Migrant workers get spotlight
Journalists will explore the upheaval caused by prolonged separation
Toronto Star reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh has been awarded this year’s Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship, along with documentary photographer Melissa Renwick, to pursue a project on the impact of Canada’s migrant worker program.
Mojtehedzadeh and Renwick will use the $25,000 fellowship to delve into a rarely seen perspective on the migrant worker program, focusing on the voices of the spouses and children left behind in Mexico, and asking the question: Is a program meant to empower families actually destroying them?
“The idea that some families must choose to live apart for the majority of their lives to put food on the table struck us as an instinctively compelling one,” said Mojtehedzadeh, who reports on labour issues for the Star. “While migrant workers often face extreme vulnerability performing manual labour on Canadian farms, their families also experience deep financial, psychological and health consequences at home as a result of prolonged separation. We felt like that human cost is invisible to many Canadians.”
Mojtehedzadeh’s reporting will build on her previous stories on Canada’s migrant worker program.
Renwick, a former Star photographer who is now based on the West Coast, added: “Sara and I are so humbled and honoured to be granted the opportunity to follow in the legacy of Jim Travers by bearing witness to an issue that extends beyond Canada’s borders.”
The award is named for former Star executive managing editor and Ottawa columnist James Travers, who died in 2011. A former editor of the Ottawa Citizen, he spent years as a foreign correspondent in Africa and the Middle East during the 1980s for Southam News. Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication now administers the fellowship in his memory. Another Star journalist, Marco Chown Oved, won the award in 2014. He used the opportunity to report from Burkina Faso on the relationship between mining and Canadian foreign aid.
Mojtehedzadeh was a finalist for the Michener Award for public service journalism for her investigation into temp agencies in Ontario. In 2017, she won the JHR/Canadian Association of Journalists Award for human rights reporting.
Renwick’s work was included in a collection of Time Magazine’s top 100 photos of 2018.