Betwixt and between

The success of Canada’s immigration policy is intrinsically tied to employment of an immigrant workforce. Teaching is the fourth largest profession among Canadian immigrants, yet immigrants whose occupations are in education are three times less likely to be employed in their matching profession. Failure to incorporate an immigrant workforce not only affects economic success, but has repercussions for immigrant professional identity. This paper reflects on the development of professional identity for twelve internationally educated immigrant teachers (IETs) seeking to reposition themselves as teachers in the Greater Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada. Through qualitative interviews and Life Positioning Analysis (Martin, 2013), this research explored the role of significant others in facilitating or impeding IETs’ inclusion into the teaching force and subsequent effects on professional identity development. Language and linguistic abilities emerged as a pervasive theme. Participants found acceptance and validation of their language and cultural differences through the perspectives of the students with whom they came into contact. In contrast, the professional teaching community’s perspectives in regard to accents and language proficiency caused IETs to question their competence and negatively impacted their professional identities. Implications for practice with respect to supporting IETs repositioning are offered.

The Making of an Immigrant Niche

Although the dominant paradigm of immigrant employment views immigrants as clustered in a limited number of occupations or industries that comprise a niche, the explanations of how immigrants enter and establish these niches remain incomplete. While most researchers emphasize the importance of social networks, the social network approach begs the issue of how to account for the insertion and consolidation of immigrant networks as opposed to those dominated by incumbent native workers. This article seeks to answer this question through a case study of immigrant professional employees in New York City government. I argue that the growth of this immigrant niche resulted from changes in the relative supply of native workers and in the structure of employment, which opened the bureaucracy to immigrants and reduced native/immigrant competition. These shifts opened hiring portals; given the advantages of network hiring for workers and managers, and an immigrant propensity for government employment, network recruitment led to a rapid buildup in immigrant ranks.