Women Pluralists Negotiating Immigrant Children’s Health in an Era of Mass Migration (the 1960s)

Abstract

The article explores immigrant children’s health in Toronto, Canada, during mass migration by analysing a 1960s women-led project involving southern Europeans launched by the International Institute of Metropolitan Toronto, the city’s leading immigrant agency and part of a long-standing North American pluralist movement. Focused on the immigrant female fieldworkers tasked with convincing parents known for their ‘reticence’ in dealing with ‘outsiders’ to access resources to ensure their children’s well-being, it assesses their role as interpreters for the public health nurses investigating the Italian and Portuguese children who increasingly dominated their referrals from Toronto’s downtown schools. Without exaggerating their success, it documents the women’s capacity for persuasion, and notes the value of community-based pluralist strategies in which women with links to those being served play active roles as front-line intermediaries. The article highlights the history of women’s grassroots multiculturalism and the need to consider pluralism’s possibilities as well as its limits.