Community Care and Collective Capabilities In an Era of Retrenchment: South Asian Immigrant Women’s Community Organizing In Toronto, Canada

Background and Purpose:
Across Canada, many racialized immigrant women face barriers to decent work, affordable childcare, and stable housing, contributing to economic insecurity and social isolation (Schmidt & Bhuyan, 2022). For low-income South Asian immigrant women in Toronto, these challenges are compounded by barriers to accessing social services and exclusion from civic processes (SAWRO, 2024). Neoliberal policy shifts have devolved responsibility for immigrant settlement to local, often unpaid networks while limiting institutional capacity and creating gaps in formal supports (Bachour, 2025). In this context, grassroots, women-led organizations that combine mutual aid, direct services, and advocacy, are essential sources of support. Using the South Asian Women’s Rights Organization (SAWRO, 2026) as a case study, this research examines how a holistic model of community care—linking mutual aid, direct services, community engagement, and advocacy—shapes South Asian immigrant women’s capabilities for participation and support in everyday life.

Methodology:
This study draws on 14 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in Bangla with South Asian immigrant women who had engaged with SAWRO within six months prior to the interview. Guided by a feminist participatory action research design, the study centers the co-production of knowledge with community partners. Interviews were translated and transcribed.

Analysis integrates critical discourse analysis (Gee, 2001) with an intersectional feminist praxis (Mehrotra, 2022), attending to language use while centering relationships and community care. Drawing on the Integrated Capabilities Framework (Clark & Hodgett, 2019), the study examines how community-based organizing expands capabilities for civic engagement and collective action.

Findings:
Women described navigating overlapping challenges shaped by migration, family responsibilities, and systemic gendered and racialized barriers in Canada. Decision-making was shaped by spousal migration pathways, financial dependence, and barriers to employment, childcare, and services. While many were aware of supports, access was constrained by social isolation, family responsibilities, and concerns about stigma or immigration consequences, particularly in contexts of coercive control or partner abuse.

Participants also described navigating fragmented systems—immigration, employment, housing, and social services—without coordination or clear guidance. SAWRO/SAWIS emerged as a trusted, relational entry point into support systems.

Through engagement with SAWRO, participants described expanded capabilities, including increased access to resources, stronger social networks, and greater participation in peer support, leadership, and advocacy. These gains rely on ongoing forms of gendered labour—caregiving, emotional support, and community organizing—that remain largely invisible within formal systems.

Conclusion and Implications:
Grassroots, women-led organizations expand capabilities under structural constraint, functioning as critical infrastructures for civic engagement and social inclusion. Building on Sassen’s analysis of the “feminization of survival,” these findings highlight how racialized migrant women’s social reproductive labour sustains urban economies while remaining largely invisible, unpaid, and excluded from social protection. Organizations such as SAWRO offer a transformative vision of community care and collective advancement, grounded in the principle that “if women move forward, the whole community moves forward.” This underscores the importance of social workers engaging in community-based practice that supports migrant women’s leadership while advocating for more equitable social welfare systems.