Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

This paper critically explores what is meant by integration and the expectations that come with it, and how the ‘right’ kind of economic citizen (homo economicus) gets produced through social work practice with immigrants. Specifically, this paper will engage in critical reflection on a participant’s narrative from a larger study that explored the post-migration intentions of Ethiopians in Toronto by examining the evolution of immigrant selection in Canada, the policy of multiculturalism as the country’s most recognized policy as it pertains to integration, and how they all coalesce and shape settlement work with immigrants. This paper concludes with a discussion on how to begin to address concerns that surround settlement work with immigrants in particular how settlement workers can shape their practice to provide culturally appropriate services. At the center of this re-imagining of practice, is actively exposing those discursive formations that stratify the experiences and identities of the ‘other’. The process of re-imagining practice then is hinged on the unveiling of how the technologies of neoliberalism entrench themselves in the ‘mainstreaming’ or ‘integration’ of migrants to fashion the homo economicus.