The changing face of work and learning in the context of immigration: the Canadian experience

Workplace & Adult Learning, Faculty of Education, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

(Received 19 April 2010; final version received 21 September 2011)

Through the accounts of the experience of recent Chinese immigrants in Canada, this study examines the changing nature of work and learning in the context of immigration. Its findings reveal the precarious nature of work and learning for immigrant professionals, characterised by part time, low wages, job insecurity, high risks of ill health and limited social benefits and statutory entitlements. The study also shows that immigrants’ foreign credentials and knowledge have been racialised on the basis of ethnic and national origins. As a consequence, they suffered unemployment and underemployment, poor economic performance and downward social mobility. The racialised experience of Chinese immigrants demonstrates how racial and socio-cultural differences have been used to entrench social inequality in immigrants’ transitions. Through the process of deskilling and re-skilling, learning has become a vehicle to colonising immigrants into the dominant norms and values of the host society. The study urges government organisations, professional associations, educational institutions and prior learning assessment agencies to adopt an inclusive framework which fully embraces all human knowledge and experience, no matter which ethnic and cultural backgrounds they emerge from.