Reproductive Justice for Temporary Labour Migrants: Can Australia Learn From Canada’s Support for Latin Americans?

• In Event: Settler States, Temporary Labour: A Multi-sited Analysis of Social Reproduction, Transnationality, and Migration Management

Abstract

Reproductive justice is the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent children in safe and healthy environments. Studies focussing on Pacific people in Australia and Latin American people in Canada have revealed that temporary labour migrants can face severe impediments to the achievement of reproductive justice. This takes the form of individual and structural reproductive coercion, discrimination against pregnant people, lack of access to affordable sexual and reproductive healthcare and being subjected to sexual and gender-based violence. In both the Australian and Canadian contexts, systemic power imbalances restrict the reproductive choices and health seeking behaviours of migrants, who fear deportation and loss of access to their employment and income. Despite cultural and geographic differences, Pacific and Latin American labour migrants share experiences of isolation and precarity and interact with colonial systems that prioritise economic outcomes over human rights. In this paper, I present the findings of a study on Pacific migrants in Australia with regard to reproductive justice, drawing on interviews with 20 temporary workers, 10 employer representatives and 24 service providers and other stakeholders. I then turn to Canada to examine how the reproductive justice movement is advocating for the rights of Latin American migrants and consider opportunities for shared learnings. This analysis offers a fresh perspective on gender justice in temporary labour migration by centring reproductive justice as fundamental to migrant worker wellbeing and calling for urgent changes to policies and practices.

Author

• Lindy Kanan, University of the Sunshine Coast