A Meatpackers Immigration Journey
Industrial meat processing has long been recognized as a dangerous industry in which to work. These dangers became more pronounced with the onset of COVID-19: Across Canada and the United States, meat processing plants had to slow operations, and in some cases, shut down completely, to contend with massive outbreaks of the novel coronavirus among workers. The nature of this work– crowded industrial settings where workers often work side-by-side – led to massive COVID-19 outbreaks resulting in hundreds of workers becoming sick and numerous deaths.COVID-19 presented an unprecedented and new risk to workers who already labour under difficult and dangerous conditions of work.
The images below tell the stories of im/migrant and refugees who have ended up working at meatpacking plants, from the Migrant Dignity Project Report. This report presents the findings from a community-university research partnership between researchers from the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University and ActionDignity. Data for this report comes from a survey of 224 im/migrant and refugee workers in Alberta’s meatpacking industry and 17 qualitative interviews. The survey and interviews took place between January and May 2021. A team of multilingual researchers conducted first language interviews with 17 im/migrant and refugee workers who work in meat processing in Alberta. The interviews were transcribed and translated to English. The survey was available in five languages including English. The goal of this research project was to understand the conditions that produce vulnerability for im/migrant and refugee workers in Alberta’s meatpacking industry.
Artwork 1: A Meatpackers Immigration Journey: The Canadian Dream. AS came to Alberta on a temporary foreign worker visa to work at Cargill’s meatpacking plant. He represents the “ideal” overseas Filipino worker filling the labor shortage in an “essential” industry. He is highly skilled, well-educated, English-speaking, hardworking, productive, and efficient. He remitted money to his loved ones until acquiring a permanent residence card and bringing his family to Canada. When COVID 19 hit the meatpacking plant, AS was struck the hardest; he and family fell ill, and the virus killed his elderly father who came under a visitor’s visa. Temporary foreign workers are not only exposed to “3D” (dirty, dangerous, difficult) jobs, they also feel “dispensable” because their lack of status can result in repatriation.
Artwork 2: A Meatpackers Immigration Journey: No Safe Place. Forced conscription and other human rights abuses in parts of East Africa, as well as conflict and poverty, have displaced these workers from their home countries. Their journey from Africa was fraught with danger – threats from human traffickers, kidnappers, dangers of rape, violence in refugee camps, conflict zones, desert crossings, and finally sea crossings. For meatpacking plant workers who arrived in Canada as refugees, Cargill was then the only immediately available employment opportunity for those with mismatching skills. Meatpacking only requires physical fitness, at best, and resettled refugees in Alberta are concentrated in “low skilled” jobs like this.
For more information about the lived experiences of immigrant meat packing plant workers during COVID 19 in Alberta, click here.
Thank you to our funders who have made this project possible.
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