Abstract
One of the top priorities of immigrants upon their arrival in their host country is access to the labour market. However, many find themselves facing intersecting obstacles as they struggle to secure a job. Based on interviews with 18 immigrant settlement workers (16 female, 2 male) who themselves migrated to Canada from 10 different countries, this article investigates how these immigrants navigated the complex path of transition to work. Adopting intersectionality as its theoretical framework and institutional ethnography as its methodology, the qualitative study presented here focused on how race, gender and class intersect in sha** immigrants’ experiences of transition to work as a lifelong learning process. The findings reveal that newly arrived immigrants encounter multifaceted structural barriers in their struggle to secure a foothold in the Canadian labour market. These barriers include delays or even refusal in accepting immigrants’ prior qualifications, and they are shaped by the intersections of race, gender and class. The study also reveals how immigrants’ experiences of employability-oriented lifelong learning unveil institutional complexes and reflect colonising practices among governmental organisations, qualifications assessment agencies, employment institutions and immigrant service agencies. Instead, a decolonising and inclusive strategy is proposed to provide lifelong learning opportunities for all, acknowledge and affirm cultural difference and diversity as desirable assets, and challenge the current ideological moorings of lifelong learning theories, policies and practices in the age of transnational migration.
Résumé
Le cheminement qui mène au travail: expériences de nouveaux migrants en matière d’apprentissage tout au long de la vie au Canada – L’une des principales priorités des migrants à leur arrivée dans un pays d’accueil est l’accès au marché du travail. Toutefois, dans leur lutte pour trouver du travail, nombre d’entre eux se heurtent à des obstacles qui se chevauchent. Cet article s’appuie sur des entretiens avec 18 travailleurs d’établissement (16 femmes, deux hommes [au Canada, on appelle travailleurs d’établissement des personnes chargées d’aider les migrants à s’installer dans leur pays d’accueil, n.d.l.t.]), originaires eux-mêmes de dix pays différents. Il examine comment ces migrants empruntent la voie complexe qui les mène au travail. L’étude qualitative présentée ici recourt à l’intersectionnalité comme cadre théorique et à l’ethnographie institutionnelle comme méthode. Elle se consacre à la façon dont la race, le genre et la classe se chevauchent, façonnant ainsi les expériences des migrants sur la voie vers l’emploi en tant que processus d’apprentissage tout au long de la vie. Ses conclusions révèlent que dans leur lutte pour s’implanter sur le marché du travail canadien, les migrants de fraîche date se heurtent à des barrières structurelles aux multiples facettes. Les délais d’acceptation de leurs qualifications antérieures, voire le refus de les valider, font partie de ces obstacles sur lesquels pèse aussi l’intersectionnalité de la race, du sexe et de classe. L’étude révèle également comment les expériences des migrants en matière d’apprentissage tout au long de la vie axé sur l’employabilité mettent à jour des complexes institutionnels et reflètent des pratiques colonisatrices au sein des organisations gouvernementales, des organismes d’évaluation des qualifications, des agences pour l’emploi et des organismes de services aux migrants. Elle propose à la place une stratégie décolonisatrice et inclusive pour offrir des possibilités d’apprentissage tout au long de la vie pour tous, pour reconnaître et affirmer la différence et la diversité culturelles comme des atouts souhaitables, et pour remettre en question les ancrages idéologiques actuels des théories, politiques et pratiques d’apprentissage tout au long de la vie à l’ère de la migration transnationale.
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Notes
As Leslie McCall notes, “The terms complex, complexity, and complexities appear frequently and are central in key texts on intersectionality” (McCall 2005, p. 1772, italics in the original).
All participants’ names are pseudonyms.
Examples of such programmes are language courses, employment counselling and settlement services.
According to its own webpage on the Canadian government’s website, “Service Canada provides Canadians with a single point of access to a wide range of government services and benefits” (https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/corporate/portfolio/service-canada.html). The online job bank ** Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography. Garamond Press.
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