- PhD in Sociology, University of Toronto
- M.A. in Sociology, Simon Fraser University
- B.Sc. (Hons.) in Global Resource Systems, UBC
Bio
Anelyse completed her Master’s Degree in Sociology in 2014 and her PhD in Sociology in 2020. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria. Her research, teaching and advocacy are focused on decent work, dignified migration and ecological sustainability. Her current projects focus on agrarian livelihoods, health equity, struggles for migrant justice, and bargaining power across the food chain. Anelyse is an active member of the Migrant Worker Health Expert Working Group, and serves as a director with both the BC Employment Standards Coalition and the Worker Solidarity Network. In 2023, she received the UVic Social Sciences Community Engaged and Knowledge Mobilization Excellence Award.
Personal website: https://anelyseweiler.com/
Doctoral Dissertation
Core Values: Cider Production, Agrarian Livelihoods and Tunng Tastes in the Pacific Northwest
Master’s Thesis (Co-supervised by Dr. Hannah Wittman and Dr. Gerardo Otero)
This study sheds light on how initiatives to advance food system sustainability – alternative food networks – have addressed the precarious employment of farm workers. It compares how alternative food networks in British Columbia have engaged with flexible and precarious work regimes for migrants hired through Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program and un(der)paid interns. Based on in-depth interviews, observation and document analysis, this study demonstrates how alternative food actors can normalize a precarious farm work regime. Through the frame of a moral economy, equity in farm labour is depicted as either a non-issue, a necessary challenge in the transition to sustainability, or else an issue that should be addressed through consumer-driven regulation instead of ‘one-size-fits-all’ regulation by the state. This moral economy framing depicts precarious farm employment as limited to anomalous cases of individual ‘bad apple’ farmers. The simultaneous popularization of ‘rock star farmers’ by alternative food networks can obscure structural inequities affecting farm workers and dampen the impetus for food movement organizing.
Selected Publications
Weiler, A. M. (2023). Toxic freedom: How middle-class seasonal fruit pickers perceive and manage agrochemical exposures. Environmental Sociology.
Basok, T., Tucker, E. M., Vosko, L. F., Caxaj, C. S., Hennebry, J. L., Mayell, S., … & Weiler, A. M. (2023). The ‘contract’and its discontents: Can it address protection gaps for migrant agricultural workers in Canada?. International Migration. Online First.
Weiler, A. M., & Encalada Grez, E. (2022). Rotten asparagus and just-in-time workers: Canadian agricultural industry framing of farm labour and food security during the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian Food Studies, 9(2), 38-52.
Johnston, J., Weiler, A., Baumann, S. (2022). The cultural imaginary of ethical meat: A study of producer perceptions. Journal of Rural Studies, 89(4), 186-198.
Weiler, A. M. (2022). Seeing the workers for the trees: Exalted and devalued manual labour in the Pacific Northwest craft cider industry. Agriculture & Human Values, 39, 65-78.
Weiler, A. M. Sexsmith, K., & Minkoff-Zern, L.-A. (2021). Parallel precarity: a comparison of US and Canadian agricultural Guestworker programs. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 26(2), 143-163.
Weiler, A. M., & McLaughlin, J. (2019). Listening to migrant workers: should Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program be abolished? Dialectical Anthropology, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-019-09563-4
Weiler, A. M. (2019). Whose Labor Counts as Craft? Terroir and Farm Workers in North American Craft Cider. In A. Bonanno, K. Sekine, & H. N. Feuer (Eds.), Geographical Indication and Global Agri-Food: Development and Democratization. Abingdon, ON and New York: Routledge.
Weiler, A. M. (2018). A food policy for Canada, but not just for Canadians: Reaping justice for migrant farm workers. Canadian Food Studies/La Revue canadienne des études sur l’alimentation, 5(3), 279-284. https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v5i3.312
Weiler, A. M., McLaughlin, J., & Cole, D. C. (2017). Food security at whose expense? A critique of the Canadian temporary farm labour migration regime and proposals for change. International Migration, 55(4), 48-63. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12342
Weiler, A. M., Levoke, C. Z., & Young, C. (2016). Cultivating equitable ground: Community-based participatory research to connect food movements with migrant farmworkers. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 6(2), 73-87. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2016.062.012
Weiler, A. M., Otero, G., & Wittman, H. (2016). Rock stars and bad apples: Moral economies of alternative food networks and precarious farm work regimes. Antipode, 48(4), 1140-1162. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12221
Weiler, A. M., Hergesheimer, C., Brisbois, B., Wittman, H., Yassi, A., & Spiegel, J. M. (2015). Food sovereignty, food security and health equity: a meta-narrative mapping exercise. Health policy and planning, 30(8), 1078-1092. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czu109
See Google Scholar for a full list of publications.