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 loosing their work or being repratriated. We start with workers' knowledge and concerns and 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 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!
Active
Agriculture and horticulture workers
(Im)migrants workers, Policymakers, Journalists, Public awareness, Employers, agencies and their representatives, Researchers, Unions, and NGOs/community groups/solidarity networks
British Columbia
Journalism, media studies and communication, Law, Political science, and Social work
English and Spanish