Transnational Mobilities. Showcasing Global Precarities through Moving Pictures

My passion for film began during my studies at UNAM Science and Humanities School, when I frequently visited the José Revueltas and Julio Bracho movie theaters in the University Cultural Center (there were only two halls in there during the 80s). However, the strong urge to pick up a camera and document the absurdity of working mobility policies came years later, when I first visited a community full of contradictions, among other things, as it was a departure point for male and female agricultural workers migrating to Canada. The name of that community is now engraved as a pivotal part of my life’s journey: it is called San Matías Cuijingo, and it is located in Juchitepec municipality in the State of Mexico.

In 2004, a series of unexpected life events, the kind that are always surprising you, led me to volunteer as a guide for a medical anthropologist doing doctoral training at the University of Toronto. She was researching the health impacts of the Mexican men and women who migrated to Canada as a part of the Temporary Agricultural Workers Program (TAWT). Janet McLaughlin not only became a colleague, but also a friend, sister, and a collaborator in my future life and film projects. After her first interview at the Cuijingo community with Ricardo’s family, who had a life-altering experience on a farm in Ontario that left him paraplegic, the reality of Ricardo and his family’s testimonies completely muted the dominant voices of the coerced, secured, and regular work migration. I became aware of the power of using a camera to capture the counter-narratives of those directly affected by human migration. And so, at the end of the interview, I asked Ricardo’s family if they would be comfortable enough to share their story on screen. The answer was positive: they expressed their willingness to let everyone migrating to Canada know the challenges that agricultural workers faced. They wanted to share their experiences to prevent others from suffering the same hardships. Their story, along with others, was portrayed in Migrants: We Who Come from Within, 2007 [see box].

Following the release of Migrants: We Who Come from Within, the testimonies of Mexican men and women that support Canada’s agricultural industry began to spread away; their stories have echoed in discussions surrounding human and labor rights, food sovereignty, modern slavery, the precarity of transnational work programs, among other issues. Years later, two more films added to this: Nuances: “Temporary” Migration in Canada, and Migrant Mother (2020).

The film Nuances was a direct response to the criticism that the first documentary received by the community of Niagara-on-The-Lake, where it was presented by Amnesty International. Some of the farmers argued that the film only showcased the negative aspects of migration to Canada, suggesting that those cases were only exceptions, and that most of the employers were good people. In response, I emphasized that the crucial point was not whether they were perceived as “good” or “bad” people, but rather to redirect attention to the importance of respecting and ensuring access to human and labor rights, the need to highlight working precarity, the bad living conditions, the control and poor dwellings, surveillance mechanisms, racism, and the lack of representation by governmental labor institutions that influenced the binational agreements between Mexico and Canada.

The issues within official binational collaboration and mobility agreements were portrayed in my second documentary, with input from various perspectives. The film features testimonies from male and female workers, academics specialized in this type of migration, Mexican government representatives, and migrant support organizations, among contributors from various fields. Each one of them provided diverse insights to analyze the complexities of human mobility under governmentregulated schemes. Nuances was well-received by different universities, particularly in the Ontario province, where it became essential material for discussions surrounding labor migration.

After 15 years of working with and advocating for agricultural migrant workers, I embarked on creating Migrant Mother, my most personal project to date. A distinctive feature of this short-length documentary was that the script underwent significant changes just weeks before the filming started. The primary goal was to explore the intimate and emotional lives of the male and female workers who migrated to Canada, as I believed this would humanize them beyond that dominant narrative that reduces them to “temporary workers”. Statistical data generated by Mexican Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare reveals that over 50 per cent of the participants in this mobility program spend more time in Canada than in Mexico, this time encompasses much more than just the work.

Migrant Mother revolved completely around the need of the interviewed women to have their voices heard as Migra thers, and all that entailed. The collaborative methodology enabled these women to engage with the camera, to use the involvement in the production process, and the exhibition of the documentary, as a safe space of active listening. This approach allowed them to express emotions that had been suppressed for years.

This last work was positively welcome by the audience as the exploration of distant motherhood in the migrant context is a relatively uncharted territory in film. Following its participation in various international forums, the film sparked discussions surrounding migrant women, leading to the implementation of different university spaces where the experiences of Migrant Mothers, their children, and those taking care of them are now openly discussed. This approach offers a fresh perspective on migration, highlighting the needs and resilience created around contemporary migrant women.

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