Elena Sosa Lerín is a communications and marketing professional temporarily based in Okotoks, Alta.

‘Iam a first-generation Canadian, from Mexico. I moved to Winnipeg with my family in 1999. I graduated from the University of King’s College with a degree in journalism and political science. Although I had scholarships that covered my tuition, they did not cover my living costs, so I had to borrow money. So when I graduated, I had around $15,000 of debt, which at the time was all the money in the world. I decided to teach English in South Korea to save up the money to be able to pay my loan. So I lived in Korea for two years. The first year I was teaching English, but the second year, I ended up being the manager of a national bilingual Korean and English magazine in Seoul.

“I’ve always been very cautious and conservative with my spending. So in South Korea I was able to save enough to pay my loan and leave a little bit more for grad school. I got accepted, went to Sweden, everything was perfect. I was on top of the world. And then the market crashed in 2008, when I had started my graduate degree. I graduated in 2009. And the job market had collapsed. I couldn’t stay in Sweden because they gave preference to Swedes. I came back to Canada and all the newsrooms were letting people go left, right and centre. I was unemployed for 10 months. I was desperate. So I said, well, what do I do? And I started looking into communications.

“For the past decade or so I have been doing communications and public information for different organizations, Canadian and international. I worked for the United Nations Development Program in South Sudan. I worked for the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg. Permanent positions are a unicorn now. Contracts are short term. So I’ve learned to code, I learned graphic design, I learned to edit videos, I learned to write scripts for videos. Some of those skills, you pick up at journalism school, but again, that’s journalism. No one teaches you marketing.

“Coming back to Canada for me has been really tough. Whenever I try to establish myself here, employers look at my CV and they’re like, ‘ You’ve been all over the place, there’s no consistency.’ And it’s very difficult to explain to someone who’s not in the sector that my CV looks normal. Adjusting to the job market has also been very tough.

“You always hear ‘ Work hard, be open to possibility, if there’s an opportunity to learn a skill, go for it.’ And I feel that I have always played by that book. It’s very demoralizing. Before, when I was younger, I always thought, ‘OK, I just have to stick it out one more year and then something will happen.’ And I was hopeful. And then this pandemic hit. And, the situation, it’s rough. I’m not in my twenties anymore. I’m in my late thirties, so I don’t know what I should do.

“People are like, ‘ Oh, just pick yourself up and be humble. Just go and work in the supermarket.’ If you say go and work in the supermarket, I’ll do it. I have three degrees and speak four languages and have all the experience in the world, but I sometimes face the same precarity as other people in other industries because the system as a whole has dissolved. A lot of labour protections are just not there anymore. And it’s not only a Canadian problem. It is something that’s happened worldwide. And with this pandemic, we have two choices: We either restructure for good or we restructure for worse. And what I am seeing so far, I think the restructuring will be for worse. And that is extremely scary, because these past 10 years have been brutal.”