Closing the Borders of the Mind in an Age of Globalization
Source: flickr.com/photos/lcars/
2011 is a landmark year, the year that the Canadian “baby boom” generation turns 65. After that, so we’ve been told, everything changes. While it’s unlikely that change will be so immediately dramatic, it’s true that our aging population will pose unique challenges over the next decade. One critical one will be maintaining an adequate labour force to both drive the economy and generate the taxes required to support that aging population.
Immigration has been touted as one of the keys to this policy puzzle. Not only is 2011 a watershed year demographically, it’s also the year that immigration was predicted to account for 100% of Canada’s labour force growth. Whether this remains true in the doldrums of the post-recession labour market, remains to be seen. Yet, immigration constitutes an important part of strategic thinking about the future of the Canadian economy and society.
Global Capitalism and the Culture of Labour
In an age of globalization, immigration is the human corollary to the internationalization of capital. Just as economic capital moves more freely than ever, human capital (labour) too has become more fluid. Initially, globalization was driven by a hunger for labour that drove capital to the developing economies in search of the cheapest labour possible. In an ironic reversal, future economic growth in the developed world may be impeded by a growing labour shortage as the labour force ages, and global capital seeks to draw workers to increasingly labour-starved western economies.
For Canada, this has meant a renewed focus on immigration. In a sense, from a Canadian perspective, nothing’s new. Historically, immigration has always played a critical role in Canada’s cultural and economic development, from settlement to industrialization. This reliance on immigrant labour has also been accompanied by a degree of tension as new cultures struggle to find their place in the Canadian narrative. However, Canada seemed to have found a measure of cultural accommodation through the ideal of the “mosaic”, expressed officially through a policy of multiculturalism, distinct from the “melting pot” approach of the United States. So, while economic capital always required some degree of immigrant labour to continue its expansion, multiculturalism fostered the social capital that allowed that growth to happen.
Cracks in the Accommodation
As we move deeper into the 21st century, however, this ideal and its policy face are undergoing new scrutiny. This scrutiny now comes from a series of converging forces. First, patterns of immigration have changed. Over the past three decades, non-western regions have made up the majority of Canada’s new immigrants, bringing new values and religions into the mosaic. And, unlike earlier times, immigrants are now drawn to Canada’s major cities to the extent that, within the next two decades, “visible minorities” are expected to become either the outright majority, or close to it, in the country’s largest metropolitan areas.
Secondly, despite actively recruiting immigrants based on the match between their skills and the demands of the labour force, today’s immigrants typically fail to get recognition for the very skills and qualifications for which they were supposedly recruited. A recent study found that within four years of landing, only about one-quarter of immigrants had received recognition for their educational credentials, and less than half (40%) for their work experience. Visible minority newcomers had the lowest probability of having their work experience recognized. This is one of the most important factors underlying the high rates of poverty and under-employment experienced by recent immigrants across Canada.
Thirdly, terrorist activities starting with the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington, and the subsequent military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, have focused public policy attention on security. Out of such intense focus on “terrorists”, and the public linking of Islam and terror, arose a new xenophobia. This new xenophobia leads us to inane public debates about matters such as the public wearing of the Hijab, Burqa or Niqab, and has led us into debates about “reasonable accommodation”. In the province of Quebec, the Bouchard-Taylor Commission was struck to address precisely this question through prolonged public consultation.
The Meltdown
Yet, the seemingly incongruent forces of the need for international labour and the xenophobic reaction to terrorism appeared to be co-existing through much of the past decade. One strategy that in part facilitated this co-existence was the growth of Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs). Between 1996 and 2006, the number of non-permanent residents in Canada rose by 87%, the vast majority of these being workers. During the height of the economic boom in the Canadian west, TFWs accounted for fully 1% of the labour force of the province of Alberta . TFWs were thought to have the advantage of providing the economy the labour it needed, without making cultural demands on the host societies. While rising immigration and foreign worker programs were not without tensions, such tensions were subsumed by the prosperity of the time.
That all ended with the global economic meltdown of 2008 which provided the heat to the cauldron of simultaneously rising diversity and xenophobia. Here the cracks in the Canadian ideal of multiculturalism and the cultural mosaic begin to appear. A recent national survey found that almost one-third of Canadians now believe that multiculturalism has been bad for Canada, while in Alberta, the province that has received proportionately more foreign workers than any other, 39% perceived it to have been bad. Further, over half of Canadians felt that Canada should be a “melting pot”, as opposed to a mosaic, with Albertans among the most likely to subscribe to that ideal.
Meanwhile, immigrant labour provides the perfect scapegoat for those who seek to lay blame for the employment crisis on human rather than financial capital. Another national survey, commissioned by the Government of Canada, found that over one-third of Canadians believe that immigration increases unemployment. The poll also found that Canadians are less inclined now to feel that immigration strengthens Canadian culture compared to the start of the decade. Further, while over three-quarters of Canadians still believe that immigration is good for Canada, less than half believe it is good for their neighbourhood. As the economic position of immigrants and visible minorities deteriorates, and public attitudes harden, patterns of social and economic inequality become further entrenched. The most recent Canadian Board Diversity Survey found that only 5.3% of FP500 board members are visible minorities. Yet, despite this relative lack of diversity, over two-thirds (68%) of FP500 organizations do not have a written diversity policy, and 66% did not see a need to develop or adopt one, with most feeling that their boards are already diverse
The fears of an Ageing Population // Source: flickr.com/photos/35357724@N05/
Cowboy Culture in the New World Order: A Case in Contradictions
The city of Calgary, located in Canada’s western resource-rich province of Alberta, exemplifies these competing forces. Host of the 1988 winter Olympics, and headquarters of Canada’s petroleum industry, Calgary has strong global ties. Over the past decade, Calgary has also led the nation in economic growth, suffering as a consequence, a severe labour shortage. The resulting record low unemployment rate served as a magnet for migrants from across the country and internationally. While Calgary still receives far fewer immigrants than the cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, immigration to Calgary continues to climb to record levels, changing the face of a city that has been less diverse culturally than its larger counterparts, known more for its cowboy culture than its cultural diversity.
And, while immigrants and temporary foreign workers flocked to the city for its economic opportunities, many were also left struggling in lower-paying jobs, failing to get recognition for their qualifications and work experience. When the recession hit, it was precisely these occupations that were most affected. It is not surprising, then, that recent dialogues with immigrants in Calgary found them to feel completely shut out of the job market, either unable to find work or among the first to be laid off when the downturn began. Many had exhausted their personal savings and were burdened with crushing levels of debt. Meanwhile, even as immigrants and foreign workers find themselves economically sidelined and struggling to survive, attitudes towards them are hardening. In Calgary, a recent survey found that over one-third of immigrants were concerned about being discriminated against. Another survey found an overwhelming majority (82%) of visible minority persons to have experienced racial profiling, while almost all (96%) reported that they know someone in their community who had.
While the recession has now temporarily temporarily taken the heat off of the labour market, the labour shortage is predicted to return within the next five years. As the country’s population ages and labour shortages become generalized, the Calgary experience may be a harbinger of things to come. How Calgary resolves this contradiction between its global and cowboy cultures, while being highly linked globally and absolutely dependent on migration, may be a lesson for the country and beyond. The City recently passed a local immigration policy which may be a first step toward this resolution.
2011 and Beyond
What, then, can we expect from 2011 and indeed the rest of the decade, as we experience the ever advancing aging of the population, and the expected increasing diversity of the population and the labour force? Just as the globalization of capital is meeting renewed resistance and pressures for protectionist trade policies in response to the recession, so too is the globalization of labour meeting social resistance as the impact of global labour markets is experienced by societies that are challenged by the new diversity this reality entails. This is resulting in a rise of “cultural protectionism”.
Ultimately, the way forward will require both the continued mobility of labour and the increased cultural diversity that an internationally mobile labour force entails. However, if current trends continue, this may not come about without renewed social tensions as Canada and other western democracies redefine their understanding and approaches to multiculturalism. Navigating our way through this will require several key policy challenges to be addressed.
- Collectively, we will need to decide between “immigration” and its attendant rights of citizenship (and change to social composition, values and political constituency) or a reliance on temporary labour and the risk of further entrenched social exclusion entailed by that approach.
- The demand for heightened international security will need to be balanced with the need for increased labour mobility. On the home front, this will require adopting not only policies, but also language, that promotes respectful inter-cultural dialogue and social cohesion;
- Labour force strategies will need to be crafted that are reflective of the new patterns of predominantly non-western immigration in order to overcome further entrenchment of inequality and economic exclusion which inflicts damage not only on society, but also the economy; and,
- Recognizing and addressing systemic patterns of discrimination will require a new balancing of the principles of universality with the needs of specific populations that are being systematically disadvantaged in the public and private realms.
Optimism for our ability to navigate this policy maze successfully rests, as always, with the young. While support for multiculturalism and the cultural mosaic seems to be waning, it remains strongest among younger people. Unlike the generation about to retire, the new generations have grown up in a much more diverse society and this is the generation that will eventually need to make the important decisions that will reconcile these competing forces. Add generational diversity to the cultural and economic complexity of the new world order, and we have the ingredients for a lively debate.
And this just in from today's newspaper, the Globe and Mail: CANADIANS 'HARDENING' ON REFUGEE PROCESS Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says he’s concerned by the hardening attitude Canadians have shown the refugee process, but lawyers and activists argue that attitude only exists because of negative rhetoric uttered by the minister himself. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/brit...
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