Blog post by Nathanson fellow Eunice Mbugua
While a lot of work from an anti-racist and Canadian Black feminist theory has unearthed the many ways that Black women in Canada are marginalized and oppressed, more studies that broaden the scope of Blackness are necessary to include professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women as a distinct Black community, to address specific labour market gaps and challenges they experience upon immigrating to Canada. My qualitative study focuses on the experiences of professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women from East Africa, living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). My study asks; ‘What are the experiences of PSAIW? How do they cope? My goal is to ground theory through their voices, which are silenced through gendered anti-Black and anti-African racism.
This dissertation project builds on and expands my Master’s research paper titled “Multiple Levels of Minority’; ‘A case of professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women from East Africa navigating the Canadian professional labour market. My Master’s research paper found that, despite the Canadian Employment Equity Act which was declared in August 1986 to ensure equality at the workplace, and correct discriminations specific to women, visible minorities, Aboriginals, and persons with disabilities at multiple intersections, discrimination against PSAIW occurs due to gendered antiBlack and anti-African racism. The Master’s research paper found that despite Canada’s preference for highly educated immigrants through the point system introduced in 1967, to address immigration discriminatory practices, the criteria used to determine labour market suitability for professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women produce and sustain gender, race and ethnicity labour market discrimination practices and outcomes, that hinder professional employability of professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women, despite most of them having high qualifications.
Due to the shortage of literature on these labour market experiences, these specific gaps and experiences are gravely understudied, and normalize professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women as naturally inadmissible in Canada’s professional labour market. These literature gaps mask the systemic barriers that prevent professional labour market participation of professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women, producing a disproportionate representation in precarious jobs, unemployment, underemployment, care work, and generational poverty. The systemic embeddedness of sub-Saharan African immigrant women as only suitable for non skilled/low-skilled work, blocks access to settlement resources, professional development, and resources suitable for upward mobility. As a professional sub-Saharan African immigrant woman myself, who immigrated to Canada as an accountant with over twelve years of working experience, I have first hand experience of labour market challenges finding work in my pre-immigration career field, which led to a return to school for a second career. I therefore enter this study in my duo occupancy as a researcher participant in my multiple embodiments at the intersection of race, gender, class, and place of origin.
One key finding from my Master’s research is that, despite the devaluing of their skills, Black immigrants (particularly women) from sub-Saharan Africa have the highest rate of attainment of a bachelor’s degree or higher, even higher than Canadian-born sub-Saharan Africans. Despite their high levels of qualification, professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women are disproportionately relegated to survival jobs generally accepted for Black people and Africans in care and factory work, are rated low in credential assessment outcomes, and are denied employment opportunities needed to gain the work experience necessary to enter professional jobs. Hierarchies within Blackness also construct sub-Saharan Africans as lesser Black people, making professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women minorities within minorities.
My study calls for research methodologies and approaches that center on professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women, whose studies are missing in labour market scholarship, due to the assumption of homogeneity in how labour market discrimination is experienced across the margins. My research is interdisciplinary, situated at the intersection of critical race, anti-racist, Black Canadian feminist, and labour market policy perspectives. These intersectional frameworks offer a lens through which to examine professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women lived realities, and identify specific gaps in the labour market scholarship.
The foundation of this qualitative research is also based on epistemological and ontological tenets of social constructivism. For my dissertation study, social constructivism assumes that professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women embody multiple identity markers that shape their professional labour market realities, formed through interacting systems. I will also use critical discourse analysis to examine categories such as ‘Canadian experience,’ ‘credential assessment, ‘and ‘skilled immigrants,’ as taken-for-granted tools that contribute to the devaluation of professional sub-Saharan African immigrant women’s skills, to sustain a gendered and racialized dominant narrative. Discourse analysis provides me with a critical path to reorient historical and present-day socially constructed qualifiers that disqualify sub-Saharan African immigrants’ skills, based on what is discoursed as professional skills or who can become a professional in the Canadian labour market conceptualizing.
My dissertation study speaks to labour market researchers, academic institutions, policymakers, and employers, deconstructing the normalization of sub-Saharan African immigrant women as degenerate, and naturally deserving of a legacy of generational poverty, a logic that demarcates professional immigrants according to the politics of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. As such, a perspective particular to professional sub-Saharan African women’s experiences provides a philosophical lens to address questions about the nature, scope, and sources of existing labour market knowledge, calling for the reassessment of professional labour market recruitment criteria and the professionalization of visible minority immigrants.