By Meg M.
On February 27, 2011 Women United Against Imperialism (WUAI) hosted the community forum Confronting Precarious Work in the Era of Imperialism to educate and organize around the theme of precarious work for the upcoming International Women’s Day events that took place in early March.
Petrolina Cleto began the forum by sharing her poem titled “A Place” with the group. Her words set the tone for the discussion ahead; about the sacrifices women make under global imperialism, as they migrate to foreign places for their families’ survival and the love behind migrant women’s work. Cleto explained, “working with the community of women migrant workers in Toronto has deepened my understanding of forced migration and the effects of imperialism on the majority of women in the world today. I now clearly see their courage. I also see what is often taken for granted… the great love with which they do their sacrifices, is also what they give to the people they work for.”
The following speaker, Brigitte Dang-ay, shared with the group that she arrived in Canada in 2006. She has since been separated from her four children in the Philippines while caring for Canadian families as a temporary foreign worker under Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP). LCP caregivers are required to complete 24 months of documented, full-time, live-in domestic work within four years of arrival in Canada. On completion of this requirement they become eligible to apply as permanent residents to Canada. Although it takes great courage for caregivers under the LCP to speak out on the vulnerabilities they face at work due to their precarious migration status, Dang-ay gave voice to the difficulties many women migrant workers experience and presented a powerful account of the impact of global imperialism on her life.
While Dang-ay has spent years caring for Canadian families to support her family back in the Philippines she explained, “[my family] seems to have lost interest in me, but as long as they are happy it is okay.” Dang-ay’s story exemplifies a mother’s sacrifice. This is a sacrifice that she is not alone in making. More than 20,000 live-in caregiver positions in Canada are filled each year by people who leave their families to migrate as temporary foreign workers under the LCP, most of whom are women from the Philippines. Whether daughters or mothers, these women are part of hundreds of thousands of Filipino overseas workers who remit their earnings back to the Philippines to support their families. While remittances help families survive, there are social costs to family separation.
In this global system governments’ economies benefit from remittances and inexpensive migrant labour, while migrant workers and their families pay the price of forced family separation, loosing years with each other and often leading to family breakdown. Dang-ay explained that one of the greatest difficulties women face under the LCP is the long period of family separation.
Evelyn Encalada Grez, a founding member of Justicia for Migrant Workers, continued the forum by sharing her experiences working with migrant farm workers in Canada. Encalada Grez explained that the workers could not be at the forum to share their struggles due to the structural barriers they face as migrant workers in rural communities, but she was there to speak as an organizer to raise awareness.
According to Encalada Grez, 3-4% of migrant farm workers entering Canada each year under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program are women and they face particular challenges such as sexual harassment in workplaces, the pressure to outperform their male co-workers to prove their productive abilities, and social stigma for leaving their family behind to work abroad. Encalada Grez explained that love is a form of coercion used against women who migrate to support their families financially. Migrant women are hanging onto precarious jobs in the agriculture sector to the detriment of their well-being because they must provide for their children. She further explained that as families are forced to restructure themselves under global restructuring family separation occurs. Migrant parents then commodify their love by replacing their physical presence in their children’s lives with material objects.
The stories shared by the forum speakers highlight a broader trend in the era of imperialist globalization; people must perform precarious work with a precarious immigration status in order to survive. But women are fighting back by organizing to claim their rights at work and in the new places they find themselves as a result of their migration. Brigitte Dang-ay is a member of IWWorkers (the Association of the Filipino Women Workers of Canada).
IWWorkers was founded by Juana Tejada, a LCP caregiver who fought for her right to permanent resident status and to abolish the second medical examination required for caregivers applying for permanent residency in Canada. As a result of this campaign the Juana Tejada Law was passed, reducing the barriers that LCP caregivers face in becoming permanent residents on completion of the LCP.
Justice for Migrant Workers also organizes in rural communities to create spaces for migrant agricultural workers to make their struggles known. Working with the United Food and Commercial Workers they have brought several issues to court, including the right of agricultural workers to unionize. Many migrant women are at the forefront of making change to the precarious work they perform so those who follow in their footsteps will have a better future.
