About
Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW) is a volunteer-run political non-profit collective comprised of activists from diverse walks of life (including labour activists, educators, researchers, students and youth of colour) based in Toronto, Ontario, and now in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. We are engaged in this work alongside our personal commitments and numerous social justice struggles.
J4MW strives to promote the rights of migrant farmworkers (participating in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program and the Low Skilled Workers Program) and farmworkers without status. Promoting workers' rights entails fighting for spaces where workers themselves can articulate their concerns without losing their work or being repatriated. We start with workers' knowledge and concerns and collectively devise strategies to make necessary changes. We see ourselves as allies and strive for a movement that is led and directed by workers themselves.
Our work is and has to be transnational in scope. It considers the context of sending countries, Canada's complicity in benefitting and creating poverty in the Global South, and most importantly we consider families left behind, primarily children and women who are very much a part of migration but who are always forgotten in the equation of migrant farm labour.
J4MW collective is motivated by experiences shared and lessons learned from migrant farm workers over the course of more than nine years of community outreach in rural Ontario. As allies, activists and friends we believe migrant workers deserve work with dignity and respect!
Every single tomato has a story...
It's a story of transnational families and shattered dreams.
Evelyn Encalada
Our Principles & Goals
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Build a movement/campaign that is based on workers experiences and involves workers, ultimately is driven by workers themselves
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Continually question our assumptions and our privileges
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Link the struggles of migrant workers with processes of globalization, structural adjustment and rural displacement
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Have a long-term commitment to carry out this work
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Be accountable to workers
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Follow through on commitments we make
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Create sustainability by building alliances with other groups and communities where workers live
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Carry out work in a way that builds and preserves relations of trust with workers
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Build the capacity of and empower workers
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Build our own capacity and knowledge as volunteer community organizers and advocates
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Build our understanding of historical processes of migrant labour and workers in Canada
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Include an analysis of gender, sexuality, class and race in our work
What We Do
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Community outreach in migrant communities in rural Ontario and in sending communities in Mexico and the Caribbean
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Develop and conduct workshops around various issues including migrant women's specific concerns
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Raise awareness of the plight of migrant workers
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Document workers' complaints
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Research various aspects of migrant agricultural labour in North America
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Lobby government to change policies of SAWP and other guest worker programs that created an indentured form of labour
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Build community coalitions with similar organizations across the Americas
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Educate workers about their rights
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Aid workers in solving employment and housing problems
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Empower workers to stand up for their rights
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Engage in ongoing training of legal issues affecting migrant workers
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Connect migrant workers with human rights organizations in their home countries
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Stimulate action among migrant workers, host communities and the public at large
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Respond to emergency immigration problems
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Create spaces for both Caribbean and Mexican migrant workers to dialogue and strategize in their own terms
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Send workers care/reading packages to their farms to ease isolation and depression
