Home care work needs migrant justice: Immigrant caregiving power and mutual aid during the pandemic in Manitoba


Mary Jean Hande, Trent University

Im/migrant home care workers in Manitoba, Canada, provide essential support with daily living for older disabled people living in the community (outside of nursing homes). During the pandemic, this support was often provided under grueling circumstances during the pandemic. Early race-based provincial COVID-19 data showed that Manitoba-based immigrant workers had disproportionately high COVID-19 rates. Nevertheless im/migrant home care workers were largely excluded from provincial COVID-19 policy responses and had difficulty navigating limited settlement services and health supports in the province. Mutual aid organizing and care activism, beyond their formal care work, were thus necessary for supporting themselves and their communities. Based on a community-based participatory research project, partnered with migrant justice group Migrante Manitoba, this presentation explores the practices and transformative potential of im/migrant workers’ care activism. We conducted semi-structured online interviews with 18 Manitoba-based im/migrant home care workers employed during the pandemic, 7 community leaders serving these im/migrant workers, a small online survey of Manitoba-based settlement workers (n=15), and insights from our project policy forum. We draw on frameworks of migrant justice, care activism (Tungohan, 2023), and transnational communities of care (Francisco-Menchavez, 2018) for analyzing the challenges and possibilities of care work and resistance in the context of intersectional exclusions (Lightman, 2021) during the pandemic. We outline multi-scalar/directional care activism discussed in our interviews and explore how it strengthened the collective wellbeing of im/migrant communities, supported transnational family ties, and called for transformative government policy change. We conclude by arguing that the home care sector needs migrant justice organizing to thrive. Moreover, such expansive care activism and cross-movement/community solidarity with care receivers might transform the ways that care relationships manifest and move us towards more ethical and just care practices that can challenge the intensifying precarity, violence, and privatization in Canada’s home care sector.

Non-presenting authors: Leah Nicholson, Trent University; Susan Rodriguez, Migrante Manitoba; Mehmet Yavuz, University of Manitoba; Nelli V. Agbulos, GABRIELA BC

This paper will be presented at the following session: