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The 2020 outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic imposed emergency remote teaching on adult English as a second language (ESL) programs globally, creating unprecedented challenges not only for language learners but also for instructors. Immense difficulties were produced in the collision between a biological hazard (the novel coronavirus) and the power-inflected social structures that organize language teaching in different locales. In this paper I explore some impacts of the pandemic on three instructors in the single largest adult ESL program in Canada, Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC). Grounded in an account of the historical origins and development of the LINC program, a reflexive thematic analysis of instructor responses to vignettes of resonant challenges identified three major issues that were intensified by the pandemic: navigating digital inequities, balancing the teaching of digital literacies and language teaching in an accountability framework, and managing boundaries and expectations. These results are contextualized in the larger conversations around LINC and adult ESL programming globally, and some implications and new directions for the post-pandemic landscape now visible on the horizon are also considered.

Teaching a graduate course focused on critical understandings of interculturality offers an opportune space in which to explore decolonizing pedagogical practices. In this short paper, I examine my own attempts at decolonizing students' experiences of intercultural learning by incorporating non-Western knowledge systems to draw attention to dominant cultural perceptions, authority structures, and power relations. Using extracts of students' texts and multimodal representations of cultural discourses, I focus on four 'moments' of intercultural learning: (1) the importance of connecting to history on one's own terms; (2) how knowledge and experience shape our relationship to the land; (3) the need for uncomfortable and vulnerable spaces as potentially facilitating anti-racist/decolonial pedagogy; and (4) the tensions around cultural appropriation in relation to teaching resources. In sharing these practical realizations of teaching in higher education I hope to contribute to the larger discussion of the possibilities and challenges of a decolonizing praxis.

As the COVID‐19 pandemic emerged, instances of anti‐immigrant racism and more specifically anti‐Asian racism appeared to increase across Canada. Recognising the need to further explore and document racism and its link with the COVID‐19 pandemic, this paper explores the impact of COVID‐19 on the experiences of racism and discrimination. Using neoracism as a theoretical framework, the research is set in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, a city that has struggled with high levels of racism and discrimination in recent years. The paper draws upon both an online survey as well as interviews that explored the lived experiences of racialized individuals within the city and their experiences with racism as the pandemic progressed. Results note that individuals felt that racism and discrimination increased during the pandemic and was experienced in housing, the labour force and other public situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Despite immigrant-receiving countries' need for skilled professionals to meet labour demands, research suggests that many skilled migrants undergo deskilling, downward career mobility, underemployment, unemployment and talent waste, finding themselves in low-skilled occupations that are not commensurate to their education and experience. Skilled immigrant women face additional gendered disadvantages, including a disproportionate domestic burden, interrupted careers and gender segmentation in occupations and organizations. This study explores how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic impacted skilled newcomer women's labour market outcomes and work experiences. Design/methodology/approach: The authors draw on 50 in-depth questionnaires with skilled women to elaborate on their work experiences during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Findings: The pandemic pushed skilled immigrant women towards unemployment, lower-skilled or less stable employment. Most study participants had their career trajectory delayed, interrupted or reversed due to layoffs, decreased job opportunities and increased domestic burden. The pandemic's gendered nature and the reliance on work-from-home arrangements and online job search heightened immigrant women's challenges due to limited social support and increased family responsibilities. Originality/value: This paper adds to the conversation of increased integration challenges under pandemic conditions by contextualizing the pre-pandemic literature on immigrant work integration to the pandemic environment. Also, this paper contributes a better understanding of the gender dynamics informing the COVID-19 socio-economic climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed crucial flaws in Canada's immigration systems. While the majority of newcomers to Canada reside in urban centres, a substantial minority work and live in rural areas and small towns where crucial immigrant services are far less developed and greater geographical distances hinder efforts to support immigrants. Rural immigrants face distinct challenges, including increased social isolation and economic marginalization, which have only been amplified by the pandemic. Furthermore, the inaccurate perception of immigration as an exclusively urban issue hinders efforts to combat these problems. Building on rural immigration literature, this paper examines the ways in which the pandemic has impacted rural immigrants, including newcomers, refugees, and temporary foreign workers. Findings highlighted include the difficulty of providing immigrant support services in rural areas, the vulnerability of migrant farm workers to illness and isolation, and the lack of awareness and funding for immigration issues in rural areas relative to their urban counterparts. The paper draws on journalism and academic literature from the past year into these issues. In doing so, it demonstrates the need for renewed academic, policy, and rural development practice interests in rural immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (University of Toronto Press) is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the COVID-19 crisis with a focus on immigration and migration in Canada using a political economy lens. Neoliberalism has played a major role in shaping pandemic impacts and the responses to it. We critically assesses disproportionate COVID-19 impacts on migrants and immigrants. Migrants and immigrants carry the unequal burden of COVID-19 because of racialization, labour precariousness, and exposure to health risks on job sites and in the poor neighborhoods and over crowded housing in which many live in. Mobility and borders have also been cast as a particular threat during the pandemic even though domestic sources are the main sources of contagion. We examine the use of borders as filtering mechanisms during COVID-19 and the negative impacts this has had on migrant populations. While crises like pandemics pose many dangers they also open up policy windows through which progressive change may be realized. We reflect on these possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The purpose of this study was to describe the knowledge, protective behaviours, and psychological impact of COVID-19 on Chinese residents in Canada, as the emotional and behavioural impacts of the pandemic have not been intensively studied amongst these populations. It was important to determine whether having dependent school-age children (DSAC) aged 16 or under was associated with adverse psychological impacts amongst the Chinese residents living in the country. Methods: In April 2020, 757 eligible participants were recruited through a snowball sampling to complete an online survey related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological, behavioural, and sociodemographic variables were collected and first analyzed using descriptive and univariate statistics. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to further confirm the observed significant associations in bivariate analyses for selected psychological outcome variables. Results: Seven hundred forty-two participants who responded to the "dependent school-age children" question were included in the analysis. Most of them identified as females (65.8%) and 77.2% included receiving a university degree or higher. There were no significant differences in COVID-19 knowledge between those living with or without DSAC. However, participants with DSAC were more likely to perceive themselves as being at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 (p =.023); therefore, having a higher chance of adopting protective behaviours (e.g., hand washing, sanitizing frequently or disinfecting work and living spaces (p <.05), elevated risks of depression (p =.007), and stress (p =.010), compared to those without DSAC. Conclusions: Predominantly, the Chinese residents in Canada with dependent school-age children were more likely to report the negative psychological impacts of the pandemic. These findings warrant further investigations that may contribute to informing key stakeholders about the identification and implementation of policies and interventions to support the needs of parents with young children, during and after the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While the pandemic brought many challenges and disruption to an individual's life, it also presented individuals with the opportunity to develop coping strategies and seek changes in their lives. Brazilians experiencing that moment disclosed the uniqueness of learned lessons. Methods: A commentary written by the interviewers and transcription team of 93 interviews conducted with Brazilians living in Canada and their relatives living in Brazil, identified trends in the experiential learning acquired during the pandemic. The Bloom's taxonomy framed the review of team's insights about learned lessons and newest skills and organization of evidence within the domains of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning. Results: Overall, there was a significant number and diversity of evidence about new learning and successful strategies that the participants implemented that promoted opportunities for learning. Identified evidence was in the affective (n=26), psychomotor (n=11) and cognitive (n=8) domains. Learning occurred in the affective domain which contributed to new self-perception, expanded awareness, new life priorities, renewed humanistic thoughts, increased valorization of time, life, and interpersonal relations. Conclusions: The findings of the lessons learnt from Brazilian participants are significant and highlight the unique perspectives of the positive benefits that resulted from a negative experience due to the pandemic. The significance of this interesting set of evidence indicates that in a near future the multidisciplinary community of scientists may definitively recalibrate the research focus and further explore how individuals learn and react during a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vaccine hesitancy has taken a toll on COVID-19 immunization globally. This study aims to characterize three COVID-19-related health concerns (i.e., vaccine hesitancy, anticipated stigma, and risk perception) in Canada and how they differ based on im/migration status and other social determinants. Data were obtained from a nationwide probability sample of the Canadian Perspective Survey Series 3 (June 15 to 21, 2020). Multivariable binary logistic regression analysis was performed to investigate the association between each COVID-19 concern and nativity status, while controlling for socio-demographics. Of 3522 participants aged ≥ 25 years, the estimated overall prevalence of vaccine hesitancy was 16.9%, with im/migrants being greater than non-immigrants (21.5% vs. 15.5%, p < 0.001). After controlling for all covariates, im/migrants had around two-fold greater odds of all three health concerns, including risk perception of accessing care (aOR 2.44, 95% CI 1.89–3.15), anticipated stigma of being targeted (aOR 2.24, 95% CI 1.81, 2.78) and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy (aOR 1.99, 95% CI 1.57–2.52), compared to their Canadian-born peers. Among vaccine-hesitant individuals (n = 596), im/migrants reported higher concerns, than non-immigrants, on vaccine safety (71.3% vs. 49.5%), side effects (66.4% vs 47.3%) and mistrust in vaccinations (12.5% vs 6.6%) as possible reasons of vaccine refusal. For migrant justice, health authorities should ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and other health-enhancing resources for im/migrants to mitigate their heightened fear, stigma, and mistrust of new vaccines amidst turbulent times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Difficulties accessing health care services can result in delaying in seeking and obtaining treatment. Although these difficulties are disproportionately experienced among vulnerable groups, we know very little about how the intersectionality of realities experienced by immigrants and visible minorities can impact their access to health care services since the pandemic. Methods: Using Statistics Canada's Crowdsourcing Data: Impacts of COVID-19 on Canadians—Experiences of Discrimination, we combine two variables (i.e., immigrant status and visible minority status) to create a new variable called visible minority immigrant status. This multiplicative approach is commonly used in intersectionality research, which allows us to explore disadvantages experienced by minorities with multiplicative identities. Results: Main results show that, compared to white native-born, visible minority immigrants are less likely to report difficulties accessing non-emergency surgical care (OR = 0.55, p < 0.001), non-emergency diagnostic test (OR = 0.74, p < 0.01), dental care (OR = 0.71, p < 0.001), mental health care (OR = 0.77, p < 0.05), and making an appointment for rehabilitative care (OR = 0.56, p < 0.001) but more likely to report difficulties accessing emergency services/urgent care (OR = 1.46, p < 0.05). Conclusion: We conclude that there is a dynamic interplay of factors operating at multiple levels to shape the impact of COVID-19 related needs to be addressed through changes in social policies, which can tackle unique struggles faced by visible minority immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]