Ideology, policy and the (re)production of labour market inequality
Subtitle: a critical discourse analysis of access to professions and trades
By: by Michelle P. Goldberg.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 233
Subjects: Alien labor -- Canada.; Professional employees -- Canada.; Discrimination in employment -- Canada.; Vocational qualifications -- Canada.; Racism -- Canada.
Description: This research is important for its democratic potential. It concludes with wider educational recommendations for policy makers, educators and advocates to raise critical language awareness by providing the deconstruction and reconstruction tools needed to encourage a heightened sense of critical language awareness which is an essential part of a democracy in education. In sum, this thesis contributes to a democratic project in social justice education, which sees the creation of an informed, active and critical citizenry as one of its major goals.Each year Ontario receives over 10,000 highly educated immigrant professionals from over 180 different countries. These professionals are selected to come to Canada for their skills and experience, however, upon arrival are unable to use those skills. Despite decades of Access to Professions and Trades (APT) policies the employment situation facing immigrant professionals has not improved, but worsened.This thesis proposes an alternative explanation for this issue. Grounded in poststructural theory, it draws on Foucault's (1978) and Fairclough's (1993b) notion of discourse as social action to develop an approach to critical policy discourse analysis that can be used to deconstruct policy discourses and their interactions and identify their influence on policy reality. I argue that while, situating APT in a "skill shortage" discourse can increase public support and legitimize government action, there are unintended impacts of framing the issue in this way. The thesis concludes that racism operates in subtle way, hidden by neo-liberal ideology, to limit immigrant professionals' access to their professions and governments' ability to implement programs that remove systemic barriers to immigrants' success.This work asserts that a new model of educational policy analysis is needed that recognizes the way multiple discourses interact in a complex network of power to influence the policy process. It extends previous research such as Joshee & Johnson's (2005) policy web, Ball's (1994) notion of policy as discourse and Gale's (1999) intertexuality to offer a new framework for policy analysis that conceives of policy as a discursive web. This thesis provides evidence to support the argument that policy cannot be studied in isolation; policy operates as a discursive policy web to influence reality.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-233)