Language policies and programs for adult immigrants in Canada: a critical analysis.

Guo, Yan

Abstract

This paper explores current issues in English as a Second Language (ESL (1)) policies and programs for adult immigrants in Canada from a critical multiculturalism perspective. In the context of Canadian policies on immigration, bilingualism, and multiculturalism, the paper first provides an overview of language education in Canada historically. Current trends and issues in language programs for adult immigrants are then explored by examining discourses of integration at the level of both policy and practice, by looking at problems of teaching Canadian values, and by critiquing the emphasis on employability in language programs. Implications for language education for adult immigrants are also discussed.

Resume

Dans cet article, nous explorons les questions actuelles dans la politique et les programmes pour immigrants adultes au Canada concernant I'anglais, langue seconde (ALS(2)), et ce a partir d'une perspective critique et multiculturelle. Dans le contexte des mesures gouvernementales canadiennes en immigration, en bilinguisme et en multiculturalisme, cet article offre d'abord un survol historique de l'enseignement des langues au Canada. Puis, nous explorons les tendances et les problemes actueis dans les programmes de langue pour les immigrants adultes, en etudiant les discours d'integration au niveau a la fois de la politique et de la mise en pratique, en notant les probiemes de l'enseignement des valeurs canadiennes et en critiquant l'emphase portee dans les programmes en question pour en faire un outil. Nous y examinons aussi les implications que cela entraine pour l'apprentissage des langues chez les adultes immigrants.

INTRODUCTION

Canada has a tradition of actively recruiting immigrants from abroad for its long-term economic and political interests. Canada's full economic benefits of immigration depend on the integration of immigrants. Numerous ESL programs exist for adult immigrants in NGOs and educational institutions across the country to help immigrants integrate into Canadian society and to foster good language skills (Derwing and Thompson 2005). Current immigration and adult immigrant language policies endorse a conceptual framework of integration, but the policy in practice is problematic. Many language programs for adult immigrants tend to focus on teaching Canadian values, thus ignoring the complexity and ambiguity of the cultural experience of most newcomers. These programs also emphasize presentability and employability of immigrants through processes such as anglicizing one's names, acquiring 'soft skills' and 'fitting in' the Canadian work place. From Fraser's (2009) recognitive justice perspective, current policies and programs for adult immigrants are seriously compromised. The purpose of this article is to examine how the shift in Canada's immigration policies parallels with the shift in language policies and programs for adult immigrants and the limitations of the emphasis on employment preparation in current ESL programs.

Canadian policies on immigration, bilingualism, and multiculturalism have all interacted with larger global trends to produce the current state of language programs for adult immigrants. Accordingly, these three policy areas are central to any discussion of language programs for adult immigrants. This article starts with a discussion of these three policy areas.

IMMIGRATION CONTEXT

In the quest to understand the constellation of language policies and programs for adult immigrants, it is necessary to examine Canada's immigration policy in the historical context because "the marginal positioning of the Other was maintained through the operation of immigration and multicultural policies" (Haque 2012, 24).

Canadian immigration policy in history was unambiguously racist, explicitly discouraging or barring outright "non-white, non-European ... immigration" (Taylor 1991, 2). According to Li (2003a), immigration to Canada since the late nineteenth century can be classified into four phases, each governed by a state policy that defined and welcomed a particular class of desirable immigrants and restricting the entry of those considered undesirable (Li 2003a). The first phase of immigration, from 1867 to 1895, was a period of open immigration from European origin, especially from the United Kingdom and the United States. During this period, severe restrictions were placed on non-white immigrants such as those from Asia. For example, from 1881 to 1884, more than 10,000 Chinese workers carne to work on the western section of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Once the railway was completed in 1885, the government introduced the Chinese Immigration Act, which imposed a head tax of $50 that applied only to Chinese immigrants. In the second phase, from 1896 to 1914, when immigrants from the United Kingdom and Western Europe could not meet labour demands, Canada began to allow Eastern and Southern Europe immigrants, such as Poles, Ukrainians, Hutterites, and Doukhobors to immigrate. Canada's immigration policy for this period was clearly demonstrated in a government report in 1910:

   The policy of the Department (of Interior) at the present time is
   to encourage the immigration of farmers, farm labourers, and female
   domestic servants from the United States, the British Isles, and
   certain Northern European countries, namely, France, Belgium,
   Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland.
   On other hand, it is the policy of the Department to do all in its
   power to keep out of the country undesirable [s] ... those belonging
   to nationalities unlikely to assimilate and who consequently
   prevent the building up of a united nation of people of similar
   customs and ideals (Manpower and Immigration Canada 1974, 9-10).

Asians and other non-whites were seen as those "unlikely to assimilate" "because of their superficial racial and cultural differences" (Li 2003a, 19). Canada used race as a basis to restrict Asian and other non-whites. For example, the head tax imposed on every Chinese who came to Canada was raised from $50 to $100 in 1900 and to $500 in 1903 (Li 1998). In this way, immigration policy has functioned as a means of cultural domination and social control. The third phase, when the need for farm and domestic labour was no longer urgent, ran from 1915 to 1945, during which time British and American immigrants were preferred, followed by North European and then Central Europeans (Li 2003a). The fourth phase started at the end of the Second World War (Li 2003a). Postwar immigration policy continued to use ethnicity and nationality as the central criteria of immigrant selection. British immigrants were preferred, Europeans were accepted, and non-Europeans were largely restricted. Between 1946 and 1955, about 87 percent of the immigrants came from Europe (Manpower and Immigration Canada 1970). The substance of immigration policy during this period was clearly demonstrated in the following statement made by Prime Minister Mackenzie King in the House of Commons:

   ... the people of Canada do not wish, as a result of mass
   immigration, to make a fundamental alternation in the character of
   our population. Large-scale immigration from the orient would
   change the fundamental composition of the Canadian population. Any
   considerable oriental migration would, moreover, be certain to give
   rise to social and economic problems. (Canada, House of Commons
   Debates, 1 May 1947, 2644-6 cited in Li 2003a, 23).

In the 1960s, there were major changes in the Canadian immigration policies. During this period, it became clear that immigrants from the traditional sources could not meet labour demands in Canada. The establishment of the point system in 1967, using prescriptive criteria based on education, occupation, language skills and work experience, removed ethno-racial or national barriers in immigrant selection. The present system divides applicants into three classes: the economic class (also known as independent or skilled) comprises those who are evaluated based on their language ability, education, and skills; the family class includes those who wish to join family already settled in Canada; and the refugee class includes those requiring protection or relief. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s governments placed greater emphasis on human capital and the economic benefits of immigration (Walsh 2008). As a result, in 1986 the economic category of immigrants was expanded from specific skills to include the business class, such as entrepreneurs and investors. In the latter half of the 1990s, the Canadian government modified the point system to attract skilled immigrants needed at that time for the new post-industrial, knowledge-based economy. More points were awarded to skill and work experience (Walsh 2008). This point system has facilitated immigration from developing countries. By 2006, nearly 80 percent of immigrants came from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, and the Caribbean (Statistics Canada 2007).

BILINGUALISM AND MULTICULTURALISM

The unification of Canada as a single confederation in 1867 represented a compromise between two immigrant societies--British and French--who agreed to form a polity fundamentally divided into a two-language, two-culture country (Li 2003a). Beginning in the late 1960s, the Canadian government sought to reconstruct the character of the nation through two policy initiatives: bilingualism and multiculturalism. The first of these was, in part, a response to Quebec separatism (Esses and Gardner 1996). The Official Languages Act of 1969 granted French and English equal status as official languages of Parliament and the federal government. Aboriginal languages were excluded. With the second, promulgated in 1971, Canada became the first country in the world to make multiculturalism an official state policy. Official multiculturalism was introduced as a political exercise for bolstering national unity. Multiculturalism arose in the aftermath of the Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (Fleras and Elliott 2002). While the French-English rift was central to the report, various minority ethnic groups, especially the Ukrainians and the Germans, argued vigorously that their language and culture were as vital to Canada's nation-building project as was Quebec's (Haque 2012). The Liberal government of the day saw official multiculturalism within a bilingual framework as a compromise position that could both head off Quebec nationalism and satisfy the thirst for recognition of various ethnic groups. The commitment to multiculturalism was not only enshrined in legislation (the 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act), but also constitutionalized in section 27 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982).

What became clear was that, during the course of these two policy initiatives of bilingualism and multiculturalism, parallel changes were occurring in Canadian immigration policy. There was a significant decline in immigration numbers from Europe, whereas there was a steady increase from Asian, African, and South and Central American countries in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Hawkins 1988). The increasing number and source of immigrants were seen as one of the main demographic threats to national unity (Haque 2012). The policy of multiculturalism emerged "under pressures from and in regard to the aims of Canadians who had come, or whose ancestors had come, from Europe" (Burnet 1978, 109).

Multiculturalism has a plurality of meanings. According to Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997), there are three prevailing philosophical positions that inform multicultural policies and practices: conservative, liberal, and critical. The conservative approach presumes the superiority of Eurocentric values and beliefs, devalues immigrants' native cultures, and places uneven expectations on immigrants to conform to the norms, values, and traditions of the receiving society (Li 2003a). The liberal position acknowledges diversity, but superficially focuses on universal human "race" a sameness rhetoric that Kubota (2004) refers to as "political correctness with little substance" (31). An alternative form of liberal multiculturalism is pluralist multiculturalism, which sees differences in people and cultures. However, cultural differences are often trivialized, exoticized, and essentialized as ends in themselves. Multicultural discussions and practices often involve othering, listing bow "they" are different from "us." Both conservative and liberal approaches to multiculturalism move attention away from systemic racism and power inequities by maintaining the superiority of a dominant group and promoting a superficial rhetoric of equality, diversity, and political correctness. By contrast, critical multiculturalism makes explicit hidden or masked structures, discourses, and relations of inequity that discriminate against one group and enhance the privileges of another. Questioning ideology is central to the critical enterprise and involves "the attempt to unearth and challenge dominant ideology and the power relations this ideology iustifies" (Brookfield 2000, 38).

In the past forty years, Canada's version of multiculturalism has been praised and adopted internationally. At the same time, Canada has been criticized for having "endorsed diversity in principle without actually changing in any fundamental way how power and resources [are] distributed" (Fleras and Elliott 2002, 56). In that sense, Canada adopts conservative and liberal approaches to multiculturalism by endorsing consensus, conformity, and accommodation.

One of the flaws of multicultural policy lies in the separation of culture and language, which by any definition is a most important element of culture. Canadian bilingualism defined English and French as the official languages of Canada. This policy, by de-emphasizing the languages of other cultural groups, helped to create a cultural and linguistic hierarchy in Canada. While multicultural policy suggested that newcomers were free to preserve their traditional cultures, bilingualism implied the assimilation of immigrants into the cultures of the two "founding races." Multiculturalism within a bilingual framework maintains white-settler hegemony while also disavowing exclusion of Aboriginal and other ethnic groups (Haque 2012).

ESL PROGRAMS FOR ADULT IMMIGRANTS

Early language, citizenship, and literacy programs for adult immigrants existed before World War II through Frontier College prior to the federal government's involvement (Walter 2003). Inaugurated in 1899, Frontier College sent hundreds of university-educated laborer-teachers to bring literacy and citizenship education to the laboring immigrant men of the remote logging, rail, and mining camps at the Canadian frontier to promote their Canadianization. The construction of the good citizen in Frontier College was "a masculine, middle-class, Imperial Anglo-Canadian image" (Walter 2003, 55). The federal government first offered second language training for adult immigrants in 1947 (McDonald et al. 2008). Since that time, the federal government and various ministries in each province have administered English as a Second Language (ESL) programs. These programs are offered by school boards, community colleges, universities, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. The programs typically serve four purposes: English language training; preparation for the labour market; preparation for the citizenship test; and integration into Canadian society.

Until the early 1990s, ESL programs for adult immigrants took an assimilationist approach to citizenship preparation and nation building. In Anderson's (1918) words, ESL would 'civilize' immigrants by giving them

   a necessary knowledge of English, and an insight into Canadian
   affairs, which will tend to make them efficient, healthy,
   self-respecting citizens...many of these people will be very slow
   to understand and appreciate the higher ideals of our civilization,
   but we have every reason to hope that their offspring, born under
   the Union Jack, will grow up as valuable Canadian citizens (54-55).

With the introduction of the Citizenship Act in 1947, the federal government created a series of programs, collectively known as the Citizenship Instruction and Language Textbooks (CILT), to provide ESL classes for adult immigrants (James and Burnaby 2003). The connection between language training and citizenship education was clearly demonstrated in a document written by officials of the Citizenship Branch in 1947. The document, entitled "Immigrant Education," noted that the purpose of immigrant education was

   converting the immigrant into a Canadian ... [through] formal
   education, i.e., reading, writing, and speaking of English or
   French, in addition to the elementary study of Canadian history,
   resources and government ... [and] education for citizenship
   education, i.e., acclimating him [her] to and acquainting him [her]
   with the habits, customs and institutions of Canada (National
   Archives of Canada, cited in Joshee 1996, 113).

The expectation was that the immigrant's language(s) and culture(s) would be replaced by English and French and the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture in Canada (see Ciccarelli 1997).

Over the years, the purpose of ESL programs for adult immigrants has shifted from an assimilationist stance to a focus on language training for employment. In 1978, the federal government, through the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission (CEIC), created a national language training project as a component of the Canadian Job Strategies (CJS) program. The program provided language training for adult immigrants and native Canadians who could not find employment because of their lack of proficiency in English or French. It provided a living allowance to trainees, but only heads of households, who were mostly male, were eligible and thus it was unjust in its application to immigrant women (Giles 1988).

As a result of a court challenge sponsored by several immigrant organizations and public criticism of this discriminatory language policy, in 1986 CEIC created a program called the Settlement Language Training Program (SLTP). The program provided up to 500 hours of basic language training to adults who were not destined for the labour market, primarily immigrant women (CEIC 1986). The SLTP funds provided daycare and transportation to participants. Other programs--the Secretary of State Citizenship and Language Training Program and the Citizenship and Community Participation Program--prepared adult immigrants for their citizenship hearing. All of these programs were replaced by Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) in 1992.

LINC was the central component of the Immigration Plan for 1991-1995 that introduced the federal integration strategy, which placed a new emphasis on not only helping immigrants learn Canadian values but also on helping other Canadians better understand the cultural differences of newcomers (CIC 2001). The education of Canadians about newcomers could be policy rhetoric as it seems that immigrants are still expected to do all the learning as noted later in the article. LINC was to support the integration of immigrants:

   The objective of the LINC program is to provide basic language
   instruction to adult newcomers in one of Canada's official
   languages. LINC facilitates the social, cultural and economic
   integration of immigrants and refugees into Canada. Included in the
   LINC curriculum guidelines...is information that helps orient
   newcomers to the Canadian way of life (Citizenship and Immigration
   Canada 2006, item 6: Description of the horizontal initiative).

This indicates a policy shift from a focus on language training for employment to a focus on language training for integration. LINC "placed a greater emphasis on introducing newcomers to shared Canadian values, rights, and responsibilities" (Bettencourt 2003, 25). The subject matter covered in classes included Canadian laws, basic vocabulary for shopping and banking, as well as orientation to local services such as public transportation and housing (Bettencourt 2003). The focus of the integration of the LINC policy was the federal government's response to pressure of the majority of immigrants who are now coming from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, perceived as not easy to assimilate (Li 2003a). I will return to the discussion of the integration discourse later.

In response to the "need for a common set of standards to assist in the measurement and description of language skills" (CIC 1996, 1), the federal government funded the creation of the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB), put forth as a working document in 1996 following a long consultation process (Norton Peirce and Stewart 1997) and finalized in 2000 (Pawlikowska-Smith 2000). CLB details twelve levels of language proficiency, each comprising a list of descriptors in the four areas: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In 1997 the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CLBA) tool was introduced. The CLBA comprises three components: a listening/speaking assessment, a reading assessment, and a writing assessment. It provides benchmarks in levels from 1 to 8 and is designed to place language learners in instructional programs appropriate to their level of proficiency in English (Norton Peirce and Stewart 1997).

Between 1992 and the present, several guides to LINC have been published for teachers. These include Canadian Language Benchmarks 2000: A Guide to Implementation (Holmes et al. 2001) and LINC Curriculum Guidelines: Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (Hajer et al. 2002). Each translates the benchmarks into themes, skills, and grammar points and responded to teachers' complaints that, while they were required to use the CLB, the benchmarks constrained what they taught and how they assessed learners (Fleming 1998; Haque and Cray 2007). Research identified the constraints imposed on LINC teachers as including isolation, lack of resources, lack of job security, lack of professional development, continuous intake, multilevel classes, and low wages (Cray 1997; Haque and Cray 2007). Continuous intake refers to the practice of letting new students enroll at any point during a term. Some teachers believed that continuous intake was a consequence of service providers having contracted for classes and needing to maintain classes of a certain size to maintain government funding (Cray 1997).

While CLB 2000 describes twelve levels of language proficiency, not all levels are taught in LINC classes. LINC is meant to provide immigrants with basic communication skills (EIC 1991). In most provinces students exit at LINC level 4 for speaking and listening and level 3 for reading and writing. In British Columbia, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, for example, students exit at LINC level 3, the original level proposed by the federal government. In Alberta, students can stay up to level 4 while students in Ontario can attend up to level 5. Students in Manitoba can access LINC as long as they wish (Derwing and Munro 2007). Immigrants and refugees in all provinces except Quebec are entitled to access LINC programs, preferably within the first year of their arrival (Derwing and Munro 2007). Quebec established its own program for French-as-a-second-language immigrants. Canadian citizens are barred from LINC programs. Trainees are not usually eligible for living allowances, but can apply for support for transportation and child minding. They generally receive about 900 hours of instruction. LINC provides immigrants with survival language skills, a level not sufficient to access postsecondary education or meet the language demands of professional fields (Boyd and Cao 2009).

In 2003 the federal government introduced the Enhanced Language Training (ELT) to provide a higher level of language training for the workplace. The initial budget was only $5 million per year, but increased to $20 million a year in 2004 (CIC 2009). Most of the programs funded in 2003-2004 emphasized language training for specific fields (e.g., accounting, engineering, and nursing) and cross-cultural communication skills, as well as the soft skills necessary for immigrants to obtain and maintain employment. In general, ELT programs are equivalent to Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) levels 7-10. These programs include classroom language instruction, unpaid work experience placement, and job search assistance. As a whole, ELT programs focus on facilitating skilled and other immigrants' entry into the labour market (CIC 2009). Many skilled immigrants, who held professional positions in the countries of origin, work at low-paying jobs, not in their professional fields after immigrating to Canada (Y. Guo 2009). The intent of the ELT is to prepare the skilled immigrants with their professional language such as engineering in English with some initial Canadian work experience in their practicum.

TRENDS AND ISSUES

As discussed above, whereas early immigrants to Canada came mostly from Europe, today's immigrants are largely drawn from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, and the Caribbean (Statistics Canada 2007). Despite the official policy of multiculturalism, new immigrants from a different culture are expected to conform to the cultural and normative standards of Canadian society (Li 2003a). In the next section, current trends and issues in ESL programs for adult immigrants will be explored by examining discourses of integration at the level of both policy and practice, by looking at problems of teaching Canadian values, and by critiquing the emphasis on employability in language programs.

Discourses of Integration

As mentioned above, LINC was created as part of a federal integration strategy based on "the idea that the ability of newcomers to communicate in one of Canada's official languages was the key to integration" (Bettencourt 2003, 25). But what it is, precisely, that constitutes integration of immigrants is often taken for granted. In Canada's immigration discourse, integration refers to "the desirable way by which newcomers should become members of the receiving society" (Li 2003b, 315). At the policy level, a report of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC 1994), for example, explains the concept of integration as follows:

   Integration implies a political desire and commitment to encourage
   newcomers to adapt to Canadian society and to be received by
   Canadians and their institutions without requiring newcomers to
   abandon their cultures to conform to the values and practices of
   the dominant group, as long as the adherence to immigrants'
   cultures does not contravene Canadian laws (7).

The policy objective of integration, as stated, is a two-way process, requiring mutual adjustments by both newcomers and Canadian society. The policy stresses that integration is different from assimilation, allowing newcomers to maintain their distinct cultures under multiculturalism (Li 2003b).

In practice, however, the assessment of integration is often based on a narrow understanding and a rigid expectation of conformity of newcomers to preexisting norms and behavioural standards (Li 2003b). Li (2003b) is skeptical about whether integration really means anything other than slow assimilation. The pattern of assimilation has been implicitly endorsed by academics studying this area who measure immigrants' "success" by how much like native-born Canadian they can become and how quickly this can be achieved. Prior to the 1960s, immigrants were mainly Europeans. Since the 1970s, immigrants have been mainly Asians and Africans. Changes brought to Canada in the 1980s and early 1990s challenged Canadians who have historically assumed a "white tenor" to the culture and a "Eurocentric perspective" (Mercer 1995, 171-172). Historically, immigrants and their children "were being progressively incorporated into a collective identity and an institutional system whose symbolic character was fundamentally British, but regarded as Canadian" (Breton 1984, 128). Examining policy statements, immigration debates, and academic writing, Li (2003b) argued the integration discourse endorses the assimilation of immigrants into British-based Canadian norms.

Teaching Canadian Values

One way that the federal government's policy on integration has been implemented is through the insertion of "information on Canadian values into training programs" (EIC 1991, 2). Of course what constitutes Canadian values is debatable. When LINC was first introduced, Employment and Immigration Canada contracted a company to develop a publication entitled Canada: A Source Book for Orientation, Language and Settlement Workers (Arcturus Productions 1991). The book defined a static version of Canadian culture based on descriptions of what Canadians do and do not do. It recommended that teachers uplift adult immigrants through the teaching of health, proper hygiene, and morals (Fleming 2003). It was later withdrawn after it was criticized as patronizing by workers in immigrant-serving agencies (Fleming 2003).

Despite this history, most ESL curriculum documents and teaching guidelines still tend to present Canadian culture as a national attribute consisting of sets of stable values and behaviour patterns (Illieva 2000; Sauve 1996). Thompson and Derwing (2004) analyzed sixty-seven textbooks used in LINC programs and found that they focus on superficial descriptions of cultural facts and behaviours, thus ignoring the complexity and ambiguity of the cultural experience of most newcomers. They also found that much of the content is written from a white middle-class perspective, a problem also noted by Sauve (1996), who argued that "we live in a society that sees itself as multicultural while continuing to be biased in favour of white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian, middle-class traditions and values" (21). Similarly, Illieva (2000) illustrated how excerpts from a unit entitled "Department Stores" in the textbook Canadian Concepts 3 (Berish and Thibaudeau 1992), one of the textbooks used in LINC, reflected middle-class budgets, shopping habits, and values, assuming a universality of cultural experiences around shopping in Canada as well as in a student's native country.

The condescending stereotypes in the Source Book persist in some current ESL programs for adult immigrants. In a case study of an ESL program for adults in an immigrant-serving organization in Western Canada, Y. Guo (2009) found that immigrants felt they were expected to "think like and act like Canadians" The decisive agent in this socialization process was a job-preparation workshop facilitator who promoted the assimilation of linguistically and culturally diverse immigrants to Anglo norms. For instance, the workshop facilitator said:

   I tell them it is important for them to integrate to Canadian
   culture as quickly as possible, not to stay in their own community.
   I tell them, now that you're here, you should think like a
   Canadian. You don't think like a Chinese, an Indian or a Pakistan,
   or Iranian, or Iraqi, you should think like a Canadian. So you have
   to go out and take part in Canadian activities in Canadian life.
   That's part and parcel of life in our city (49).

Immigrants are advised to "think like a Canadian". This advice assumes, first of all, that there is a shared way of thinking that can be described as "Canadian" Two implications should be noted. First, this implies that being Canadian is incompatible with an ethnic identity, for example, with being Chinese or Iranian. Governing practices take the form of normative judgments (those judgments involving "should") that a particular form of conduct or behaviour is essentially wrong or bad (Hunt 1999), i.e., to think like a Chinese or Iranian is to be un-Canadian. An immigrant himself, the facilitator has internalized an assimilationist mentality and, in turn, attempts to colonize the minds and practices of new immigrants to a similar level of assimilation. Such internalization of an assimilationist mentality supports the supremacy of white, Eurocentric norms and behaviours. Despite the official policy of multiculturalism, Canada is "dominated by the hegemonic British and the French cultural norms" (Satzewich and Liodakis 2007, 123).

The Focus on 'Employability'

Having had their education, work experience, knowledge of English and/or French, and other abilities assessed in the application process, skilled immigrants presumably arrive in Canada well-prepared to successfully establish themselves as permanent residents in Canada (CIC 2007). Many immigrants held professional or managerial positions in their home countries. Following their arrival in Canada, however, many experience unemployment or work at low-paying jobs. They often encounter barriers in the Canadian labour market. These obstacles can be the result of both systemic and personal deficiencies. In the case of the former, poorly designed mechanisms of recognition devalue immigrants' prior credentials and work experience (S. Guo 2009). In the case of the latter, lack of Canadian experience, the length of residence in Canada, and inadequate command of English impede the successful integration of skilled immigrants (Reitz 2001).

To address the issue of lack of Canadian experience, Canada made unpaid work experience part of its ELT programs. While these programs purport to offer professional language acquisition and labour market knowledge, some service-providers have attempted to mould skilled immigrants according to an ideal of the compliant worker (Soveran 2011). The author's (2009) study of an ELT bridge-to-work program for skilled immigrants in a Western Canadian city showed that the program focused on presentability and employability of immigrants for the Canadian labour market through processes such as reducing their accents, anglicizing their names, and adapting to Canadian linguistic and cultural norms. For example, the program providers were aware that an ethnic name is another factor that might contribute to employment discrimination (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Discrimination Research Center 2003). In recognition of such discrimination, ESL teachers often recommended that immigrants take on an anglicized name. One ESL teacher reported:

   We have spoken extensively in class about changing your name to an
   anglicized name. We've not pressured individuals to change their
   names in any way. We've talked about the pros and cons of doing
   that and the presentability versus another and the pros and cons of
   the perception of those names. It's being able to give a realistic
   point of view to these individuals so they make decisions for
   themselves and then are aware of potential outcomes.

If immigrants use an anglicized name, it is assumed they are more likely to find employment in the Canadian labour market. For example, one administrator commented that: "There are people who like to integrate and they do everything to become part of [Canada]. People change their names."

All of the immigrants except two chose English first names. The two who did not change their names are from Russia and Slovakia. One believed that his name "is beautiful" and another found a temporary job. A possible reason that these two did not change their names was that families from Eastern Europe had settled in Western Canada, so that Russian and Ukrainian names became absorbed into the dominant culture of the region. In contrast, the other thirteen chose English names in order to ensure their employability, illustrated in the following excerpts:

   Our coordinator told us that employers sorted out names on resumes.
   I changed my name in order to get more interviews.

   I have chosen an English first name so that it will be easier for
   me to find a job. I've got more phone calls after I have changed my
   name.

   I have chosen an English name because it would be easier for my
   employers and colleagues.

For some employers, an ethnic name implies immigrants' inability to integrate into Canadian society. They may "provide a rationale for discriminatory behaviour that would be considered as unacceptable on the basis of skin colour" (Creese and Kambere 2003, 570). All the immigrants were informed that employers react negatively to their ethnic names. An English name serves as symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977), providing a linguistic marker in which potential employers and colleagues may recognize them as legitimate members of a Canadian workplace. Aware of the potential negative reactions of employers to unfamiliar or "foreign"-sounding names, the program governs immigrants through indirect control and through "encouragement"--through "technologies of the self" (Dean 2010). Professional immigrants are "encouraged," not forced, to choose an English name. Such names increase their "presentability," the call rates for job interviews, and thus their opportunities to be employed in the Canadian labour market. Changing their names may be due to immigrants' genuine fears because they need good jobs to be able to support themselves and their families. They may see not changing their names as a luxury, a principled stand they simply cannot afford. Moreover, these practices fail to challenge systemic processes of marginalization based on names (Creese and ambere 2003; Pennycook 1998). Rather, they contribute to the inequality and discrimination facing immigrants in Canadian society. The ESL programs place the pressure on immigrants to assimilate without promoting changes in the larger Canadian society. The roots of the dominance of English language and sociocultural norms are not questioned in the program.

Similarly, another study of the LET bridge-to-work program for skilled immigrants delivered by a non-profit immigrant-serving agency in Western Canada demonstrates that the program aimed to help immigrants understand Canadian workplace culture and fit into the workplace (Soveran 2011). The program was designed to help immigrant women with a background in accounting prepare for entry-level accounting jobs in Canada. There were specific ways that the program endeavored to show the immigrants how to fit in through a cultural understanding of what it meant to be a professional in Canada. These included developing positive attitudes, self-presentation as confident, bodily comportment in conservative dress, workplace values such as the North American relationship to time, the importance of work-life balance, and building soft skills. The service-providers told immigrants that professional self-presentation in dress included moderate styles, size and colour of jewellery they wore, the sparing use of perfumes, and neutrally-coloured and styled clothing. Acceptable dress included dark clothes, appropriate skirt lengths that were below the knee, and close-toed shoes. Service-providers explained that soft skills meant appropriate interpersonal relationships and communication. These included being polite and friendly, capable of team-work, making small talk with their coworkers, and asking to join co-workers at lunch. The program staff emphasized that "obtaining and keeping a job in Canada was about fitting in culturally as much as it was about having the skills required by the job description" (Soveran 2011, 88). In the program, technologies of governance were used in the explicit shaping of conduct and dispositions and through directing immigrants in the self-formation work required to fit into the Canadian workplace (Dean 2010; Rose 1998). The discourse of "fitting in" is problematic. Such discourse promotes a one-way process of integration, requiring immigrants to adapt to the Canadian workplace expectations, but there were no discussions of the employment discrimination and gender inequality these immigrants faced in the Canadian labour market. Such discourse also implies that there is an idealized universal Canadian workplace culture. In that sense, this program adopts conservative and liberal approaches to multiculturalism by endorsing conformity to a presentation of the "ideal Canadian employee."

IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE

Current immigration and adult immigrant language policies endorse a conceptual framework of integration, but the policy in practice is assimilationist, not integrationist. The ESL programs, focusing on teaching Canadian values, have failed to integrate cultural difference and diversity into language education. On the contrary, the programs have become a vehicle for assimilating immigrants into the norms of the dominant culture. The current policy directing adult immigrant English language education in Canada emphasizes human capital models, the functional goal of job preparation, and individualized skills (Gibb 2008; Walsh 2008). ESL programs for adult immigrants have become a mechanism of neo-liberal control to produce ideal workers for the Canadian labour market (Ng and Shan 2010). Perhaps Fraser's (2009) recognitive social justice is a promising alternative to these issues.

Fraser (2009) defines justice as "parity of participation ... justice requires social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life" (16). Recognitive justice refers to parity of social goods, such as opportunity, position, and power, as well as of institutional inequities (Fraser 2009; S. Guo 2010). The emphasis on equality of opportunity and participation positions integration as a non-coercive two-way process which requires mutual change by both newcomers and Canadian society. As Li (2003b, 330) notes,

   A more enlightened view of integration would take into account how
   Canadian society and its institutions perform toward newcomers.
   Assessing successful integration would also mean determining the
   degree to which institutions are open or closed to immigrants;
   whether communities welcome or shun newcomers; and whether
   individual Canadians treat newcomers as equal partners or
   intruders.

It is not just the newcomers who need to adapt to the Canadian culture. The receiving society also needs to change in order to recognize political, cultural, linguistic and economic contributions of immigrants to Canada.

Adult educators need to adopt a critical multiculturalism approach which challenges their own deficit perspective of difference (S. Guo 2009) so that they can become cultural brokers and transformers by providing immigrants with strategies to overcome employers' racism. They can examine real issues facing immigrants, such as non-recognition of foreign credentials, racism in hiring and promoting practices, and accent discrimination (S. Guo 2009; Munro 2003). Focusing on language skills is not sufficient. Rather, adult educators can help immigrants develop critical language awareness in order to contest and change practices of domination (Fairclough 1995) and reclaim their professional knowledge.

In language education, the development of educational services for adult immigrants from a recognitive justice perspective would include immigrant knowledge and community input into the creation and implementation of appropriate programs (Fraser 2009). One approach is to value immigrants' professional knowledge and to activate such knowledge for Canadian contexts. Immigrant professionals know the professional concepts of their fields in their native language. They may not know how to express these concepts adequately in English. Bilingual programs in both English and immigrants' native language can be offered in large metropolitan centers where many immigrants share the same native language. With funding from the federal government, different language programs can be designed to meet different needs of the learners. Immigrant parents who want to stay at home for several years can participate in social conversation classes. Newcomers whose goal is to find employment in the Canadian labour market can be connected with multilingual mentors in the workplace. More senior colleagues can serve as mentors to provide on-the-job training that is similar to apprenticeship (Reitz 2005). Mentors can share their knowledge and experience with newcomers, and help them build professional and business networks. Skilled immigrants can participate in occupation-specific mentoring.

The preparation of citizenship education in ESL programs for adult immigrants, from a recognitive justice perspective, would reject the current deficit model that seeks to assimilate immigrants to the norms of the dominant culture. This framework calls for 'pluralist citizenship' that recognizes that immigrants have multiple attachments to specific languages, cultures, and values (Guo 2010). It requires a transformation of policy and practice in language programs for adult immigrants to take into account the plural ways of belonging, dynamic negotiations of transnational identities, and plural ways of becoming Canadians (Guo 2010; Waterhouse 2011; Wong and Satzewich 2006).

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NOTES

(1.) The term English as a Second Language (ESL) is problematic. English as an Additional Language (EAL) is more appropriate as it recognizes that many people have more than one language before learning English. In government policy documents, ESL is used.

(2.) L'expression <<anglais, langue seconde>> est d'un emploi problematique. Il serait plus approprie de dire <<anglais, langue supplementaire>> pour reconnaitre que beaucoup de gens parlent deja plusieurs langues avant d'apprendre l'anglais. Les documents gouvernementaux sur la politique linguistique, emploient l'expression ALS.

YAN GUO is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary. Her teaching and research interests include teaching English as an Additional Language, critical perspectives in language education, intercultural communication, language and identity, and language policy. She has published numerous journal articles and several book chapters.