Low-skilled temporary foreign workers in Canada : how their subordinate status is discursively legitimated through public opinion

Foreign Worker ◽

Pilot Project ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

Current Status ◽

Formal Training ◽

Foreign Workers ◽

News Outlet

This paper attempts to show how public opinion discursively legitimates the subordinate status that low-skilled temporary foreign workers are assigned in Canada. The author first shows how this status has been created through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and, more specifically, the Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training. In order to analyze public opinion, comments made online in reference to news outlet articles concerning low-skilled temporary foreign workers were located. Using a dual labor market theoretical framework a critical discourse analysis is performed on these comments, attempting to uncover how power and dominance are reproduced within them. The results of this analysis demonstrate how the discourse contained within public opinion helps to maintain the current status faced by this population.

Remaining Competitive In The Global Economy Through Temporary Migrant Labour? One "Short-TGerm" Step Forward And Two "Long-Term" Steps Backward In Canadian Immigration

10.32920/ryerson.14646117.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick M. Sullivan

Keyword(s):

Global Economy ◽

Foreign Worker ◽

Pilot Project ◽

Foreign Workers ◽

National Interests ◽

Temporary Migrant ◽

Canadian Immigration ◽

Short And Long Term

In the last 10 years, the creation and expansion of the Low Skill Pilot Project (LSPP) has substantially increased the scope of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, ultimately eclipsing permanent immigration into Canada. The consequences, while positive for employers in the short-term, are perverse for Canada’s principles of social justice and equity in the long-term. It is also not clear whether the Project serves Canada’s immigration goals and national interests in the long term. This paper examines the LSPP’s creation and development, and analyzes short and long-term implications for Canadian society and the “Canada brand” of immigration, which refers to Canada’s image as a “destination of choice” for would-be immigrants the world over. This paper draws attention to the dichotomy of labour rights, wages and benefits of skilled and unskilled temporary foreign workers. A juxtaposition of two foreign worker categories within a dual labour segmentation framework illustrates this phenomenon.

Remaining Competitive In The Global Economy Through Temporary Migrant Labour? One "Short-TGerm" Step Forward And Two "Long-Term" Steps Backward In Canadian Immigration

10.32920/ryerson.14646117 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick M. Sullivan

Keyword(s):

Global Economy ◽

Foreign Worker ◽

Pilot Project ◽

Foreign Workers ◽

National Interests ◽

Temporary Migrant ◽

Canadian Immigration ◽

Short And Long Term

In the last 10 years, the creation and expansion of the Low Skill Pilot Project (LSPP) has substantially increased the scope of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, ultimately eclipsing permanent immigration into Canada. The consequences, while positive for employers in the short-term, are perverse for Canada’s principles of social justice and equity in the long-term. It is also not clear whether the Project serves Canada’s immigration goals and national interests in the long term. This paper examines the LSPP’s creation and development, and analyzes short and long-term implications for Canadian society and the “Canada brand” of immigration, which refers to Canada’s image as a “destination of choice” for would-be immigrants the world over. This paper draws attention to the dichotomy of labour rights, wages and benefits of skilled and unskilled temporary foreign workers. A juxtaposition of two foreign worker categories within a dual labour segmentation framework illustrates this phenomenon.

The People or the Police: Who to Blame? A Study Investigating Linguistic and Textual Devices Journalists Use in Framing News Stories

Theory and Practice in Language Studies ◽

10.17507/tpls.0612.02 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 6 (12) ◽

pp. 2245

Author(s):

Hamza Ethelb

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

Discourse Analysis ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

The Public ◽

News Stories ◽

The People ◽

News Organizations ◽

Al Arabiya ◽

News Event

One news event may be represented differently by different news organizations. Research in news representation remains sparse in Arabic. This article investigates some of the linguistic and textual devices used in journalistic texts. It looks at the way these devices are used to influence public opinion. This gives rise to significance of conducting this research. This study uses these devices within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). For the purpose of this study, four news articles produced by Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya were examined under CDA in order to show how journalists structure their news stories to imply an ideological stance. The analysis showed that Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya represented the people and the police differently, each according to their ideological and political leanings. This resulted in the public having different opinions of the event.

Ideological Polarization as a Deception Strategy in the Discourse of American Think Tanks: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Journal of the College of languages ◽

10.36586/jcl.2.2022.0.44.0001 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 0 (45) ◽

pp. 1-25

Author(s):

Ali Hamzah Lafta ◽

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

Discourse Analysis ◽

Policy Making ◽

Political Discourse ◽

Think Tanks ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

Think Tank ◽

Ideological Polarization ◽

Political Realities

Deception is an inseparable facet of political discourse in attaining strategic political gains though compromising public opinion. However, the employment of discursive deception strategies by the policy-making institutions of think tanks has not received due attention in the literature. The current study aims at exploring how the ideologizing deception strategies are utilized by the conservative American think tank of the Washington Institute to reproduce socio-political realities and re-shape public opinion. To fulfill this task, van Dijk’s (2000) notion of ideological polarization which shows positive self-representation and negative other representation is adopted to conduct a critical discourse analysis of four Arabic texts released with the main focus on four different political topics. Results reveal the centrality of employing deception strategies for the sake of realizing political wins for establishing an ideological hegemony while simultaneously polarizing an Us against Them extreme.

Are Temporary Foreign Workers Filling only Labor Shortages? The Case of Canada

Case Studies in Business and Management ◽

10.5296/csbm.v4i1.10717 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 1 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dominique M. Gross

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Foreign Worker ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Foreign Workers ◽

Short Term ◽

The Government ◽

Market Test ◽

Term Labor ◽

Clear Information

A temporary foreign worker (TFW) program is meant to fill short-term labor shortages and, constraints are imposed on employers for resident workers not to be affected in getting jobs. Often, employers consider that such a program imposes time-consuming administrative barriers and they pressure the government to obtain easier and faster access to TFWs. The Canadian policy was modified in two Western provinces from a required high time-consuming labor market test for all occupations to prove labor shortages to an immediate hiring of TFWs for occupations in a given list. Using DDD, it is tested whether priority to local workers was ensured under the new program. The analysis shows that much faster access to TFWs accelerated rises in unemployment in some high- and low-skill occupations and, impacts were quite different across the two provinces and industries. Thus, some domestic workers have been negatively affected. The main cause was a lack of clear information about local occupational labor shortages and political supports to employers for cheaper labor.

Covering Islam in Western Media: From Islamic to Islamophobic Discourses

Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics ◽

10.21462/jeltl.v2i1.33 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Bouchaib Benzehaf

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Media Theory ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

Religious Communities ◽

The West ◽

News Stories ◽

Holistic Review ◽

The Media

A fundamental role allocated to the media is the shaping of public opinion about topical issues, thus making the act of obtaining accurate and verified information a major challenge. In this context, Said (1997) argues that coverage of Islam by the media has always been lacking in subjectivity, and Arabs/Muslims have at best been obscured and at worst “othered” and demonized rather than revealed by the media. The 9/11 attacks have re-triggered an explosion of media coverage of Islam and Muslims with the terms "Muslim" and "Terrorist" becoming synonymous in many western countries. The attacks have been exploited to cause a social anxiety/panic toward Islam and Muslim cultures leading to Islamophobia which is being further reinforced in Trump’s America. Situated within the framework of Said’s Orientalism, which helps us understand the relationships between the West and the Muslim world and also framed by agenda-setting media theory, which explains how media manipulate public opinion, this paper argues that Islamophobia results from the way the news stories regarding Islam and Muslims are covered. In particular, these stories are media(ated) and thus distorted. The paper borrows tools from critical discourse analysis, particularly global meanings and lexicalization, to analyse selected examples of media(ted) coverage of Islam and Muslim stories from different media sources with the aim of offering a holistic review of the scope and nature of the coverage of Islam and Muslims. In light of the results, we suggest interfaith dialogue and intercultural education as measures that can bring about understanding and tolerance between different religious communities.

Construction of Public Opinion in Online News on the Issue of Nurses’ Expulsion from Boarding House: A Critical Discourse Analysis

TEKNOSASTIK ◽

10.33365/ts.v19i1.751 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 48

Author(s):

Octavia Chandra Dewi ◽

Rosaria Mita Amalia

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

Discourse Analysis ◽

Health Workers ◽

Online News ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

Social Actors ◽

The Social ◽

Boarding House

In the pandemic of covid-19 that has spread worldwide, health workers become heroes that stand on the frontline of the battle to fight the coronavirus, and ‘public enemies’ as well, they are also the people who interact directly with the virus through their patients. The case of nurses’ expulsion from boarding house, has proved that society around them is afraid of being contaminated by the virus through their interaction with health workers. This study was conducted using Critical Discourse Analysis study (CDA) through the three dimensions by Van Dijk (1997) upon the texts to describe and to analyze the social actors involved in the case of nurses’ expulsion from boarding house along with their roles in constructing public opinion through online news; to describe and to analyze the forms of power abuses and social inequality used by the social actors involved in this case which construct public opinions. The object of the study is taken from online article about a review about the nurses’ expulsion from boarding house in Solo, central Java, in pikiran-rakyat.com. The source of data analysis was the text of the review itself, and the public comments about the issue. The analysis upon the social actors’ attitudes and utterances, including the public’s comment about the issue showed that the bad person can be the victim as well, depends on the construction upon public opinion.

Contentious mobilities and Cheap(er) Labour: Temporary Foreign Workers in a New Brunswick Seafood Processing Community

The Canadian Journal of Sociology ◽

10.29173/cjs28256 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

pp. 375-398 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Christine Knott

Keyword(s):

New Brunswick ◽

Labour Force ◽

Foreign Worker ◽

Foreign Workers ◽

Mobility Patterns ◽

Different Types ◽

Seafood Processing ◽

Over Time

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is highly contentious. Particularly contentious are those parts of the program that have allowed for exploitative labour practices and the replacement of Canadian workers. Mobility for employment has been increasing, and researchers have focused on different types of mobile workers ranging from international (including the TFWP) to intra-provincial migrants, often in isolation from each other. Less research has focused on multiple mobilities within one industry to understand how and why labour force composition and employee mobility patterns change over time. Also under researched is why demand exists for TFWs in areas with high unemployment. This paper uses a case study of the seafood processing industry (both wild and farmed) in a rural region of New Brunswick to explore this industry’s claims about labour shortages and serial reliance on differently mobile labour forces over time. It draws on findings from a review of relevant documents and ethnographic fieldwork including interviews. Using the historical changes in the (im)mobility patterns of processing workers in this region, this paper highlights how the increased use of the TFWP by seafood processing companies is tied to manufactured raced and gendered employer practices.

Making Temporary Permanent: The Silent Transformation of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Just Labour ◽

10.25071/1705-1436.24 ◽

1969 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jason Foster

Keyword(s):

Labour Market ◽

Foreign Worker ◽

Foreign Workers ◽

Economic Downturn ◽

Documentary Evidence ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Labour

During the mid-2000s the number of temporary foreign workers (TFWs)present in Canada increased dramatically, more thantripling in eight years. Thebulk of the increase was due to an expansion of theTemporary Foreign WorkerProgram (TFWP) to include lower-skilled occupations. The stated reason for theexpansion was to address short-term labour shortages. Contrary to expectations,upon the onset of the economic downturn in 2008, the number of TFWs did notdecrease significantly, and appears to be increasing again in 2010 and 2011. Thispaper tracks the evolution of the TFWP from a stable program designed toaddress short-term labour needs in high-skilled occupations into a broaderlabour market tool. The paper examines the most recent available statistical datafor the TFWP and other documentary evidence to argue the role of the TFWP inCanada’s labour market has quietly shifted, becoming a permanent, large-scalelabour pool for many industries, reminiscent of European migrant workerprograms. The paper also examines the potential labour market implications ofan expanded, entrenched TFWP.