Exploring Language Settlement Program and Social Reproductive Work through the lens of Racial Capitalism


Wanda Chell, Educational Policy Studies

Canada aggressively recruits and welcomes the waged and social reproductive labour required for maintaining the Canadian economy, through well-crafted im/migration policies and international branding as a friendly, inclusive, and multicultural nation (Abu-Laden and Gabriel, 2015). Some Black and People of Color (POC) immigrants upon arrival, however, experience differential economic and health outcomes, and/or degrees of welcome (Chen and Hou, 2019; Johnston, 2022; Lightman and Gingrich, 2018). In response governments, non-governmental organizations, and community groups have established networks of settlement programming to assist immigrants better integrate: participate in the labour market, society (civic engagement), the building of a successful life (Guo and Guo, 2016; Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada [IRCC], 2023). The federally funded Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program, delivered via settlement organizations offers approximately 8000 language and settlement classes across 200 sites across Canada (IRCC, 2020). The literature on the LINC program largely focuses on single, isolated initiatives such as the Canadian Language Benchmarks (Haque and Valio, 2017), Portfolio-Based Language Assessment (Abbot, Lee and Ricioppo, 2021; Desyatova, 2020) and/or curriculum/instruction (Apedaile, and Whitelaw, 2012; Diepenbroek and Derwing, 2013). Scholarship utilizing more critical frameworks argue an attentiveness to labor market participation and/or “Canadian values, may facilitate (un)intentional assimilation or homogeneity within language programming (Haque, 2017). A small body of scholarship explores the ways LSPs may operate as an instrument of differentiation, disciplining and/or ordering immigrants (Barker, 2021; Fleming 2010). The (economic) structures into which immigrants may be assimilated, however, are taken for granted and while the latter disrupts the discourse of settler care it stops short of the purpose/role such reproductions serve or consider the deeper socio-cultural and political implication of recruiting im/migrant (un)waged labour. Drawing on a comprehensive review of the empirical research pertaining to LSPs, program documents, and practitioner insights, I suggest the theoretical framework of racial capitalism (Bhattacharyya, 2018; Gilmore, 2020; Kelley, 2017; Kundnani, 2023; Robinson, 2020) may have utility in exploring LSPs, not only as an instrument in preparing immigrants for particular forms of waged labour but as a means to relegate and shape those for social reproductive and/or surplus/precarious labour. Racial capitalism, rooted in the work of South African anti-colonial/racist/capital scholars/activists and later developed as a theoretical framework, may highlight the “benefit” derived from differentiation and for whom, in the racialized unequal allocation of economic, political, social and/or psychological rewards. Capitalism not only makes spaces for non-capitalism by defining some as productive labour and others non-productive, but it also demands (social) reproductive labour to function (Fraser, 2016:2017). Generational replacement and the work of social reproductive work need not be limited to kin and home. The care of children, the aging, and those with disabilities, by immigrant women of colour, has allowed white wo/men to participate in higher compensated waged labour (Razack, Smith and Thobani, 2010). From positioning LINC instructors as “second” wage earners to the monetary as well as social debt to the state incurred by refugees by way of transport fees and gratitude, to the long wait times and punitive attendance policies of LINC, we may consider the possible role LSPs might have in “pushing” or “trapping” some participants in reproductive labour, or as a site of reshaping social reproductive labour to be better suited to the particulars of a local environment whether in course offerings, curriculum or in program structure. This paper intends to contribute to critical theorizations of LSPs and/or stimulate discussion within educational spaces purportedly designed, and claiming to, welcome and support immigrants. For too long the field of settlement has hidden behind the protective cloak of white innocence, settler care, and good intentions (Chell and Kapoor, 2018). This is critical if the federal Anti-Racism Strategy is to be more than a performative goodwill gesture.

This paper will be presented at the following session: