Many professionally trained immigrant applicants receive high marks in the selection process for
their perceived value to the host Canadian society and economy. Upon arrival, however, many
new immigrants find that employers and industry-regulated accreditation boards do not recognize
their foreign degrees and work experience. In this thesis, I interview 25 underemployed or
unemployed foreign-trained engineers in Vancouver to investigate the diversity of their
experiences in the labour market. I focus on how they perceive the obstacles they are facing and
how they are responding to these barriers in seeking employment. This thesis is situated in a
growing body of literature that considers labour markets as complex, place-contingent, socially
and institutionally embedded constructs. Using a "socio-institutionalist" approach, which refutes
conventional neoclassical economics' theories of labour markets as free, self-equilibrating, and
uninterrupted markets, enables me to compose, then put to work, a multilogical theoretical model
that examines the ways in which various institutions control, shape, and govern access to
professional engineering jobs in Vancouver. In particular, I draw upon theories of regulatory,
social and cultural institutions in the labour market. I find that regulatory institutions, such as the
Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia (APEGBC), create
licensing obstacles that are indeed profound for new immigrants. In addition, many recent
immigrants are excluded from local social networks that diffuse information about professional
job availabilities; assistance is provided through inclusive immigrant and ethnic networks, but
this rarely leads to professional employment. Lastly, many newcomers perceive their cultural
institutional affiliation to be wanting, and so pursue Canadian academic credentials in an attempt
to gain entrance into the market.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/12908 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Geddie, Katherine Paige |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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