STUDY 1: Racial discrimination in employment in Quebec
A project of
En collaboration avec
With the support of
Research team members
Victor Armony, Vissého Adjiwanou, Shaima Jorio Avec la collaboration de Éric Koba, Alexandre Lamont et Evens Mensah Ouvor
Context
The creation of the Observatory of Racial Inequalities in Québec was made possible thanks to financial support from Heritage Canada as part of its new anti-racism strategy. This project is being led by Alternatives, an international solidarity organization, in partnership with several organizations, including the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Diversity and Democracy (CRIDAQ) at UQAM. The CRIDAQ Diaspora Observatory is responsible for the project’s Scientific Committee.
General objectives of the projet
The Observatory project emerged from a recognition of the persistence of racial inequalities and discriminatory practices in many spheres of society: in hiring practices, in the health system, and within the justice system, housing and education. This situation affects racialized people and immigrants, among others, ability to fully participate as citizens and to integrate socio-economically in Quebec. In light of this situation, the Observatory will look at employment, given its key role in inclusion, and will focus on systemic obstacles in this domain. Our mission is to shed new light on issues related to systemic racism and we will contribute to the public debate through recommendations that will come out of our research.
Concretely, our work will entail weighing in on the multiple ways that racism manifests itself and identifying what causes it. We will share this knowledge in order to sensitize public officials, members of the employment sector and racialized communities in order to better understand the mechanics of discrimination, to ultimately make concrete change in this area. To accomplish this, the Observatory’s Scientific Committee will carry out four quantitative and qualitative studies in 2021. In part, this will entail the creation of an inventory of discriminatory situations happening in the employment sector in Quebec by drawing a quantitative portrait of racial inequalities. For example, statistical indicators will be used to highlight socio-economic disparities between the majority population and racialized groups in several sectors of economic activity. Subsequently, the committee will carry out direct consultations with racialized and immigrant communities in order to collect testimonies about their lived experience in matters of racial discrimination in employment. The team will also analyze discriminatory discourse related to employment on the Internet, in order to detect discursive patterns of racist speech in this virtual space.
Description of the four studies
To shed new light on the issues relating to systemic racism in employment, to place these questions at the forefront of public debate, and to advocate about these issues with public authorities, we plan to conduct four studies:
Many studies have focused on racial inequality and discrimination in employment in Quebec. The objective of this first study is to take stock of all of the indicators of socio-economic disparities between the majority population and racialized and immigrant groups in Quebec over the past twenty years, as identified in these studies. Indeed, it is important to have this perspective in order to observe the progress made in Quebec, but also to identify the gaps that still exist.
In order to meet this objective, we will use two complementary methodological approaches. First, we will conduct a review of previous studies in order to list the main indicators of discrimination and inequality in employment based on racialized identities. This work will be independently evaluated by two researchers from our team, and allow us to select the articles which have adopted a rigorous methodological approach. From the selected articles, we will create a statistical portrait of discrimination in the employment sector according to “race” or ethnicity. These indicators will be interpreted according to age, sex, ethnic origin and socio-economic status in order to better target the sub-populations to be prioritized.
The second approach we will use is an analysis of secondary data from Statistics Canada (and other specific studies) on employment issues. The aim of this analysis is to complete the statistical assessment by exploring areas rarely covered by other surveys. This first study will allow us to have a clearer idea of the advances in research on discrimination in employment based on “race” or ethnicity while allowing us to identify the research limitations and possible future contributions. This is also the direction of the three other studies in this project.
Although statistics on inequality and discrimination in employment on the basis of racial identity give us a clear understanding of the gaps that need to be filled, they do not capture the experiences of those who experience them. In this second study, we aim to document racialized people and immigrants’ experiences and perceptions of discrimination when looking for work or in the workplace.
Through this study, we will identify the different types of discrimination (including repercussions on the general well-being of the targeted individuals), as well as individuals’ reactions to discriminatory acts. This study is important because it will allow us not only to collect testimonies about the experiences of people targeted by discrimination but will also remind us that these issues are in no way trivial. We will show that each testimony, however subjective, reveals situations that have a considerable impact on individuals’ psychological well-being. To do this, we will develop a questionnaire that will allow us to collect quantitative data using open questions which will be distributed, online, to 300 people. The stories, which will document participants’ experiences in their own words, will then be analyzed using quantitative textual analysis tools, in order to provide a global view of the participants’ experiences of discrimination.
The third study aims to give depth to the results of the second study by setting up consultations with people who have experienced discrimination in the workplace, in close collaboration with civil society partners and the community. This study will include 10 focus groups made up of 8 people each, which we will group together according to common characteristics such as ethnicity, religious affiliation, immigrant status (racialized citizens and racialized immigrants), age, sex and place of residence.
These meetings will be useful because they will solicit testimonies in a safe space, so necessary in order to collect key information that will give us access to the different facets and complexity of discriminatory acts, particularly regarding their subtle and latent manifestations such as micro-attacks.
The ultimate goal, here, is to better understand the mechanisms and strategies targeted people use to cope with discrimination.
As a result of this work, we will be able to list the ways that racialized people and immigrants show agency, as social actors, not passive victims.
Finally, the last study, which focuses on discourse used to justify discrimination, will complement the three preceding studies. Its objective is to analyze discriminatory discourse around the realm of employment, on the Internet, in order to detect discursive patterns. Consequently, it will more or less corroborate the results of studies 2 and 3.
To meet this objective, we will collect comments and reactions linked to articles and columns on the topic of discrimination in employment published on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of the main Quebec news media outlets (Le Devoir, Journal de Montréal, La Presse, Radio-Canada), as well as, from political actors. We chose Twitter because focuses on sharing information with a large audience (while others are more focused on communities of friends), and due to the interest it arouses in the media and with politicians, making it an important element of the Quebec political landscape. However, as these accounts are rarely visited by Quebec Internet users, we will also complete these analyzes by integrating Facebook accounts.
Then we will conduct a discourse analysis of the comments in three steps. Once the first step of identifying discriminatory comments has been completed, we will analyze the emotions behind the discriminatory comments (anger, surprise, fear, etc.) as well as the subjective dimension of these comments. A final qualitative step will deepen the results in order to identify the type of vocabulary used in statements that are discriminatory in nature while examining the implicit logic that attempts to justify the existence of inequality in employment.
Recent developments in class actions related to racism in Quebec
In addition to the four studies carried out by the scientific committee of the project, Salvador David Hernández, a researcher at Alternatives, will analyze the evolution of collective actions linked to racism in the province. To this end, a bank of articles published in Le Devoir and in The Montreal Gazette between 1990 and 2020 will be studied quantitatively to identify the main trends in their content.