Ghosts and Shadows: A History of Racism in Canada

A history of racism reinforces discrimination and exploitation of racialized immigrants in general and African-Canadians in particular. My paper contends that historically institutionalized structures are the ideological fulcrum from which ongoing socio-economic inequalities derive and retain their legitimacy. Specifically, I argue that the historically institutionalized system of slavery and ensuing systemic structures of racial discrimination negatively influence the incorporation of racialized immigrants into the Canadian labour market. A historically racially segmented labour market continues to uphold colour coded social and economic hierarchies. Although Canada’s point system ensures that immigrants are primarily selected on the basis of their skills and qualifications, many professionally trained and experienced racialized immigrants endure perpetual socio-economic constraints, characterized primarily by low-end, precarious forms of employment.  While not intended to serve as an exhaustive chronology, this essay draws on three historical periods of Black migration and experience in Canada: the first spans early sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth-century, the second dates from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, and the third extends from mid-twentieth century to the present. The following historical timeline traces the prevalence and enduring nature of systemic structures and substantiates Abigail Bakan’s (2008) suggestion that both “racism and a culture of hegemonic whiteness were and remain endemic to the Canadian state” (p. 6)

Contradictory Mobilities and Cultural Projects of Afropolitanism : African Immigrant Nurses in Vancouver, Canada

I explore the relationship between social class and race, through an examination of how Black nurses enact Afropolitan cultural practices to negotiate contradictory class mobilities in Vancouver. While this paper reflexively draws from my family’s lived experiences to begin thinking through the nuances of Afropolitanism, I hone the discussion in contextual reference to the class-making practices of African-born nurses. The nurses channel Afropolitan class-making projects, through which they develop a flexibility and openness of mind that enables them to reject taking on the role of victim in their contradictory mobilities. Afropolitanism refers to “an expansive politics of inclusion that seeks to position actors as part of a transnational community of Africans of the world” (Adjepong 2021, 1), to “imbue Africanness with value” (137). Merging the literature on anti-Black racism in nursing with scholarship examining relationships between social class, race, and culture, this paper draws out the promises and pitfalls of Afropolitanism through an exploration of how African immigrant nurses—part of a growing Black Canadian middle class—grapple with contradictory mobility in Canada’s racialized terrain. It contributes to discussions of the Black middle class, in the context of a “relative newness of Black middle classes” (Rollock et al. 2012, 253).J’explore la relation entre la classe sociale et la race en examinant la manière dont les infirmières noires adoptent des pratiques culturelles afropolitaines pour négocier des mobilités de classe contradictoires à Vancouver. Bien que cet article s’inspire, selon une approche réflexive, des expériences vécues par ma famille pour commencer à envisager les nuances de l’afropolitanisme, j’affine la discussion en me référant aux pratiques de création de classe des infirmières d’origine africaine. Les infirmières canalisent les projets de création de classes afropolitaines, à partir desquels elles développent une flexibilité et une ouverture d’esprit qui leur permettent de rejeter le rôle de victime lors de leurs mobilités contradictoires. L’afropolitanisme se réfère à « une politique d’inclusion expansive qui cherche à positionner les acteurs comme faisant partie d’une communauté transnationale d’Africains du monde » (Adjepong 2021, 1), pour « conférer une valeur à l’africanité » (Ibid., 137). En combinant la littérature sur le racisme anti-Noir dans les soins infirmiers et les études sur les relations entre la classe sociale, la race et la culture, cet article met en évidence les possibilités et les obstacles de l’afropolitanisme, en explorant la façon dont les infirmières immigrantes africaines, qui font partie d’une classe moyenne noire canadienne en plein essor, sont aux prises avec une mobilité contradictoire sur le terrain racialisé du Canada. Il contribue aux discussions sur la classe moyenne noire, dans le contexte d’une « relative nouveauté des classes moyennes noires » (Rollock et al. 2012, 253)

Negotiating borders: The ‘everyday’ encounters of Black African immigrant caregivers in Vancouver, British Columbia

Organized around the central question of how transnational migration in a global neoliberal era has left unchallenged the gendered and racialized nature of caregiving work, my dissertation focuses on the experiences of racialized Black African immigrant caregivers in lower mainland Vancouver. In this context, my dissertation evaluates how power relations that are entrenched in social and political constructs of race, ethnicity, class, gender, immigration status etc., - as intersecting networks - administer and reinforce distinctive social inequalities, reproducing hierarchies upon which material and symbolic powers are based. Based on a life-work framework interrogating caregivers’ sense of belonging, my project identifies and discusses border encounters, as described by Black immigrant caregivers. Largely through discursive covert processes and practices, caregivers described being often singled out, and or assigned less desirable or more dangerous work. Caregivers demonstrated these border encounters through stories and narratives that epitomized their “not quite fitting in” and hence, their contradictory sense of belonging and exclusion. Indicative of the liminal experiences that often pervades the lives of racialized immigrants; these border testimonies belied the principles of a pluralistic multicultural Canada. Centered on the lives and material realities of eight respondents, this feminist ethnography was formulated through anti-racist, Black and feminist intersectional theoretical perspectives. Inspired by these theoretical foundations, the study applies the witness accounts of caregivers to explicate how they navigated isolating encounters. Through a critical re-examination of their own history, which caregivers engaged in by re-formulating social and political factors that determined their lives, my dissertation holds that this group of immigrants sought to transform their sense of selves as empowered and active agents in the work spaces they occupied. Although the caregivers employed critical approaches in negotiating contradictory encounters and resisting isolating experiences, this project finds that racialized and ethnicized social identities remained a salient theme in how the respondents interpreted and made sense of their work-related encounters. Thus, my discussion grapples with understanding how sources of, and shifts in, social identities such as race, class, ethnicity, gender etc. – as sites of (dis) empowerment – influence ‘everyday’ lived experience, and how this is negotiated and contested