From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine Our Value System
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From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine Our Value System Joubert Satyre The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed one of the biggest ironies of our times: important life- preserving services such as food production and health care are performed by people who are unappreciated by our modern society. Before the pandemic, progress, success, and development were our dominant social values. The preservation of life and the people who contribute to this preservation were taken for granted until the pandemic put them on the center stage. Doctors and farmers have enjoyed recognition, but those who support their work, mostly from the subaltern class, have been invisible and largely ignored until the pandemic exposed the need for such workers: without temporary foreign workers who would wash and feed the infected and hospitalized; who would clean for those who need to disinfect their homes; and who would plant and harvest fruits and vegetables? The subsequent question that the pandemic has raised is if our value system should remain the same after these “guardian angels” perform their duties in helping society to deal with the pandemic, or if governments and social systems should finally make some changes which will recognize the work of essential workers, as they have been called during the pandemic. Scientific development, technical progress, and outrageous, ostentatious consumerism have generated a myriad of activities considered necessary. COVID-19, however, reminded us of our fragility and how uncertainty plagues human life. It has shown us that two areas of activities are necessary for our survival in times of crisis: health and food. Therefore, it has made visible those normally invisible workers employed in these two areas.
Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine Our Value System Social Invisibility According to Júlia Tomás’s (2010) article, "The Notion of Social Invisibility", the expression “social invisibility,” an antonym of social visibility, was first used in 1949 by John Edward Anderson and again in 1963 by Edward Clifford in the field of psychology. According to these two psychologists, the one who is socially invisible exists for others but is perceived as a subordinate. Therefore, the invisible person’s contribution to society is seen as null. In 1982, the sociologist Yves Barel, in his book La marginalité sociale, applied the notion of social invisibility to the working and marginalized class. In the 1990s, the notion of social invisibility became a nomadic concept employed by many researchers in various areas, but particularly in the sociology of immigration (women domestic workers, agricultural workers) and in the sociology of work (precarious and low-valued jobs). This term became regularly used to refer to work and workers who were “left behind.” Júlia Tomás explains: “In the following years of the same decade, several documents explicitly use the term [social invisibility], most of them in the sociology of immigration and racism and in the studies of female domestic work. The term subsequently became synonymous with discrimination and exploitation, racism and concealment” (2). Studies employing the term “social invisibility” have established links among social invisibility, immigration, racism, and women's work. In other words, social invisibility is synonymous with or related to the Other. And this Other can have many faces and cover many socio-professional categories. In this sense, we should perhaps speak of the spectrum of Otherness, ranging from the Other who is not entirely different from the Same to the Other who is completely different. In the first category, we can classify citizens who, for various reasons, are obliged to work in these shadowy, low-paying, and depreciated field. In the last category are those who come from elsewhere and who, in most cases, constitute the cheap labor that benefits the capitalist system. The term social invisibility is particularly applicable to health care workers and carries a significant weight. In her work, Identité, invisibilité sociale, altérité. Expérience et théorie anthropologique au cœur des pratiques soignantes, anthropologist Francine Saillant (2000) MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 2
Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine Our Value System argues that the invisibility of caregivers is associated with a lack recognition from both the patients and the administration for their work. These caregivers are: “suffering from non- recognition in the face of a problematic identity, social suffering produced by policies that privilege the administration of things and people rather than the work of mediation that accompaniment represents” (19). For Saillant, health care work is by its very nature invisible: “health care work is to the health care system what domestic work is to the market economy: essential but invisible, omnipresent but without market value” (25-26). If we continue with comparisons, hospital work is as invisible as domestic work, and they are both as invisible as the work of slaves or of colonized people. In an increasingly spectacular and theatricalized world where ostentation triumphs, social invisibility is synonymous with social non-existence. The problem of social invisibility and non-existence can also be associated with the notion of silence or silencing discussed within the framework of Subaltern Studies. To be invisible is like being mute. Therefore, Spivak's famous question : "Can a subaltern speak?" could be rephrased into ″Can the subaltern be made visible?” COVID-19, however, has made farm workers, nurses, orderlies visible as society suddenly realizes that it cannot function without them. Healthcare Workers in Quebec Most of the healthcare workers made visible by the pandemic are migrants, more specifically Black and Filipino women. In their newspaper article “The Contribution of Immigrants and Population Groups Designated as Visible Minorities to Nurse Aide, Orderly and Patient Service Associate Occupations,” Martin Turcotte and Katherine Savage explain that there are significant differences between the ethnocultural characteristics of nurse aides, orderlies, and patient service associates and those of workers in other occupations. Specifically, nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates are more likely to belong to a population group designated as a visible minority (34 percent) than workers in all other occupations (21 percent). 12 percent of all workers in these occupations are Black, 11 percent were Filipino, and 4 percent were South Asian. By comparison, Black and Filipino workers each account for 3 percent of workers in all other occupations, and South Asian workers, 5 percent. These visible minorities perform the MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 3
Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine
Our Value System
most thankless tasks in hospitals and long-term care centers (CHSLDs), yet society cannot
decide if these essential workers are worthy of receiving resident status in Canada, or if they
should have a sick leave with benefits when they get infected caring for the sick.
In Quebec, which has been secularized since the Quiet Revolution, the government has used the
religious metaphor of “guardian angels” for the hard-working migrants and nurses who have
been extremely helpful in taking care of COVID patients. This rhetorical move sparked anger in
nurse-clinician Louise Parent, who sees the use of this laudatory name by the government as a
strategy to bamboozle nurses and orderlies. She wrote in her open letter of December 7th, 2020:
“I ask you and beg you to stop calling us guardian angels. It is contemptuous and degrading. An
angel is a supernatural creature in many traditions. He is sent from God in different religions. We
are very much alive; we have been suffering for years from this caring profession. We are
exhausted and many have resigned. It is a dying profession; we have been treated unequally for
years. It is as if women in 2020 are good at cooking and procreating. This nickname suits Mr.
Legault, so that he doesn't negotiate properly with a large majority of women. It's sweet and it
takes all the seriousness of our work in the eyes of the population. It is degrading and
contemptuous. Why not call the doctors guardian angel doctors?’’ (translated, Le Devoir 2020).
One positive outcome of the pandemic is that there has been a strong current of sympathy among
the population in favor of the regularization of the asylum seekers who have risked their lives
working with the infected. Consequently, the federal government has taken the decision to give
refugee status to some of the undocumented migrants who had been directly involved in patient
care at the height of the pandemic, such as nurses, nursing auxiliaries, and other health service
workers″ (Romain Schué 2020). Unfortunately, not all governments have done the same. For
example, although the Quebec government initially announced that it would recognize the
sacrifice of undocumented migrants made during the first wave of the pandemic by granting
them the right of asylum, it later reneged on its promise and refused to properly recognize
migrant work. Romain Schué reported on November 20th, 2020, that “The Legault government
continues to blow hot and cold to organizations wishing to broaden access to the future
regularization program for asylum seekers who have worked at the height of the pandemic.”
MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 4Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine
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As stated above, Canadians have not been insensitive to the fate of these workers and workers in
the shadows. Their demands were supported by groups defending minorities. Among these
groups, we can mention Debout pour la dignité, whose President Wilner Cayo wrote a letter
(May 7th, 2020) to the Prime Minister of Canada in which he asks him to regularize the
undocumented migrants who participated in the fight against the pandemic, sometimes at the risk
of their lives. There have been numerous demonstrations and calls in their favor as a way of
thanking them. As a result, many people were outraged when they learned that some of these
asylum seekers who had been at the forefront in the fight against the COVID-19 were going to
be deported. In a letter to the federal government, several organizations supporting Haitian
migrants reminded Canadians of the contributions made by asylum seekers in the struggle
against the pandemic. They explain why it would be an injustice and an ingratitude to expel them
from the country: “Many of them almost died and lost colleagues,” the letter said. “We can
hardly imagine that our guardian angels could be expelled from the country as soon as the battle
is won. Such a gesture would go against our Quebec and Canadian values” (Valérie-Micaela
Bain 2020).
To live up to the image of The Just Society, as former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau
imagined, the founders of a campaign, significantly called De l’invisible à l’essentiel have made
important recommendations which may help invisible workers become recognized essential
workers. Slim Gédéon, a member of this campaign, has asked for an increase of $2 per hour for
all janitors, whose work disinfecting and cleaning public places also makes them essential
workers: “Because we are on the front line, we took risks. We put our families' lives at risk.”
This extension of Canada's recognition to all those involved in the fight against the COVID-19 is
highlighted in The Canadian Press, such as the article dated August 1st, 2020, which states the
following:
“Activists and experts hope the federal government will now make changes. Protesters are calling
for permanent residence to be granted not only to asylum seekers who come to the rescue of
elderly people in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, but to all those who work in jobs
MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 5Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine
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that have been decreed essential during the pandemic, whether in the fields, warehouses or
grocery stores, for example.”
When it came to power, the Legault government in Quebec had set as a priority to substantially
reduce the number of immigrants. But, amid the pandemic, many of the essential tasks,
particularly in the health field, were performed by immigrants and asylum seekers working in
precarious situations. Immigrants and asylum seekers have played a significant part in saving
lives during the pandemic, but it should also be kept in mind that immigrant workers play an
increasingly important role in the capitalist system. This is particularly true in agriculture. In this
life-preserving industry, which is not immune to the profit-at-all-costs capitalist attitude,
subaltern groups play an important role in harvesting and fruit picking, performing tasks that
agricultural machinery cannot do. They help feed the general population, yet they are often
invisible as they work in sub-human conditions.
Agricultural Workers in Ontario
As French surgeon, writer, and philosopher Henri Laborit states in Éloge de la fuite (1976): “The
fundamental motivation of living beings seems to be [...] the maintenance of their organic
structure” (20). In other words, health and food are the two most important concerns of
humankind and the fundamental principle of self-preservation. The relevance of Laborit’s
position was confirmed when the COVID-19 pandemic reduced human activities and made
health and nutrition our top priorities. The pandemic, in other words, triggered the survival
mechanisms that nature has shaped during evolution, forcing society to recognize what is
essential to its survival. However, it is not clear that these new priorities have led to the proper
recognition of agricultural workers who, like healthcare workers, work behind the scenes to
preserve life.
While the dominant group in the healthcare sector are women, farmworkers are predominantly
male. But they all have one thing in common: most of them are not originally from Canada,
especially in the agricultural group. Seasonal workers come mainly from Mexico and the
Caribbean through the Seasonal Agriculture Worker Program (SAWP) program, which was
MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 6Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine
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established jointly by the federal and provincial governments. It is an official and legal program
that is supposed to provide some security for the workers. There are nearly 17,000 seasonal
workers who come to work on southern Ontario farms and greenhouses each year. Through this
program, Ontario gets nearly 80 percent of its farm workforce from its seasonal migrant workers
and the province benefits a great deal from the SAWP.
Unfortunately, limited measures have been taken by Canada and the provinces to protect
agricultural workers. They have been living in horrible conditions, but little was known about it
until concerns regarding the pandemic led the media to expose this segment of our society to the
public and make it visible. The problems, however, are nothing new. The 2006-2007 UFCW
report speaks of the almost weekly media coverage of the difficulties faced by migrant farm
workers in Quebec. According to the UFCW report, one worker reported that his crew did not
have access to clean water, and eight workers suffered from itchy skin, eye irritation, stomach
pain and diarrhea. One worker was seriously ill (8). This report also reminds us that “work on
farms in Canada is seasonal, intensive and dangerous.” It states that under provincial labor laws,
farm workers are excluded from negotiations regarding their living and working conditions. In
Alberta and Ontario, they have no right to join a union. Farmers are often grossly disrespectful
and abusive in a variety of ways. Their working conditions are such that it is not surprising that
seasonal workers have the highest number of workplace injuries in Canada. The UFCW report
states:
Farm workers experience a very high rate of work-related accidents, injuries, illnesses and
fatalities. In 1999, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published the results of a study that
concluded that fatalities were about 11.6 per 100,000 workers each year. In the five-year period
between 1991 and 1995, there were 503 deaths on Canadian farms. Since June 2006, a migrant
farm worker has the right, under provincial legislation, to refuse unsafe work. However, due to
the failure of the SAWP, a worker's employer can simply have the worker repatriated if he or she
seeks to exercise this fundamental right. (12)
The working conditions of seasonal agricultural workers have been unknown to the public, who
generally knows little about where their food comes from. But people became concerned when
MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 7Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine Our Value System the COVID travel restrictions threatened to deprive Ontario farms of their seasonal workers: farmers would not be able to plant crops and to harvest. If they used only the local workers who were available to them, the supply would decrease and that would result in higher prices in grocery stores. The Radio-Canada website gives us an idea of the abysmal working and living conditions of migrant workers. In an article aptly titled, “The Hell of the Non-Status Farm Workers in Ontario” written by Thilelli Chouikrat, there is a testimony in which one of the workers describes the conditions they found when they arrived: “It was horrible. There was nothing: no blankets, no food, a horrible smell because the toilets were badly made. When you use them, all the smell of excrement comes out. It's unbreathable. The mattresses are dirty, they stink [...] We could not sleep on them. And they never brought us food. We didn't eat anything until the next day” (Radio-Canada July 2, 2020). On June 8, 2020, Nicolas Haddad of Radio-Canada (June 8, 2020) also wrote that on the Scotlynn farms, “forty workers were housed in a single dormitory with only one shower between them.” Hence, it is not surprising that since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Chouikrat, “close to 1,000 farm laborers, contracted COVID, representing almost one-third of confirmed cases in this region. Many of them are migrant workers without status. They work under an organized system that escapes inspection and screening” (Chouikrat 2020). It did not take long for protest groups to bring this situation to the public. Vasanthi Venkatesh, a professor of Law, Land, and Local Economies at the University of Windsor, wrote that COVID exacerbated and exposed the working conditions of farm workers in Ontario: “What I'm talking about,” she says, “are overcrowded dormitories, long hours of work without pay or sick leave, unsafe working conditions without access to medical care, to the Employment Standards Act and other protections enjoyed by other sectors, working in highly precarious conditions” (Radio- Canada 2020). Vankatesh’s position has been echoed by a long list of all those journalists and groups of men and women involved in the struggle for migrant workers' rights who denounced the mistreatment of these workers. MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 8
Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine Our Value System By the end of the summer of 2020, three workers had died from COVID-19 in Ontario, while thousands more were infected. At this point, it is not yet known how many of them are suffering from the aftermath of what is known as “long COVID-19.” It is a heavy price that these invisibles have paid. In fact, it was necessary to organize a socio-financing campaign to repatriate the remains of the first of these three victims to Mexico. From these observations, we can paraphrase the title of the European Forum (2001) and talk about the "bitter taste of fruits and vegetables" that we consume in Canada, as elsewhere we talk about bitter sugar, an oxymoron revealing the execrable working conditions of Haitian cane cutters in the Dominican Republic. It is hoped that the wish expressed by UFCW in its 2006-2007 report will be fulfilled, and that in the future these workers will have better protections: "Canada must sign without further delay the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations" (15). Conclusion In Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince (1943), before separating from the little boy, the fox teaches him one last lesson: "Here is my secret. It is very simple: you can only see well with your heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes" (85). This aphorism, which is a warning that appearances are often misleading, applies well to the situation of socially invisible workers, whom COVID- 19 has exposed as essential because they perform life-preserving tasks. The pandemic has not only shown that health and food workers are essential but also that they are underprivileged. It has exposed the general injustice and warped value systems that characterize the modern world. As Anaïs Elboujdaïni and Mugoli Samba emphasized in their article, “Quand la pandémie révèle des injustices” (Radio-Canada, May 8, 2020): “In the space of a few months, workers in areas often neglected in society have become heroic in the eyes of the world. They are on the front line of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.” Among them are healthcare and agricultural workers, but also those who work in the least valued sectors of the capitalist system such as janitors, cab drivers, vendors, and supermarket clerks. Most of them are immigrants, asylum seeking migrants, seasonal workers, and other subaltern groups. They are invisible groups which have performed visible, life-saving difficult tasks. We hope that this crisis will lead governments MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 9
Joubert Satyre. From Invisible to Essential: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Led us to Reexamine
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at the federal and provincial levels to seriously reflect on the fate of these “guardian angels” and
that they take legal measures to put an end to the abuses they suffer. The federal government
seems determined to solve the problems faced by these invisible essential workers, according to
statements made by Kevin Lemkay, spokesperson for federal Immigration Minister Marco
Mendicino: “We know that there are extraordinary people doing heroic work in providing care
and services to people in Quebec and across Canada, and we need to look at how we can help
them and recognize their work” (Romain Schué, Radio-Canada 2020). Mathieu Genest, press
secretary to federal Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, agrees, promising to rethink the
temporary foreign worker program and how the Canadian government can better protect them.
After rhetoric, action is needed. Treating these workers as human beings is not about doing them
a favor; it is simply about doing the right thing: society must recognize that not only have the
subaltern essential workers performed valuable work during the pandemic, but that they
contribute to society in normal times, as well. Many humanists have made this observation and
are calling for more than just emotional responses. If the world is a stage, as the baroque topos
advanced notably by the Calderón de la Barca in Spain and William Shakespeare in England
advocated, and if society is a spectacle, as Guy Debord claims in La société du spectacle (1967),
then the script must change.
References
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gardiens″ demandeurs d’asile». 13 mai, Radio-Canada.
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Radio-Canada.
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Gerbet, Thomas, Lavoie, Mireille, 2020. «Le gouvernement paiera les Québécois pour aller
travailler dans les champs». 17 avril, Radio-Canada.
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Our Value System
Haddad, Nicolas. Radio-Canada, 8 juin 2020.
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MIC (Memoria, Identité, and Community), Volume 1 (2021). 11You can also read
