(SOM3a) Immigrant networks in the integration process I

The process of immigrant integration is multifaceted and influenced by various factors, including economic opportunities, cultural adaptation, and social networks. While all these components play important roles, the influence of social networks, in particular, has garnered increasing attention. Social networks, comprising individuals and the relationships that exist between them, can significantly impact immigrants' experiences in their destination countries. This session aims to explore the intricate dynamics of how immigrants form new ties and the profound effect of these networks on the overall integration process. It seeks to address the question of what role the immigrant’s network plays in their integration process and overall well-being and falls under the theme of immigrant integration. Tags: Migration and Immigration, Networks

Organizers: Emmanuel Kyeremeh, Toronto Metropolitan University, Jonathan Amoyaw, Dalhousie University; Chairs: Emmanuel Kyeremeh, Toronto Metropolitan University, Jonathan Amoyaw, Dalhousie University

Presentations

Erika Borrelli, University of Windsor

Voices of precarious labour: Unveiling the role of non-union employee representation models for migrant farmworkers in North America

In Canada, entry requirements for temporary migrant farmworkers are determined by Temporary Foreign Worker Programs. These programs limit participants to working in the agricultural sector, a high-risk industry with limited institutional oversight and union protection. These entry conditions contribute to precarity among migrant farmworkers, whose employment is linked to their immigration status, giving employers significant control over immigration decisions. This authority creates a climate of fear regarding repercussions, such as deportation or exclusion from future contracts, significantly hindering their ability to voice concerns or address workplace issues. Similarly, undocumented migrant farmworkers in the United States experience precarious conditions characterized by limited job security and minimal social protections. The temporary and often informal nature of their employment further complicates their ability to assert rights or negotiate for improved working conditions. In advocating for migrant farmworkers to assert their rights, activists and social justice organizations have called for change and proposed various solutions. Social sustainability initiatives, through farm certification and product labelling, have recently emerged as a way to address precarity among migrant farmworkers in North America. Participating farms are required to uphold socially sustainable standards with a focus on ethical labour practices that are rigorously enforced through third-party audits. Certain social certification initiatives, such as the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI), include on-site, worker-led communication teams and advanced training for both employees and management as integral components of their implementation. These strategies aim to provide workers with knowledge of workplace practices, skills for ongoing verification of standards, and power to improve labour conditions. Conceptualized as non-union employee representation (NER) models in employment sectors where unionization is difficult to attain, this research aims to bridge a link between the concepts of voice and precarity to enhance our understanding of how NER models, like social certification, can contribute to empowering precarious workers by fostering their participation in shaping organizational decision-making processes. Based on findings from 25 qualitative interviews with undocumented migrant farmworkers at an EFI-certified farm in the United States, I contend that NER models, specifically those prioritizing worker training, knowledge advancement, and the establishment of worker-led communication teams, positively influenced participants. I argue that the implementation of these models has played a crucial role in nurturing consultative participation ­ – a mode of involvement in decision-making where workers are actively consulted, and their insights, feedback, and opinions are prioritized. By equipping workers, with tools and platforms for expressing their viewpoints and providing feedback to team leaders and management, a ‘culture of collaboration’ emerged. This democratic decision-making process, engendered a sense of inclusion among the workers, especially for those whose opinions were heard and acted upon, promoting agency and instilling trust in the organizational framework. The potential of NER models in the Canadian context remains largely unexplored. Drawing on insights from 35 qualitative interviews with migrant farmworkers across Ontario, I explore the voice farmworkers currently have and compare it to the voice they want. While NER models have demonstrated improved consultative participation among undocumented migrant farmworkers in the United States, my investigation also aims to examine the possibilities and limitations these models may encounter in shaping the voices of precarious farmworkers in Canada. Farmworkers interviewed in this study expressed reservations regarding the design and implementation of a NER model, like the EFI being implemented in Canada. At the same time, they believed, despite the need for a more robust and institutionalized mechanism for worker involvement, an initiative aimed at enhancing worker training and knowledge production could prove beneficial. In conclusion, this study highlights the transformative potential of NER models on precarious workers’ voices. The findings underscore the crucial role these models play in heightening the voices of precarious workers, providing them with the means to influence workplace processes. The significance of consultative participation emerges as a key factor in amplifying workers’ trust in organizational decision-making and thereby reinforcing a sense of agency. However, the inherent limitation of consultative decision-making, where authority allocation remains unchanged, introduces the risk of fostering a ‘false consciousness’ among workers. This risk is compounded by both the reliance on employers’ voluntary participation in these initiatives and their acknowledgment and action on workers’ suggestions. Nevertheless, NER models that facilitate consultative participation offer subtle and nuanced channels of influence for precarious workers.

Yvonne Chang, McGill University

Immigrant entry pathways and sense of belonging in Canada

Human capital selection is central to Canada’s immigration policies, which are tailored toward the mass recruitment of economic migrants, particularly high skilled workers. Immigrants’ human capital characteristics can affect their cultural competence in the host society and are closely connected to the social networks that they may rely on after entry, which may influence their sense of belonging. Moreover, belonging may be especially dependent on the nature of labor market experiences for economic migrants, who are admitted for their presumed employability (Kazemipur and Nakhaie 2014). In this study I use the 2013 General Social Survey – Social Identity to explore how sense of belonging to Canada and to the town/city varies by admission class for Chinese, Indian, and Filipino immigrants. In particular, I examine whether distinctions between primary economic applicants and tied migrants (economic dependents or family migrants) extend beyond the labor market context, given gendered admissions and household roles (Banerjee and Phan 2015; Elrick and Lightman 2016). My findings suggest that the associations between primary/tied migrant status and immigrants’ sense of belonging are cohort- and gender-specific, with some parallels between women who entered as economic dependents and men in the family class.

Shirin Khayambashi, Toronto Metropolitan University

The Immigrant Experience in Brandon, Manitoba: The social challenges of integraion in small towns and rural regions of the Canadian Prairies

This presentation explores the changing pattern of migration in Canada and how the changing pattern affects the social integration of new immigrants. Within the last few decades, Canada has witnessed a change in the path of international migration, which is diverted from the traditional destination. The new destinations have changed from the larger urban settings into remote and rural regions of Canada. This change in the pattern of migration directly relates to the demand for foreign labour forces in small and rural regions of Canada due to outmigration and the decreased birth rate in these regions (Kelly et al., 2023; Sano et al., 2020; Hanlon et al., 2022). The demand for foreign labour forces encourages the provincial active participation in recruitment through various federally funded programs and initiatives. The changing trend of international migration, thus, creates changes in the regional demographics. These unlikely immigrant destinations are experiencing unprecedented diversity in areas with dominant settler colonial regional narratives. Based on the changing trend of migration, this research explores the integrational challenges for new immigrants settling in the Canadian Prairies by focusing on the immigrant experience in the city of Brandon, Manitoba. Brandon presents a similar pattern of settlement. The influx of diversity and changing demographics challenges the region’s preparedness and welcoming environment to acclimate to the needs of changing demographics. The abrupt introduction of a diverse immigrant population can cause friction between the new population and the existing residents in the region. This presentation explores the following question: How do recent immigrants negotiate their identities as outsiders and establish their sense of belonging in the city of Brandon, Manitoba, as they encounter various forms of intentional and unintentional acts of discrimination? This research applies a mixed-method approach to understand the immigrant experience in Brandon, MB. Through the mixed methodology, this project explores the personal account of the challenges of settlement for the immigrant population residing in Brandon, MB, from macro and micro levels of analysis. By exploring the new immigrants’ experiences with settlement and integration, this project reflects on the contested relationship between the new residents and older settlers in the region. To explore these contested relationships, the research addresses the ongoing problem of racism and discrimination experienced by recent immigrants in the city of Brandon, MB. Using participants’ accounts of settlement in the region, the research investigates the experience of racism from both the individual and institutional levels. In this research, both quantitative and qualitative data indicate a general pattern of discrimination at the social, economic, and political levels. Based on these challenging experiences, many racialized new immigrants rationalize the racially oriented acts of violence by blaming the communal ignorance in the region and the lack of institutional resources to address the integrational challenges. The existing contested relationship is related to the dominant discourse of the white settler narrative, which aims to maintain its social location. In this paper, I also discuss the future research founded on this project. In the upcoming studies, I will explore the regions interethnic relationships between immigrants and indigenous populations in Brandon, MB.

Gabrielle Isabel Abando, University of British Columbia

'Tao Po!': An exploration of the role of Filipino-Canadian neighbourhoods in anchoring and cultivating Filipino-Canadian community

Within the last fifty years, Filipinos have become one of the largest ‘visible minority’ groups in Canada, and yet Filipino-Canadian literature is still a budding field. To date, most foundational work has focused on the macro sociopolitical factors of Filipino-Canadian immigration or sociocultural factors of Filipino-Canadian experience. This paper aims to re-embed Filipino-Canadian literature in the everyday settings in which these experiences take place. Though literature extensively describes how Filipino lives stretch across space, rarely are such conversations grounded in the daily settings and spaces they occupy. Even less discussed is how and why these spaces become spaces that bind communities together – thus their importance. Understanding space as a dialectic between society and space, spaces must be understood in the context of their everyday making and remaking – the push and pull between the actors who occupy it. And yet, much literature on Filipino diasporic space is written in the retrospective: mourning spaces lost to us. Extensive work has been done on the policy and sociopolitical factors that enable gentrification of immigrant community space, but how are we to assert the importance of these spaces without understanding them as they are experienced every day? Despite being a ‘gateway city’ for immigrants due to its proximity to the Pacific, Vancouver’s Filipino Canadian community remains understudied relative to the East coast. As Vancouver rises to ‘global city’ status, the city is a real-time case study in how ethnic communities hold themselves together in a highly dynamic culture and cityscape. How the city handles the maintenance of these spaces, then, will be significant. As Vancouver’s own Joyce-Collingwood neighbourhood, a commonly known ‘hub’ for Filipino immigrants, teeters on the edge of gentrification, capturing the space as it functions for the community offers invaluable insight into how immigrant communities generate their own space, what makes these spaces accessible, how space tends to these communities. With this in mind, the following project investigates the specific spatial mechanisms by which Filipino-Canadians feel attached to a space that imbues it with a community and cultural significance. This project uses a combination of ethnographic field notes and semi-structured interviews with Filipino-Canadian Joyce-Collingwood residents and regulars analyzed through qualitative coding methods. Anyone who identifies themselves as a member of the Filipino-Canadian community and is a Joyce-Collingwood resident or regular (measured by visiting the neighbourhood at least once a month) was eligible for participation. Participants were asked about their daily routines in the neighbourhood, personal stories of connection that take place within the neighbourhood, the role of the neighbourhood in facilitating their feelings of belonging both within the Filipino-Canadian community but also within Canada more generally, and whether or not the small businesses and centralized local community feel of the area differs to larger Filipino chain restaurants scattered throughout the city. Ethnographic field notes supplement interview data, collected by the author, herself a recent Filipino immigrant, and were taken over the course of five months. This project is a work in progress, but emergent themes include: transit accessibility, intersections with class, spatial visibility as identity affirmation, feelings of community camaraderie, and community agency. Most vitally, this research stresses the importance of understanding these spaces holistically; that the preservation of only immigrant businesses is not adequate to sustain these safe havens for immigrants. Rather, they must be understood as an integrated whole.