Dear CASCA members,

Please join us in congratulating Etni Zoe Castell Roldán, PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology, from Dalhousie University, who has been awarded the 2025 Richard F. Salisbury Award, given each year to an outstanding PhD candidate, enrolled at a Canadian university, for the purposes of defraying expenses incurred while carrying out dissertation fieldwork. The award is named in memory of Dr. Richard Frank Salisbury, a founding member of the McGill University Department of Anthropology.

In Etni Zoe’s own words, the research supported by this award focuses on the following topic and questions:

“This ethnographic project examines how social suffering and endurance shape the never-retirement lives of aging Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) former workers in Mexico and Jamaica. It focuses on former workers from Guerrero, Mexico, and St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, key regions with long-standing ties to the SAWP. This research will advance understanding of the experiences of former workers from their home countries and the diverse aging processes they undergo, primarily as their lives are shaped by ongoing hardship and suffering while in a state of perpetual non-retirement upon returning home from the SAWP. Additionally, as an anthropologist from Guerrero, I have a unique perspective on labour migration, precariousness, and the diverse livelihoods of local families. These are not just academic concepts but realities I have witnessed in my anthropological work and daily life.”

We look forward to learning more about this work at a future CASCA meeting.