More than 1.3 million people immigrated to Canada between 2016 and 2021. UBC’s Centre for Migration Studies, founded in 2020, advances research and public dialogue on human mobility. With current geopolitical tensions and economic changes, migration continues to be a vital and relevant field of research. 

UBC graduate students across disciplines are researching the ways procedures and available supports shape women’s experiences in immigration. From Kinesiology to Anthropology to Population and Public Health, students are creating an impact in a variety of contexts for women’s immigration. 

  • Naomi-Maldonado Rodriguez uses a combination of methods to explore the embodied experiences of migrant women living with HIV in Canada. Her research emphasizes collaborating with communities and contributing to the work of organizations on the ground.  
  • Emma Stirling-Cameron analyzes how structural factors, including policies and support systems, shape women’s access to reproductive healthcare when seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border in Tijuana. Through her work, she plans to contribute to scientific evidence on the impact of immigration policies. 
  • Alix Mintha examines discrimination against lesbian asylum seekers in Canadian immigration procedures. She hopes to dispel myths and create expert evidence for lawyers supporting asylum applicants with her research.  

Each of these students explores topics related to immigration — learn more about their research below. 

Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez, PhD Candidate in Kinesiology

No currently available research explores migrant women’s experiences living with HIV, but Kinesiology PhD candidate Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez is filling the gap. For her dissertation, she is examining how migrant women living with HIV access support in Canada and exploring the factors that shape their experiences receiving support.  

According to Maldonado-Rodriguez, a person’s migration status in Canada impacts how they are connected to healthcare and related support. Some people may also be diagnosed with HIV through the immigration process, adding additional stress to an already difficult process.  

Gender-based violence can compound these factors, as it increases the risk for contracting HIV. Women living with HIV are also more likely to experience gender-based violence after diagnosis. 

Maldonado-Rodriguez's work was influenced by her master’s thesis exploring the impacts of intimate partner violence on the brain.  

"When you start diving into the literature around violence, it really opens your understanding to beyond interpersonal violence, and you start thinking about the ways in which institutions and structures are designed in ways that do enact a sort of violence onto people,” said Maldonado-Rodriguez. She emphasized the need to reveal how colonialism, racism and sexism are embedded in structures like the migration and healthcare systems.  

To best capture experiences, Maldonado-Rodriguez combines her focus on embodiment in kinesiology with grounded, interpretive methodologies derived from nursing. Her research also involves organizations helping people living with HIV navigate the healthcare system, and she plans to organize participatory work and community engagement events later in the project. 

Collaborating with communities and organizations is critical for this research. Because Maldonado-Rodriguez's goal is sharing the experiences and challenges of migrant women living with HIV, she wants to support on the ground work. 

“I'm not saying after my research we will change the healthcare system,” she said. “I think it's more about building on the work that's already happening in community and using this particular skill set that I'm developing as a researcher to support whatever work they're trying to do and lead.” 

Emma Stirling-Cameron, PhD Student in Population and Public Health

Women seeking asylum in the United States via Tijuana, Mexico often have less access to contraceptives and care after giving birth. Emma Stirling-Cameron, a PhD student in the School of Population and Public Health, is researching the structural factors that impact asylum-seeking women’s access to care.  

Though many women seeking asylum at the Tijuana border have access to contraceptives in their countries of origin, the journey to the United States upends their lives, disrupting their access to care. Stirling-Cameron also says that high levels of gender-based violence, sometimes perpetrated by state actors, are particularly problematic when women cannot access contraceptives.  

Even when support is available, women may be unaware of how to access it. Away from their homes and support networks, women may not know where care is available along the journey or in Tijuana, and they may not be able to pay for services. Language barriers or racism can further complicate access. 

Seeking contraceptives and reproductive healthcare is often not a priority, especially when women also have young kids. Living conditions for asylum seekers in Tijuana are dire, and food and water insecurity is common. Non-governmental organizations do provide humanitarian aid, but the demand is much higher than what they can offer, says Stirling-Cameron. 

Asylum-deterrence policies, which try to dissuade potential asylum-seekers, make access to care even more difficult. Restrictions on arriving by air push people to take the arduous journey by land, and requirements to remain in Mexico while waiting for an American asylum hearing limit healthcare options.  

Stirling-Cameron says that asylum deterrence policies have escalated over the past decade, both at the US-Mexico border and globally. 

“That’s the physical manifestation of this really racist, xenophobic, white nationalist rhetoric that we've seen from a lot of high-income Western countries or countries in the global North,” she said.  

Stirling-Cameron finds her research particularly important in our current political climate, with challenges to immigration also being created in Canada. Given contemporary discourse on immigration, she hopes her research will contribute to scientific evidence on the human effects of these policies. 

“We're trying to be as neutral as possible,” said Stirling-Cameron “so that this evidence can be used in court to demonstrate how devastating these policies are and how significant the impacts are on particularly vulnerable people.”

Alix Mintha, MA Student in Anthropology

Lesbian asylum seekers often face discrimination in Canadian immigration procedures, according to MA in Anthropology student Alix Mintha. Her work highlights how unnecessary demands for evidence and doubts of lesbian identity create new pressures for asylum seekers. 

Refugee status in Canada is hypothetically attainable just for experiencing homophobic persecution, but this is not true in practice. Mintha says that members of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) often assume applicants are straight unless they offer evidence otherwise. Such prejudices require lesbian asylum seekers to prove that they are not only persecuted but also lesbian. 

Demands for evidence are frequently invasive or ignorant of cultural context. Applicants for asylum are expected to perform their lesbianism in ways that mirror Western gay male, not lesbian, communities. They may also be asked to identify their sexual orientation in Canadian terms that may not suit them. Through interviews with lesbians claiming asylum, Mintha found one woman was pressured to quickly marry her same-sex partner she met in Canada. IRB members are also making an increasing number of requests for private, sexually explicit material in the name of evidence.  

Lesbian asylum seekers may face additional skepticism from IRB members for being a mother, appearing feminine or having been in a relationship with a man. According to Mintha, lesbian applicants face more challenges of this nature than gay male applicants because discrimination against lesbians is more common in private, as opposed to public, spheres. IRB members can also be more skeptical of lesbian identity than gay identity. 

“The lesbian identity still faces so much inconceivability,” said Mintha. “Women having sexual desires is something that sometimes is seen as inconceivable by asylum adjudicators.” 

Guidelines for IRB members handling cases involving sexual orientation are in place, but they are not mandated and cannot be enforced.  

Through her research, Mintha wants to provide a source of evidence for lawyers and a resource for lesbian asylum seekers, even if helping the latter means letting them know that their experiences with the Canadian system are not unique.  

She also hopes to dispel myths that claiming asylum is Canada is easy and liberatory. Said Mintha, “when it's not accepted, it can be a matter of life and death.” 

Recommended resources for further reading: 

  • Lewis, Rachel. “The Cultural Politics of Lesbian Asylum: Angela Maccarone’s Unveiled (2005) and the Case of the Lesbian Asylum-Seeker.” The International Feminist Journal of Politics 12, nos. 3–4 (2010): 424–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2010.513112. 
  • Llewellyn, Cheryl. “Erasing violence: lesbian women asylum applicants in the United States.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 25, no. 4 (2021): 339–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2021.1889939. 
  • Ramage, Kaylee, Emma Stirling-Cameron, Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, et al. “‘When you leave your country, this is what you’re in for’: experiences of structural, legal, and gender-based violence among asylum-seeking women at the Mexico-U.S. border.” BMC Public Health 23 (2023): 1699. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-16538-2. 
  • Sari, Elif. “Lesbian refugees in transit: The making of authenticity and legitimacy in Turkey.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 24, no. 2 (2019): 140–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2019.1622933. 
  • Stirling-Cameron, Emma, Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, and Shira M. Goldenberg, “Deterrence-based asylum policies exacerbate health inequities among women and children seeking safety at the US-Mexico border.” The Lancet Regional Health – Americas 24 (2023): 100545. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2023.100545.

 

Guest post by Marie Erikson, fourth-year Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy Honours student 

 

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