Global Migration Podcast: Season 3

Mohammed Alsaleh, host of Season 2, returns to welcome Gabriele Dumpys Woolever, our new host for Season 3. Listen to find out what’s in store for this season of the podcast. This episode was created as part of a research project on Temporary Foreign Workers during the Time of COVID-19, a collaboration between UBC researchers (Vanessa Banta, Gabriele Dumpys Woolever, and Geraldine Pratt) and the Migrant Workers Centre in Vancouver, BC (www.mwcbc.ca). We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. Theme song: She Found Moments In Bells, MagnusMoone

A woman in Surrey is trapped between two forces: the controlling roommate that wouldn’t let her leave their apartment for months because of COVID, and the government that will keep her unemployed if she moves out. How much can she do to make life bearable until either force lets up? This episode was created as part of a research project on Temporary Foreign Workers during the Time of COVID-19, a collaboration between UBC researchers (Vanessa Banta, Gabriele Dumpys Woolever, and Geraldine Pratt) and the Migrant Workers Centre in Vancouver, BC (www.mwcbc.ca). We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. Theme song: She Found Moments In Bells, MagnusMoone Additional songs in order of appearance: Palladian, Blue Dot Sessions Tamarinda, Blue Dot Sessions Trenton Channel, Blue Dot Sessions Palladian, Blue Dot Sessions Louver, Blue Dot Sessions Zulia Conspiracy, Blue Dot Sessions Forgotten, Edoy Pennies, Ketsa Trenton Channel, Blue Dot Sessions The Come Up, Audiobinger  

After being exploited out of his job, a highly trained caregiver in Surrey seeks employment as an essential worker in the COVID economy. Yet he faces fake jobs, demands for bribes, and months of unemployment while waiting for the government to process his new work permit, and now he’s running out of options to support his wife and two teenagers.

This episode was created as part of a research project on Temporary Foreign Workers during the Time of COVID-19, a collaboration between UBC researchers (Vanessa Banta, Gabriele Dumpys Woolever, and Geraldine Pratt) and the Migrant Workers Centre in Vancouver, BC (www.mwcbc.ca). We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

Theme song: She Found Moments In Bells, MagnusMoone

Additional songs in order of appearance:

Naborrada Danca, Lobo Loco

Goldfinch Flight to the North, Axletree

Lobo Lobo, Blue Dot Sessions

San Diego Sunday, Blue Dot Sessions

Goldfinch Flight to the North, Axletree

Lobo Lobo, Blue Dot Sessions

Sustained Light 1, Daniel Birch

San Diego Sunday, Blue Dot Sessions

Metonic, REW

San Diego Sunday, Blue Dot Sessions

Naborrada Danca, Lobo Loco

She’s lost three jobs in a row and might have to leave Canada if it happens again. But after a few weeks out sick, a nanny in Kelowna gets an angry call from her employer threatening to fire her for being unreliable and worried about COVID. What she does next isn’t in the script for temporary foreign workers.

This episode was created as part of a research project on Temporary Foreign Workers during the Time of COVID-19, a collaboration between UBC researchers (Vanessa Banta, Gabriele Dumpys Woolever, and Geraldine Pratt) and the Migrant Workers Centre in Vancouver, BC (www.mwcbc.ca). We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

Theme song: She Found Moments In Bells, MagnusMoone

Additional songs in order of appearance:

Vela Vela, Blue Dot Sessions

Lina My Queen, Blue Dot Sessions

Vela Vela, Blue Dot Sessions

Pukae, Blue Dot Sessions

Angel Tooth, Blue Dot Sessions

Pukae, Blue Dot Sessions

Scattered, Ketsa

Pukae, Blue Dot Sessions

Angel Tooth, Blue Dot Sessions

Scattered, Ketsa

Lina My Queen, Blue Dot Sessions

Hedgeliner, Blue Dot Sessions

Scattered, Ketsa

Further Discovery, Blear Moon

Olivine, REW

Vienna Beat, Blue Dot Sessions

Arrest without charge, indefinite detention, traumatizing conditions: Canada has long used immigration practices akin to its more infamous neighbor to the south. But when COVID-19 drew attention to the extra vulnerability faced by incarcerated people, something began to change. UBC legal scholars Efrat Arbel and Molly Joeck found that more migrants in Canada were being released and fewer were being detained. It signaled an important shift in how immigration detention was adjudicated, and who was taken to be at risk when people crossed borders. A new progressive window was finally opening – or so it seemed. How was this shift justified and could it be maintained when COVID was no longer a main concern?

Links:

Efrat Arbel & Molly Joeck (2021) Immigration Detention in the Age of COVID-19

Molly Joeck (2020) Taino v. Canada: Has the Federal Court Just Endorsed the Indefinite Detenion of Noncitizens in Canada?

Efrat Arbel & Ian C. Davis (2018) Immigration Detention and the Problem of Time: Lessons from Solitary Confinement

Siena Anstis & Molly Joeck (2020) Detaining the Uncooperative Migrant

Human Rights Watch & Amnesty International (2021) Welcome to Canada campaign

Human Rights Watch & Amnesty International (2021) “I Didn’t Feel Like a Human in There”: Immigration Detention in Canada and Its Impact on Mental Health

Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (2018) Report of the 2017/2018 External Audit (Detention Review)

Music Credits:

Theme song: She Found Moments in Bells, MagnusMoone

Additional songs in order of appearance:

Blue Dot Sessions, Junca

Blue Dot Sessions, Throughput

Daniel Birch, Birds Eye View

Ketsa, Never Wrong

techtheist, Restless Mind

Jahzzar, Gramaphone

Nctrnm, Parade

Blue Dot Sessions, Heather

Blue Dot Sessions, Gullwing Sailor

Argentina is known for its history of European immigration in the 20^th century. It’s also been critiqued for the accompanying violence it wrought against Indigenous and other non-white people as it tried to establish itself as a white nation. But a UBC historian has found that in the 1910’s, Argentina used additional mechanisms to keep Asian migrants out of the country, without ever putting an exclusionary law on the books. That’s one reason these racial exclusions have been largely invisible in the historiographic record, until now. They are what historian Ben Bryce calls, ‘a story of absence.’ What can the account of one boatful of Punjabi laborers, stranded in the port of Buenos Aires in 1912, tell us about Argentina’s efforts to transform itself through immigration? And how might this relate to present-day Argentina and the enduring myth of whiteness?

A group of some of the first arrivals onboard the Italian steamer Savoia. Source: “Inmigrantes de la India inglesa,” Caras y Caretas (Buenos Aires), 3 Feb. 1912, p. 81.

Links:

More information and research by Benjamin Bryce can be found here.

More information and research by Gastón Gordillo can be found here.

Music Credits:

Theme song: MagnusMoone, She Found Moments in Bells

Additional music and audio footage in order of appearance:

Banda Municipal de la Ciudad de Bueno Aires, ¿Cuando se extinguirá la vela? (©2015 From Argentina Records)

Sucesos Argentinos N 482. Para todos los hombres del mundo, 1948 (Archivo General de la Nación, legajo 224)

Inmigración. Plan quinquenal, 1946 (Archivo General de la Nación, legajo 1499)

Irama Gema, Circling the Stars (Clouds of Dust)

Banda Municipal de la Ciudad de Bueno Aires, Atalaya (©2015 From Argentina Records)

Banda Municipal de la Ciudad de Bueno Aires, Minestrone (©2015 From Argentina Records)

Blue Dot Sessions, Caseco

C. Joynes, Nuevo Tango