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Research Highlight
The list below highlights some of the recently announced funding received by the School of Social Sciences researchers. Further details about Atkinson researchers, research projects and research interests can be found through the links on the column to the left.
Funding Opportunities
Leah F. Vosko
SSHRC Standard Research Grant - Precarious Employment and Transnational Labour Regulation: Gender, Nationality and Labour Market Insecurity
This research program seeks to explore the role of the transnational labour code (TLC) in shaping experiences and manifestations of precarious employment in industrialized contexts. Precarious employment is the subject of growing attention at the national level, and it has become a central object of transnational labour regulation in the last several decades. The character and incidence of precarious employment varies by context yet its effects are remarkably similar for workers, especially those from socially disadvantaged groups: limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low income and high risks of ill-health. Inequalities along the lines of gender and nationality also shape patterns of precarious employment across, as well as within, national and supranational jurisdictions. This research program involves:
· conceptualizing the TLC and describing efforts to regulate precarious employment; · exploring linkages between approaches to transnational regulation and prominent manifestations of precarious employment, specifically, precarious forms of part-time and temporary paid employment, solo self-employment, and migrant work; and,
· analyzing the relationship between gender, nationality, patterns of precarious employment, and approaches to regulation across and within nations and regions. Wenona Giles
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) - Standard Research Grant (2004 Competition)
This three-year project, "The Globalization of Homelessness in Long Term Refugee Camps", builds on extensive scholarship and experience in conflict zones and the refugee camps they spawn. It aims to detect patterns among camps that have existed for a decade or more to determine why such chronic conditions persist. We aim to generate concrete findings that will assist in answering the following questions:
- Where such camps persist, what is currently being done to create permanent solutions for refugees, if anything? What is the role of UN agencies in this process? Aid agencies? NGOs?
- Where such camps persist, what are the human development indicators (socioeconomic status, infant mortality, life expectancy, etc.) for the camp populations? How, if at all, do they differ from those of refugees’ country of origin? How, if at all, do they differ from those of the country of asylum in which they find themselves? How do these measure up in relation to the Millenium Development Goals for all poor countries, developed by the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) and now being implemented by the UN as benchmarks for human development?
- How can the concept of human security, extending a feminist analysis, be improved or revised in light of our findings above?
Joseph Mensah
The Dialectics of Transnational Religious Practices and Identities: The Case of Ghanaian Immigrants in Toronto
This research seeks to examine religious transnationalism in Canada, using Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto as a case study. The study has five main objectives, which are to:
(a) examine the ways in which Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto live their religious lives across borders;
(b) explore how these immigrants use religious symbols, icons, and ideas to assert their allegiance and sense of belonging to both Ghana and Canada;
(c) analyze how the transnational activities of these immigrants relate to, overlap with, and differ from other kinds of transnational practices they pursue;
(d) analyze the institutional and organizational contexts in which Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto enact their transnational religious practices and identities; and
(e) highlight the role of the nation-state (i.e., Canada and Ghana) and global cultures and institutions in shaping the nature and contours of religious transnationalism among Ghanaian immigrants in Toronto.
Ester Reiter Secular Jewish Culture and Community
This is a study of the Labour League, later the United Jewish People?s Order [UJPO], when this community was at its strongest the 1920s through the 1950s. The project documents the vibrant cultural, educational, mutual aid and political activities that immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe organized to enrich their lives. I explore several themes: why people who had virtually no resources were willing to devote so much energy to community building; why people joined the socialist Jewish left; women?s participation in this community and the importance of Yiddish in their lives. The project explores various facets of this community: the Yiddish shules for children; the chorus, originally the Freheit Gezangs Farein (Freedom Singing Circle) which began in 1925 and still exists; the dance troupe; sports leagues and the union activism of members. What were the reasons for its decline in the late 1950s? How did cold war politics contribute to the expulsion of all ?left leaning organizations? from the Canadian Jewish Congress, and how did the organization respond to the revelations of the twentieth party congress of the USSR of Soviet anti Semitism. How did the changing class composition of Canadian Jewry affect involvement in the United Jewish People?s Order?
Nandita Sharma Negotiating Late Capitalism as Non-Immigrant Labour in the U.S.: H-Category Temporary Visa Workers and US Society
This research proposal examines the ways a non-immigrant labour force in the U.S. is organized through a complex set of H-1B, H-2A and H-2B temporary work visa categories and the consequences of this categorization on the lives of those who hold them. Since the introduction of the first of the H-category visas in 1986 (H-2A for the agricultural sector) and its expansion to the high-skilled white-collar service sector (H-1B in 1990) and low-skill non-agricultural sectors (H-2B in 1991), there has been growing demand from employers for greater numbers of migrants to be channeled into the non-immigrant worker stream of U.S. citizenship and immigration policy. U.S. governments, businesses, unions, community groups and policy analysts have recognized this growing demand and have proposed a range of studies and initiatives in response. These include recent proposals from the U.S. President, employers? organizations and select labour unions to regularize undocumented migrants by shifting their status from illegal to temporary visa workers but, notably, not to the status of permanent resident. The research will document the life conditions, choices, and expressions of migrants within H-category visas, how their lives are significantly shaped by the U.S. state through the apparatus of immigration laws and policies and offer insights into how a ?common sense? is organized for the existence of certain migrants as temporary workers while others are granted permanent resident status in U.S. society.
Meg Luxton
In April 2004, Meg Luxton received SSHRC funding to support her research project "Ensuring Social Reproduction: a longitudinal study of households in Ontario." Professor Luxton's research examines the ways in which "family-friendly" or "work-life" policies actually affect the day-to-day lives of the people they are designed to help. This project examines the impact of various policies aimed at helping adults combine labour market participation and caregiving responsibilities. It considers the effects of various public and private policies such as maternity and parental leaves, child care provisions and home care. The study asks under what circumstances state legislation, collective bargaining or other arrangements produce the most responsive and satisfactory outcomes.
Leah Vosko
On September 30, 2004, an event was held to celebrate the launch of the Gender and Work Database (GWD). The GWD, under the direction of Leah Vosko, Canada Research Chair in Feminist Political Economy, is an integrated research tool under development in the School of Social Sciences. Combining a unique technical infrastructure with emerging social science research, the GWD enables new analysis regarding work and society and allows for unprecedented evidence-based policy and decision making. As a web-accessible database, the GWD offers greatly expanded opportunities for public access and dissemination of Canadian data and research. The launch was the opening event of a two day conference which highlighted current research in the field of gender and work through multi- and inter-disciplinary scholarship. For more information on the Gender and Work Database, please visit http://www.genderwork.ca.
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Drache funded for ambitious interdisciplinary SSHRC initiative
Prof. Daniel Drache, director of York?s Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, and co-author and co-investigator Prof. Seth Feldman, Department of Film & Video, Faculty of Fine Arts, and Faculty of Graduate Studies, have been awarded a $115,000 SSHRC (Social Sciences & Humanities Council of Canada) grant for a major Research Development Initiative: "Global Cultural Flows, Information Technology and the Re-Imagining of National Communities". Another key collaborator is Prof. Fred Fletcher, director of the Communication & Culture Graduate Program. Through the initiative Drache and Feldman aim to determine what impact current global cultural changes will have on Canada?s national, regional and social citizenship practices in the 21st century. "Impacted by global exchanges that have commodified cultural identity, Canada is increasingly described as what sociologist Manuel Castells [University of California, Berkeley] refers to as a ?network society? of multiple allegiances and identities," Drache says.
The key issues Drache and Feldman are investigating are the way global culture flows through immigration and how new civil practices are redefining Canada as a social and economic entity.
One of the outcomes of the initiative will be an infrastructure for ongoing research through a multidisciplinary consortium of Canadian, American, Mexican and European scholars. Their network will be based at the Robarts Centre and at the York/Ryerson Graduate Program in Communication and Culture.
At the end of March, Feldman, Drache and their team of researchers will launch the project at York by hosting a workshop entitled, "Identity, Diversity and Global Culture Flow: Getting a Handle on Issues that Bug Us". |