Women Experiences of Immigration to Canada Presentation

Women’s Experiences of Immigration to Canada: A Review of the Literature Maryam S. Rezazadeh and Michael L. Hoover McGill University This systematic review of the literature on the experiences of first-generation immigrant women in Canada was conducted with the aim of describing the factors found in the peer-reviewed literature that affect all aspects of their adjustment and well-being. This review was as broad as possible, while restricting it to peer-reviewed studies published from 1980 through 2015. On the basis of a comprehensive search of key databases (ERIC, PsycINFO, Medline, PubMed electronic databases, and university library e-journal sources), 166 peer-reviewed articles were identified whose results described some aspect of foreign-born women’s experiences in Canada. These articles were read and coded for (a) general topic of the study, (b) research methodology, (c) number of foreign-born women participants, (d) participant demographics (country of origin, legal status, and location within Canada), and (e) academic discipline of the study. A 3-step grounded theory approach was used to categorize the research topics of the articles. Six research topics emerged that exhaustively categorized all 166 articles: cultural transitioning, employment, housing, intimate partner violence, access to medical care, and mental health and well-being. The main findings of each article are described under those 6 topics. Foreign-born women faced economic, cultural, linguistic, and systemic barriers that impeded their access to health, social, and economic resources. Nonetheless, many studies revealed effective coping strategies and support networks that eased their transition to Canadian society. On the basis of these results, recommendations are made for further research on foreign-born women and for more effective and culturally sensitive mental health services. Keywords: women, immigrant, Canada, mental health, acculturation Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cap0000126.supp Immigrants to Canada came mainly from Europe until two pieces of legislation came into effect that dramatically changed patterns of immigration: the 1976 Immigration Act and the 1977 Citizenship Act. The Immigration Act created a separate status for refugees, whereas the Citizenship Act removed the special status for British subjects. Soon thereafter a series of political upheavals occurred around the world, including revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua, repression in Guatemala, and wars in Iran, Iraq, Sudan, South Yemen, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. The more open immigration policies, combined with increased political turmoil, led to a dramatic increase in non-European immigration to Canada, both economic and refugee. The number of women immigrating to Canada has grown since 1980, including increasing numbers of visible minority women from underdeveloped and developing regions of the world. Since the 1990s, the Canadian government has emphasized attracting skilled professionals. As a result, more foreign-born women immigrating to Canada are highly educated and arrive as principal applicants, although most continue to immigrate as dependents, either under the family class category or as the spouse of a principle applicant (Chui, 2011). Embarking on life in Canada poses unique challenges for foreign-born women as they must negotiate new social relationships, group membership, often learn a new language, and seek access to the resources necessary for living. Their experiences resettling in Canada are shaped by the social, political, and cultural contexts of the systems of power with which they interact while Migration across international borders can be a challenging process because of the many unknowns that await immigrants in the new country. This is true even for immigrants to Canada, an immigrantand refugee-receiving nation that promotes a multicultural value set by acknowledging its diverse ethnic and cultural communities. Migration is even more challenging for women because they face unequal opportunities, particularly at the decision-making junctures of the migration and resettlement process, especially when most women who immigrate to Canada do so as dependents of male family members (Chui, 2011). Because the migration and resettlement process affects all areas of these women’s lives, this systematic review of the literature was conducted with the goal of identifying the broad range of issues faced by foreign-born women in Canada by describing the factors found in the peer-reviewed literature that affect their adjustment and well-being. This article was published Online First November 27, 2017. Maryam S. Rezazadeh and Michael L. Hoover, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University. We thank Bruce M. Shore and Robert J. Bracewell, who provided helpful, thoughtful, and insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this article, and Ada L. Sinacore for her guidance and help to the first author in becoming familiar with the literature on this topic. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael L. Hoover, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University, 3700 McTavish street, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y2. E-mail: michael.hoover@mcgill.ca 76 LITERATURE REVIEW OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN CANADA navigating the various areas of life in Canada. However, these systems of power in Canada rest largely on a Eurocentric consciousness that lacks the multicultural framework and sensitivity needed to effectively address the needs of non-European immigrants (Henry & Tator, 2006). In an important contribution to our understanding of the literature on foreign-born women in Canada, Guruge, Thomson, George, and Chaze (2015) conducted a systematic literature review of the effects of social support on the mental health of foreign-born women in Canada, which identified factors that led to foreign-born women underutilizing formal social support, such as lack of access to information, cultural and linguistic barriers, transportation problems, and the stigma of seeking out mental health services. Although the scope of their review is narrower than that of the present review, and therefore used different search terms, many of the articles identified in their study were also independently included in the present literature review. In this review, the term foreign-born refers to anyone born outside of Canada who has migrated to Canada to establish permanent residence, whereas the term immigrant is used when discussing articles that used that term. Although gender is a social construct distinguished from biological sex, we have accepted authors’ operationalizations of gender, usually on the basis of self-report. Visible minority refers to members of a group considered a racial or ethnic minority. Materials and Method This literature review included peer-reviewed studies published in English from 1980 through 2015. The year 1980 was chosen because it marked the beginning of a new wave of immigrants and refugees entering Canada under the new citizenship and immigration legislation. The literature search was conducted using the ERIC, PsycINFO, Medline, and PubMed databases as well as university library e-journal sources. These databases were chosen because they include the journals most commonly cited in counselling research. In addition, a manual search of the reference lists of included studies and Google Scholar searches were also conducted to locate other relevant articles. Articles from the searches that were not peer-reviewed were excluded from the review. A combination of search terms and search strings was used to locate studies, including foreign-born women Canada, immigrant women Canada, women immigrants refugees Canada, immigrant mental health Canada, immigrant health services, immigrant social conditions, immigrant socioeconomic factors, immigrant gender employment, and immigrant housing. Because the goal of this review was to address studies of immigrant women’s experiences in the Canadian context, studies were included only if they reported results that explicitly discussed the experiences of foreign-born women in Canada. The process of categorization and review of the articles began with (a) doing a literature search using the selection of keywords mentioned earlier, (b) retrieving the articles, (c) excluding articles that were not peer reviewed and literature reviews, and (d) including peer reviewed articles listed in literature reviews, (e) excluding articles for which no data on women’s experience could be extracted, and (f) reading each peer reviewed article in its entirety to ensure that all inclusion and exclusion criteria were met. A total of 166 research articles remained, which were then read by both authors. Using a grounded theory approach (Wolfswinkel, Furtmueller, & Wilderom, 77 2013), articles were then grouped by research topic, using a three-step process of (a) open coding, in which the main finding of each article was identified as it spoke to the experiences of foreign-born women (e.g., seeking educational opportunities); (b) axial coding, in which hierarchical relationships among the open codes were determined (e.g., seeking education was axially coded as a subcode of adaptation); and (c) selective coding, in which the relations among the highest-level axial codes are determined and refined (e.g., medical care was distinguished from mental health, whereas mental health was grouped with well-being). At each stage of coding, both authors discussed the coding and came to consensus. Only five articles (3 %) required a brief discussion before both authors reached consensus as to selective code. Where an article addressed more than one selective code, it was coded by its main finding as reported in its conclusion. Six research topics emerged from the selective coding which captured all of the articles reviewed: cultural transitioning (39 articles), employment issues (28 articles), housing issues (seven articles), intimate partner violence (10 articles), access to medical care (40 articles), and mental health and well-being (42 articles). Each article was then read by both authors, who determined the main research focus, the methodology used, the number of foreign-born women studied, the demographics (country of origin, legal status, location within Canada), as well as the academic domain of the article on the basis of the journal and the academic affiliation of the authors. In each of the six following sections, the included articles are presented in table form, including the topic of research, methodologies used, the population under study, and academic discipline. This is then followed by a discussion of the results of the studies. Cultural Transitioning and Negotiating Gender Roles by Foreign-Born Women Key information about the 39 studies addressing cultural transitioning is summarized in Table S1 in the online supplemental materials. The resettlement process for foreign-born women often included taking on new roles such as entering the paid labor force, or pursuing higher education while delaying marriage and child bearing (Shirpak, Maticka-Tyndale, & Chinichian, 2011). Negotiating new gender roles and cultural expectations affected their ties to their families or ethnic communities and their integration into the Canadian society (Safdar, Lewis, & Daneshpour, 2006; Sinacore, Titus, & Hofman, 2013). Some women challenged traditional gender roles “as a symbol of empowerment and autonomy,” and adopted a multicultural ethnic identity (Sadeghi, 2008, p. 221), whereas others maintained a strong identity with their cultural group but deviated from traditional gender roles (Mac & Alderson, 2009; Malhi, Boon, & Rogers, 2009). Others remained ambivalent about gender roles and continued to assume traditional gender roles (Samuel, 2010), such as providing care to elderly family members and children (Spitzer, Neufeld, Harrison, Hughes, & Stewart, 2003). Maintaining ties to their cultural communities provided foreign-born women with a sense of identity, a sense of well-being, and facilitated their integration in Canada (Berry & Blondel, 1982; Choi, Kushner, Mill, & Lai, 2014a; Safdar, Lay, & Struthers, 2003). Some foreign-born women negotiated transnational identities through multiple migrations, and maintained strong ties both to Canada and their country of origin (Das Gupta, 2006). Visible minority foreign-born women reported experiencing discrimination in Canada (Das Gupta, 2006; George & Ramkissoon, 78 REZAZADEH AND HOOVER 1998; Poolokasingham, Spanierman, Kleiman, & Houshmand, 2014; Samuel, 2010; Sutherland & Cheng, 2009). Gidengil and Stolle (2012) found that foreign-born women lacked awareness of government services for obtaining help with discriminatory treatment, domestic violence, or unlawful rent increases. Women perceived more group than individual discrimination by majority-group Canadians, a perception that increased with the length of time in Canada (Lalonde, Taylor, & Moghaddam, 1992; Moghaddam & Taylor, 1987). Although they minimized their personal experience of discrimination and its impact (Malhi & Boon, 2007), the perception of group discrimination led to retention of their cultural heritage (Taylor, Wright, Moghaddam, & Lalonde, 1990), and strengthened their identification with their ethnic communities (Shemirani & O’Connor, 2006). Foreign-born women reacted differently to personal encounters of racism based on the extent to which they had adopted mainstream Canadian culture and their knowledge of their ethnic group’s historical experiences of racism (Ku, 2005, 2012). Ng (1981) concluded that ethnicity is not intrinsic but that immigrants find themselves being given an ethnic identity on arriving in Canada. Some visible minority foreign-born women position themselves in social spaces and express their identities by celebrating their ethnic or religious differences (Ku, 2012; Ruby, 2006) or through community involvement and activism within both their cultural communities and in the wider Canadian society (Tastsoglou & Miedema, 2003). Activism by visible minority foreign-born women played a significant role in their integration into Canadian society and served as a strategy to advocate for their ethnic communities in Canada (Miedema & Tastsoglou, 2000), and to resist racial discrimination (Ku, 2011, 2013). Foreign-born women reported a strong desire to learn one or both official languages to improve their employment prospects, to gain better access to health information and services, (Dyck, 1993; see Table S5 in the online supplemental materials), and to take a more active role in their children’s education (Kilbride & Ali, 2010). However, this did not imply a desire to abandon their mother tongue (MacPherson & Ghoso, 2008). Foreign-born women tended to rely more on informal networks to improve their language proficiency (Adamuti-Trache, 2012), and learning English served as a tool to negotiate their social identity (Morgan, 1997). However, informal learning of English proved difficult for older foreign-born women because of limited contact with native speakers (Wang, 1999), and factors such as work and child-care responsibilities were major impediments to women taking English classes (Kilbride & Ali, 2010). Duguay (2012) reported that government-sponsored language classes failed to improve prospects for finding employment. Low English proficiency led to feelings of exploitation and powerlessness in the workplace (Kilbride & Ali, 2010). English language training in the workplace enabled foreign-born women to acculturate more effectively to the Canadian work environment (Duff, Wong, & Early, 2000) and gain a greater sense of autonomy (Wong, Duff, & Early, 2001), but failed to improve their workplace status (Fenwick, 2008; Harper, Peirce, & Burnaby, 1996). Foreign-born women encounter opportunities and challenges as they transition to a new life in Canada, requiring the negotiation of new roles, language use, identities, and social ties, which can affect women’s relationships with their families and their cultural groups in complex ways. Foreign-born women show a strong desire to learn an official language and contribute to the social, political, and economic life in Canada through volunteer work and activism in various organizations in their ethnic communities and the wider Canadian society. However, visible minority foreignborn women remain a marginalized group, and experience discrimination in various Canadian contexts, indicating a need for more studies to shed light on the impact that discrimination and marginalization has on women’s adjustment and well-being. Employment Experiences of Foreign-Born Women The 28 studies addressing employment experiences are presented in Table S2 (see the online supplemental materials. Foreign-born women gain a sense of identity from their employment (Brigham, 2011), especially as income earners (Anderson & Lynam, 1987), and gain financial security and a sense of independence (Suto, 2009). But, they are more likely to be unemployed than foreign-born men (Wilkinson, 2008) or their Canadian-born counterparts (Lamba, 2003), or underemployed in traditional female jobs, often part-time, earning lower incomes than Canadian-born women (Boyd, 1984). This remains true despite their having more education than Canadianborn women, and living in cities with more job opportunities (Premji, Shakya, Spasevski, Merolli, & Athar, 2014). Migration forced some women to change their employment trajectories to more femaledominated careers, despite having training in male-dominated fields (Ng & Shan, 2010). Women experienced particular difficulty obtaining employment in their field of specialization (Sinacore, Mikhail, Kassan, & Lerner, 2009; Sinacore, Park-Saltzman, Mikhail, & Wada, 2011; Walsh & Brigham, 2007). Nonrecognition of foreign credentials and demands for Canadian experience perpetuated unemployment, underemployment, and deskilled labor among foreign-born women (Gibb & Hamdon, 2010; Man, 2004). Obtaining Canadian certification proved challenging for foreign-born women who faced competing demands of contributing to family income, fulfilling domestic responsibilities, and advancing their career (Suto, 2009). Often, internationally educated women accepted lower paid employment while trying to complete their recertification (Phillion, 2003; Walsh, Brigham, & Wang, 2011). Women reported having to conceal their professional skills and work experience in order to accept lower paying employment outside their careers (Shan, 2009b, 2015). Low language proficiency kept foreign-born women in lowskilled and dangerous jobs (Fuller, 2011) and inhibited access to information about their rights concerning workplace health and safety (Premji, Messing, & Lippel, 2008). Maitra and Shan (2007) found that the on-the-job training that foreign-born women received did not help them advocate for themselves concerning working conditions. Further, women employed in hazardous jobs feared that reporting work related injury would endanger their employment status (Premji & Lewchuk, 2014). Although barriers to employment in Canada have been shown to decrease foreign-born women’s socioeconomic status (Shan, 2009a, 2009b) and affect their well-being (Sakamoto, Ku, & Wei, 2009), women actively engaged in strategies to overcome structural barriers (Sangha, Slade, Mirchandani, Maitra, & Shan, 2012). Foreign-born women volunteered their time, accepted lower wages and worked harder than did their Canadian-born coworkers in order to prove their skills and qualifications to employers (Tastsoglou & Miedema, 2005). Foreign-born women tended to prior- LITERATURE REVIEW OF …