maybe we shouldn't laugh so loud" / 107 NourpaNah including that of nursing. 5 In the words of one of the nurses interviewed for this research, "This is the story … for a number of us … a large community of us." 6 Although modern workplaces such as the nursing sector claim to be raceand gender-blind, 7 my research contributes to the scholarship demonstrating that the lived experiences of immigrant and ethnic minority nurses is patterned throughout their career by racialization and differential treatment. 8 Racism has in fact been shown to be integral to how the profession has been structured in modern times, as discussed by Das Gupta. 9 Her research demonstrates the interwoven racialized, gendered, and occupational hierarchy of healthcare labour, with black nurses subordinate to white nurses, themselves subordinate to doctors. My research further explores the experiences of racialized labour, grounding these experiences in a particular time and place, born out of a particular historical evolution and political-economical governance. Furthermore, through the analysis of the nurses' narratives about their experiences, I show how daily and structural racism is negotiated, navigated, and balanced against considerations of long-term career development, residential prospects, and family goals. Similar to research that uses oral history to explore experiences of negotiating racism in the workplace, 10 my work reveals patterns of subtle individual resistance. I utilize similar methods to explore the experiences of foreign nurses on temporary work permits in Nova Scotian communities, examining labour and migration precarity.My interviews were framed around workers' movement to Nova Scotia, focusing on their labour experiences in this province, including interactions with clients, patients, unions, colleagues, and employers, as well as career aspirations and trajectories. Forty-six per cent of the nurses interviewed originated from India, and another 36 per cent were from the Philippines. A few came from countries in Europe and Africa. Twenty-one per cent were men, and the rest were women. All but three or four had entered Canada on a
This article presents a qualitative study of the experiences of a sample of Afghan refugees who have settled in Canada. Using Anthony Giddens’s concepts of structure and agency, the author analyzes interview data to explore how the respondents express their agency within the structural constraints of refugee life. In light of the research findings, it is argued that Afghan refugees form a diverse and heterogeneous population, in stark contrast to the essentialized and homogenous portrayals of silent, suffering victims of circumstance as found in popular media and policy discourse.
Many healthcare workers are 'on the move' as part of their employment, travelling often great distances to such places as patients'/clients' homes and community clinics. Healthcare workers' experiences of this employment-related geographic mobility have been relatively invisible even though mobility is necessary for home and community care. Interviews with professional (e.g. nurses) and paraprofessional (e.g. personal care assistants) healthcare workers in Nova Scotia (Canada) found that mobility includes safety risks, and health and economic costs, although a few professionals had employment contracts that helped to protect them against such risks and costs. Paraprofessionals appear to be most impacted by the economic costs given their lower incomes. Many healthcare workers also experienced travel positively, as time away from fixed sites, and associated this time with freedom. The risks of mobility were understood by some workers as part of a duty to care, but a few suggested that the health and economic costs are an undue burden, pointing to an opening for challenging these conditions. There is a need for regulations to ensure all healthcare workers are safe as they are mobile to and from fixed sites, and do not have to shoulder the health or economic costs of mobility.
Mobility and movement is an increasingly important part of work for many, however, Employment-Related Geographical Mobility (ERGM), defined as the extended movement of workers between places of permanent residence and employment, is relatively understudied among healthcare workers. It is critical to understand the policies that affect ERGM, and how they impact mobile healthcare workers. We outline four key intersecting policy contexts related to the ERGM of healthcare workers, focusing on the mobility of Registered Nurses 1019), the Research and Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and numerous university and community partners in Canada and elsewhere. The authors would also like to acknowledge funding provided by
In capitalist societies, workers feel, or feel obliged to feel grateful for having a job. In a world marked by global inequality, migrants from the global South to the North are expected to feel gratitude for their opportunity to move to and live in a first world country. In the case of temporary foreign workers, both these sorts of gratitude come together. The political economy regime governing the conditions of work and cross-border movement for temporary foreign workers employed in health care in Canada engenders feelings of gratefulness from workers towards their employers. Contextualized within a cross-disciplinary study of gratitude as a social construct, this article uses the case of this particular sort of work and migration gratitude to develop knowledge on the nuanced and complex ways in which structures of feeling lead from and loop back into capitalist political economies.
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