Season 3, Episode 02: Samir (Because the System)

After being exploited out of his job, a highly trained caregiver in Surrey seeks employment as an essential worker in the COVID economy. Yet he faces fake jobs, demands for bribes, and months of unemployment while waiting for the government to process his new work permit, and now he’s running out of options to support his wife and two teenagers.

This episode was created as part of a research project on Temporary Foreign Workers during the Time of COVID-19, a collaboration between UBC researchers (Vanessa Banta, Gabriele Dumpys Woolever, and Geraldine Pratt) and the Migrant Workers Centre in Vancouver, BC (www.mwcbc.ca). We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.