Tens of thousands of women and men from elsewhere pick the fruit and vegetables that grow here, clean public facilities and wash our parents or grandparents. Essential work for which they are considered precarious, if not outright exploited. The documentary Essentials sheds light on these workers, who are treated as nothing more than disposable in Quebec society.
Posted at 8:00 am
Immigration and the plight of immigrants are issues that have occupied Sonia Djelidi (Breaking the Code) for a long time. She is the daughter of immigrants and has long noticed a disconnect between the public discourse on immigration and the immigrant reality that she sees and experiences.
“For many people, immigration means: problems, threats and the disappearance of French. It’s never positive, except when you pull out of the bag what I call a trophy immigrant: three or four people you call to say everything’s fine, she says. For me, my friends and family, immigration means sacrifice, racism, struggle for dignity and hard work. »
Sonia Djelidi doesn’t twist her tongue seven times in her mouth before speaking, but she does weigh her words. His tone is calm and direct. Like the documentary Essentials, directed by Ky Vy Le Duc, which she co-carries with journalist Sarah Champagne, and which takes a disturbing look at the situation of migrant workers in Quebec.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY TÉLÉ-QUEBEC
Sonja Djelidi
The sometimes appalling working conditions of farm workers occasionally make headlines. The pandemic has forced the recognition that elder care relies heavily on an immigrant workforce. But Essentials goes further: it dissects a system that encourages precariousness, if not outright abuse, of foreign temp workers.
“We do not question the role these people play in society or their state of bondage,” denounces Sonia Djelidi. Now who is the perfect immigrant in Quebec? Is it a foreign temporary worker who is fetched, deployed and sent home when no longer needed? How come we ended up in a utilitarian and available immigration? »
human dramas
Essentials meets Carole, Rodrigo, Patricia and Edyn. Every one of them is one of these shadow workers. Edyn, for example, has been a temporary farm worker for … 10 years. He is trying to gain permanent resident status in a variety of ways. His employer Savoura doesn’t seem to be able to help him much, even though immigrants are essential to running the company.
As my colleague Sarah Champagne says, every time you see a Quebec food product, you can be sure it’s a brown or black hand that not only reaped it, but planted it and nurtured it.
Sonja Djelidi
Carole, she has multiplied the jobs since she had to leave the abusive employer that brought her here. She is sometimes reduced to being hired by informal agencies recruiting cheap, pliable labor from metro Montreal parking lots for unscrupulous employers.
IMAGE FROM THE DOCUMENTARY ESSENTIALS
Informal recruitment agencies recruit workers in precarious situations in parking lots in the Montreal area on a daily basis. The working conditions offered are not always in accordance with the law.
So it is a whole entity – framed by the state and from which the state also benefits – that is dissected into essentials. eloquent. And sensitive. Each of these migrant workers has a family and a story. Sometimes incredibly sad. Edyn only sees her children for two weeks every two years. Carole hasn’t seen hers in six years.
Behind this is also the hypocrisy of the system and the instrumentalization of the immigration debate.
“We must refuse to talk about immigration in a problematic way, something that only serves certain columnists and politicians,” believes Sonia Djelidi. The toxicity of language has to stop. »
The documentary maker also believes we need to promote access to permanent residency (“other countries have done this,” she insists) and put an end to so-called “closed” work permits that prevent one worker from knocking on the door of others Employer if the one who brought him here imposes inhumane conditions on him. “That makes exploitation possible,” she says.
“Do you have to lose your children’s childhood? Do you have to lose a leg? We saw people who had accidents at work, says Sonia Djelidi. should you lose your dignity What do you have to lose to earn the right to stay in Quebec? »
Wednesday, 8 p.m., in Télé-Québec