The ‘zeros’ who became heroes deserve to be rewarded by us

It’s important to point out the irony here: vilified when they crossed the Canada-u.s. border to make a refugee claim over the past three years, people with precarious status are now seen as essential workers to be celebrated. Julie Young, Grace Wu and Johanna Reynolds

On June 14, migrant and undocumented worker organizations in Canada led a virtual rally calling for full immigration status for all. Held online due to the pandemic, the rally comes amid reports the Canadian government is considering granting status to people working on the front lines of the pandemic without secure legal status — including people originally from Haiti and Nigeria employed in Quebec’s longterm care facilities who are also awaiting a decision on their refugee claims.

This sector always has a shortage of workers due to physically demanding working conditions seen as undesirable by many Canadian citizens or others with secure status. As Ruth Pierre-paul, director of the Bureau de la communauté haïtienne de Montréal says, “These people are living a double stress: They have to work and are on the front lines of a battle that could put them in the grave, with a status that gives them no benefits and makes them more vulnerable.”

It’s important to point out the irony here: vilified when they crossed the Canada-u.s. border to make a refugee claim over the past three years, people with precarious status are now seen as essential workers to be celebrated. In the words of Frantz André, a Montreal-based advocate with the Action Committee for People Without Status, “When they came, they were considered the zero of this world. Now they are heroes.”

This moment when more Canadians have been confronted with the reality of systemic racism and inequality due to both the COVID-19 pandemic and sustained protests across North America in response to police brutality offers an opportunity to rethink the dynamics that allow these very different stories to be told.

The shift in perspective — from “unauthorized border crossers” to “essential workers” — bears further examination. It demonstrates what critical refugee studies scholar Yen le Espiritu calls “differential inclusion”: “the process whereby a group of people is deemed integral to the nation’s economy, culture, identity and power — but integral only or precisely because of their designated subordinate standing.” In other words, mostly people of colour working on the front lines of this crisis are recognized as “essential” but only because of their deliberately low and precarious status. They are welcome for their labour but not for permanent membership in society.

Less often considered within this frame of “essential workers” are the thousands of people who arrive in Canada each year to work on farms through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program or those who enter with temporary work permits to labour in meat-packing plants; along with long-term care facilities, farms and meat-packing plants have seen disproportionately high rates of COVID-19 infection as advocates with Justice for Migrant Workers had warned officials about from the beginning and continue to monitor.

Advocates held a series of rallies in June in southwestern Ontario communities to show support for migrant workers, provide personal protective equipment that employers had not been supplying and call for the closing of these workplaces until they’re in compliance with health and safety protocols.

COVID-19 has exposed some of the worst of how we have chosen to organize our world. As businesses start to reopen slightly, let’s not lose sight of this. Care and agricultural work have been recognized as valuable because of the risks that workers face and their positions within the systems that keep our daily life running.

These sectors have relied on racialized and migrant workers for many decades. These jobs are not temporary and their status should not be, either. If they’re seen as having the right to membership because of their invaluable contributions on the front lines, certainly this right extends beyond a pandemic when they return to being invisible and undervalued.

We can and must do more to protect the people who work precariously at the heart of Canada’s care and food systems: permanent status at a minimum.

Julie Young is Canada research chair (Tier 2) in critical border studies and assistant professor in the department of geography and environment at the University of Lethbridge. Grace Wu is an affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University and a former refugee advocate at Amnesty International. Johanna Reynolds is an affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University. Their collaborative multimedia resource, Remembering Refuge, launches this month.