“Caught in the Same Webs”—Service Providers’ Insights on Gender-Based and Structural Violence Among Female Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada

Abstract

Drawing on the experiences of service providers supporting live-in caregivers and migrant agricultural workers in two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec), we explore how structural violence shapes the precarious conditions of female temporary foreign workers. Service providers emphasized how transnational social pressures on women to maintain employment, the captivity involved in women's employment contracts, the limits on unionization, and women's isolation and lack of privacy, act together to create an unbalanced relationship between the employer and female worker. In turn, this leads to precarious migration and work conditions that foster a vulnerability to violence and abuse while at the same time limiting access to and delivery of services and social support to female temporary foreign workers. Amid these restrictions, service providers focus on making a difference where they can through initiatives such as human rights education workshops, offering support, understanding Canadian regulation, and empowerment workshops. Greater Canadian national options for permanent residency status could provide a basis for adequate services to temporary foreign workers as part of their universal human rights. Temporary foreign workers contribute to Canadian society, making it encumbant upon the Canadian state to ensure the respect of their universal human rights.

“I Will Not Leave My Body Here”: Migrant Farmworkers’ Health and Safety Amidst a Climate of Coercion

“…If workers are able to refuse unsafe work, perhaps by extension, there will be increased incentive for employers to improve their workplace environments. Yet the option of permanent status upon arrival would also allow workers the opportunity for greater protection under the law, and would remove jurisdictional blurriness that maintains workers at the margins of legal protections [43].…”

Supports for migrant farmworkers: tensions in (in)access and (in)action

“…Furthermore, many migrant agricultural workers face language barriers, exclusion from federally-funded programming, lack of adequate confidentiality in medical settings, financial/insurance coverage barriers, and difficulties in accessing follow-up care (AUTHORS, 2018;Salami et. al, 2016;Robillard et. al, 2018).…”

Borders and boundaries in the lives of migrant agricultural workers: Towards a more equitable health services approach.

“…Yet they are often excluded from public spaces and their access to public services, including health services, is limited by a variety of complex factors. These include direct and indirect coercion from bosses and government officials, geographic and linguistic isolation, exclusionary policies, lack of access to transportation, lack of social networks, and experiences of racism (Caxaj & Diaz, 2018;Hennebry, 2012;Hjalmarson et al, 2015;Robillard et al, 2018). SAWP workers' exclusion from many community spaces and their incomplete access to the benefits of Canadian citizenship or residency require nurses and other healthcare professionals to consider the unique social and political mechanisms that threaten the health and wellbeing of this group.…”

“…In fact, even though hundreds of complaints are documented by non-government agencies , migrant agricultural workers rarely make official complaints because of the systemic onus put on workers to navigate the system and absorb the risks of reporting (Faraday, 2012). Key barriers include a lack of oversight mechanisms and an over-reliance on worker-initiated complaints, workers' geographic isolation, transportation barriers, language barriers and limited access to interpreters, limited knowledge of, or ability to navigate services, and poor networks of support Robillard et al, 2018). The cumulative impact of these regulatory and contextual barriers is a ritualized and systemic lack of access to medical care and legal protections for this group.…”

“…For instance, migrant agricultural workers have reported that employers encouraged them to work through an injury or illness, not to report a workplace incident, to use over-the-counter treatments instead of seeking medical attention, or to postpone seeking medical help until a less busy time of the season (Caxaj & Cohen, 2019). Although migrant agricultural workers are technically eligible for provincial health coverage, national pension plans, unemployment insurance, and other government programs, very few of them are able to secure access to these benefits (Hennebry et al, 2016;Robillard et al, 2018). In Ontario, migrant agricultural workers rely on their bosses to help them register in the provincial health care program, which in practice has meant that very few workers are actually enrolled (Robillard et al, 2018).…”