On Being Not Canadian: The Social Organization of “Migrant Workers” in Canada*

Abstract

Se fondant sur la méthode d'ethnographie institutionnelle de Dorothy E. Smith, l'auteure étudie l'organisation sociale de notre connaissance des gens catégorisés comme non‐immigrants ou « tra‐vailleurs migrants ». À la suite de l'étude du Non‐Immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP) du gouvernement canadien (1973), elle montre l'importance de la pratique idéologique raciste et nationaliste des États à l'endroit de l'organisation matérielle du marché du travail compétitif « canadien » dans le cadre d'un capitalisme mondial restructuré de même que la réorganisation qui en résulte des notions d'esprit national canadien. Elle montre aussi que la pratique discursive des parlementaires qui consiste à considérer certaines personnes comme des « problèmes » pour les « Canadiens » ne provient pas de l'exclusion physique de ces «étrangers » mais plutôt de leur differentiation idéologique et matérielle des Canadiens une fois qu'ils vivent et travaillent dans la société canadienne. Utilizing Dorothy E. Smith's method of institutional ethnography, I investigate the social organization of our knowledge of people categorized as non‐immigrants or “migrant workers.” By examining Canada's 1973 Non‐immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP), I show the importance of racist and nationalist ideological state practice to the material organization of the competitive “Canadian” labour market within a restructured global capitalism and the resultant reorganization of notions of Canadian nationhood. I show that the parliamentary discursive practice of producing certain people as “problems” for “Canadians” results not in the physical exclusion of those constructed as “foreigners” but in their ideological and material differentiation from Canadians, once such people are living and working within Canadian society. Expressions such as…“foreigner”… and so on, denoting certain types of lesser or negative identities are in actuality congealed practices and forms of violence or relations of domination… This violence and its constructive or representative attempts have become so successful or hegemonic that they have become transparent—holding in place the ruler's claimed superior self, named or identified in myriad ways, and the inadequacy and inferiority of those who are ruled. — Himani Bannerji.

From “Canadians First” to “Workers Unite”: Evolving Union Narratives of Migrant Workers

“…However, race cannot be avoided in such a circumstance. By focusing on citizenship and employer wrongdoing, union leaders initially collaborate with the state in hiding racist elements of the TFWP (Sharma, 2008) and entrenching TFWs' position as "other". The initial arc possesses many of the features of unions' historical responses to immigrants.…”

“…In a sense, they are aiding and abetting in a campaign to bust unions" (Gil McGowan, Alberta Federation of Labour, Calgary Herald, May 7, 2006). Sharma (2007Sharma ( , 2008 has argued the TFWP serves to racialize migrant workers through differential status, perpetuating a perception of foreign workers as "other". Union leaders, while not directly mentioning race, draw upon widespread perceptions that TFWs are racially and culturally different to so-called Canadians-despite Canada's racial diversity- (Nakache and Kinoshita, 2010), and thus contribute to framing TFWs as "other".…”

Locating Televisual and Non‐Televisual Textual Sequences with Institutional Ethnography: A Study of Campus and Apartment CCTV Security Work

“…These text-reader conversations reveal the organizational arrangement of an institution, as well as the professional and bureaucratic discourses of the ruling apparatus (Smith, 2001: 175). The texts which concern institutional ethnographers range from government transcripts (Sharma, 2001), to interview transcripts (Smith, 1990: 12-51), to agency records (Ng, 1988), to musical scores (Warren, 2001), to photographs (McCoy, 1995), to video (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1997), to overlapping forms of video and non-video texts (Walby, 2005). The relations which texts organize are often characterized by ruling, or the objectification of a subject who is being acted upon organizationally.…”

Against the Grain: Socially Just Social Science from the Standpoint of Roxana Ng (Review Essay)

“…By way of illustration, despite her consistent concern with the social reproduction of social inequality, a major sociological question, the Canadian Journal of Sociology does not contain a single citation of Ng's work. The Canadian Review of Sociology has just three references to her scholarship (Eichler, 1985;Li, 1992;Sharma, 2001), each limited to a short, parenthetical reference to her research by and for Chinese immigrant women. In other words, Ng's theorizing and research have been taken up by politically like-minded colleagues, but much of her work is circulated apart from a (Euro-Canadian, liberal) "malestream" social scientific tradition.…”