Last’s year’s October harvest moon was one I will never forget.
It was a witness that night when I had to pick up Laura (a pseudonym) at the apple farm with two police officers. We left the farm in such haste that Laura’s belongings were scattered throughout various plastic bags. It was a rescue mission more reminiscent of a crime scene.
She could not leave without lovingly saying goodbye to each of the women with whom she had shared that awful crammed bunkhouse. When she was ready, she turned to me and said, “Let’s go.”
We walked together, Laura on crutches with much pain, tears flowing down her face, tears that quickly became contagious.
The tall, white, male police officers were shocked. They had no clue that migrant women lived and worked in their community, let alone what some had to go through to earn a living producing food that ended up on our kitchen tables. One of the officers confessed, “Apples are never going to taste the same again.”
Laura’s crime was to have been injured at work. She lost her balance, fell off the tractor, and her legs were crushed by its wheels. As soon as she regained consciousness after her first surgery, an official from the Mexican consulate in Toronto started harassing her. She was pressured to sign forms that would withdraw her rights to treatment and benefits in Canada and return her immediately to her rural village in the state of Puebla.
That way her employer would not incur increases in Workers Compensation premiums. The plan was to send her back to Mexico as soon as possible, essentially discarding her.
We advised her differently – of her right to lost wages and to treatment in Canada. Earlier that night, the employer had waited for me and my travel companion. Clearly inebriated, he violently lunged at us, threatened me and physically assaulted my companion. He told us that he was the boss and he decides what is done or not done with his workers.
The only way to ensure Laura would not be repatriated against her will was to remove her from the farm. Since it was private property, the only way we could do that was with the police.
This was the same farm where, two years ago, another group of migrant women had fought back against the employer’s insistence they could not leave the premises after work – not even for a walk down the road.
Those stories are a part of a hidden reality among migrant women who work in rural Ontario through temporary visa permits. Most work through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, where men significantly outnumber women workers. With few contracts for women, women seek to protect their place in the program because they are dependent on the wages to sustain themselves, their children, and their families back in rural Mexico.
Most dream of their children rising out of poverty through better education. Sometimes women migrate, too, to escape violence, only to find it again in a different context with other actors, such as their employers, consulate officials, and sometimes even co-workers.
Many times women prefer to endure inhumane living conditions, abusive treatment, and dangerous working conditions in order to keep this dream alive.
It is well documented that migration is part of many household survival strategies Mexican women have had to undertake, not only to the U.S. but also into Canada. Less is known about those experiences in Canada, a country known for its respect for human rights, but like many other Western economies increasingly reliant on migrant labour as a form of cheap, flexible, and subservient labour.
Migrant labour has indeed become a structural necessity for the agricultural industry in Canada. Their poverty is capitalized upon by employers. Poverty among women becomes a disciplining factor for labour control that makes available workers willing to work for less money – and with no rights.
Time and time again women of the program confess that migration to Canada is like a trap. Even though they may want to stop migrating they cannot because wages in Mexico keep them impoverished. Since most of the women are lone mothers, women find no other choice than to leave their children for months a time in order to provide for their basic needs.
Rural Women Making Change and Justicia for Migrant Workers have worked with local service providers to respond to migrant women’s specific needs in rural communities. But most government funded agencies and community centres do not have the mandate to service migrant women – our research and documentation of the vulnerabilities women face often fall on deaf ears.
In many instances employers respond by punishing women by not hiring them at all instead of being responsive to their needs as human beings.
That night at the farm I realized how terrified women were of their employer – and of losing their contracts. When the employer was yelling and berating us, two women looked on from afar. Paralyzed by fear, they could not do a thing. I realized that a collective for the rights of migrant workers cannot solely be about workers rights but also for life and dignity. I have heard this many times before among Maquila women workers in Mexico and Central America but that night this message was all the more urgent and tangible.
We have to create and support humane forms of generating a living so that we truly engage in the global project to eradicate poverty.
Evelyn Encalada Grez is a researcher with Rural Women Making Change, and is co-founder of Justicia for Migrant Workers.
