Precarity, Opportunity, and Adaptation: Recently Arrived Immigrant and Refugee Experiences Navigating the Canadian Labour Market

Abstract

Immigrants and refugees have contributed significant growth in the Canadian economy over the last three decades. Despite clear advantages of a smooth transition into the labour force, many newcomers experience multiple barriers impeding their pathways to sustainable livelihoods. Further, significant increases in refugee resettlement and asylum claims in Canada since 2015 resulted in a growing number of refugee newcomers entering the labour market, often facing additional challenges of precarious legal status while seeking employment. To interrogate the settlement landscape, this chapter examines newcomers’ employment-related needs, experiences, and aspirations through a case study of migrants and refugees in Greater Toronto. Using narrative-biographic interviews, the chapter presents an ethnographic approach to examine how individual migrants navigate labour market policies and settlement dynamics during their initial years. A biographical approach allowed us to focus on the interplay of migrant agency, precarity, and adaption to both long-standing labour market dynamics as well as new barriers and enablers brought on by the shifting sands of Canada’s pandemic affected economy. The chapter highlights how emotions, decisions, and actions are inter-related and coalesce with broader structural conditions within a network of actors – individuals, networks, and institutions – to shape the labour market experiences of recently arrived immigrants and refugees.