"Ignoring differences and refusing to accommodate them is a denial of equal access and opportunity. It is discrimination. To reduce discrimination, we must create and maintain barrier-free environments so that individuals can have genuine access free from arbitrary obstructions to demonstrate and exercise fully their potential (Equality in Employment 1984:3)".

This study reviews literature selected from an extensive bibliography relating to issues on migration to Canada and internationally. A key objective of the review was to develop an understanding of the experiences of migrant women in the Canadian labour market and the connection between their labour market participation and their integration into all aspects of Canadian society. Therefore, much of the literature reviewed focuses on the settlement and integration experiences of immigrant and refugee women. A review of literature about immigration related issues has enriched the project's understanding of Canadian immigration from both a historical and contemporary perspective.

Reviewing this literature has also helped to clarify the relevance of a comprehensive study of African immigrant and refugee women's employment experiences in Toronto. The review process has revealed a limitation in much of the literature due to the tendency to categorize immigrants, and especially immigrant women, as a homogeneous group. Thus, the literature rarely has taken the diversity of experiences of immigrants and refugees in Canada, which arises out of their different socioeconomic, political, cultural, employment, and educational backgrounds, into account. This project has attempted to address this limitation by focusing specifically upon African immigrant and refugee women.

The literature reviewed here, written after 1970, has been categorized into three main areas and divided into three periods. The areas are: (1) independent studies and academic research; (2) government sponsored and produced studies; (3) literature produced by non-governmental agencies. The three periods are as follows: (1) 1970-1980; (2) 1980-1990; (3) the current period, beginning with 1990. Periodization is relevant because it allows for an analysis of the literature as a response to the particular social, economic, and political discourses during the time in which a study or report was undertaken and, thus, acknowledges a corresponding link between the current "climate" and how issues are framed and articulated within a particular study or report. It also takes account of the relationship between the design and implementation of immigration policy, current social and political discourses, and the construction of analytical and theoretical tools for addressing social, economic, and political issues.

This review thus emphasizes the conceptualization of Canadian immigration policy as a dynamic process. The development of dominant issues as they are taken up within the literature cannot be isolated from social movements and political interests as they are expressed within both the Canadian environment and internationally, within academic and nonacademic settings, and within governmental and non-governmental organizations. Because this review was undertaken with a particular interest in literature addressing migrant women's experiences, for example, it became relevant to develop a perspective of this literature as it unfolded alongside and in response to the women's movement in Canada and the elaboration of feminist theories. Periodization elucidates the articulation of issues in the literature as it reflects attempts to address and understand Canadian multiculturalism and the rapidly changing global migration patterns.

It can be argued that the literature of each period reflects both reactions to and reactions against changing immigration policy as it responded to and structured patterns of migration to Canada. The degree to which the literature is a mirror image of Canadian immigration policy and corresponding issues can thus be examined. This study takes the view that immigration and state policy is a central component in the research, articulation, and conceptualization of the questions surrounding the employment of immigrant and refugee women: immigration and hence state policy is central to any discussion regarding immigrants' assimilation and integration into mainstream Canadian culture and society. Such a perspective inevitably evokes issues related intimately to ethnicity, race, culture, gender, class, empowerment, and notions about peoples' participation in society.

Our review starts at 1970 precisely because the growth of the women's movement and elaboration of feminist theory during the 1970s contributed toward an awareness and interest in migrant women's labour market experiences. This interest developed into the production of more comprehensive studies throughout the 1980s. This period also coincides with the United Nations Decade for Women which influenced both academic and governmental interest in issues specifically related to women. The studies and reports which appeared during the 1970s reflect feminism's interest in women's participation in the formal labour market and the prominence of issues of equality and sexism in the labour force.

Writing in the 1970s had not yet taken account of the women's movement as a social transformation about and directed toward middle-class, white women who had access to formal education institutions. It neglected the interests of both immigrant as well as Canadian-born women of the lower classes who had been working in the lower job sectors and informal economy for decades. Thus, while the studies undertaken during the 1970s discuss social status, the position of women workers, the conditions under which they work, and the "ghettoization" of immigrant women in the manufacturing and services industries, much of this was attributed to sexism in the Canadian labour market and gender relations within the immigrant communities concerned. While there are a few exceptions (Turrittin 1976; Arnopolous 1979; Wallman 1979 -- see below), most studies do not significantly reflect the issues of race and class which became integrated throughout social and feminist discourses during the 1980s, nor do they reflect the emphasis toward culture and ethnicity which characterizes the discourses of the 1990s.

Jane Turrittin's study of West Indian domestic workers from the small island of Montserrat was one of several done on West Indian domestics as an occupational group in the 1970s and earlier (Bled 1965; Henry 1968). These studies criticized Canadian immigration policy, arguing that the policy through which these women were allowed into Canada (The Canadian-West Indian Female Domestic Scheme) was both racist and sexist. Turrittin traced the social networks Montserratian women used to advance their geographical and social mobility and described the contradictory social and class relationships -- exploitation and/or patron-client relationships -- in which they were enmeshed as domestic workers (1981).

Sheila Arnopoulos' Problems of Immigrant Women in the Canadian Labour Force (1979), represents an effort to "fill in some of the information gaps relating to the immigrant woman's role and experience in the Canadian labour market" (1979:2). This study was produced at the end of a decade which witnessed progress in western women's efforts to enhance women's participation in the labour market and brings to attention some of the ways in which immigration policy was impacting upon the participation of immigrant women in the Canadian labour market, specifically upon women working in the garment and textile industry. Arnopoulos presents the view that immigration policy in Canada has historically developed in response to labour market demands and that any understanding of immigrant women's experiences and status in the labour market of the 1970s is contingent upon a historical understanding of Canadian immigration policy.

The answer lies in immigration admission practices which since the fifties have tended to encourage the entry of two types of worker: the highly-educated professional at the top of the labour market pyramid and the unskilled worker at the bottom (1979:3).

Problems of Immigrant Women suggests that the government has demonstrated a tendency to view immigrant labour market participation as being dominated by immigrant men. If "women come in as `sponsored' wives, as about a third of immigrant women do, their occupations are not accounted for" (1979:1). Thus, it is suggested that a consequence of immigration policy practices has been that "immigrant women are more than any other group concentrated in the poorer paying work sectors where they are frequently overworked and underpaid" (1979:6). Arnopoulos relates immigrant women's poor labour market position and status to weak labour standards legislation, limited opportunities for workers to pursue their rights in the workplace, and a lack of fluency in either English or French. Although Arnopoulos does not provide an extensive analysis of language training programmes, she argues that without access to language training immigrant women are:

deprived of the first tool necessary for knowledge and protection of basic rights as well as a chance to move on to a better job, namely the ability to effectively communicate in the society (they live) in (1979:34).

In response, "the immigrant woman sticks with her own ethnic group and speaks her own language" (1979:33).

Both Arnopoulos (1979) and Sandra Wallman, in The Scope for Ethnicity (1979), put forth the argument that ethnicity based upon linguistic unity within the workplace is not an effective means of organizing for change. Wallman suggests that even:

workers in a position of least power in the economic system have some space for "local" organisations within the constraints imposed upon them by "outside" structures, (however,) given the nature of those constraints -- and perhaps also given the diversity of ethnic affiliations represented in the labouring group -- ethnicity is...not often the most useful of 'local' organising principles (1979:12).

In The Scope for Ethnicity (1979), Wallman conceptualizes ethnicity as "the process by which `their' difference is used to enhance the sense of `us' for purposes of organisations or identification" (1979:3). A key aspect to understanding ethnicity is to view how this process works to "differentiate and identify groups of people for particular purposes" and how ethnicity is then "the recognition of significant differences between `them' and `us'" (1979:3). There must always be a `them' and an `us' or a `they' and a `we'. According to Wallman, ethnicity "takes two".

This conceptualization of ethnicity views boundaries between groups as flexible and changing social constructions. Even if these boundaries are recognized to differing degrees by various groups, they exist precisely because they are recognized by groups which use them to identify their difference or distinctiveness. Wallman suggests that the process of constructing boundaries is reactive, and the characteristics of an "ethnic group" are both "self-imposed" and "other-imposed". Each minority population within an urban economy constitutes "a bunch of people distinguished by characteristics which stand in some meaningful contrast to the characteristics of the classifier" (1979:5).

Exploring the "process and use of ethnicity" in workplace contexts, Wallman further develops a conceptualization of an "ethnic economy" within a dominant economy. "Formal" and "informal" forms of work are not viewed as being in contrast but rather as having some degree of complementarity.

Traditional cultural resources of obligation, filiation, status, organisations, value and so on are adapted to non-traditional spheres of work, often with the effect of enhancing work-defined objectives; patterns and structures and technologies of work feed back upon traditional culture, affecting, offering - sometimes even enhancing - aboriginal forms and meanings (1979:10).

Thus people working in an "ethnic economy" have constructed its organization based upon the options, or lack of options, available to them in the formal economy. However, Wallman's argument seems to accept the notion that the "ethnic other" is bound by culture and tradition. When the boundaries are "self-imposed" they are the "traditions of a particular culture". Traditional cultural values expressed within the domestic sphere are transferred to the work sphere; the "mode of organisations" thus guided by domestic -- traditional -- relations. The:

traditions of a particular culture will lead its members to select certain forms of work out of the options open to them; will allow or require them to carry rights and obligations over from the non-work to the work sphere...and will provide them with idioms, symbolic structures and modes of organisations which may, if they are suitable to it, be adapted to the needs or opportunities of a particular environment (1979:11).

Lacking a gender analysis, Wallman's analysis differs remarkably from that presented by Sallie Westwood and Parminder Bhachu almost ten years later in Enterprising Women (1988) and from Annie Phizacklea's feminist critique of the 'ethnic economy' which appears in Enterprising Women.

A similar critique can be made of a government-commissioned report, Three Years in Canada: Canadian Immigration and Population Study 1974), which influenced policy with respect to immigration in the late 1970s. Although it found that immigrant women appeared to have a higher labour market participation rate than Canadian-born women, "the study confined itself mostly to male heads of families...the labour market experience of immigrant women as a group was not considered" (Arnopoulos 1979:2).

The decade between 1980 and 1990 is significant for both the development of western feminist studies as well as for an increasing awareness of and interest in the experiences of immigrant and refugee women from western and non-western countries. It is a period during which literature produced by Canadian writers begins to critically acknowledge and address the previous neglect of women's cultural, ethnic, linguistic, socio-economic, and class diversity. There is also a growth in literature produced by immigrant women representing non-governmental organizations which both addresses the limitations of earlier studies as well as articulates and introduces new issues. In addition, the 1980s are significant for this review in that the development of multiculturalism as a government policy and as an element of Canadian identity becomes integral to the analyses of studies and reports. It is also during the 1980s that the patterns of global migration change significantly. More people are arriving to settle in Canada from non-western countries and more people are arriving as political refugees. Moreover, more people are arriving as Family Sponsored, and more women immigrants and refugees from non-western countries are contradictions surrounding ideologies behind multiculturalism and also contributes toward a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences of immigrant and refugee women beyond the labour market participation as well as how their employment experiences are mediated by other factors. This literature can be viewed as setting the tone for 1990s discourses which acknowledge the integration of culture, class, gender, and race in the contemporary Canadian environment.

Literature was produced from university social science and humanities departments; government departments commissioned studies of the 'immigrant woman' in Canada; and social arriving, than during earlier years. The 1980s literature captures the complexities and service organizations conducted their own studies in their efforts to better meet the needs of their clients and to compete for provincial and federal funding. Much of this literature points to the limitations and barriers confronted by immigrant women in all aspects of their integration into Canadian society. A portrait emerged of immigrant women as having special language and skills training needs, as being over-represented in the manufacturing and service industry sectors, as facing discrimination in the labour market, as being limited in their employment opportunities by a lack of access to childcare, and finally, as having to take on positions which did not reflect their educational qualifications and work experiences.

The 1980 spring issue of Canadian Woman Studies chronicles the decade between 1970 and 1980. The introductory editorial reflects upon feminism and women's studies in the 1970s and the many achievements of the women's movement, concluding that "the greatest positive changes have been made on the personal level" (CWS 1980:3). Women who had traditionally seen themselves as being at the forefront of women's social and political transformation came to recognize that the significance of women's personal experiences extended beyond themselves.

Many women have changed their attitudes towards themselves - and towards other women...We've learned to test things out against a new set of values -- values that spring from the experience of a shared womanhood (CWS 1980:3).

The beginning of a new decade was viewed as the beginning of a "new phase" in feminism, a phase which would come to reflect an effort by the women's movement to reach beyond western cultural and social boundaries to include the personal outside of the western personal -- "the phase when, backed up by our own culture, we begin to change the things beyond ourselves" (CWS 1980:3).

In 1981, the federal Liberal government sponsored the first national conference addressing immigrant women's experiences in Canada. This conference, and the ensuing report, The Immigrant Woman in Canada: A Right to Recognition (1981), may have contributed to the direction of both government and non-governmental studies throughout much of the decade. Both the conference proceedings and the report highlighted language training as a key factor in the more equitable integration of immigrant women. A lack of fluency in English or French was considered to be the greatest barrier to immigrant women's full participation in the Canadian labour market and in Canadian society. The report refers to the Minister of Employment and Immigration's suggestion that "no federal service available to immigrants is more important than language training", and the Minister's assertion that the government was currently "elaborating a more sensitive employment strategy that would emphasize `special recognition of the problems immigrant women face'" (Multiculturalism Directorate 1981:8). It was acknowledged that immigrant women were discriminated against "both because of their sex and of their status as immigrants -- and some, in addition, because of their colour". Immigrant women were seen to be "victimized in three areas: immigration, employment, and education" (1981:7). In spite of this, discrimination and racism did not emerge as a prominent discussion theme either during the conference nor within the report. The fact that immigrant women often work in "jobs that Canadian women won't take" (1981:7) was not explored. While The Immigrant Woman in Canada recognizes that their immigrant status is one basis of discrimination against immigrant women in the labour market, it fails to address the relationship between immigrant women's cultural and ethnic background and their employment status.

Rather than problematize the construction of stereotypical images and identities of immigrant women as a homogeneous group, The Immigrant Woman in Canada contributes to such stereotypical images. According to the report, immigrant women:

are expected to be the guardians of their indigenous culture, the promoters of ethnic loyalty within the family. Yet each morning they wave the children off to school knowing that their offspring are naturally becoming more and more Canadianized. If these women do not learn English or French, do not gain an appreciation for Canadian lifestyle, they find themselves as the years of sacrifice grow, in the agonizing position of being rewarded with alienation from their husbands and their children (1981:20).

The report further states:

At the bottom of many of the problems lies the tradition of many cultures that the husband is king of the castle and his wife and children must abide by his often arbitrary will. This concept is reinforced when the woman is catalogued as a dependent on entering Canada, so that, while she may work harder and longer outside the home than her husband, she is treated as nothing more than a grown-up child within the family (1981:21).

In The Immigrant Woman in Canada, the government recognized the right of immigrant women to "be regarded as individuals with their own aspirations and difficulties", but another image also emerges. This second image views immigrant women as dependent, victimized, lacking in resources and communication skills, and as immobilized by their traditional domestic roles. The report does not conceptualize immigrant women as autonomous decision-makers and social actors but rather as a victimized group who must look upon the government to "give them their rightful place, as full contributors and participants in Canadian society" (1981:21). Finally, the report leaves a strong message about the acceptance of cultural diversity in the Canadian social milieu. "Cherishing cultural traditions must never be an excuse for failing to advance with society" (1981:21).

In spite of government efforts during the 1980s to address the experiences of immigrant women in Canada, and to examine the reasons immigrant women's experiences are distinct from Canadian-born women, government ministries and departments continued to sponsor reports which neglected to integrate consideration of immigrant women into discussions of Canadian women. One example is the study A Decade of Promise: An Assessment of Canadian Women's Status in Education, Training and Employment, 1976-1985 (Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women 1986). This work does not address immigrant women in its analysis and presentation of the changing position of women in the Canadian labour market.

Annie Phizacklea conceptualizes "immigrant women"' as another "layer of segmentation" within the working class, subordinated because of their race and gender (1983). Phizacklea argues that immigrant women:

having been `produced' by the demand for labour in socially undesirable and low-wage sectors of the economy...(are) confined to those sectors often by specific policies and practices which are partially justified by the ascription of inferior characteristics, the consequences then being viewed as a vindication of the ideology (1983:85).

K. Seydegart's Beyond Dialogue: Immigrant Women in Canada 1985-1990 (1984) attempts to:

document the priorities of Canadian immigrant women as they bear on federal government policy and programming for the years 1985-1990, in order to achieve equality in the participation and status of immigrant women in Canada (1985:4).

This report brings to the open the discrimination experienced by immigrant women and calls for "aggressive strategies to overcome discrimination in all its forms" and for the development of "a new egalitarian relationship with federal government departments and agencies to replace a relationship in which women are perceived as dependent" (1985:3). Westwood and Bhachu (1988) also argue for a recognition of the importance of challenging "naive culturalist accounts" that attempt to demonstrate the relevance of race, ethnicity, and gender in "explanations of behaviour".

Both A. Estable (1986) and Westwood and Bhachu (1988) attempt to address issues around the relationship between western feminism and immigrant women, particularly immigrant women from non-western countries. Westwood and Bhachu refer to the "polarization" of the women's movement over the issue of racism in western settings, while Estable suggests that an area of interest that needs to be pursued further is the "relation of immigrant women, and the organized immigrant women's community, to the organized mainstream `women's movement'" (1986). Westwood and Bhachu call for a "feminist agenda which is alive to the specificities of black minority women as it encompasses the experiences and concerns of all women" and express a commitment toward "understanding the lives of minority women as simultaneously an expression of difference and similarity" (1988:2).

Who Gets the Work: A Test of Racial Discrimination in Employment (Henry and Ginzberg, 1985) was funded by Multiculturalism Canada as the first large-scale and in-depth study of employment discrimination in Canada (see also Equality in Employment, 1984). The introduction to Who Gets the Work outlines the significance of the study:

For the first time in Canada, there is direct and concrete evidence of some of the ways in which non-Whites are denied equal access to employment. The results of this study clearly indicate that there is very substantial discrimination affecting the ability of members of racial minority groups to find employment (Henry 1985:4).

The study defines discrimination as:

those practices or attitudes, wilful or unintentional, which have the effect of limiting an individual's or group's rights to economic opportunities because of irrelevant traits such as skin colour (1985:4).

Employment discrimination was tested by sending "job seekers" into the labour market. White applicants were found to receive a greater proportion of job offers and were more frequently called back for a second interview, they were also more often treated with courtesy.

Who Gets the Work draws upon earlier government-sponsored studies, such as Equality Now! (1984), which had identified employment discrimination as a key factor in the labour market opportunities and experiences of "visible minority" groups. Writing of Equality Now!, Frances Henry and Effie Ginzberg state:

(B)rief after brief submitted to the all Parliamentary Committee on Visible Minorities in Canadian Society, complained that non-Whites simply do not have the same access to employment as do other more privileged members of society (1985:4).

Equality Now! and Equality in Employment clearly identify discrimination as a problem; Who Gets the Work presents tangible evidence of how employment discrimination works in the job search process. Henry and Ginzberg point out that both reports also:

note that a form of affirmative action is the only strategy designed to provide equal access to employment to all members of society regardless of their gender, religion, ethnicity, physical status or race (1985:8).

David Matas's much later work, Racism and Migration (1994), discusses two types of discrimination: official and structural. Official racism "is policy racism", while structural racism is "discrimination, both in the governmental and non-governmental arena, in the supply of services, in hiring, in promoting, that is not overt" (Matas 1994:15). In accordance with the conclusions presented in Who Gets the Work, Matas suggests that combating structural racism, "involves techniques such as affirmative action, reasonable accommodation and the establishment and involvement of human rights commissions" (1994:15).

The first study on Africans in Toronto, The Integration of Black African Immigrants in Canadian Society: A Case Study of Toronto CMA (1988) was undertaken by A.B.K. Kasozi. This work, which provides a statistical description and analysis of racial discrimination and its impact upon the participation and position of African immigrants in Toronto's labour market, documents well the significance of employment position in Canada's hierarchical, class and ethnically stratified society. Kasozi writes:

Participation in the economic life of a society as represented by employment, a good income, job security, opportunities for advancement, chances for training, ability to get another job when the old one is lost and so on, is probably the most important indicator of integration (1988:23).

The Integration of Black African Immigrants in Canadian Society highlights the extent to which discrimination is truly a barrier not just to employment, but to people's opportunities to progress fully in other social domains.

Frank Trovato and Carl Grindstaff's Economic Status: A Census Analysis of Immigrant Women at Age Thirty in Canada (1986), focuses upon economic status and achievement as key factors in the assimilation of immigrant women to Canadian society. The authors identify assimilation as "a complex and multidimensional phenomenon" (1986:570), but the work as a whole does not take into account the complex social and cultural relationships in Canadian society which are influenced by economic status and class position, as well as perceptions of race and ethnicity, country of origin, and cultural background.

The connection between birthplace and economic status is explored by Monica Boyd in Ascription and Achievement: Studies in Mobility and Status Attainment in Canada (1985). Boyd suggests that country of origin is "intimately tied to occupation stratification in Canada" (1985:416), and that "birthplace stratifies the female full-time labour force" (1985:436). According to Boyd, immigrant mobility is influenced by group differences in motivations and aspirations, differences in prejudice and discrimination encountered by various groups, and state-derived labour policies which direct the patterns of immigrant labour (1985:395). Boyd also suggests that socio-economic backgrounds might influence occupational status within Canada: "Do some groups have a higher occupational status than others because they come from higher socio-economic origins?" (1985:417).

Because status is discussed in Boyd's work in terms of mainstream Canadian notions, her work reveals a limitation present in many such discussions: to what extent are the criteria of status ascription and attainment similar in, and of equal interest and significance to, various immigrant groups? To what extent can there be made a meaningful comparison of status between immigrant groups, and between immigrants and Canadians, when comparison is based upon mainstream notions of class position and status?

In Ethiopian Refugee Settlement in Ontario: The Process for Government Sponsored Refugees (1987), Steven Metzger reviewed the relationships between employment counsellors and their clients -- in this case Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees. Metzger suggests that employment counsellors tend to view "job placement and self-sufficiency as the key goals of their mandate" (1987:19). Resettlement workers and employment counsellors to whom Metzger talked spoke about pressures of time and financial constraints as influences on their ability to meet the interests of Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees. On the other hand, the Ethiopians and Eritreans interviewed pointed out the limitations of the focus toward eligibility and job-readiness Canadian work experience, and expressed an interest in developing skills beyond the superficial level encouraged of them by government and non-governmental sponsored and administered programmes. They also suggested that a "lack of information and access to information" slowed their adjustment to Canadian society.

Metzger argues that the construction and categorization of refugees as a group by employment counsellors, government representatives, and employers does impede upon refugees' adaptation to and participation in Canadian society. Metzger thus raises and addresses the important issue of the expectations held by refugees and immigrants when they arrive in Canada. Many of the frustrations experienced by this group of African refugees is due to their expectation that their previous educational and work experience will be easily transferrable to the Canadian labour market. These frustrations are compounded by the difficult adjustments political refugees must confront. Metzger suggests that part of these difficulties could be alleviated by more comprehensive orientation and training. Joan Semalchik (1992) adds that greater understanding on the part of Canadians would be beneficial to refugees' settlement.

The implications of losing one's country, family and past life is greatly exacerbated by memories of intense personal violation and maltreatment. Specialized service is necessary, but recognition and support from the larger community remains vital for those who have endured and survived the torment of torture (1992:27).

According to Metzger, the "problem of unrealistic expectations cannot be separated from that of cultural shock and cultural adjustment" (1987:14).

Shirley Seward's report, Immigrant Women in Canada: A Policy Perspective (1988), attempts to "redress" the neglect of immigrant women in the formulation and implementation of immigration policy by presenting an analysis of the economic and social characteristics of immigrant women in Canada. Moreover, the report calls for giving attention to the "special needs" of immigrant women.

Annie Phizacklea's feminist critique of modes of organization and production within an "ethnic economy" (1988) reflects a more sophisticated analysis than previous studies of immigrant women's social and economic positions within the larger urban economy (see Wallman 1979). Nonetheless, Phizacklea's study leaves room for the development of a more comprehensive understanding of "ethnic economy". If, indeed, there are ethnic economies functioning within the larger urban formal economy, is the construction of ethnic boundaries a progressive reaction to the limitations of immigration policy concerning language training, skills upgrading, and employment services? Wallman (1979) queried the usefulness of local organization. One might also ask whether women's participation in "ethnic economies" and/or informal work spheres represents the most progressive solution to the limitations of state policy and the lack of opportunities (barriers) in mainstream social and economic relations.

Roxana Ng's The Politics of Community Services (1988) provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the positions of immigrant women in the Canadian labour market in relation to the delivery of employment counselling and services. This work highlights the instrumental and powerful role that agencies and organizations can play mediating between immigration policy practice and immigrant women and demonstrates the often contradictory and conflictual nature of this role. Employment agencies are conceptualized as guided by the particular political, economic, and social interests of the three groups agencies work with simultaneously -- immigrant women, the government, and employers. Ng shows, however, that it is often immigrant women whose interests are not adequately met, particularly with regard to their employment in positions which match their experiences and qualifications. Ng states that, "through observing the counsellor's daily work of job counselling and placement, I came to see how `immigrant women' were produced as a labour market category" (1988:11). One of the important questions which arises from Ng's work concerns the extent to which employment counsellors, collectively and individually, make decisions that affect women's participation in all aspects of Canadian society in response to pressure to secure funding from government sources as well as to continual demands from employers for unskilled labour? Are immigrant women too often being directed toward the lower job sectors so that employment agencies can continue functioning to meet employers' needs?

Ng found that the employment agency she studied had a clear mandate for advocacy and social action with respect to the improvement of immigrant and "visible minority" women's labour market positions. However:

the agency's operation underwent certain transformations from its inception ..it came to function on behalf of the state apparatus in organizing and producing immigrant women as a distinctive kind of labour, as `commodities', in the Canadian labour market (1988:12).

According to Ng, an employment counsellor:

constantly had to strike a balance between her role as an advocate and her relationships with government officials and employers on whom the agency depended for funding and for a continual supply of job orders (1988:14).

 

Peter Li's 1992 work, Race and Gender as Bases of Class Fractions and their Effects on Earnings, demonstrates the complementarity of race, class, and gender as mediating factors in immigrant and "visible minority" women's employment experiences. Li presents a theoretical framework for looking at how class is fragmented by race and gender. Drawing upon 1986 Census data, Li compares five classes -- managerial, professional, working, employer, and petty bourgeoisie -- and concludes that, "the findings tend to support the claim that race and gender fractionalizations operate more strongly among wage-earners than among those who own and control capital" (1992:502). Li describes an "ascriptive class segment" as "a portion of a class which is set off from the rest of the class by some readily identifiable and relatively stable characteristics of the persons assigned to that segment, such as race, ethnicity, or sex..." (1992:490). Both racism and sexism set women apart so that they become, as Phizacklea has argued (1983), another layer of segmentation within an already subordinated working class.

Several studies and reports produced during the 1980s recognize that gender, race, and country of origin influence the recruitment of labour into particular job sectors (Multiculturalism Directorate, 1981; Phizacklea, 1983; Seydegart, 1985; Ng, 1988; Westwood and Bhachu, 1988). Li's work suggests that income inequalities within job segments or classes are more influenced by gender than by race. "Non-white women have by far the worst income level, although their income gap relative to white women is relatively small". The "effect of race on earnings is dependent upon gender: race produces a greater effect on earnings among men than women" (1992:496). Thus, Li determines that "non-white women seem to have experienced a major jeopardy in earnings for being women, and only a marginal jeopardy for being non-white" (1992:501).

Li's work does not explore the process by which non-white women with similar educational qualifications as their white male counterparts become part of the lower working class in the first place. A necessary question becomes to what extent do education and economic status determine class for some, while race and culture are more important factors in class position for others?

In its 1994 spring issue focusing on race and gender, Canadian Woman Studies strongly reflects the significance of the complementarity of these concepts as analytical tools in women's studies. While feminism at the beginning of the 1980s sought to extend an awareness of the "personal" beyond its traditional boundaries, feminist writing in the 1990s is influenced by issues of representation and authority. The spring 1994 issue seeks to document and analyze the socio-economic and political "climate of controversy" in Canada. The editorial board was:

chosen for its wide representation of diverse communities and for its grassroots connections...our lives reflect the experiences of gender and race oppressions in their multiple complexities (CWS 1994:3).

In working toward a theoretical framework for understanding relations within the "total cultural web" of a multicultural society, it becomes relevant to consider the degree to which various cultural interests are being expressed within the more dominant, mainstream social, economic, and political institutions. Helene Moussa (1993) presents a conceptualization of culture as a thread which links all of the structures of a society, rather than as an individual, separate structure. For Moussa, culture:

is an intricate web of verbal and non-verbal language systems: the social, economic and political institutions and their infrastructure in a given country; the customs and traditions of a group of people; the ecological and architectural characteristics of a country and community...Culture is the way people express themselves, the way they move and the way they solve their problems. Culture determines what people consider to be important, what they value and what they do not value. Culture is not neutral ...Culture is learned... We cannot really understand one facet of culture without relating it to the total cultural web (1993:27).

This entails questioning the extent to which, and the manner in which, the multiple and diverse expressions of various cultures are mediated by the "need" or demand for participation or integration in mainstream society. The dominant "culture" can be viewed as that which embodies the individual structures that influence and control "other" cultural expressions and "others" participation in those structures. If the society itself is viewed as being comprised of diverse and varied cultural expression, and its institutions as reflecting the interests of what is perceived as the dominant "culture", then ideas about people's participation in society become a central component of debates and discussions about Canadian multiculturalism.

In The Multiculturalism Act and Refugee Integration in Canada (1994), Fernando Mata describes the Multiculturalism Act of 1988 as being "based on a set of fundamental values and principles which allow immigrants and refugees to identify with Canadian society" (1994:20). These principles are directed toward Canadians, encouraging attitudes of inclusiveness and hospitality, understanding of cultural difference, protectiveness of individual and collective rights, and promotion of a "social ethos" rooted in equality and participation. Mata's work reflects the dramatic changes in the construction of Canadian identity which occurred in the 1980s and which remain a focus of Canadian discourses. "By the early 1980s, the Canadian public realized that the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country was a fundamental and irreversible characteristic of Canadian society" (Mata 1994:18).

Earlier on, Westwood and Bhachu had discussed culture in the following manner:

a material and collective expression of social life...our understanding, therefore, connects the importance of cultural forms in generating strategies, defences, and forms of resistance... cultural change becomes a complex interaction between contradictory elements which generate change in uneven ways and simultaneously reproduce patterns and innovate (Westwood and Bhachu 1988:11).

In consideration of Westwood and Bhachu's conceptualization, an understanding of multiculturalism can be further enhanced by viewing cultural dynamism in the Canadian context as an articulation between essentially, though not inherently, "contradictory elements" -- minority cultures and mainstream social, economic, and political structures. (See also arguments by Simmons and Keohane [1992] presented in the chapter on the state).

Within the Canadian context, it is assumed that multiculturalism encourages and "promote(s) the pluralistic coexistence of diverse social groups" (Opoku-Dapaah 1994:10). In Adaptation of Ghanaian Refugees in Toronto, Opoku-Dapaah argues:

integration is conceptualized as the ability of immigrants and refugees to settle into the existing Canadian mosaic, benefiting fully from available opportunities, without emerging as a subclass (1994:10).

The Immigration Dilemma (Globerman 1992) is comprised of essays through which a theme of the economic and social impact of immigration upon the contemporary Canadian environment and institutions is interwoven. This type of work is important to understand Canadian immigration debates in the 1990s in that it reflects both the growing concern about and reaction to the changing backgrounds of migrants to Canada -- more people arriving from nonindustrial countries -- as well as to the relationship between economic decline and "open-door" immigration policy. Works such as The Immigration Dilemma should also be considered within the context of the recessionary economy.

Globerman criticizes the view that immigration benefits the Canadian economy, overall, by drawing attention to an Economic Council of Canada study which concludes that there is no sustained correlation between immigration and economic growth" (1992:7). Although Globerman also acknowledges that immigration does not necessarily create high unemployment, his work emphasizes that the potentially positive gains of "cultural and ethnic diversity" of immigration to Canadian society "remain to be seen". Globerman identifies and defines the central aspects of immigration discussions in Canada, pointing out that the Economic Council of Canada "notes explicitly that the debate about immigration in Canada revolves around both the numbers and type of immigrants that should be allowed into the country" (1996:6). Since this work concludes that immigration generally has demonstrated neither a strong positive or negative impact upon economic growth and stability, Globerman suggests the more relevant issue is the "erosion of tradition and values", and the problems incurred by educational systems burdened by children without English or French fluency as well as an immigrant and refugee processing system seemingly out of government control (1992:6).

The more salient features of a book such as The Immigration Dilemma are its contributions to constructions about notions of the Canadian identity. More significant, perhaps, is the development of an argument which posits a single, unified, and cohesive Canadian identity as something which is "eroded" or devalued by the presence of immigrants and refugees, by immigration policy and, thus, by Canadian multiculturalism. What is not fully explored is multiculturalism as an integral aspect of Canadian identity.

The majority of the literature reviewed for this study can be categorized as writing which critiques the design and implementation of immigration policy in view of its generally negative impact upon immigrant's and refugee's lives. There are, however, other elements to the discussion of immigration related issues in Canadian literature. Rather than viewing the design and implementation of immigration policy in terms of its impact upon the ability of, and opportunities for, immigrants to integrate and participate in Canadian society, some literature questions the impact of immigrants' presence upon Canadian economic, social and political institutions. Some observers propose theoretical frameworks for analysis of Canadian society as encompassing cultural diversity. Other observers propose a critique of the influence of cultural diversity upon a single, well developed Canadian identity.

An objective of this review has been to present literature that raises theoretical questions and presents analyses which would be complementary to some of the quantitative and qualitative data presented elsewhere in the study. We therefore hope that this review, along with the data presented in the other chapters, will stimulate readers to actively consider the experiences and situations of immigrant and refugee women in Canada, and more specifically of African women in Metropolitan Toronto.

Canadian writings, studies, reports, and documents about immigration clearly point to the increasingly complex character of immigration as a subject in the contemporary Canadian environment. One of the more salient features of the literature is that it indicates the extent to which such discussions remain unresolved. Viewing the literature from a historical perspective (periodization) encourages an understanding of the changing priorities and issues. Although the literature selected for this review was produced after 1970, this is not because immigration was not discussed prior to this period but rather because the issues more relevant to this study really come to the forefront beginning with the late 1970s and early 1980s. In developing an understanding of the more prominent issues such as the delivery of social services, language and skills training, education and work qualifications, and the integration of immigrants into mainstream society, it is useful to consider the contexts for writing. The key contexts might be identified as: the women's movement and feminist theory; the changing migration patterns to Canada; the political and economic interests of Canada, the development of immigrant and "visible minority" women's social organizations; multiculturalism; the changing pattern of women's labour force participation; the recessionary economy.

Writings about women immigrants and refugees in Canada contribute toward increasing awareness and understanding of the distinct experiences of women, especially women from non-western countries, in the labour force. However, a limitation of this recognition has been the categorization of immigrants as a homogeneous group. The need to explore how immigrant women become more "immigrant" than immigrant men and how some immigrant women become more "immigrant" than other immigrant women is an important remaining challenge. Further exploration of the notions and constructions which "allow" some women to have a class, others to have a culture, and others to have only a colour are also needed. Thus, there is a need to develop comprehensive understanding and full recognition of the ways in which culture, ethnicity, race, gender, and class are taken up, reconfigured and/or confused in the construction of social, economic, and political relationships in contemporary Canadian society.

The use of language is another aspect of the dynamic character of "immigration discussions" to which more attention needs to be given. For example, toward the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s the subjects of study -- immigrants and refugees -- are generally referred to as social actors rather than subjects. This terminological change can be attributed, in part, to postmodern writing, as well as to progressive methodological transformations in social anthropology, women's studies, and sociology. Westwood and Bhachu's introduction to Enterprising Women (1988) illustrates this change. They write: "The black and minority women are seen to be active subjects calling upon diverse resources, including their ethnic and cultural context, for their lives in the workplace and the home" (1988:2). In Storm and Sanctuary (1993), Moussa describes being "deeply moved and inspired" by the Ethiopian and Eritrean women with whom she worked and how she found a resistance to circumstances which greatly impinged upon their survival. Moussa explains that this "understanding of resistance has made me see them as victimized rather than as victims, and as active shapers of their personal and collective lives" (1993:16).

In a similar way, much of the more recent literature acknowledges and even emphasizes people who have traditionally been conceptualized as passive, dependent, and vulnerable, as social actors, as having agency, as actively participating in decision-making, and even as innovating solutions. While there is no doubt that this is a positive development in contemporary discourses, it is nonetheless important to keep in mind that these "new" social actors did not suddenly develop agency and strength in the 1980s. Rather, those who wrote about them chose to accord them with active decision-making abilities.

This study has worked toward maintaining a socio-political perspective (see Chapter Four) throughout the research and data-collection process and throughout the discussions presented in the report. The relevance of the study's literature review is linked to the ongoing need for recognition of the context and climate, as well as for ongoing analysis of developments in social and political discourses, such as changes in language.

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