As part of the World Social Forum of Intersections (FSMI), the Committee for Human Rights in Latin America (CDHAL) and the Women’s Committee of the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC/CTTI) came together to organize a powerful workshop on a reality that is too often ignored: the lives of undocumented women in Canada.
To be a woman, a migrant, racialized… and without status.
What does it mean to live through this triple marginalization in a city like Montreal? For hundreds of thousands of women in this country, it means living with the constant fear of arrest. It means working without protection, without rights, without a safety net. It means being excluded from healthcare, education, and decent housing. It means being rendered invisible by a society that benefits from their labour while denying them even the most basic human recognition.
In the face of this structural violence, women are organizing.
For over eight years, the Women’s Committee of the IWC has been breaking the silence. Composed of migrant women with or without status, the committee fights for full regularization and recognition of their dignity. Their struggle is built on resistance, solidarity, mutual care, and collective empowerment.
The workshop held during the FSMI was a moment of powerful sharing and learning. Women shared stories of resistance, survival strategies, and grassroots knowledge. For these women, community organizing is not optional — it is vital. It is a space of reclaiming identity, resisting erasure, and building collective strength.
It is estimated that nearly 500,000 people live without status in Canada — and a large proportion of them are women. They are our neighbors, our co-workers, our comrades. They deserve not only to exist in the eyes of the law but to live in freedom, safety, and dignity.
The IWC, alongside CDHAL, continues to carry this fight forward.
We demand full and immediate regularization for all undocumented people.
We demand an end to the exploitation of migrant labour through colonial and capitalist state policies.
We demand status for all — now.
To learn more about the workshop:
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