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Prior to the COVID–19 outbreak, food insecurity was already a serious public health problem in Canada, impacting 12.7 percent of households. In recent years, activists, practitioners and researchers from a range of health–related disciplines, have debated the legitimacy of food banks and other charitable food programs, contending that policy and programs at the federal level must be prioritized to address the underlying root causes of poverty. This paper challenges the discourse that charitable food programs prevent or distract from Canada's social equity goals. Alternatively, this paper argues that programs and initiatives at the local level can emerge to bring short–term stability and self–sufficiency to local communities while also advocating for longer–term structural change. Drawing upon structuration theory and critical ecologies of anti–Black racism, we examine the work of BlackFoodToronto, a food sovereignty initiative, to illustrate the negotiation of power and agency, and how groups and networks react to and reshape confining and enabling structures through collaborative practice. In addressing Canada's food security crisis, this paper offers an alternative perspective of community–based, nonprofit and charitable programs, which in practice, can help inform future food security policy and related health equity and community development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing processing times for immigration applications, increasing numbers of people admitted on temporary visas, and delays processing refugee claims mean that more newcomers spend longer periods of time living in Canada with precarious immigration status. This paper uses qualitative research to examine how people with precarious immigration status exercise agency in the face of restrictions to their rights and risk of deportability, as well as the extent to which agency is able to transform people's everyday realities. The research shows that regimes of immigration control construct people with precarious immigration status as un-belonging and undesirable as members of Canadian society. The research identifies two ways that research participants exert autonomy over their lives: persistent presence and critiquing their construction as un-belonging and undesirable. Both forms of agency involve the creation of counterpublics to build networks for practical support and recognition of the legitimacy of their presence in Canada. While agency made it easier for participants to sustain themselves, the research shows that participants internalized discourses hostile to people with precarious immigration status, suggesting that agency is both necessary but also limited in its capacity to mitigate the harm caused by the construction of them as un-belonging and undesirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines changing migrant attitudes towards marriage practices among South Asians Canadians. Based on the responses of 64 first and second-generation immigrants to Canada from the state of Kerala, India, the paper provides an examination of the social forces which challenge, reinterpret, transform, and reject cultural practices. Migration narratives speak of the ways in with both first and second generations actively engage in the making of migrant identities. The findings point to migrant agency and consciousness in challenging patriarchal structures and transforming practices which are perceived by respondents as oppressive and exploitative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines legal discourses on precarious status children in Canada over the last decade. Drawing on different theoretical frameworks and taking into account laws and court decisions, the paper will examine the way in which precarious status children are regarded as powerless subjects in need of protection and as threatening others. The article argues that these two apparently contrasting discourses are embedded within specific socio-historical constructions of childhood and children's citizenship which deny and limit their agency and conceive of their claim to membership as illegitimate. In the case of precarious status children, illegality and citizenship need to be redefined in a developmental perspective, questioning the potential risks associated with prevalent moral and social assumptions on childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the notion of human agency in the context of women experiencing a chronic illness. Based on two qualitative studies conducted with Canadian women of Chinese- and Anglo-descent living with diabetes, we unmask the complex power relations inherent in patient–practitioner interactions, and problematize the privileging of healthcare providers as knowers and experts on the patient’s body. Specifically, we analyse the meanings that women ascribe to their illness experience. We discuss how women experience the loss of agency in healthcare encounters, how they resist patienthood by reclaiming agency, and how healthcare providers foster agency in their interactions with women. Rather than suggesting that biomedical experts should be ‘written out’, we propose to rewrite healthcare providers as ‘reflexive practitioners’ through the construction of transformative knowledge. We argue that praxis-oriented practice, which is based on transformative knowledge, will provide the space for women and healthcare providers to enter into a new dialogue and a relation in which women can sustain a sense of self, and begin the journey of healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]