Canadian immigration from the Russian Empire is often portrayed as consisting entirely of non-Slavic minorities and religious refugees. Vadim Kukushkin shows that a large number of immigrants were peasants from Russia's Ukrainian and Belarusan provinces attracted by Canadian wage-earning opportunities, unlike their neighbours from Austrian-ruled Ukraine who searched for land.

Written from the migration systems perspective, From Peasants to Labourers places the migration of Ukrainian and Belarusan peasant-workers within the context of Old- and New-World economic structures and state policies. Through painstaking analysis of thousands of personal migrant files in the archives of the Russian consulates in Canada, Kukushkin fills a void in our knowledge of the geographic origins, spatial trajectories, and ethnic composition of early twentieth-century Canadian immigration from Eastern Europe. From Peasants to Labourers also provides important insights into the nature of ethnic identity formation through an exploration of the meaning of "Russianness" in early twentieth-century Canada.