The Gendered Working Lives of Seven Jamaican Women in Canada: A Story about "Here" and "There" in a Transnational Economy

The article discusses the 1978 case of seven Jamaican women who were to be deported from Canada and the questions the case raised about the value of women's labor and discriminatory immigration policies. Specifically, the article assesses the West Indian Domestic Scheme, an agreement between Canada and some English-speaking Caribbean countries to send Caribbean women to Canada to address the shortage of domestic labor. It argues that the terms of the agreement facilitated the deportation of domestic workers without consideration for how the process of migration had changed their social and personal relations with their children, families, and households, both "here" and "there," in ways that made it difficult for them to return home. In so doing, the article addresses the transnational complexities of women's lives that remain at odds with immigration and labor policies. The objective of the article is to elucidate why the women, in their roles as mothers, decided to challenge the orders to leave Canada and to illuminate the ways in which racialized women find the means to negotiate in-between spaces that allow them to survive.