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Event Series Event Series: NFUniversity

Lives and Experiences of South Asian Migrant Agricultural Workers in British Columbia

virtual event

Start time by time zone
12 Noon PST / 1pm MST / 2pm CST / 3pm EST / 4pm AST / 4:30pm NST

Virtual Event Virtual Event

January 22 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm PST

In the late 1970s, a group of young South Asian men  in BC recognized the need for farmworkers to organize, which led to the creation of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU). A documentary about the CFU, celebrated images of its members and showed how women joined the struggle for better working conditions. While the CFU seemed to be  a success story,  when conducting interviews in rural Abbotsford this past year, it became clear to Dr. Anushay Malik that the conditions the CFU fought against are still very much alive and well in rural BC.

In this NFUniversity session Dr. Malik will chronicle the formation of the CFU, its successes, and why those successes were short-lived. This exploration of the history of the CFU will help answer key questions about labour organizing, including: what motivates workers to come together to form a union at some points, and at other times, resist unionizing efforts? How did the CFU manage to involve so many migrant women in the union? Why didn’t the CFU lead to lasting change? What are the current conditions for South Asian farmworker women in BC today?

Event Presenter(s)

Dr. Anushay Malik is a social historian who works on labour, migration and global anti-colonial movements at Simon Fraser University. She explores archival sources to find out  how people make meaning from stories they have access to and that power has hidden. Recently she co-curated two exhibitions which both highlight cross-border narratives of migration and resistance that states are not invested in telling. Kaghazi Kashtiyan (Paper Boats) focuses on Bengali migrants in Pakistan who have been rendered stateless, and Truths Not Often Told that focuses on South Asian migration to Canada. She also co-wrote Union Zindabad!, a book chronicling the history of South Asian labour action in British Columbia, which included a section on the Canadian Farmworkers Union and their struggles.