(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.

Foroogh Mohammadi, Acadia University

Friendship Communities of Belonging: How Do the Iranian Immigrant Communities Emerge and Function in the Atlantic Canadian Cities?

Many Canadian midsized cities are declining due to economic restructuring (Filion, 2010). Additionally, these cities are less diverse and have been unsuccessful in attracting immigrants until recently (Carter, Morrish, and Amoyaw, 2008). In addition to the economic and social needs of the region to attract more immigrants, the low retention rate has impacted the public’s view toward immigrants “because of the underlying expectation that newcomers will eventually leave” (Pottie-Sherman and Graham, 2020, p. 23) for more traditional immigration gateways, including Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. The midsized cities across Canada hold a quarter of Canada’s population (Lewis and Donald, 2010), and it is important to understand how they accommodate immigrants. This research focuses on home-ing and doing belonging beyond the individual level and questions them at the community and group level among Iranian immigrants who live in the Atlantic Canadian cities. I focus on the significance of the friendship communities of belonging and their pivotal role in immigrant integration and transferring knowledge to the newer immigrants. I explore how the Atlantic Canadian cities shape the experiences of immigrants in relation to their community building, decision-making to leave the Atlantic region, and their sense of belonging. Also, I ask how the communities of belonging emerge and function in the Atlantic cities. In this, I pay particular attention to the unique characteristics of Atlantic cities and the imaginations the Iranian immigrants have toward living in bigger cities. I engage with the theories of group culture creation and functioning (Fine, 2012; Eliasoph and Lichterman, 2003) to analyze how these communities emerge and function. I conceptualize the participants’ practices in connection to Anderson’s (2006) concept of imagined communities, Melucci’s (1989) concept of collective identity, and the role of meta stories (Cope et al., 2019) and narratives in the shaping and functioning of these communities. Using qualitative methods, including semi-structured, in-depth interviews with sixty-seven first-generation Iranian immigrants residing in the five Atlantic Canadian cities and five cities in Ontario, I argue that collective narratives and meta-stories work as a source of driving motivations for the participants in this study to leave the Atlantic region. Previous Iranian immigrants have deposited the knowledge of seeking a better fate on the mainland. New Iranian immigrants are immediately exposed to this knowledge and start to imagine their future outside the Atlantic provinces. However, the uniqueness of Iranian communities in the Atlantic region and the closeness of friendship groups leave a powerful impact on the minds of people who leave for the major urban centres. It drives the Iranian immigrants who left for the major urban centres like Toronto and Ottawa to seek and find old friends and motivate them to reinforce their bonds with them. Focusing on community and group-level processes, this research suggests that meta-stories and narratives shape the common imaginations of Iranian immigrants about remote and central locations and have an impact on their decisions to leave or stay in the Atlantic region. Moreover, it demonstrates that friendship groups significantly contribute to creating a space for interaction, mutual understanding, and performing an “authentic” or an Iranian-style version of self with the central role of the mother tongue language. The close and tied friendship groups play the most prominent role in enacting belonging and are pivotal in operationalizing temporary belonging in the Iranian diaspora in Canada. This study fills the gap in understanding the lives of immigrants who land in the Canadian Atlantic midsized cities, many of whom do not stay there and leave for Ontario. It sheds light on how Atlantic Canadian cities can become more immigrant-friendly and how immigrants could make a long-term home there.

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.