Relocating precarity and resiliency within Montreal: the Artists’ Bloc of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre

ABSTRACT

In this document we describe our experience relocating precarity and resiliency by way of arts activism, to denounce and make visible social injustices experienced by im/migrant communities in Montreal. Under the umbrella of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre, and other allies from the im/migrant workers’ movement, we combine knowledge building, action strategy and the arts as methods to challenge the pernicious effects of Canadian migration policies. Through these processes we have developed tools such as the metro map of Montreal (The Network of Immigration) to show the systemic discrimination towards vulnerable and racialised im/migrant workers in Montreal. This work allows us to intercept and play with notions of precarity and resiliency in the current context of austerity, to rethink these concepts as part of our experienced realities and concerns and to relocate them and transform them in generating political resistance as a strategic offensive.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant workers
• arts activism
• Montreal
• precarity
• resilience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Koby Rogers Hall is an artist, writer and social practice facilitator based in Montreal. Her body of work is dedicated to relational arts practices, archiving as cultural activism, and public interventions for political engagement. She conceives and facilitates social practice design with the performance collective Mischief Theatre, the multidisciplinary arts activist PreOccupations, the Politics & Care project, and the Artists’ Bloc of the Immigrant Workers’ Center in Montreal. She teaches as part-time faculty with the Theatre Department and School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University in Montreal.

Manuel Salamanca is a Sociologist and currently a Ph.D. candidate of the Faculty of Education of McGill University. His academic career combines activism, art, research and critical knowledge production from the epistemological stance of immigrants and vulnerable groups within Montreal. He is developing this learning process through his participation as militant and activist in the Immigrant Workers Centre, the Temporary Agency Workers Association, the Artists’ Bloc, and through his work as a researcher.

The Artists’ Bloc of the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal (Canada) are a collective of immigrant and migrant workers, artists and activist that advocate and fight for dignity and rights in the workplace. The collective engages in artistic pursuits, research initiatives, activism and project-based interventions, generating new forms of knowledge from creative and dialogic explorations of an exploitative labour system, and experiences of the Canadian immigration system.

Notes

1. Our first six italicised quotations are excerpts from interviews recorded during the Artists’ Bloc creation of ‘The Network of Immigration’ metro map in Montreal in January 2015. Translations from French and Spanish are provided by the authors.

2. The Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) administers provincial public health services and prescription drug insurance plans.

3. This is an excerpt from an article co-written with Noé Arteaga, ex-migrant worker and member of the Artists’ Bloc, for a compilation edited by Natalie Doonan (see Doonan 2015).