Projects

  • The goals of this project are to emphasize the importance of specificity and heterogeneity among migrant farmworkers in BC, contribute and expand existing knowledge on TFWPs and precarity within academic literature, and inform government and community stakeholders such as local community agencies, diverse levels of government, and community organizers/workers about the complexities of the migrant labour force to avoid a one size fits all manner of supporting and advocating for the migrant farmworker population. This research also intends to trace precaritization as a process of settler-colonialism and racialization within Canada and the hemisphere that extracts labour and life from Indigenous workers from the Global South. Most importantly, the research project aims to strengthen and expand existing networks of support and advocacy among migrant farm workers in BC.  The research project is also geared towards the co-creation of accessible and useful mixed art research outputs to strengthen the agency, resistance and empowerment among migrant farmworkers from Guatemala.

    Project proposal submitted January 2023.

  • Migrant farmworkers (MFWs) from Guatemala have received limited attention in the literature of Temporary Foreign Worker Programs (TFWPs) in Canada, particularly beyond Quebec where they first started emigrating to work in farms, greenhouses, and packing plants. Many are of Indigenous Maya backgrounds, yet their Indigenous identities are often erased in the category of Spanish speaking farmworkers.

    This project will use qualitative and decolonial research methods to explore the particularities of MFWs through the lens of indigeneity, cross-border livelihoods, and immigration-labour policies with a focus on British Columbia and a rural Maya community in Guatemala.

    My main questions include the following:

    • What does it mean to be a Maya MFW in rural British Columbia?

    • How does this Indigenous identity and culture shape the ways that Maya MFWs make meaning of their labour-migration experiences?

    • How has labour-migration to Canada impacted the livelihoods and survival of current and former migrant farmworkers of Maya backgrounds?

    This study is important because it would produce new knowledge about Indigenous migrant worker intersections that uniquely centres processes of colonialization, indigeneity, and displacement within the literature of TFWPs. This study also has the potential to build cross-border solidarity with Indigenous Nations across Guatemala and Canada.

    Project proposal submitted December 15, 2022.

  • Planned for October 2025 in Vancouver, this summit aims to bring together grassroots migrants organization for knowledge sharing and capacity building for the rights of migrant workers across the province. The summit will combine dialogue, skills workshops, art, music and a community meal to enliven our senses and strengthen our collective joyful resistance for migrant justice.

  • In phase II of the pandemic livelihood project, I am tracing the role and labour of community organizers supporting migrant workers farm during the most challenging years of their labour migration, attempting to survive the COVID 19 pandemic while feeding the multibillion dollar agribusiness.

  • A community project to collect and remember the migration, uprooting and settlement stories of the 1.5 generation growing up in Canada since the civic-military coup in Chile.

    ChileCanStories.com

  • Aimed at needs assessment, direct support and outreach with migrant farmworkers around their gendered and sexual needs in rural BC and Ontario.