
Project Investigator: Jennifer Hyndman. Partner: ActionDignity.
Funding: SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant.
Term: 2020-2022.
The project seeks to unpack the links between the migration status of meat packers and their experience of COVID-19. Reports in the media and by community advocates, including partner organization, ActionDignity, indicate that the workforce is composed of almost entirely of migrant and immigrant workers: both Temporary Foreign Workers from the Philippines and resettled refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan; yet exact information about the current legal status of workers is unknown. The project aims to document exactly who works at these plants, under what conditions, and with what impacts at the Cargill plant in High River and JBS Foods in Brooks, Alberta.