Can Immigrants Solve Canada

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Can Immigrants Solve Canadas Skill Shortage?
Dr. Michelle Goldberg 8th National Metropolis
Conference, Vancouver March 25, 2006
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Minister of Immigration Joe Volpe (2005)

• Canada's future is dependent on
  immigrationThe evidence for this is clear Our
  birth rate is among the lowest in the western
  world, our participation rate is the highest
  among countries in the Organization for Economic
  Co-operation and Development, and our
  unemployment rate continues to fall. Indeed, even
  smaller centres and rural communities across this
  country are now entering the competition for new
  Canadians as they seek to keep the critical mass
  of people needed for their long-term survival

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Skill Shortage Discourse

• Brain drain and demographic issues
• Low fertility rates, aging population
• Immigrants as solution to crisis
• Immigrants as commodity
• Key to building human capital
• Add value to economy
• Immigration as a benefit to the nation for
  economic prosperity
• Investment in economy
• Compete in global marketplace

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Globalization Neoliberal Era

• Economic logic used to justify a market-
  driven mentality
• calls for deregulation or unrestrained policies
• everything is couched in economic terms and
  competition
• market-driven mentality
• Reduced state spending and eliminate public
  deficits and debt

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Immigration and Globalization

• Increased mobility of capital and persons
• Proliferation of trade agreements
• facilitate labour mobility
• Rapid technological advancements
• facilitating information flows
• Policies couched in economic terms
• The education and skills that immigrants bring
  are an essential tool that Ontario employers need
  to utilize to keep pace with global competition

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Canadas National Discourses

• Multiculturalism
• Equality
• Social justice
• Interaction
• Immigration is not only fair and equitable but
  makes good economic sense (Government of
  Ontario, 1992)

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Framework

• Beyond referential view
• Social constructivist view
• Social construction of reality through discourse
• Constitutive view of discourse
• Discourses are practices that systematically
  form the objects of which they speakthey are
  not about objects they do not identify objects,
  they constitute them and in the practice of doing
  so they conceal their own invention (Foucault,
  1974, p. 49)
• Informed by ideology

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Discursive Web

• Multiple discourses
• Multiple voices
• Predominant discourse Hub
• (Con)text
• Intertextuality Gale (1999)
• Polycentricity Hogwood Gunn (1990)
• Policy web Joshee Johnson (2005)

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Truth

• Common sense
• Affects our understandings, thoughts and
  behaviours which influences the reality we are
  living in
• Perpetual irritation in media authority
• Multiple voices

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Immigrants as a Benefit to Society

• Fill skill shortages
• Help business compete globally
• Knowledge of overseas markets, cross cultural
  communication, language
• Right kind of immigrants who integrate
• easily employable upon arrival
• contribute quickly to the economy

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Impact of Discourse on Immigrant

• Ignores other contributions
• Depersonalizing
• Limits the types of policy solutions
• Demands less government policy
• Constructs negative immigrant identities
• Ignores racism

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Training Discourse

• Immigrants as foreign-trained
• Devalued as not up to Canadian standards
• Immigration policy as training policy
• Blame the victim

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Negative Impacts

• Negative Immigrant Identities
• Drain on resources
• Economic migrants
• Negative Attitudes
• Threat to social cohesion
• Erosion of Canadian national identity

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Social Construction of the Other

• Binary
• Positive self negative other presentation
• Limits what is thinkable
• Assimilatory
• Facilitates competition
• Canadian-born entitled to first choice

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Discursive Interactions

• Self sufficiency discourse
• Home grown solutions
• Distribution discourse
• Rural communities
• Made in Ontario discourse

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Conclusion

• Neo-liberalism emerges to suppress overtly racist
  discourses
• Reinforces Canadas tolerant, pluralistic, free
  of racism view
• Skill shortage is truth and immigrants are
  solution
• Only seen through web approach

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Implications

• Limits immigrant professionals access to Canadian
  labour market
• Limits policy makers ability to implement
  policies to facilitate access
• Training, information and assessment policies
  distract from systemic change policies

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Transformative Action

• Discourse that constructs positive identities
• Move away from binaries to thirdspace
• Highlight social benefits of immigration
• Value immigrant knowledge and culture
• Admit systemic racism exists