The disjuncture of learning and recognition: credential assessment from the standpoint of Chinese immigrant engineers in Canada

To better recognise foreign qualifications, many OECD countries have promoted liberal fairness epitomised by universal standards and institutional efficiency. This paper departs from such a managerial orientation towards recognition. Building on recognitive justice, it proposes an alternative anchoring point for recognition practices: the standpoint or everyday experiences of immigrants. This approach is illustrated with a qualitative study of the credential recognition practices of the engineering profession in Canada. From the standpoint of Chinese immigrants, the study identifies a disjuncture between credential recognition practices and immigrants’ career stage post-migration. Taking this disjuncture as problematic, it further pinpoints recognition issues such as redundancy and arbitrariness, a narrow focus on undergraduate education, and a deficit view of training from other countries. While some of these issues may be addressed by improving administrative procedures, others demand a participatory space allowing immigrants to become partners of assessment, rather than merely its objects. (DIPF/Orig.

The Evaluation of Immigrants' Credentials: The Roles of Accreditation, Immigrant Race, and Evaluator Biases

Theories of subtle prejudice imply that personnel decision makers might inadvertently discriminate against immigrant employees, in particular immigrant employees form racial minority groups. The argument is that the ambiguities that are associated with immigrant status (e.g., quality of foreign credentials) release latent biases against minorities. Hence, upon removal of these ambiguities (e.g., recognition of foreign credentials as equivalent to local credentials), discrimination against immigrant employees from minority groups should no longer occur. Experimental research largely confirmed these arguments, showing that participants evaluated the credentials of black immigrant employees less favorably only when the participants harbored latent racial biases and the foreign credentials of the applicants had not been accredited. The results suggest the importance of the official recognition of foreign credentials for the fair treatment of immigrant employees.Labour Discrimination, Immigrants, Racial Minorities, Prejudice, Credential Recognition, Experiment

Indirect Pathways Into Practice: Philippine Internationally Educated Nurses and Their Entry Into Ontario’s Nursing Profession

Social connectedness to social support systems and communities highly affect the transitioning success of Philippine Internationally Educated Nurses (IENs). These networks are especially critical during the first year upon arrival. The fragmented, indirect pathways to professional practice, (including barriers to foreign credential recognition, lengthy and costly examination, licensing and retraining result in direct devaluation of IENs and the possibility of permanent (de)skilling. Female IENs endured more financial and emotional hardship, compared to their male counterparts, with regard to family obligations and deeper financial burden. While many of the male IENs experienced the same challenges as women, the latter experienced longer unemployment as they stayed home to take care of children, while their husbands found work first. More research on gendered discrepancies among IENs is recommended

Labour market performance of immigrants in smaller regions of western countries: some evidence from Atlantic Canada

Despite recent interest in regionalization of immigration in host nations, most studies have analyzed immigrants’ economic performance by largely focusing on their overall national performance. A regional analysis is necessary because changing geographic distribution of immigrants can affect their economic performance positively or negatively. Present paper focuses on Atlantic Canada whose share in annual Canadian immigrant inflows has been traditionally low, but where recent policy initiatives have resulted in greater attraction and retention of immigrants. Immigrants are found performing better than non-immigrants in regional labour market. The importance of regional analysis of immigrants’ economic performance and contribution in host nations is highlighted

Migrating professional knowledge: progressions, regressions, and dislocations

Drawing on practice-based learning theory, this chapter examines issues pertaining to the deskilling of immigrant professionals in Canada. It argues that adult educators need to have an awareness of transnational migration dynamics and work in meaningful ways to keep immigrant professionals connected to professional knowledge practices

Occupational (Im)mobility in the Global Care Economy: The Case of Foreign-Trained Nurses in the Canadian Context

The twenty-first century has witnessed a number of significant demographic and political shifts that have resulted in a care crisis. Addressing the deficit of care provision has led many nations to actively recruit migrant care labour, often under temporary forms of migration. The emergence of this phenomenon has resulted in a rich field of analysis using the lens of care, including the idea of the Global Care Chain. Revisions to this conceptualization have pushed for its extension beyond domestic workers in the home to include skilled workers in other institutional settings, particularly nurses in hospitals and long-term care settings. Reviewing relevant literature on migrant nurses, this article explores the labour market experiences of internationally educated nurses in Canada. The article reviews research on the barriers facing migrant nurses as they transfer their credentials to the Canadian context. Analysis of this literature suggests that internationally trained nurses experience a form of occupational (im)mobility, paradoxical, ambiguous and contingent processes that exploit global mobility, and results in the stratified incorporation of skilled migrant women into healthcare workplaces

Talent Is Ready: Promising Practices for Helping Immigrant Professionals

Outlines the need to better integrate highly skilled immigrants into the workforce, promising practices in assessment and advising, skill building, and organizational capacity building; and tips and insights for nonprofits, funders, and policy makers

Constructing Problems and Solutions: The Social Construction of Foreign Credential Recognition as a Social Problem and Policy Priority in Canada

Utilizing a social constructionist approach to social problems, and drawing from the public policy's insights into agenda-setting dynamics, this thesis examines the social construction of foreign credential recognition as a social problem in Canada, and the factors that led to the elevation of this issue onto the federal government's policy agenda in 2001 - some twenty years after it was initially claimed to be a troublesome condition. More specifically, this study explores how the claims-making activities of various stakeholders involved in the foreign credential recognition debate came to define the issue as a social problem, and how those activities transformed this social problem into a policy solution worthy of widespread public and political attention. While the historical analysis of federal policy documents provide background and context to the development of foreign credential recognition as a social problem, interviews with eighteen stakeholders from the policy community contribute to an in-depth understanding of the claims-making dynamics involved in the foreign credential recognition debate. Findings from this thesis reveal that while foreign credential recognition was largely constructed around humanitarian concerns in the 1980's, claims-makers redefined the issue as a promising economic policy tool with the potential to benefit the country as a whole from the 1990's onward. This definitional shift, largely constructed by strategic and innovative organizational sponsors on behalf of immigrant victims, garnered foreign credential recognition increased public and political attention based on its appeal to neoliberal goals in the context of a globalizing knowledge economy. Foreign credential recognition was elevated onto the federal government's policy agenda in 2001 as a consequence of the convergence of widespread concerns over Canada's economic competitiveness and prosperity in the global economy, the claims-making activities of experienced and committed organizational sponsors, public awareness of and support for the issue, and political receptivity to economically promising policy solutions.Master of Arts (MA

Immigrant Wage Assimilation and the Return to Foreign and Host-Country Sources of Human Capital

We compare predicted relative immigrant wage profiles based on returns to YSM and to foreign and host-country sources of schooling and experience. We find the biases inherent in inferring assimilation from a return to YSM appear more substantial than those emanating from the assumptions necessary to estimate foreign and host-country returns directly using standard data sources. Given the policy relevance of allowing entry effects and subsequent wage growth to depend on the foreign human capital immigrants bring and their post-migration schooling and work decisions, our findings suggest the predominance of YSM models in the literature is not well founded.Immigrant workers; wage differentials; human capital

U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Trade Facilitation, Enforcement, and Security

[Excerpt] This report describes and analyzes import policy and CBP’s role in the U.S. import process. (The report does not cover CBP’s role in the U.S. export control system.) The first section of the report describes the three overarching goals of U.S. import policy and the tension among them. Second, the report provides a legislative history of customs laws, followed by an overview of the U.S. import process as it operates today. Third, the import process and CBP’s role in it are discussed. The final section highlights several policy issues that Congress may consider in its oversight role or as part of customs or trade legislation, including measures seeking to provide additional trade facilitation benefits to importers and others enrolled in “trusted trader” programs, to improve enforcement of intellectual property and trade remedy laws, to strengthen cargo scanning practices, and/or to promote modernization of customs data systems, among other issues. A list of trade-related acronyms used in the report is provided in Appendix A