ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a glimpse at the daily lives of migrants with precarious legal status residing in Hamilton and its rural surroundings and it documents the types of social services, which they claim to need access. The Sanctuary City movement can be traced to the 1980s and 1990s when religious congregants and other civil society groups helped Guatemalan and El Salvadoran refugees settle in "public sanctuaries" in defiance of US immigration authorities. In Canada, precarious legal status excludes most individuals from access to all but the most basic health care at community health centres, most social services including settlement and integration services, English classes, legal aid and post-secondary education. To illustrate the theme of health and well-being, the chapter provides stories told by five migrant participants: a married elderly couple, a mother and daughter, and a married man who left his family behind to work in the agricultural sector.
