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Temporary migrant workers (TMWs) are a significant part of many Canadian industries, including the agriculture and meat-packing sector. However, recent events due to the COVID-19 pandemic have brought out some issues present in this field. Issues include the precarious nature of this type of employment, exploitative practices that may occur, barriers to receiving care while as a TMW, and various other problems.
Learning objectives
- What can be done and what advocacy efforts exist to help TMWs that may be experiencing exploitation?
- What barriers to receiving healthcare among TMWs exists and how can they be addressed?
- What labour laws exist to prevent exploitative TMW practices?
- Understanding issues faced by TMWs like precarious employment, exploitation, barriers to care, etc.
Audience
Newcomer-serving professionals in Health and Settlement sectors
About the panelists
Dr. Bukola Salami is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta. Her research program focuses on policies and practices shaping migrant health. She has been involved in around 60 funded research projects and leads 20 with funding from national and international agencies. She has led projects on African immigrant child health, immigrant mental health, access to healthcare for immigrant children, African immigrant youth mental health, migration of nurses as live-in caregivers, the experiences of temporary foreign workers in Alberta, downward occupational mobility of immigrant nurses, and parenting practices of African immigrants.
Santiago Escobar is a labour organizer, National Representative at UFCW Canada and Coordinator of the Agriculture Workers Alliance, where he advocates for better and safe work environments. He regularly contributes with media outlets with analysis and comments on labour and migrant rights and lobbies the Federal and Provincial Governments to improve workers’ rights and labour standards. Read about UFCW Canada's Status of Migrant Workers Report 2020.
Stephanie Mayell is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellow and PhD Candidate in the Medical Anthropology Program at the University of Toronto. Stephanie’s doctoral research investigates the ways race and the histories of slavery influence Jamaican migrant workers' affective states and experiences of health and injury in relation to their participation in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Stephanie has conducted community-based health research with migrant agricultural workers in Ontario and Jamaica since 2014. She is a core member of the Migrant Worker Health Expert Working Group (MWH-EWG), a team of academics and clinicians who came together in 2020 to address the needs of migrant workers in Canadian agriculture during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide recommendations to federal, provincial, and municipal government agencies. She is currently working on research projects on the health of migrant agricultural workers in Canada at Wilfrid Laurier University and Western University.
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