The Role Of Immigrant Serving Organizations In The Canadian Welfare State: A Case Study

by
B. Saddeiqa Holder

CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION AND INTERPRETATION

Summary of the Study

The aim of this thesis has been an investigation into the role of immigrant serving organizations in the welfare state. According to community advocates, the growth of ISOs resulted from: mainstream institutions’ inability to provide services in the languages of immigrants; lack of understanding in mainstream programs, policies and staff, of the culture and life experiences of immigrants; immigrants’ preference to receive social services from organizations and staff from their own communities; ISOs’ ongoing advocacy to eliminate racism as a barrier to settlement; and the work of ISOs in pressuring government for increases in funding (Beyenne et al.,1996). Proponents also argue that ISOs have been continually underfunded, that the range of funded services is inadequate to meet the needs of immigrants, and that, given the unwillingness or inability of mainstream services to meet the service demands of immigrants, separate institutions are required to meet immigrant needs, and to actualize power sharing with minority communities.

International literature on voluntary organizations in the welfare state has been investigated revealing factors that impact upon one aspect of ISOs, their status as voluntary organizations that are largely government funded. A second body of literature on minority (immigrant) communities in Canada has been explored shedding light on that other defining characteristic of ISOs, service delivery to immigrants. Taken together these bodies of literature reveal a contradictory relationship with the state. State policies and funding enable at the same time that they constrain.

The immigration process and subsequent settlement of immigrants have been structured by state intervention in different ways at different periods. Recent literature on the voluntary sector has identified a country's socio-historical circumstances as relevant. Strong nation building dynamics (Pal, 1993; Parkin, et. al., 1992), a federal/provincial structure, and constitutional allocation of powers to each of these levels of government (Hawkins, 1986) have been key features of the Canadian situation. The legacy of these institutional features has shaped present day jockeying between levels of government regarding responsibilities for immigrant services. In anglophone Canada in the past, British welfare state traditions have determined the greater presence of state funded/state delivered services with a supplementary role played by voluntary organizations (Campfens, 1990). State provided services were characterized by the application of universal criteria and standardized rules (Evers, 1993).

Socio-economic and cultural changes spurred the growth of the voluntary sector (Evers, 1993; Ismael, 1988; McCarthy & Hodginkinson, 1992) and the funding of community based advocacy and service organizations which originated during the 1960s has continued unabated despite fluctuating funding levels, policies and program criteria. During this period Canada's preoccupation with national identity shifted from that of a bilingual nation to a multicultural country, although much of the political debate still centres upon the two Charter groups. Nonetheless, from the mid-1960s government support for advocacy organizations has been couched in terms of national unity, and consequently, citizenship, identity, and participation, encouraging in turn a political discourse of collective rights and equality (Pal, 1993). Federal funding for official language minority associations and multicultural groups fared well relative to women's groups and First Nations peoples (Pal, 1993; Phillips, 1991), attesting to the preeminence of Canadian identity issues-- in symbolic terms at least. Concurrently a notable policy constituency of immigrant and refugee aid organizations was created (Agnew, 1996; Lanphier & Lukomskyj, 1992; Whitaker, 1991). However recent cost cutting measures have taken a toll: a 1996 Metropolitan Toronto community agency survey reveals immigrant and settlement services as being the hardest hit by funding reductions (City of Toronto Urban Development Services, Metro Community Services, Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, 1996).

Political studies of immigrant serving organizations in Canada have suggested that government funding has operated as a form of social control, creating elites within ethnic communities (Indra, 1987), blunting criticism by agencies (Agnew, 1996), influencing the terms in which needs are expressed, and reproducing a labour market stratified by gender and ethnicity (Ng, 1988). Social work writings concerned with service delivery questions recommend the provision of service through mainstream agencies’ use of ethnic matching (Matsuoka & Sorenson, 1991) or through collaboration between mainstream organizations and settlement agencies (Teram & White, 1994) because ISOs are by themselves unable to meet immigrant needs, given their chronic underfunding. Further, separate institutions may result in a continued marginalization of immigrant groups (Christensen, 1993). Taken together they paint a bleak picture of the possibilities of community involvement and control of services.

Research in different countries supports the thesis of variability in types of ISOs ranging from ethnic associations with minimal service delivery, to those that meet the designation of alternative service organizations whose defining characteristic is its deep commitment to social change, to highly professionalized service organizations dedicated to improvement of the group it serves, but who are less politically active.

A case study of an ISO was undertaken guided by the following questions: 1a) what are the core features of the organization and 1b) what is its role in meeting community needs; 2a) what factors explain the core features and 2b) what processes of adjustment operate? In addition to a review of documents, past and present staff and Board members were interviewed as well as clients, funders and mainstream organizations involved in cosponsoring relationships.

The data reveal that key features of the Centre include: its underpinnings in both service provision and political representation; a commitment to the personal empowerment of clients; service accountability to and resource dependence upon funders, especially government; embeddedness in institutional relations with other ISOs (in the sense that participation in networks of agencies, for purposes such as lobbying, etc., is a goal in its own right); an allegiance to its historical origins as a service deliverer to Spanish and Portuguese women; adaptation to community needs within the limited degrees of freedom allowed by dependence upon external funding; and increasing client access to multiple programs through partnerships with mainstream service providers. In this case study the conceptualization of ISOs as alternative service organizations neatly captures the liberatory aspirations of the Centre, aspirations which rest upon the social or economic marginalization of immigrants and their experience of loss and transition.

A major preoccupation of the Centre is the agency’s ability to address unemployment and employment in low paying jobs, thus a major service focus is the labour market and economic well-being of clients, beyond marginal levels. Services to abused women also figure prominently in the Centre’s achievements. Hence, to generalize from the experience of the Centre, a central purpose of ISOs is that of meeting the needs of real people (as opposed to the abstract or bureaucratically defined concept of ‘immigrant’), that is, the nonEnglish speaking, unemployed, and abused women, through the mechanism of support groups that promote kinship ties. (This thesis also finds support in Opoku-Dapaah’s investigation into Ghanaian refugees.)

The effectiveness of the Centre’s work is not known in the sense that government accountability frequently emphasizes the number of services provided and these organizations lack the resources to carry out in depth evaluations. Although the Centre has attempted to gauge the quality of its programs, the longer term effectiveness of programs and services in terms of increasing individual client well-being or advancing group equity is unknown. Unintended outcomes such as the development of community leaders attest to Phillips’ (1995) depiction of the voluntary sector as a forum for citizen engagement, which, at a broader level, builds social capital. However, while the Centre has been able to facilitate the development of leadership skills of particular individuals, it has been unable to engage in community or group development initiatives, largely due to the absence of a bounded geographic locale where clients live.

Multiple determinants of change operate within the agency - internal dynamics of growth, organizational goals, client needs, and accountability to funders. Kramer (1994) therefore suggests that the conventional antinomy between autonomy and accountability may be more artificial than real. In Chapter 1 I formulated the purpose of the study in terms of ISOs as the dependent variable and the Canadian state as the independent variable. Having conducted this study a reformulation is required. We might enumerate the presence of intervening variables such as the characteristics of the sector, organizational characteristics, or the characteristics of funding representatives as factors that influence the degree of conflict in government/ISO relationships.

One of the key organizational characteristics of the agency has been its advocacy function and its role as part of an influential policy constituency in Canada. This mobilization by ethnoracial communities to extend welfare provision highlights the role of social movements as agents of change in social policy. This role is now more curtailed than in previous times as we see governments intent on rolling back social welfare entitlements and equity policies.

Long Term Prospects for ISOs

As Andrain (1985) points out, elements of voluntarism and determinism are at play in government decision making. Individual policy makers possess the ability to influence policy--but within limits. These limits may comprise cultural beliefs, i.e., ideologies, formal laws, informal customs. The ability to exercise power within the political system, the scope of public action that is permissible, and the state of the economy (especially tax revenues) operate to place limits upon public action. One of the fallouts of global restructuring has been the loss of Canada's manufacturing base and a consequent increase in unemployment, for both the native born and immigrants. Thus tax receipts are decreased at a time of increased demand for social insurance.

The result has been the decision by federal and provincial governments to translate fiscal constraints into a redefinition of social entitlements and general reduction in social expenditures.

Thus there is a strongly pragmatic orientation to the approach taken herein. That is, notwithstanding how we want things to become, there are real parameters and a real historical context which limit the possibilities. In 1973, Habermas wrote of a legitimation crisis resulting from the inability of the state to respond to the numerous demands placed upon it. Richmond's (1991) updated appraisal is provided by Dorais, Foster, and Stockley (1994):

Policy-makers face a ‘no-win’ situation. There are too many conflicting interests to reconcile and too many structural contradictions in the global economic and social system to permit any policy a ‘rational’ or ‘optimal’ solution to pressing demographic, economic, political and humanitarian concerns. (p. 401).

The absence of a self evident solution, struggles between competing economic interests, and a lack of consensus has allowed government representatives to be selective about which suggestions and advice are taken (Dirks, 1995), resulting in state actions that promote economic goals such as strengthening the economy and infrastructure and enhancing international status. Jimenez notes:

Ironically, the process of globalization, economic integration and economic restructuring give rise to an increasing movement of persons across international boundaries. "International labor migrant" is a more precise term to describe those who move in the complex web of a global economic system. Since the 1960s, economic migrants from developing countries to industrialized nations have quadrupled, reaching 940,000 per year. (Jimenez, 1997, p.1)

Public perception views high immigration levels as undesirable in these times. Government, aware of the need for population growth but desirous of decreasing public expenditures, has opted to pursue more skilled immigrants (and fewer family class immigrants) who will contribute to the economy and require few supportive services. In Jimenez’ (1997) view, worldwide, current immigration policies facilitate the exit and entrance of business owners, executives, administrators, and support technical labour (while limiting the movement of the poor), thereby advancing the interests of a global economic elite.

At the same time, presently the basic problems in immigrant settlement arise from high unemployment levels. In a study of 1991 census data, poverty amongst ethnoracial groups was correlated with higher than average unemployment levels within those groups, despite high educational levels (Ornstein, 1997). A report of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto’s Commissioner of Community Services indicated that a survey of people on social assistance (excluding single parents) revealed: 68% were born outside Canada; 42% of this group had arrived after 1990; about one third had significant or occasional English language difficulties; 66 % of all survey respondents had completed at least Gr. 12 ; 54% had some college/university; and 20% had Gr. 10 or less. More than one half of those with high school education, and 43% of those with higher education had studied outside Canada (Metro Chief Administrator’s Office, 1996).

Where previous generations of immigrants could be sure of employment and hence, some degree of economic security and/or mobility, structural unemployment means that present day immigrants can be less sure of economic security. The potential for ghettoization is there despite the shift in emphasis in immigration policy to more educated and financially independent immigrants. Barriers to foreign-trained professionals and trades people, and gaps between labour market shortages and the skill sets of immigrants mean that problems in economic absorption will persist.

At the present time the lack of a clear mandate for community-based immigrant serving organizations is witnessed by the federal government's recent decision to devolve service delivery to local levels (e.g., provinces, municipalities, local planning committees), and to maintain current levels of funding but open up funding to broader public sectors institutions such as school boards and colleges. The proposed federal withdrawal from the current system purchase of service contracts for settlement service provision would leave the state playing a coordinating role by setting minimum standards for service provision. In theory, a pluralization of service provision would follow and ISOs would become one form of non profit service provider among others vying for government contracts. In the ensuing competition for funds, even the currently circumscribed political function of the agencies is likely to be curtailed. The benefit of devolution is of course flexibility, the ability to design programs that meet local needs. The drawbacks are the fiscal stress that occur when service demands exceed fixed funding levels, and intensified competition for dollars. In this competition there are clearly winners and losers among ISOs: winners have been able to maintain their organizations through strategies such as collaboration with other organizations.

Thus far the federal government has eschewed any role for the delivery of settlement services by for-profit enterprises. This probably reflects less of a commitment to ISOs as distinctive service providers and more of a recognition of the sector’s cost efficiency. (Private for-profit enterprises have accessed governmental funding for employment training; for example, a now defunct federal/ provincial training initiative for social assistance recipients program contracted with a for-profit organization in partnership with five ethnoracial community agencies.) Additionally, service accountability is increasingly measured in terms of the difficult to measure service outcomes and outputs rather than the even more difficult to measure equity outcomes.

Despite an improvement in mainstream service delivery (i.e., more mainstream organizations delivering culturally appropriate services) there has been no concurrent reduction in the demand for ethnoracially based service organizations. It is a positive sign that services to immigrants is no longer the concern of minority communities alone. The ISO sector cannot, on its own, provide equitable access to services, as well as addressing ethnic stratification and social inequalities. So-called mainstream services must assume some of this responsibility. Monitoring by funders and advocacy groups will continue to be necessary to assure appropriate decision-making structures, staff resources, and programs are in place.

In devising solutions to the current instability in the immigrant service sector (e.g., 36% cuts in the Province of Ontario’s spending in the past two years and uncertainty regarding federal programs), Mwarigha (1997) of the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto proposes a type of triage approach in which settlement monies are dedicated for the initial and intermediate stages of settlement, that is: shelter, food, clothing, information and orientation, and other essential services, language training, educational upgrading, and access to health, housing and legal systems. (He understands the "long term stage" to be various initiatives that facilitate the long term participation of individual immigrants in Canadian society.) His proposal rests upon a conception of ISOs as primarily service deliverers to individuals. Meanwhile, some time ago, Indra argued that:

Were these organizations [ISOs] further institutionalized and more legitimated as means of social and cultural integration, they would also become a far more powerful political force in two senses at once; this would create a set of potent vehicles for the advocacy of ethnic minority concerns, while at the same time meaningfully integrating these groups into the fabric of Canadian political life. (Indra, 1987, p. 168)

For Indra, ISOs represented a mechanism for group empowerment.

While attractive in its emancipatory intent of power sharing, the notion of separate institutions is problematic. It is a political response which does not necessarily lead to adequate service responses. First, the assumptions of a homogeneous community have been done away with. Gender, class and in some instances clan and interethnic divisions exist among immigrant communities surfacing in struggles for control of service organizations. Second, the existence of multicultural ISOs provides a model which challenges the need for separate ethnospecific organizations. Third, the issue of how to provide counselling has been a long standing service issue. Many communities lack trained professional or paraprofessional staff. Thus far responses to this service issue have included the inadequate response of attempting to work through interpreters, and the training of immigrant workers to provide group counselling in areas such as wife and sexual assault. Fourth, how does the extreme insistence on cultural diversity and/or structural pluralism translate into participation in the political sphere of decision making and the consequent ability to affect access to economic and political power? Fifth, all communities do not possess comparable resources: some will thrive and others will languish. And last, as this case study reveals, a shortcoming of the agency's work has been its limited ability to forge links with other communities, both immigrant and majority. (Recently more stringent funding polices have led to collaboration between the Centre and other agencies to offer joint programming.)

In terms of service provision the most powerful arguments for ISOs appear to be: that as Opoku-Dapaah has found, in the absence of integration in the economic sphere primarily, ISOs proffer a kind of safety net of cultural, kinship and linguistic resources; the ability of the agencies to band together and collectively articulate needs and thereby extend the provision of services to immigrants; and the brokerage/advocacy role played by settlement workers in increasing client access to mainstream services.

In political terms of course, the symbolic allocation of resources to minority communities is realized. But is there not an argument to be made for the importance of ISOs in more than symbolic terms? Writing in the area of democratic theory , Mansbridge (1996) adopting Nancy Fraser’s term ‘subaltern counterpublics,’, advocates fostering such groups because of their importance to democracy in supplementing mainstream discourses and formal deliberations in government:

The goals of these counterpublics include understanding themselves better, forging bonds of solidarity, preserving memories of past injustices, interpreting and reinterpreting the means of those injustices, working out alternative conceptions of self, of community, of justice, and of universality, trying to make sense of both the privileges they wield and the oppressions they face, understanding the strategic configurations for and against their desired ends, deciding what alliances to make both emotionally and strategically, deliberating on ends and means, and deciding how to act, individually and collectively.(Mansbridge, 1996, p. 58)

Recommendations

A single case study is inadequate to the task of capturing the variety of forms of ISOs which range from associations using volunteers as unpaid staff, peer self-help groups, community-based grassroots associations and service agencies staffed by professionals. Thus surveys and multicase studies are required. Longtitudinal studies of agencies would provide insights into organizational variables that influence an agency’s growth and effectiveness. The effects of the current period of flux--fiscal constraints and competition for funds--also warrants investigation.

How can we build on the strengths of the sector to enable it to compete with mainstream institutions? The Centre’s success with the use of support groups parallels the experience of Jewish Immigrant Aid Services and their use of support groups (Romberg, 1994). Therefore, the effectiveness of particular services, service models, and models of service coordination should also be highlighted through research.

Hein’s (1991) caution that immigrants’ relationship to the welfare state not be subsumed within the larger field of race and ethnic relations, and that attention be paid to the conditions that lead to immigrants becoming ethnic minorities is well taken. For example, economic dislocation and marginality, in conjunction with the experience of transition and loss are conditions leading to some immigrant groups’ self-identification as an ethnic community. The nature of the group’s interactions with the host society is yet another variable.

In the current climate of curtailed government spending on social welfare services prescriptions for increased spending seem hopelessly naive. How can the demand for ethnically based services best be accommodated? The recommendations below have implications for broader public institutions such as universities and colleges, government, and ISOs.

From the instrumental perspective of obtaining the greatest impact from decreasing resources, Mwarigha’s (1997) proposition for the rationalization of funding to cover the initial stages of settlement has much to recommend it, since assistance with settlement in the language of the immigrant is obviously required. Further, the symbolic allocation of resources to minority communities is attained (leaving untouched the achievement of power in the political and economic spheres). From another point of view Mwarigha’s recommendation is less attractive. The triage approach leaves the agencies with "a constituency of the weakest", that is, immigrants in the initial stages of settlement. If agencies are to engage in community fund rasing, as is recommended below, these are the people with the least resources.

In Ontario, arguably the most innovative model of settlement services are offered by Jewish Immigrant Aid Services in Toronto. They have been able to supplement government funding with their own community funding to design programs that are holistic. Obviously all communities do not share the same socio-economic profile. If agencies want the flexibility to design programs that meet the needs of their particular communities they must pursue community funding. Activists have traditionally feared that this will ‘let the government off the hook’, leading eventually to reduced funding. If community development is an activity the agencies see as necessary, they will have to fund it themselves anyway since government has not been funding community development for some time.

Under the present Progressive Conservative government in Ontario, social services are being moved "from state responsibility to personal and community responsibility" (Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, cited in Mwarigha, 1997). On the basis of empirical research, the argument could be made that for many immigrants who have left behind their familial and community connections, ISOs represent new, albeit artificial, forms of family and community support.

In-depth or longer term counselling must be addressed through programs that will: train paraprofessionals beyond basic level skills, recruit students from diverse communities into counselling programs, and fast track the accreditation of foreign trained counselling professionals. Initiatives such as these need to be championed, but ISOs are not likely proponents of initiatives like these that do not strengthen the agencies. In the present circumstances they generally lack the resources to engage with mainstream organizations in such change initiatives.

On the subject of strengthening agencies, this case study has revealed the not too surprising finding that through efficient management practices, such as meeting accountability requirements and effective agency administration and leadership, agencies are able to exert influence on funders and policy makers. Therefore a training school or initiative for smaller agencies and newer communities, akin to those of labour unions would not be amiss. The workshops and professional development activities that exist are short term and turnover in the profession is high. Professionalism in management practices is desirable because it signifies accountability to stakeholders. Professionalism in human service delivery is not as clear cut. Professionalization implies the specification of skills and models of practice derived from a body of knowledge and theory. The strength of the community based sector has been its ability to respond flexibly and to develop innovative programs (Kramer, 1981) in the absence of clearly enumerated principles and codes of conduct. Critics of professionalization fear the imposition of yet another form of social control on clients. Settlement workers favour professionalization as recognition for the work they do and as a step towards addressing the issue of relatively low wages and wage disparities across the sector.

Finally, service coordination among ISOs and between ISOs and mainstream organizations should be addressed for many reasons, but most notably for the purpose of enhancing client access to services at a time of decreased service availability.

Conclusion

In the introductory chapter I alluded to an otoh/botoh perspective--a humourous but insightful turn of phrase. Otoh/botoh is a descriptive as well as a normative assertion of an intrinsic duality. Pels (1995), writing of simultaneity or duality in another context, seeks to supercede the barren opposition between functionalist and critical traditions:

I shall proceed from the hypothesis that the enabling and disabling dimensions...are interconnected in a much more immediate and constitutive sense than can be grasped from the dualistic oppositions in which both traditions hold each other prisoner. "Duality" does not mean that the productive and exploitative dimensions, "eufunctions" and dysfunctions, can simply by joined together by simple addition. It entails something like a generative or symbiotic coincidence of "light" and "dark" sides. These polarities appear to presume and precondition one another in a sense that falls out of range for one-dimensional "optimistic" or "pessimistic" approaches. (Pels, p.82)

The truth of otoh/botoh term resides in the endurance of a number of dichotomous ideas. For example:

The challenge to the activist is to manage or balance these polarities with awareness, to be self-conscious, but not naive in their opposition.

From the otoh/botoh approach ensue modest and pragmatic conclusions, which nonetheless signal a practical engagement, the outcome of which is never guaranteed in advance. Hence for example, the conclusion that the field of immigration and multiculturalism is a field of unequal struggle between parties endowed with unequal resources: dominant group(s) and dominated groups of outsiders and newcomers. The dominant group opts for strategies of assimilation to which its interests are immediately linked; minority groups may choose more or less combative strategies in their efforts to level the playing field. Each acts in accordance with its perceived self interest and, in this instance, the resultant conflict has resulted in some progress and the promise of a fissure in the dominant social order.

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Virtual Library		Updated February 09, 2004