This paper presents findings from an exploratory study with Master
of Social Work (MSW) graduates... more This paper presents findings from an exploratory study with Master of Social Work (MSW) graduates in Canada to explore the extent to which their classroom and practicum learning addressed social justice and anti-oppressive practice. Thirty-five MSW graduates took part in a semi-structured online survey regarding the quality of social justice knowledge and practice skills in their field instruction and coursework. The survey also examined how graduates employ social justice in their current social work practice. The majority of the study sample reported favorable educational outcomes and embraced social justice goals in their current practice. Discourse analysis of written comments, however, identified a disconnect between social justice theory, field education, and the overall climate of the social work program. Despite an explicit endorsement of social justice values by the program and the profession, graduates reported limited opportunities to learn anti-oppressive practice or apply social justice theories in their field education. We argue that the ‘hidden curriculum’ in social work education reflects market pressures that privilege task-oriented goals while ‘mainstreaming’ social justice rhetoric. Skills to confront oppression with transformative change are viewed as abstract goals and thus less useful than clinical practice.
Social work has engaged with and led the revolutionary social movements of the past century. Yet ... more Social work has engaged with and led the revolutionary social movements of the past century. Yet today, as activism by and for racial others unfolds across the United States and Canada, our discipline remains largely silent. This article considers new ways for social workers to conceptualize social work activism, challenge the existing erasures within the profession, and construct innovative strategies to locate social work within the critical social movements of our time. Recognizing the continuity of histories of colonialism, slavery, and genocide, the author argues that social workers must engage with racialized communities’ resistance through their legacy of exclusion and displacement. The author demonstrates the significance of an evolving politics of race and social justice for social work practice.
This paper reflects critically on our ethical responsibilities as social work researchers who rep... more This paper reflects critically on our ethical responsibilities as social work researchers who report on transnational resistance movements in the age of terrorism. Through my own research on the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada, I problematize why and how research representations of racialized activists and activisms come to be profoundly political. I reflect on how a research project is framed, how the researcher and participants are involved, how attention is paid to ethical issues, and the extent of critical reflexivity around how movements are represented. Recognizing that all activism is socially constructed and that research labels inform social identities and social practices, I also examine contested categories of resistance to unpack how they inform or challenge dominant constructions of migrants, their activism, and their struggles in relation to Canada’s own context of separatism, sovereignty, and colonization. Rather than employ any one term to refer to a singular narrative of transnational resistance in our research, I argue that we foreground the power structures and global relations that fundamentally mark colonized identities and their activism across spaces and movements. I draw upon Indigenous, critical, and anti-oppressive research approaches to centre the transgressive potential of decolonial representation and resistance.
Purpose: Despite the elimination of explicitly discriminatory immigration selection policies sinc... more Purpose: Despite the elimination of explicitly discriminatory immigration selection policies since the 1960’s, the social inclusion of immigrants into the labour market continues to mark covert exclusionary practices in Canada. “Canadian experience” (CE) has been identified as one influential factor in immigrants’ unsuccessful attempts to obtain gainful employment. It may constitute “hard skills” (e.g., credentials) and, more importantly, “soft skills”, an ability to operate within “Canadian workplace culture”, an ambiguous concept that is tacitly understood and difficult to articulate. Despite an established critique of the lack of CE as an exclusionary practice and discriminatory requirement for employment, since 2008, immigration policy has embraced CE as criteria for permanent residence for prospective skilled immigrants and those who are already in Canada with visa in desirable occupations. This research examined the discursive construction of “skilled immigrants” and “Canadian...
Beginning in mid-2008, the Tamil diaspora around the world organized in extraordinary activism ag... more Beginning in mid-2008, the Tamil diaspora around the world organized in extraordinary activism against the escalating violence in northern Sri Lanka. Responses to the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada provide a unique case study to examine a contemporary moment of resistance, when race thinking and spatiality intersected within and beyond national borders. Using critical theories of representation, I conceptualize Canadian print media coverage of the protests as representations of a "strange encounter" with the other. I explore the media's production of the other and its conflation of the Tamil protester-terrorist through constructions of space. I also examine how scale operates through underlying national values to conceptualize a precarious structure of belonging. Through these discursive moves, I demonstrate how the resulting figure of the "other," the "outlaw," and the "outsider" came to represent and delegitimize the racialized/ spatialized Tamil protest(er).
While much social movement research focuses on how activists actively cultivate affect and how so... more While much social movement research focuses on how activists actively cultivate affect and how social movements benefit from shared emotions, these ideas rarely intersect with research examining how race constructs emotional responses in a white settler society. I bridge this theoretical divide by examining the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada to study dimensions of suffering and apathy through the construction of the racialized protest(er). Drawing upon illustrations from a critical discourse analysis of 153 mainstream news articles and interviews with activists and journalists, this paper explores how racial logic frames media and public discourse through (1) the expression of protesters’ suffering and (2) the construction of racial apathy by the Canadian public. The paper theorizes why and how race frames the production of suffering and apathy, and offers considerations for social movement theory.
Purpose: Despite the elimination of explicitly discriminatory immigration selection policies sinc... more Purpose: Despite the elimination of explicitly discriminatory immigration selection policies since the 1960’s, the social inclusion of immigrants into the labour market continues to mark covert exclusionary practices in Canada. “Canadian experience” (CE) has been identified as one influential factor in immigrants’ unsuccessful attempts to obtain gainful employment. It may constitute “hard skills” (e.g., credentials) and, more importantly, “soft skills”, an ability to operate within “Canadian workplace culture”, an ambiguous concept that is tacitly understood and difficult to articulate. Despite an established critique of the lack of CE as an exclusionary practice and discriminatory requirement for employment, since 2008, immigration policy has embraced CE as criteria for permanent residence for prospective skilled immigrants and those who are already in Canada with visa in desirable occupations. This research examined the discursive construction of “skilled immigrants” and “Canadian...
This paper examines the branding of ‘Canadian experience’ in Canadian immigration policy as a rhe... more This paper examines the branding of ‘Canadian experience’ in Canadian immigration policy as a rhetorical strategy for neoliberal nation-building. Since 2008, the Canadian government has introduced an unprecedented number of changes to immigration policy. While the bulk of these policies produce more temporary and precarious forms of migration, the Canadian government has mobilized the rhetoric of ‘Canadian experience’ as a means to identify immigrants who carry the promise of economic and social integration. Through a critical discourse analysis of Canadian print media and political discourse, we trace how the brand of ‘Canadian experience’ taps into the affective value of national identity in an era of global economic insecurity. We also illustrate how the discourse of CE remains ideologically deraciailzed, such that the government’s embrace of CE as an immigrant selection criterion dismisses the discriminatory effects this discourse has shown to have for racialized immigrants in Canada.
This paper presents findings from an exploratory study with Master
of Social Work (MSW) graduates... more This paper presents findings from an exploratory study with Master of Social Work (MSW) graduates in Canada to explore the extent to which their classroom and practicum learning addressed social justice and anti-oppressive practice. Thirty-five MSW graduates took part in a semi-structured online survey regarding the quality of social justice knowledge and practice skills in their field instruction and coursework. The survey also examined how graduates employ social justice in their current social work practice. The majority of the study sample reported favorable educational outcomes and embraced social justice goals in their current practice. Discourse analysis of written comments, however, identified a disconnect between social justice theory, field education, and the overall climate of the social work program. Despite an explicit endorsement of social justice values by the program and the profession, graduates reported limited opportunities to learn anti-oppressive practice or apply social justice theories in their field education. We argue that the ‘hidden curriculum’ in social work education reflects market pressures that privilege task-oriented goals while ‘mainstreaming’ social justice rhetoric. Skills to confront oppression with transformative change are viewed as abstract goals and thus less useful than clinical practice.
Social work has engaged with and led the revolutionary social movements of the past century. Yet ... more Social work has engaged with and led the revolutionary social movements of the past century. Yet today, as activism by and for racial others unfolds across the United States and Canada, our discipline remains largely silent. This article considers new ways for social workers to conceptualize social work activism, challenge the existing erasures within the profession, and construct innovative strategies to locate social work within the critical social movements of our time. Recognizing the continuity of histories of colonialism, slavery, and genocide, the author argues that social workers must engage with racialized communities’ resistance through their legacy of exclusion and displacement. The author demonstrates the significance of an evolving politics of race and social justice for social work practice.
This paper reflects critically on our ethical responsibilities as social work researchers who rep... more This paper reflects critically on our ethical responsibilities as social work researchers who report on transnational resistance movements in the age of terrorism. Through my own research on the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada, I problematize why and how research representations of racialized activists and activisms come to be profoundly political. I reflect on how a research project is framed, how the researcher and participants are involved, how attention is paid to ethical issues, and the extent of critical reflexivity around how movements are represented. Recognizing that all activism is socially constructed and that research labels inform social identities and social practices, I also examine contested categories of resistance to unpack how they inform or challenge dominant constructions of migrants, their activism, and their struggles in relation to Canada’s own context of separatism, sovereignty, and colonization. Rather than employ any one term to refer to a singular narrative of transnational resistance in our research, I argue that we foreground the power structures and global relations that fundamentally mark colonized identities and their activism across spaces and movements. I draw upon Indigenous, critical, and anti-oppressive research approaches to centre the transgressive potential of decolonial representation and resistance.
Purpose: Despite the elimination of explicitly discriminatory immigration selection policies sinc... more Purpose: Despite the elimination of explicitly discriminatory immigration selection policies since the 1960’s, the social inclusion of immigrants into the labour market continues to mark covert exclusionary practices in Canada. “Canadian experience” (CE) has been identified as one influential factor in immigrants’ unsuccessful attempts to obtain gainful employment. It may constitute “hard skills” (e.g., credentials) and, more importantly, “soft skills”, an ability to operate within “Canadian workplace culture”, an ambiguous concept that is tacitly understood and difficult to articulate. Despite an established critique of the lack of CE as an exclusionary practice and discriminatory requirement for employment, since 2008, immigration policy has embraced CE as criteria for permanent residence for prospective skilled immigrants and those who are already in Canada with visa in desirable occupations. This research examined the discursive construction of “skilled immigrants” and “Canadian...
Beginning in mid-2008, the Tamil diaspora around the world organized in extraordinary activism ag... more Beginning in mid-2008, the Tamil diaspora around the world organized in extraordinary activism against the escalating violence in northern Sri Lanka. Responses to the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada provide a unique case study to examine a contemporary moment of resistance, when race thinking and spatiality intersected within and beyond national borders. Using critical theories of representation, I conceptualize Canadian print media coverage of the protests as representations of a "strange encounter" with the other. I explore the media's production of the other and its conflation of the Tamil protester-terrorist through constructions of space. I also examine how scale operates through underlying national values to conceptualize a precarious structure of belonging. Through these discursive moves, I demonstrate how the resulting figure of the "other," the "outlaw," and the "outsider" came to represent and delegitimize the racialized/ spatialized Tamil protest(er).
While much social movement research focuses on how activists actively cultivate affect and how so... more While much social movement research focuses on how activists actively cultivate affect and how social movements benefit from shared emotions, these ideas rarely intersect with research examining how race constructs emotional responses in a white settler society. I bridge this theoretical divide by examining the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada to study dimensions of suffering and apathy through the construction of the racialized protest(er). Drawing upon illustrations from a critical discourse analysis of 153 mainstream news articles and interviews with activists and journalists, this paper explores how racial logic frames media and public discourse through (1) the expression of protesters’ suffering and (2) the construction of racial apathy by the Canadian public. The paper theorizes why and how race frames the production of suffering and apathy, and offers considerations for social movement theory.
Purpose: Despite the elimination of explicitly discriminatory immigration selection policies sinc... more Purpose: Despite the elimination of explicitly discriminatory immigration selection policies since the 1960’s, the social inclusion of immigrants into the labour market continues to mark covert exclusionary practices in Canada. “Canadian experience” (CE) has been identified as one influential factor in immigrants’ unsuccessful attempts to obtain gainful employment. It may constitute “hard skills” (e.g., credentials) and, more importantly, “soft skills”, an ability to operate within “Canadian workplace culture”, an ambiguous concept that is tacitly understood and difficult to articulate. Despite an established critique of the lack of CE as an exclusionary practice and discriminatory requirement for employment, since 2008, immigration policy has embraced CE as criteria for permanent residence for prospective skilled immigrants and those who are already in Canada with visa in desirable occupations. This research examined the discursive construction of “skilled immigrants” and “Canadian...
This paper examines the branding of ‘Canadian experience’ in Canadian immigration policy as a rhe... more This paper examines the branding of ‘Canadian experience’ in Canadian immigration policy as a rhetorical strategy for neoliberal nation-building. Since 2008, the Canadian government has introduced an unprecedented number of changes to immigration policy. While the bulk of these policies produce more temporary and precarious forms of migration, the Canadian government has mobilized the rhetoric of ‘Canadian experience’ as a means to identify immigrants who carry the promise of economic and social integration. Through a critical discourse analysis of Canadian print media and political discourse, we trace how the brand of ‘Canadian experience’ taps into the affective value of national identity in an era of global economic insecurity. We also illustrate how the discourse of CE remains ideologically deraciailzed, such that the government’s embrace of CE as an immigrant selection criterion dismisses the discriminatory effects this discourse has shown to have for racialized immigrants in Canada.
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Papers by Daphne Jeyapal
of Social Work (MSW) graduates in Canada to explore the extent to
which their classroom and practicum learning addressed social justice
and anti-oppressive practice. Thirty-five MSW graduates took part in
a semi-structured online survey regarding the quality of social justice
knowledge and practice skills in their field instruction and coursework.
The survey also examined how graduates employ social justice in
their current social work practice. The majority of the study sample
reported favorable educational outcomes and embraced social justice
goals in their current practice. Discourse analysis of written comments,
however, identified a disconnect between social justice theory, field
education, and the overall climate of the social work program. Despite
an explicit endorsement of social justice values by the program and
the profession, graduates reported limited opportunities to learn
anti-oppressive practice or apply social justice theories in their field
education. We argue that the ‘hidden curriculum’ in social work
education reflects market pressures that privilege task-oriented
goals while ‘mainstreaming’ social justice rhetoric. Skills to confront
oppression with transformative change are viewed as abstract goals
and thus less useful than clinical practice.
of Social Work (MSW) graduates in Canada to explore the extent to
which their classroom and practicum learning addressed social justice
and anti-oppressive practice. Thirty-five MSW graduates took part in
a semi-structured online survey regarding the quality of social justice
knowledge and practice skills in their field instruction and coursework.
The survey also examined how graduates employ social justice in
their current social work practice. The majority of the study sample
reported favorable educational outcomes and embraced social justice
goals in their current practice. Discourse analysis of written comments,
however, identified a disconnect between social justice theory, field
education, and the overall climate of the social work program. Despite
an explicit endorsement of social justice values by the program and
the profession, graduates reported limited opportunities to learn
anti-oppressive practice or apply social justice theories in their field
education. We argue that the ‘hidden curriculum’ in social work
education reflects market pressures that privilege task-oriented
goals while ‘mainstreaming’ social justice rhetoric. Skills to confront
oppression with transformative change are viewed as abstract goals
and thus less useful than clinical practice.