The Labour Market Participation of Immigrant Women : A Study on Immigrant Women in the Flemingdon Park Area

Abstract

Through face-to-face interviews with seven immigrant women living in the Flemingdon Park area, this paper explores the barriers that immigrant women encounter in accessing the labour market, and the challenges they face in the labour market. The findings suggest that lack of work experience, language barriers, absence of networks, lack of education, and family responsibilities and gender roles are major barriers that immigrant women have to cope with while accessing the Canadian labour market. Working environment and underemployment appeared to be the challenges that immigrant women who are, or have been in the labour force, had to deal with in the work place.