There is a gap in our field regarding leisure research on specific ethnic groups. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the experience of leisure and of involvement in the First Chinese Senior Association of Vaughan (FCSAV) for Chinese adults aged 50 to 65 years who have been living in Canada for at least five years. As this is a phenomenological study, the main focus is on the meanings and experiences of these participants. Purposeful sampling methods were used to find participants who fit the study criteria of being a Chinese immigrant from Mainland China and/or Hong Kong, living in Canada for at least five years, between the ages of 50 to 65, a member of the First Chinese Senior Association of Vaughan, and participating in at least one activity at the Centre at the time of interview. Altogether, 13 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted over two weeks in July 2010. Five main essences were developed from the analysis of the interview data: changing leisure with changing culture; achieving and maintaining health; experiencing freedom and choice; cultural expression and cultural learning; and feeling a sense of community. Interestingly, there was also an overarching theme of leisure as an essential component to life. These findings exemplify the great value Chinese immigrants place upon leisure as they experienced it at the FCSAV as well as its connection to holistic health. Also, leisure at the club was described as a site for cultural expression and the development of community. Overall, implications of this study will be of most value to recreation practitioners and researchers by allowing for greater cultural sensitivity in developing and enhancing programs for this specific group.

My research studies immigrants’ learning experiences as socially organized practices. Informed by the sociocultural approach of learning and institutional ethnography, I treat learning as a material and relational phenomenon. I start by examining how fourteen Chinese immigrants learn to fit into the engineering market in Canada. I then trace the social discourses and relations that shape immigrants’ learning experiences, particularly their changing perceptions and practices and personal and professional investments. I contend that immigrants’ learning is produced through social processes of differentiation that naturalize immigrants as a secondary labour pool, which is dismissible and desirable at the same time. My investigation unfolds around four areas of learning. The first is related to immigrants’ self-marketing practices. I show that core to immigrants’ marketing strategies is to speak to the skill discourse or employers’ skill expectations at the “right” time and place. The skill discourse, I argue, is culturally-charged and class-based. It cloaks a complex of hiring relations where “skill” is discursively constructed and differentially invoked to preserve the privilege and power of the dominant group. The second area is immigrants’ work-related learning. I find that workplace training is part of the corporate agenda to organize work and manage workers. Amid this picture, workers’ opportunity to access corporate sponsorship for professional development is contingent on their membership within the engineering community. To expand their professional space, the immigrants resorted to learning and consolidating their knowledge in codes and standards, which serve as a textual organizer of engineering work. The third area is related to workplace communication. My participants reported an individualistic communication ‘culture’, which celebrates individual excellence and discourages close interpersonal relations. Such a perception, I argue, obscures the gender, race and class relations that privilege white and male power. It also leaves out the organizational relations, such as the project-based deployment of the engineering workforce that perpetuate individualistic communicative practices. My last area of investigation focuses on immigrants’ efforts to acquire Canadian credentials and professional licence. Their heavy learning loads direct my attention to the ideological and administrative licensure practices that valorize Canadian credentials and certificates to the exclusion of others.

Literature on lifelong learning indicates that major life transitions lead to significant learning. However, compared to learning in paid jobs, learning in and through household work has received little attention, given the unpaid nature and the private sphere where the learning occurs. The current study examined the changes and the learning involved in three aspects of household work: food work, childcare/parenting, and emotion work among recent Chinese immigrants in Canada. This study draws on data from a Canadian Survey on Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL), 20 individual interviews, a focus group, and a discussion group with new Chinese professional immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area. The results indicate that food work and childcare increased dramatically after immigration due to a sudden decline of economic resources and the lack of social support network for childcare. Emotion work intensified due to the challenges in paid jobs and the absence of extended families in the new homeland. To adapt to the changes in their social and economic situations, and to integrate into the Canadian society, Chinese immigrants learned new beliefs and practices about food and childrearing, developed new knowledge and skills in cooking and grocery shopping, in childcare and disciplining, in solving conflicts with children and spouses, and in transnational kin maintenance. In addition, the Chinese immigrants also developed new views about family, paid and unpaid work, meaning of life, and new gender and ethnic identities. However, these dramatic changes did not shatter the gendered division of household work. Both the qualitative and the quantitative data suggest that women not only do more but also different types of household tasks. As a result, it is not surprising that both the content and the ways of learning associated with household work varied by gender, class, and ethnicity. By exploring learning involved in the four dimensions of household work: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, this dissertation demonstrates that learning is both lifelong and lifewide. By making household work visible, this research helps make visible the value of the unpaid work and the learning involved in it.

My research studies immigrants’ learning experiences as socially organized practices. Informed by the sociocultural approach of learning and institutional ethnography, I treat learning as a material and relational phenomenon. I start by examining how fourteen Chinese immigrants learn to fit into the engineering market in Canada. I then trace the social discourses and relations that shape immigrants’ learning experiences, particularly their changing perceptions and practices and personal and professional investments. I contend that immigrants’ learning is produced through social processes of differentiation that naturalize immigrants as a secondary labour pool, which is dismissible and desirable at the same time. My investigation unfolds around four areas of learning. The first is related to immigrants’ self-marketing practices. I show that core to immigrants’ marketing strategies is to speak to the skill discourse or employers’ skill expectations at the “right” time and place. The skill discourse, I argue, is culturally-charged and class-based. It cloaks a complex of hiring relations where “skill” is discursively constructed and differentially invoked to preserve the privilege and power of the dominant group. The second area is immigrants’ work-related learning. I find that workplace training is part of the corporate agenda to organize work and manage workers. Amid this picture, workers’ opportunity to access corporate sponsorship for professional development is contingent on their membership within the engineering community. To expand their professional space, the immigrants resorted to learning and consolidating their knowledge in codes and standards, which serve as a textual organizer of engineering work. The third area is related to workplace communication. My participants reported an individualistic communication ‘culture’, which celebrates individual excellence and discourages close interpersonal relations. Such a perception, I argue, obscures the gender, race and class relations that privilege white and male power. It also leaves out the organizational relations, such as the project-based deployment of the engineering workforce that perpetuate individualistic communicative practices. My last area of investigation focuses on immigrants’ efforts to acquire Canadian credentials and professional licence. Their heavy learning loads direct my attention to the ideological and administrative licensure practices that valorize Canadian credentials and certificates to the exclusion of others.

Literature on lifelong learning indicates that major life transitions lead to significant learning. However, compared to learning in paid jobs, learning in and through household work has received little attention, given the unpaid nature and the private sphere where the learning occurs. The current study examined the changes and the learning involved in three aspects of household work: food work, childcare/parenting, and emotion work among recent Chinese immigrants in Canada. This study draws on data from a Canadian Survey on Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL), 20 individual interviews, a focus group, and a discussion group with new Chinese professional immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area. The results indicate that food work and childcare increased dramatically after immigration due to a sudden decline of economic resources and the lack of social support network for childcare. Emotion work intensified due to the challenges in paid jobs and the absence of extended families in the new homeland. To adapt to the changes in their social and economic situations, and to integrate into the Canadian society, Chinese immigrants learned new beliefs and practices about food and childrearing, developed new knowledge and skills in cooking and grocery shopping, in childcare and disciplining, in solving conflicts with children and spouses, and in transnational kin maintenance. In addition, the Chinese immigrants also developed new views about family, paid and unpaid work, meaning of life, and new gender and ethnic identities. However, these dramatic changes did not shatter the gendered division of household work. Both the qualitative and the quantitative data suggest that women not only do more but also different types of household tasks. As a result, it is not surprising that both the content and the ways of learning associated with household work varied by gender, class, and ethnicity. By exploring learning involved in the four dimensions of household work: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, this dissertation demonstrates that learning is both lifelong and lifewide. By making household work visible, this research helps make visible the value of the unpaid work and the learning involved in it.