Kairos Canada has launched two new participatory workshops that deepen understanding as starting point for collective action on migrant justice. The Migrant Worker Exercise and Equal in Dignity, Equal in Rights: A Migrant Justice Workshop for Church Communities invite participants to examine how Canada’s temporary labour migration system shapes workers’ rights, choices and access to power.
Through the Migrant Worker Exercise, participants step into an interactive, role-based learning experience that explores the decisions and constraints migrant workers face in relation to employment, housing, workplace rights, immigration status and access to support. By examining how policy, power and unequal access to rights shape those choices, participants move beyond individual experiences to understand the systems that create and sustain injustice.
Equal in Dignity, Equal in Rights brings the Migrant Worker Exercise into faith-based settings, inviting church communities to connect migrant justice with dignity, solidarity and collective responsibility. Participants reflect on the role faith communities can play in moving beyond awareness and charity, toward deeper accompaniment and collective action joining migrant workers and migrant-led movements working for rights and systemic change.
“The goal is not simply to generate empathy for migrant workers,” says Leah Shifferaw, Migrant Justice Team Lead, Kairos Canada. “It is to foster solidarity. Solidarity asks us to recognize our connection to these systems, listen to migrant workers’ experiences and act together to create conditions where everyone is treated as equal in dignity and equal in rights.”
Together, the workshops offer churches, faith communities, schools, community organizations and others ways to deepen their understanding of migrant justice, examine the systems shaping workers’ lives and turn learning into collective action for change.
