Every day, Evenold supports people whose migratory status is precarious. He helps them navigate a healthcare system that denies them access to care precisely because of their status.
With these patients, who constantly live in fear of ‘getting injured or falling ill and not being able to afford the costs’ or ‘a border services officer ordering their removal from the country,’ Evenold knows he must build strong bonds of trust. These are essential to encourage them to open up and reveal the painful realities hidden behind a symptom. For the migrant peer support worker, it is through these connections that he can put his vision of care into practice, where ‘healing means identifying all the obstacles to a person’s well-being.’
Listening to Juliette and Evenold, it quickly becomes clear that the physical health of the people they support is just the tip of the iceberg. Before achieving well-being, these individuals must overcome a number of barriers.
Evenold recalls a woman who came to see him about her daughter’s sleep problems. After several meetings that allowed the peer support worker to ‘get to know the person in their uniqueness, their story, their subjectivity’ and earn her trust, he realized that the child’s issues were not physiological. Behind the difficulties in sleeping peacefully lay the fear that had permeated the daily life of this family, who had walked from Brazil and constantly dreaded being sent back to their country. ‘So, to heal the sleep problem,’ Evenold concludes, ‘we have to heal the migration problem.’
Juliette confirms: ‘What makes a person’s situation precarious is primarily their migratory status.’ With this status come barriers to housing, employment, financial security, and food security. Eventually, health issues worsen the initial situation: ‘diabetes, for example.’
To illustrate this absurd cycle, the duo has plenty of anecdotes. Like the time Evenold accompanied someone to the hospital suffering from ‘a visible emergency.’ The triage nurse, however, ruled that since the person was not covered by the RAMQ, their condition did not qualify as an emergency. The solution: sign a payment agreement before seeing a doctor.
Does the complexity of their work discourage them? Clearly not: ‘The goal is not just to help the person adapt to the unjust system they live in, but also to try to change that system.’