Migration Conversations

This is part 2 of a two-part episode where we speak with Mary Jane and Milanie, two former migrant caregivers and Aimee, an advocate with Migrante Ottawa, a cause-oriented organization that promotes the rights and welfare of Filipino migrants in Canada. We talk about the essential work Mary Jane and Milanie did to care for Canadian children and elderly, the conditions that they were subject to and their heartbreaking separation from family. They express the importance of advocacy and support provided by grassroots organizations like Migrante. We discuss how immigration law and the design of the temporary foreign worker program shaped their lived experiences.

Meet Deepan Budlakoti. Born and raised in Canada, Deepan had a Canadian birth certificate and Canadian passport. Then one day he was told he was not a citizen and overnight he became a foreigner and stateless. We talk about how he became stateless, what his life in limbo is like, and what you can do to support his fight to reclaim his citizenship.

Meet immigration and refugee lawyer, Debbie Rachlis. We talk about the Gaza Special Measures Program, why nobody has been able to come through that program, and what it tells us about IRCC's ad hoc approaches to humanitarian crises.

Meet Carrianne Leung, Jenny Heijun Wills and Lindsay Wong, all award winning authors in Canada. We talk about the craft of writing, the fluidity and complication of identity as writers, and how migration and diasporic experiences inform their work.

Meet Frédérique Chabot, the Director of Health Promotion and Interim Executive Director of Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights, an organization that promotes health, wellbeing and rights related to sexuality and reproduction. We talk about the barriers the COVID-19 pandemic has erected in accessing abortion health care and how these barriers are more severe for migrant women given that access is reliant on the immigration status one has. As you listen to this episode, consider how there is a need to consider access to health care with a gendered and racialized lens and how pandemic responses so far have ignored migrant women.