“Here, there’s still a sense that people are willing to listen”: Why U of T sociology professor Jerry Flores moved his family from Washington State to Toronto

Who: Jerry Flores, 39, associate professor of sociology, University of Toronto Mississauga Known for: Investigating anti-Indigenous violence in urban centres Moved from: University of Washington Tacoma in July of 2017

Watching the election coverage on November 5, 2024, drink in hand and family by his side, Jerry Flores felt the same anxious fluttering in his gut that he had experienced eight years earlier. And as the results rolled in, he felt the same hope he’d been harbouring then—that a Democrat would win the White House—evaporate. To tamp down his despair, he started silently listing off the ways in which things were now different. His three kids, all in diapers during Trump’s 2016 victory, were almost tweens. He and his wife had traded their life in Tacoma, Washington, for a quiet cul-de-sac in Mississauga. There was still fear, but it was muted—the effect was like watching a disaster movie rather than being in it. The reason: he and his family had become Canadian citizens. Related: Trump’s Loss, Toronto’s Gain—Meet the artists, professors, scientists and other luminaries ditching the US and moving north

When Trump was first elected back in November of 2016, Flores hadn’t wasted any time. He swiftly accepted an offer he’d been weighing to join the sociology department at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and he landed in Canada eight months later. Whenever he met someone new, he’d tell them he had just arrived and would be greeted, to his surprise, by the word “welcome.” Casual acceptance wasn’t something Flores was particularly accustomed to. He had grown up in a low-income Latino neighbourhood in suburban Los Angeles, and as the son of Mexican immigrants, he was used to being seen as second class in America. Even graduating with a master’s degree in sociology from San Diego State didn’t change that. One night, when he was out for a run, police handcuffed him at gunpoint because they said he matched the description of someone who had stolen a truck. Related: “I want my kids to grow up in a free country”: Philosopher and professor Jason Stanley on his decision to leave the US

Canada offered him a new beginning. And he had something to give in return. In the US, Flores’s research had focused on how institutions such as schools, detention centres and the police shape the lives of at-risk Latina women and girls. He was, more than anything, interested in finding ways to dismantle systemic injustices and shed light on inequalities. His specific area of expertise had a Canadian analogue that needed his help. Flores wanted to better understand what was happening to young at-risk Indigenous women in urban centres. So he spent two years interviewing dozens of women and girls in Toronto and was struck by the overlap with what he had found in California: a young woman would run away, engage in high-risk behaviours, shoplift to meet basic needs, perhaps sell drugs. Except that in LA they would often be incarcerated, and here they were disappearing.

The work is dark and often harrowing, but Flores is driven. The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls needs political support, funding and people working to keep it in the national spotlight. Last year, he spent his sabbatical turning his research into a forthcoming book, Disappearing in the City: An Urban Ethnography of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. His goal is to help inspire policy change and foster good-faith conversations with decision ­makers—something he struggled to accomplish as an American academic. “Here,” he says, “there’s still a sense that people are willing to listen.”