Podcast, Social Justice

Women, Work, More: Migrant Women & Transnational Loving — with Evelyn Encalada Grez

November 18, 2021

Below the Radar · Migrant Women & Transnational Loving — with Evelyn Encalada Grez

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A transnational labour scholar, co-founder of Justicia for Migrant Workers, and assistant professor from SFU's Labour Studies Program, Evelyn Encalada Grez joins this episode of Women, Work, More to speak about migrant women and their experiences of transnational loving.

Evelyn explores the pains that accompany migration, from separating families to the often temporary loves that migrant women find while working within Canada. Despite these pains, Evelyn speaks about the forms of agency that migrant women enact throughout their migration — that often revolves around reasserting their power over their bodies and sexualities.

As the episode continues, Evelyns speaks about her past projects that have aided in re-empowering migrant workers and migrant women within their migration. She also shares the changes that need to be made to undo the exploitation inherent within temporary labour migration programs.

Throughout the episode we hear quotes from migrant women whom Evelyn has encountered and interviewed as part of her research. These quotes came from Evelyn’s transcribed interviews and are voiced by readers in both English and Spanish. These do not feature the voices of the migrant women who initially spoke these words in order to maintain their anonymity.

Read the Transcript

Resources

About Our Guest

Evelyn Encalada Grez

Dr. Evelyn Encalada Grez is a transnational labour scholar, organizer and co-founder of Justice for Migrant Workers and Assistant Professor in Labour Studies at Simon Fraser University.

She has worked with migrant farmworkers for two decades across rural Canada, Mexico and Guatemala. She has mobilized her research in various venues such as the UN in New York, the National Autonomous University of Mexico and collaborated in various multidisciplinary projects to amplify the voices of migrant workers. Her research has focused on the experiences of Mexican migrant women who forge transnational livelihoods between Canada and Mexico. Currently, she is conducting research on the effects of the pandemic on migrant farmworkers within a transnational perspective.

Crew

Host & Producer - Alyha Bardi

Audio Editor - Paige Smith

Cover Artist & Secondary Editor - Kathy Feng

Transcriber & Copywriter - Melissa Roach

SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement Director - Am Johal

Music

“Words” by Jason Shaw is licensed under CC BY 3.0
“Drive” by Scanglobe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
“Industrial Sunrise” by Scanglobe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
“Transit” by Scanglobe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

ABOUT THE SERIES

Experiences of gendered work are multifaceted. Common concepts like the glass ceiling or the gender wage gap, don’t even come close to scratching the surface of the varying barriers and experiences that women and gender diverse people face within their working lives. From dealing with sexualized work environments, to juggling work and home lives near and far, to retirement — these experiences not only vastly differ from men’s, but also vastly differ for feminized workers across differing social intersections such as age, race, nationality, and more.

To gain a more nuanced perspective, this series, hosted by SFU Labour Studies student Alyha Bardi, documents the lived experiences of women and their relationships with work across varying life stages & social intersections. Each episode features a snapshot-esque look into the lives of a specific group of women workers — starting with young women restaurant workers, then working mothers, then migrant women, with the series culminating on its final episode on senior women. Alongside self-told stories of women workers’ lived experiences, we hear from professors, labour organizers and policy critics as they share their expertise and findings.

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