562.2
Strategies for Change: Immigrant Women Confronting Dekilling and De-Professionalization

Saturday, July 19, 2014: 12:45 PM
Room: 302
Oral Presentation
Guida MAN , Sociology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
This paper is based on empirical data from a research study[1] on the experience of highly educated Chinese and Indian immigrant women who were professionals in their home country. In particular, this paper aims to discover how the women utilize their agencies to mobilize a myriad local and transnational strategies to confront and change their situations in the context of neoliberal restructuring and the concomitant deskilling and de-professionalization of immigrant women in the new country.

The study found that despite their education, immigrant women professionals are routinely being deskilled, and are channeled into precarious positions which are low paid, part-time, flexible, with no security nor benefits. In order to survive in a racialized and gendered globalized labour market, some women lowered their employment expectations, and took on menial, precarious employment in the new country in order to gain “Canadian experience” and to make ends meet. Others tried to improve their situation through formal retraining processes by returning to college/university so as to gain formal Canadian education, knowledge and skill. Our research also found that the immigrant women were actively participating in transnational practices. For examples, some immigrant women who were unable to juggle their paid work and looking after young children, sent their children back to their home country to be cared for by extended family members so they could focus on their job search or engage in paid employment to make ends meet.  

 



[1] The data for this paper is derived from the project “Transnational Migration Trajectories of Immigrant Women Professionals in Canada: Strategies of Work and Family” (2009-14), supported by SSHRC through a research grant to Guida Man (PI), Tania Das Gupta (CI), Kiran Mirchandani (CI), and Roxana Ng (CI).