A strikingly consistent theme among research participants was the shared acknowledgement of feelings of ‘estrangement’—that feeling of being disconnected from the spaces individuals inhabit, of being out of place (Ahmed, 1999). For most, the experience of migration has been very difficult and sometimes painful, particularly in the beginning, with some participants equating migration with a loss of identity as in the case of Elsa, who has been living in Canada for two and a half years:
[w]hen I came to Canada the first three, the first six months were terrible! Depressed, I was so depressed! I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to do anything! I didn’t know how to speak English. I didn’t know, absolutely nothing. I felt so trapped, caged in my house. It was very difficult! It was a huge depression! I asked God so many times “What should I do? What should I do?” Because I didn’t know what to do, I just can’t explain it, I just didn’t feel the same.
Angelica, who has lived in Canada for ten years, describes her early settlement experiences in a similar way:
Well a part of me died I think. That is how it felt! Like I was losing pieces of myself—it is difficult to describe, but I was just not the same! I felt trapped in my house, alone and afraid. And, that is not me! But, I was afraid of everything! Overwhelmed by everything! It was such a sad and terrible time.
For Amelia, the sense of sadness upon arrival to Canada was sudden and intense:
I just did not realize how difficult it would be. I had travelled my whole life O.K., I remember people asking me about it and I remember saying, “I know that it is going to be difficult, but I know I can do it. If other people can do it so can I.” But, I didn’t know. I had no idea how difficult it would be until I arrived. Oh, I just about died! And, I had been here [to Canada] before on vacation, like visiting. But it is not the same to move, so I did not expect it to be that difficult. Um, but you have no idea what it is like to lose your identity. Really, that’s what it boils down to, unless you have experienced it before and I hadn’t so…I had travelled all my life and I thought it would be the same, but it is not!—Because I think a lot of people go
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through it and we just don’t expect it, we don’t know what losing your identity is, until you go through it and um, back then I did not realize I was losing my identity back then, I just felt depression.
Amelia went on to recall her sense of sadness upon arrival to Canada:
All of a sudden the plane landed and I just…the panic set in…all of a sudden it was panic, it was panic, it was sadness, it was loneliness, it was loss. I will never forget the moment the plane landed and I just, I just started bawling. And, I just couldn’t even comprehend it myself, from that moment on it was crying constantly. From the moment I woke up until the moment I went to bed.
Miguel Antonio, who moved to Canada two years ago, described being in Canada in the following way:
I don’t know if this is the word, the correct word?—But, for me, life was like bleak—yeah, kind of bleak. Because we [Mexicans] are so used to—maybe to mingle more with the people. I told you right? For example, in Mexico City, there are people, everywhere all the time. So, you are so used to walking the streets and seeing people everywhere—in general I think it’s more warmer—the feeling is warmer—the relationship with the rest of the people I guess…I didn’t expect to find, to feel like this in Canada—like, here I often feel trapped in my house; I feel a kind of isolation. In the beginning it’s really hard I think, really lonely.
Migrant workers also related a sense of initial disorientation; a feeling of being lost as intimated in the following quotes:
The first year that I came here, I don’t know…I came here as one who was afraid. Lost really because one doesn’t know, not even about to what place they’re coming to, not what kind of work they are going to do, not even to which farm. I didn't know anything. I had no place, like a scared one I was.
(Francisco)
You get off the plane and you don’t know where you are going. What you will be doing. No one explains anything to you…No one says, “Welcome. Do you have any questions? These are your rights? This is what you can expect. These are the services available to you? This is what you don’t have to accept.” You know talk about what you are doing in Canada. Your rights, nobody tells you this and so you do feel very alone and unsure of yourself.
(Antonio, fifteen seasons)
The above quotes are also indicative of another key theme in migrants’ narratives—the feeling or sense of being walled up or locked up (encerrados) in Canada.Benny who immigrated to Canada ten years ago, a time that he emphasized as ‘being quite good and happy’, did however share the following sentiment:
[h]ere life is so different, so much lonelier, here everyone is separated. They are alone in their houses with only their immediate family. They are always working, working, not really getting together. Always busy working, they work all day to buy big houses where they stay alone and watch T.V.—it is really strange,
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working, working to be alone. You know, that is what I found most difficult when I first arrived, that feeling of being alone, of being locked up in my house and that is still what I miss the most of all about Mexico—my family, the people and the time we spend together.
Feelings of encerrados are amplified for migrant workers because ‘employers prefer locating workers on or near their property, housing arrangements extend the reach of employers’ control over farm workers behavior beyond the sphere of work, including restrictions on workers’ mobility off the farm’ (Preibisch, 2010: 415). This has involved the imposition of curfews, prohibiting visitors of the opposite sex, or obliging workers to inform their employers of their whereabouts when outside the farm (Preibisch, 2010; Preibisch, 2007; Preibisch & Encalada Grez, 2010). For Sharma (2006: 19) the Canadian state’s positioning of migrant workers as a foreign worker force and the associated denial of the freedoms of labor market and spatial mobility (i.e. assigning workers to a specified employer and stipulations of occupation, residence, and length and terms of employment) constitute migrant workers as legally indentured to their employers. Likewise, Gogia (2005: 364) notes migrant workers’ ‘limited access to and control over forms of mobility ascribes a secondary status…over their rights to work and stay in the country.’ These conditions culminate in acute feelings of encerrados with workers reporting: ‘It does make one feel trapped’, ‘It feels like a kind of jail. Yes you want the money. Yes you are desperate for the money, but, how you must sacrifice. It is not right. It feels terrible!’ and ‘I like to go out to walk around the town, to know where I live, where I am at. Otherwise we are like birds caged up’.
When reflecting on their lives in Canada Mexican migrant workers described an appreciable labour vulnerability, lack of personal autonomy and social isolation. The following quote is emblematic of these dynamics.
In my way of seeing things, it’s not that you need courage to come here. No, it is that you have to bare the sadness, the sadness to see that there are those who do not see us as people, I have thought about this a lot, there are people who see us as human being and that are kind and thank us for our work. But there are others who see us as animals. Some see us as if we have come here to take their jobs. At work some treat us as if we are here to be slaves and do what we are told to do. Not ask questions, not have breaks, like machines. Lately, coming here to work I see more and more of this kind of abuse, where those men treat us
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like machines, picking on us, calling us names, if the workers demand respect and if we don’t satisfy them, then they ask for other workers. If we ask about how we are being paid, if one starts to protest they complain and say that worker is no good. They don’t want us to think, they just want us to work. They understand that we are desperate to work. So what can I do? I am in a situation I did not choose. It is not like the majority of [migrant] workers love it here, to be away from their homes, what keep us here is the necessity. I just want people to realize we are not animals or machines. We are human beings!
(Gilberto)
The terms and conditions of Canada‘s SAWP therefore create a particular ‘space of non- existence’ (Bibler Coutin, 2003). What Sharma (2006: i) refers to as ‘a system of apartheid where those categorized as ‘migrant workers’ live, work, pay taxes, and sometimes die in Canada, but are subjected to a legal regime that renders them perennial outsiders in relation to Canadian society’ (my emphasis). In speaking with Mexican transmigrant workers it was apparent that this sense of ‘non-existence’ or invisibility is a distinct element of migrants’ emplacement in Canada. As clearly articulated in the following quotes:
‘The people here they don’t see me…here I am like a ghost…they see right through me.’ (Gilberto)
‘I expected so many good things of Canada. In Mexico people they talk, often you will hear them say, “Canada is amazing! Canada is so much better than the United States.” So I had high expectations of this country. And, yes because you see Asians, Hindus and Indians you think, it is going to be good because there are a lot of people from outside, not only Mexicans as I am. ..I thought, here I will make it. But instead, I discovered for me, a Mexican migrant worker, I do not count. I am not seen here.’
(Juan, one season).
‘The Canadian people are closed off, they don’t talk to you. They don’t want anything to do with you. It’s as if they don’t see me, as if they see right through me, like I do not exist.’
(Diego, twenty seasons)
‘We are treated like animals, like we don’t matter, like we don’t really exist. At work the boss he never even looks at me, he doesn’t know my name. It makes me very, very sad.’
(Antonio, fifteen seasons) Roberto’s commentary is also telling:
Look I am a “good Mexican”, I obey my bosses and I just work. That is what they want Mexicans to be here, silent workers. You sense it, for example, when you are in town too. When there are a lot of Mexicans around, when Canadians see a lot of us here, they get tired of us. Because everywhere they go they bump into a Mexican. And they tire of that; that is what I think. In the fields in the greenhouses, this is our place for Canadians. Not in the stores, not in the streets. In these spaces we are a nuisance, an inconvenience. They would prefer we were not seen.
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