regime has been widely criticised for its failure to provide protections and address migrant needs. This article contributes to these critiques by analysing how temporariness impacts the sense of belonging and perceptions of social inclusion among farmworkers in Canada. The sense of inclusion and belonging is vital for individuals' sense of well‐being, and therefore, a critique of temporariness is incomplete without it. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2018–2019 in a rural community in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, it documents that, despite certain initiatives to make temporary migrant workers feel welcomed, migrants have not grown attached to this place. We situate farmworkers' limited sense of belonging in the exclusionary architecture of this labour migration regime. We argue that two structural elements in particular make it impossible for most migrant farmworkers to feel connected to Canada—the forced separation from their families, and the lack of mobility within the labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]