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The transition from university to the graduate labour market has become increasingly competitive. As university degrees no longer offer a guarantee for success, graduates mobilise other forms of capital to gain a competitive advantage. First-in-family and working-class students are seen to be disadvantaged as they lack access to the types of economic, social and personal capital employers prefer. This article is based on a qualitative longitudinal study of first-in-family, working-class students in Canada. Starting university in 2005 with very high ambitions and goals for substantial mobility, I will show how most gradually revised these goals over the 16 years they have been followed in the study, and how they engaged in a range of strategies to negotiate their potential working-class disadvantages to find career success. They further evoked a broader notion of mobility beyond career achievement, in that they also discussed personal/intellectual growth through education, their ability to develop and accumulate middle-class cultural capital, while not abandoning their working-class roots, and the importance of stability over status.

This article offers a tentative exploration of how working-class students' mobility is affected by the push to enter middle-class careers and lifestyles, and the pull of their working-class origins. Based on a nine-year qualitative longitudinal study of working-class students at a Canadian university, I will show that few study participants experienced mobility as an uncontested or linear trajectory. Two key storylines can be identified: (1) a story of adjustment, modification and contentment; and (2) a story of conflict, loss, and struggle. For most, educational mobility was tempered by revisions of occupational ambitions, by returns to their home communities and by lifestyle choices that do not fit simple narratives of status mobility. And yet, all expressed a growing sense of self-confidence, appreciated their education as an experience of personal growth, and achieved on their own terms, in post-graduate education and newly discovered careers.

The biggest threat to civil society in Canada and the United States is the economic doctrine known as neoliberalism. Sometimes referred to as the corporate agenda, this philosophy supports the deregulation of industry, the privatization of the commons, the weakening of workers' rights, and corporate tax cuts. Acknowledging that teaching is a political act, this paper makes a case for social studies and history teachers to develop pedagogy that lifts the hegemonic veil for students. Progressive values--progressive tax reform, support for workers, strengthening social welfare, and regulating industry--are the antithesis of neoliberalism. After describing the effects of neoliberalism today, the paper highlights important victories for working- and middle-class citizens taken for a stronger civil society in the pasts of both countries based on Keynesian economics and social democratic values. The paper outlines a pedagogical approach for social studies teachers based upon ideology critique, critical media literacy, and reframing of neoliberal discourses with progressive ones. Deconstructing hegemony is the crucial component of this critical pedagogy.

As undergraduate degrees have become increasingly common and their relative value has declined, employers increasingly look for evidence other than human capital that can distinguish one candidate from another. Both social and personal capital are important in this respect, but also create disadvantages for university graduates from less privileged backgrounds. Using data from a qualitative longitudinal study, I will discuss the employment outcomes of working-class, first-generation university students in Canada. The findings to be presented highlight that working-class graduates struggle with the development and mobilisation of social and personal capital in the search for employment. Instead, they largely rely on formal job postings and trust in the value of their human capital. Some participants discussed mandatory internships and placements that took place during their education, and how they assisted them in the development of networks and social capital for career advancement. Shifting occupational goals can also be interpreted as the result of participants' reassessment of their chances to break into high-status professional careers.

In 2002, approximately two thirds of school teachers in the Canadian province of Alberta went on strike. Drawing on media, government and union documents, this case study reveals some contours of the political economy of labor relations in education that are normally hidden from view. Among these features are that the state can react to worker resistance by legally pressuring trade unions and justifying this action as in the public interest. This justification seeks to divide the working class and pit segments of it against each other. The state may also seek to limit discussion and settlements to monetary matters to avoid constraining its ability to manage the workplace or the educational system. This analysis provides a basis for developing a broader theory of the political economy of labor relations in education. It also provides trade unionists in education with information useful in formulating a strike strategy. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

In this paper, we develop an information distortion model (IDM) of social class differences in self-beliefs and values. The IDM combines psychological biases on frame-of-reference effects with sociological foci on ability stratification. This combination is hypothesized to lead to working-class children having more positive math self-beliefs and values than equally able salariat children. We further suggest that the same conditions that give rise to the working-class benefit in self-beliefs and values are associated with signaling effects that suppress educational aspirations and attainment. These hypotheses are tested in 1 cross-sectional multinational and 1 longitudinal study. The results in favor of the IDM challenge cultural models of social class differences and have implications for rational action theory.

Using a collection of settler family letters to the Elementary Correspondence School (ECS) in British Columbia, the first provincial government--supported "schooling by mail" arrangement of its kind in Canada, I highlight the efforts of rural families to secure an education for their children in the period between the First and Second World Wars. The settler families who took advantage of correspondence schooling did so without the benefit of a professional teacher or a dedicated schoolhouse. This arrangement proved onerous for many settler families. In their letters to the ECS, adults and young people articulated the belief that the provincial government needed to do more to provide educational services for them. Families were acutely aware of their contributions to the prosperity of the province and, in return, they demanded schools for their children. Given the unique perspectives reflected through this collection of letters, my examination is situated in the interstices between rural schooling and correspondence schooling.

Popular rhetoric suggests that the future of post-industrialized regions is dependant in part on young people's engagement. If so, school and community educators will do well to work with youth to better understand influences on how they envision engagement--both historical and present-day--and assumptions on which they are premised. They then may be better positioned to critique the local value of dominant notions of civic engagement and to envision definitions that more closely reflect their own lives and communities' needs. I examine young people's historical perceptions of their post-industrial region in the early to semilate (1980s) 20th century. I discuss their views of and emotional responses to what they perceive as markers of the past, what they feel has changed, and what has remained the same. I consider ways their emotional responses are entry points for youth and school and community educators to critically consider the impact of changing cultural, social, and economic arrangements on young people, their communities, and their civic engagement.

As the numbers of working-class students at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which they consolidate their working-class habitus with the middle-class culture of the academic field. Drawing on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a large, research-intensive Canadian university, I focus on the experiences of those participants who fully embraced, became integrated, and achieved academic success at university. They not only spoke about gaining new knowledge, but also about growing personally, changing their outlooks on life, growing their repertoire of cultural capital, and developing new dispositions and tastes about a range of issues, from food to politics and their future careers. Yet, the interviews also reflect a complex and complicated mix of allegiances to and dismissal of their working-class roots, as many recognize this transformative process as having made relationships with parents or former friends and peers more difficult. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for working-class students who increasingly distance themselves from the class culture in which they grew up, but who are still likely to find themselves in adult situations in which they are perceived as cultural outsiders.

In the course of educational expansion, student populations have become more diverse. This paper represents an international literature review on the topic of first-generation students (FGS), i.e. students whose parents have not obtained a higher education qualification. On the basis of more than 70 research articles and reports on FGS from several countries, we find that the focal points in FGS research concern their pre-college characteristics, mobility factors, decisions about institution, degree and subjects, FGS' experiences at university, and academic outcomes. Summarising the state of research on these topics, we point to two problems: (1) the international incommensurability of data on FGS due to differences in how FGS are defined and researched; (2) the depiction of FGS' problems as individual rather than structural problems. We recommend that structural changes such as making organisational structures in higher education institutions more transparent are in order instead of offering special support programmes only for FGS.

A meta-analysis of 35 studies found that social class (socioeconomic status) is related to social integration among students in higher education: Working-class students are less integrated than middle-class students. This relation generalized across students' gender and year of study, as well as type of social class measure (parental education and parental income). However, type of social integration measure was a significant moderator. In particular, the social subscale of the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire obtained the largest effect (r = 0.18, p less than 0.001). Significant effects were also found using measures of the sense of belonging and participation in formal and informal social activities. Future research in this area should use multidimensional measures of social integration and investigate potential mediators of the social class-social integration relation. (Contains 1 table and 1 footnote.)

Purpose: This paper aims to report on the author's recent research examining the meaning and practices of educating for solidarity, specifically from anti-racism and decolonizing perspective. The research is part of the critical exploration on new educational approaches on solidarity building among workers and trade union members in the broader political and economic context of neoliberalism. Design/methodology/approach: Utilizing the research methodologies of participatory action research, arts-informed research and critical autobiography, the research draws on the words and visual images made by the participants who are labour educators and activists from Aboriginal and racialized communities. In-depth interview and the Aboriginal talking circle method were used to deepen the dialogue among this group of activists. By focusing on their authentic voices and lived experiences, the research is grounded in Dei's stance on the importance of the embodied knowledge as part of the necessary conditions for anti-racism education work and political action. Findings: The findings reveal a sense of profound gap between what participants experience as daily practices of solidarity and what they envisioned. Through the research process, the study explores and demonstrates the importance and potential of a more holistic and integrative critical labour education approach on anti-racism and decolonization. The study proposes a pedagogical framework on solidarity building with four interlinking components: rediscovering, restoring, reimagining and reclaiming: as a way to make whole. Research limitations/implications: A further research implication will be to explore the possibility and application of this proposed pedagogical framework with a group of trade union activists from racialized and non-racialized backgrounds. Social implications: The pedagogy of solidarity offers a transformative process for activists to engage in critical dialogue on how to build solidarity across constituencies. The solidarity circle dialogue process provides a space for critical reflection. Originality/value: This is an original research integrating Aboriginal worldview and arts-informed research, to explore the potential of a new pedagogy that is grounded in restoring people's spirit, recovering their voices so they can have the courage to reimagine; and reclaim in order to make whole. The value of the research lies in its hopefulness as a tool of countering the politics of division and fear.

As their numbers at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which working-class students negotiate their potential outsider status in what is often considered an essential middle-class institution. Based on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a Canadian university, I argue that their acceptance of the ends and means of both the academic and social demands of university contributes to the development of different student roles, which in turn affects their likelihood to succeed academically. Drawing on works by Bourdieu and Bernstein, I present four case studies of students who lived through university committed, alienated or in transition toward either commitment or alienation. I show that despite similar working-class backgrounds, study participants' reaction to university was anything but predictable. Instead, prior socialization, clear and realistic career goals, and chance encounters at university played an important role in their approach to university life. (Contains 1 note and 1 figure.)

Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra-credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common, access to employment and further education opportunities increasingly depend on extra-curricular and "enriching" educational experiences. Using qualitative data from a longitudinal study of working-class university students in Canada, I will address the mechanisms by which they have gained or were denied access to such experiences. The data suggest that working-class students' relative lack of financial resources and social networks are barriers to the development of extra-credential experiences, which in turn leads to the change of educational and career plans for some. (Contains 2 notes.)

As austerity measures intensify around the world, the axe has come down particularly hard on post-secondary education (PSE). So-called education "reform" has shown itself to be a lightning rod for confrontation. In order to deal with unprecedented government budget shortfalls, caused, it must be recalled, by the lead agents of the capitalist class (its bankers, insurance companies and politicians), the public sector is now being strangled. The capitalist sector is, moreover, catching a second wind, and engaging further flagrant excesses as profitability once again reins supreme. Incredibly, rather than laying blame on the origins of the present (private sector-led) recession, budget shortfalls are being blamed on an allegedly bloated and inefficient public sphere, including the users and producers of those services. The targets include both private and public sector unions, as well as universal social programs that aim to provide a modicum of protection against the vicissitudes of the market. Increasingly, then, the public sector is becoming a prime space for privatization, whereby market mechanisms are increasingly being locked-in thereby extending commodification and marketization. This is creating new openings for the privatization of public assets and services as a means to pay for the crisis. In this article, the authors examine the nature of the recent austerity measures enacted in the wake of the Great Recession with a particular emphasis on Carleton University and Ontario. While similar in intent and form to austerity measures enacted across the United States and Europe, the Open Ontario plan and the "Public Sector Restraint Act" demonstrates how the working class is being forced to pay for an economic downturn thoroughly centered in the private sector. Further, the authors reflect on how these austerity measures impacted the most recent round of collective bargaining between Carleton University and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 4600. They also show how CUPE 4600 worked with other labour unions and student associations on the Carleton campus to mobilize resistance to the curtailment of collective bargaining rights. (Contains 21 footnotes.)

In this paper, I compare socio-economic experiences and community perceptions expressed by socially and economically disadvantaged young people with those of university students living in the same post-industrial community. I consider markers of distinction among these young people in relation to their family and educational experiences. I also critique overlaps in their perceptions of their community with specific focus on recreational infrastructure and physical environment. Youth insights suggest that the downturn in the economy has had an impact on their families' ability to provide the traditional kind of support expected of working-class families. The resulting gaps in local cultural and social capital influence school successes and ultimately, economic life chances for youth in already marginalized communities. Despite varying life chances, all participants held similar perceptions of their community. Their shared views beg the question: can collaborations among fractions of young people strengthen efforts to advocate for social and economic security and comfort for all youth within and across disenfranchised communities? (Contains 9 figures and 1 note.)

Based on the results of transition studies in the UK, Germany, USA and Canada, the virtues of analysing the structural contexts, institutional arrangements and the young peoples' action orientations are presented. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, school and the labour market have become more and more decoupled and transition routes more uncertain. From a structural perspective, the sorting of school leavers into different transition pathways according to their educational achievements contributes to the reproduction of social inequality. From the actor' perspective, transition uncertainty requires that young adults develop agency (planful and adaptive competence) in order to manage meaningful decisions between alternative pathways to employment. By relating the concept of agency to intuitive rationality and biographical choice, various action strategies are presented that document how young people from different social origins actively pursue individual goals when choosing to follow or to change transition pathways. In contrast to an emphatic reading of the individualisation thesis, comparative transition studies show that only socially privileged and educationally successful youths succeed in transforming their agency into self-reflexive projects.

Labor market conditions, a pervasive public discourse about the benefits of higher education, and parental hopes push many young working-class people into university. The institutional culture and demands of university, however, often remain elusive and fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, I draw on qualitative interviews with first-generation, working-class students at a Canadian university to analyze the ways in which these students discuss their reasons to attend and their expectations for university, and the implications of their attitudes for their future success at university. Analysis of the interview data shows how the relatively high and risky investment of working-class youth in education leads to strong utilitarian and vocational orientations toward university. Although a narrow focus on the career potential of university is generally perceived as problematic, I argue that it may also help working-class students in their transition to university. Nonetheless, a critical educational process is necessary that not only helps working-class students achieve their educational and occupational goals, but also understand their unique status in a social institution that they entered as outsiders.

The question of access to French-immersion programs has become a timely subject in Canada as a result of shifting political priorities, cutbacks, and growing concern around finding the most efficient way to teach French as a second language (FSL). While drawing on social selection and identity perspectives on school choice, this article presents the results of a study with a group of Canadian students in an Ottawa high school who had followed a Late French-Immersion (FLI) program in grades seven-eight (ages 11-14). Findings indicate that Canadian-born middle-class parents played an active role in the school choices of their preteens and that students from immigrant and working-class backgrounds were able to compensate for class and cultural disadvantages by playing a leading role in the family decision to accept a LFI placement. Results also showed that students from middle-class families primarily began LFI programs for communication-related purposes; whereas students from working-class backgrounds were more concerned with employability-related issues. This article also stresses the importance of providing bilingual educational options to older students and discusses some of the benefits of conducting comparative research on Canadian and American bilingual educational programs. (Contains 1 table.)

In January of 2001, the TimberWest Corporation permanently closed its Youbou sawmill facility near Duncan, British Columbia, Canada laying off 220 workers. On the surface, the Youbou mill closure reinforced a pervasive sense that workers and communities in the province are increasingly vulnerable to an ever more globally integrated and footloose forest industry. But a funny thing happened in Youbou; the workers fought back. While the mill was completely dismantled and scrapped, with no discernable response from the provincial government, workers from the Youbou sawmill banded together to form a new NGO called the Youbou TimberLess Society. Since its inception, the YTS has developed into one of the most unique and compelling voices for forest policy reform in BC. In so doing, the YTS also represents something of an anomaly in exhibiting many of the characteristics of so-called new social movements, and yet emerging from the industrial working class. This paper explores the ways in which the YTS has served as a powerful arena in which the subjectivities of sawmill workers and other community members have been transformed through organized resistance to global capital. At the same time, informed by the YTS, the paper draws on Polanyi's idea of the dual movement to examine scales and terms on which globalization and competing notions of autonomy are contested in moral economies of both work and nature.

This article examines the historical literacy experiences and current literacy practices of the parents of one working class family as they shape the literacy learning of their four-year-old daughter. Data collected from field notes, observations, and videotaped interviews of the parents and daughter were analyzed and events sorted into categories congruent with foundational concepts of emergent literacy, such as intentionality, concepts of writing, and concepts of print. Analysis of the data revealed that socioeconomic status or residential location does not determine a child's literacy background and that great variation exists in diverse families. Despite living in communities deemed "at risk," some families are able to provide activities to support the development of critical early literacy concepts in their children. The article also provides practical suggestions for teachers so that the home, school, and community can work together to foster children's literacy knowledge. (Contains 2 figures.)

Social class has strongly influenced the development of social policies about adult education. Present policy discourses are a result of weakening working-class interests.

The research reported in this paper attempts to document the actual learning practices of working-class people in the context of the much heralded "knowledge-based economy." Our primary thesis is that working-class peoples' indigenous learning capacities have been denied, suppressed, degraded or diverted within most capitalist schooling, adult education institutions and employer-sponsored training programmes, at the same time as working class informal learning and tacit knowledge are heavily relied on to actually run paid workplaces. Our analysis is based on five case studies of Canadian union locals which document the learning practices of hired workers based in different industries and employment sites with strikingly different support systems for education and training and working-class learning generally. We criticise dominant theories of adult education for preoccupation with ahistorical and individualised, psychological processes and motives while ignoring the collective learning processes that workingclass people rely upon most. For this reason we rely on a cultural-historical theory of adult learning. These case studies show that workers are generally active learners, that they do much of their learning informally and that much of this learning is of high quality. (Contains 2 tables.)

Despite late modernity and risk society discourses about the decreasing influence of structural factors on educational and occupational attainment, it has also been argued that socio-economic background and gender continue to influence individuals' school-work transitions. Comparing youth apprentices and academic high school students in Canada and Germany, I show how working-class students planning on attending university perceive these plans as far more risky and uncertain than do their peers with highly educated parents. Similarly, working-class youth in apprenticeships are confident about their success in these programs. While conditions of late modernity or risk society may have created tendencies toward individualization, young people continue to draw on social experiences rooted in their habitus. But rather than seeing school-work transitions as either structurally determined or largely individualized, I propose that individuals form dispositions based on a reflexive understanding of their position in the social structure. (Contains 3 tables and 3 notes.)

Examines the educational history of a black woman teacher in an African-Canadian, low-income setting in southern Ontario. Discusses the interactions and influences of race, gender, and class in her formative years as a schoolgirl of African descent and in her teaching practice. (MMU)

This literature review shows that independent learning and self-improvement were promoted in early nineteenth-century Canada. However, learner autonomy in the working classes faltered in the face of lack of resources and political opposition. (SK)

Describes the life of workers and the political turmoil of the Depression years. Introduces "Industrial Image/Images Industrielles (1987)," a volume containing art depicting life during the 1930's. Examples of the artwork are included. (GG)

Interviews with high school senior girls in Vancouver, Canada, who selected business courses are used to illustrate how students' knowledge of the school and of the society produces course choices that in turn tend to reproduce class and gender categories. (RM)

Capitalist, patriarchal, and sexist social structures and values affect how working class adolescents plan to allocate responsibility for domestic labor. Interviews with 83 Canadian male and female high school students revealed that they anticipate choosing patterns of domestic labor which perpetuate women's subordinate roles at home and work. (AM)

In 2021, the Ontario government legislatively prohibited most non-competition clauses, the first Canadian government to take this step. The move was unexpected because the political party in power (the Progressive Conservative Party, or PCP) has not traditionally been a strong supporter of workers' rights. However, the PCP wanted to demonstrate a new commitment to the working class, and it knew that banning non-competition clauses would attract little backlash from its business constituency since the common law renders almost all noncompetes illegal in Canada anyway. The common law approach to the enforceability of non-competition clauses is similar in Canada and the United States. Courts in both countries are suspicious of these clauses because they restrict the right of workers to accept jobs within their field. However, Canadian courts are far less likely to enforce non-competition clauses than their American counterparts. This divergence can partly be explained by fundamental differences in employment law architecture, including the fact that a doctrine of inequality of bargaining power guides Canadian courts. This doctrine, developed primarily by the Supreme Court of Canada over the past hal fcentury, is comprised of both a descriptive and a normative element. Descriptively. the doctrine recognizes (1) that work has a psychological component and is integral to human dignity, personal identity, and selfworth in Canadian society; and (2) that the employment relationship is frequently characterized by inequality of bargaining power. Normatively, the doctrine of inequality of bargaining power posits that, due to the importance of work and the reality of inequality of bargaining power, the common law should develop in a manner that considers the vulnerability of employees. Relying on the doctrine of inequality of bargaining power, Canadian courts have refused to sever or rectify unreasonable and over-broad noncompetition clauses. This refusal marks a substantial divergence from courts in the United States. where courts routinely intervene on behalf of employers to read down unreasonable non-competition clauses to Inake them enforceable. This Article examines the treatment of noncompetition clauses in employment contracts through a comparative lens, explaining how Canadian courts (and now legislators) have demonstrated much less tolerance for contractual restrictions on the right to work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conversation with critical platform and labor studies, which tend to focus on drivers and food delivery workers, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the platform gig economy from the perspective of reproductive labor and migrant domestic workers. The exploitation of women's unpaid and low-paid reproductive work has persisted throughout various stages of capitalist development. Migrant domestic workers' underpaid reproductive labor becomes an essential site for primitive capital accumulation and the production of the labor force in the contemporary neoliberal global economy. Building upon analyses of the historical and contemporary circumstances of transnational migrant domestic workers in Canada, I argue that digital labor platforms become a technology-enabled, capital-driven force in the larger commodification and exploitation process of migrant workers' reproductive labor, and such processes are underpinned by entangled structural and institutional forces of the uneven capitalist development, racism, patriarchy, and the state's discriminatory (im)migration and labor policies. The article suggests that understanding the seeming prevalence of platform work should be situated in the continuous formal subsumption of reproductive labor and the class immobility of migrant domestic workers, and labor activism and movements should contest the entwined power dominations beyond merely demanding regulations over platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a wide-spread pedagogical interest and scholarly conviction in the possibilities of educational drama for creating more contextually-situated, engaging, and multi-modal L2 learning experiences (Piazzoli, 2018; Stinson & Winston, 2011), there is scarce empirical evidence concerning what is actually taking place interactionally in L2 classrooms for adults. This article presents a bottom-up microanalysis of classroom interaction in an ESL class in Canada with over 16 adult learners designed to explore the potential and actual impact of educational drama on classroom discourse and students' L2 learning experiences. Using a discourse analytic approach (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Goffman, 1981), I analyze the dynamic identity work of the class participants. The article presents empirically-grounded research findings that illustrate instances of interaction in and through which drama-based ESL pedagogy contributes to the development of dialogic and democratic classroom discourse and fosters a transformative empowering interpersonal space (Cummins, 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barry Eidlin's book, Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada (Cambridge University Press, 2018) explains why unions are weaker in the United States than they are in Canada, but have not always been that way. Indeed, unionization rates were virtually identical for much of the twentieth century, then diverged in the 1960s. Against dominant accounts focused on long-standing differences in political cultures and institutions, Eidlin argues that the divergence resulted from different ruling party responses to working class upsurge in both countries during the Great Depression and World War II. In Canada, an initially more hostile state response ended up embedding "the class idea"—the idea of class as a salient, legitimate political category—more deeply in policies, policies, and practices than in the United States, where class interests were reduced to "special interests." In this symposium, three noted labor scholars engage critically with the book. Cedric de Leon interrogates Eidlin's account of the role of racial divisions in explaining divergence, noting "more persistence and convergence than there is rupture and divergence" between these two countries on this issue. Nelson Lichtenstein's critique focuses on the exceptionally vociferous character of US employer hostility, which he argues that Eidlin downplays. And Judith Stepan-Norris notes the surprising lack of actual class actors in a book about class organization, while raising interpretive questions about the relation between labor and the Communist Party in both countries. Eidlin concludes the symposium with a response to the critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here are some reasons why this claim might be challenged: It assumes that the gap between CP leaders' and workers' positions on the war effort was large enough to explain workers' abandonment; was this the case? With regard to the right to strike and replacement workers rights in both countries, Canada has in recent decades reinforced workers' right to strike and weakened replacement workers rights. Why did CP union leaders' rhetoric alienate workers to the point that workers abandoned them forever while the impactful actions of other leaders didn't? Communist union leaders were able to hang on during the milder purge because there was no explicit exclusion of CP leaders from union leadership as there was in the Taft-Hartley Act in the United States. [Extracted from the article]

Second, once labor became institutionalized in these competing ways, labor was split off from the Left in the United States, thus making it increasingly difficult to pose class as an organizing principle of party and labor politics. Though the NDP and organized labor assisted in purging the Communist Party, labor and the Left never severed ties, Eidlin argues, in part owing to radical political tendencies within the NDP. By contrast, the ruling Conservative and Liberal parties in Canada chose a course of violent antilabor repression, a move that pushed organized labor into the waiting arms of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), later the New Democratic Party (NDP). [Extracted from the article]

Once thought to be the only genuinely revolutionary force, the labor movement is in retreat worldwide. By way of example, this article argues that by reawakening our human capacity for solidaristic relationships, theatrical plays are one means of revitalizing the labor movement. This article uses the theory of interaction rituals to analyze a dramatic production that follows in the tradition of the workers' theater movement. The play focuses on the little‐known historical role of women in the 1941 to 1942 strike in Canada's gold fields. Audience responses to the after‐performance survey reveal the play's positive ritual effects. This study fills a gap in the empirical literature on interaction rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada has not been left untouched by a new authoritarian, or ordered, populism that has seen the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union. Based on measurements of public opinion and other means developed to assess the phenomenon, this paper finds that populism in Canada is a significant political force, replacing the traditional left-right political spectrum. Not only has northern populism created a heightened partisan polarization in Canada, but it also proved to be a strong predictor of the outcome of the 2019 federal election. The authors' research shows that 34 per cent of Canadians maintain a populist outlook. Older, less-educated, working-class Canadians are the most likely to sympathize with ordered populism, and it is more prevalent in Alberta and Saskatchewan. It is also more closely aligned with Canadians whose political sympathies lie with conservative political parties. A number of factors have contributed to the rise of ordered populism. These include economic stagnation, the growing disparity between the wealthy and the middle and working classes, a sense that society is headed in the wrong direction and a backlash against the loss of traditional core values. Ordered populism rests on the belief in a corrupt elite, and the idea that power needs to be wrested from this elite and returned to the people. Oriented toward authoritarianism, ordered populism emphasizes obedience, hostility toward outgroups, a desire to turn back the clock to a time of greater order in society, and a search for a strongman type to lead the return to a better time. Nothing about ordered populism serves the public interest. Instead, its anti-democratic nature makes it incapable of solving the problems that spawned its rise in the first place. Ordered populism is xenophobic, mistrustful of science and journalism, and unsympathetic to equality and gender issues. Arising out of fear and anger, ordered populism is ultimately unhealthy for Western democracies and their societies and economies. Canada has yet to accord the rise of ordered populism the attention it deserves, although this paper explains why it is a critical force in this country that needs to be addressed. Currently, attitudes toward ordered populism are generally limited to sneering, derisiveness and denial, all of which do nothing to address the problem. Solving it requires understanding its roots. And if its origins lie in the collapse of the middle-class dream, then policy-makers will need to focus on creating a new economics of hope. Ordered populism is at the heart of stark divisions in Canada, and the 2019 federal election did little, if anything, to mend the rupture. Dissatisfaction with the election's results could forecast an even worse polarization in the near future, and increase the appeal of authoritarianism, if populism is left unaddressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical examination of the relationships between food and identity is explored among early British and American Loyalist settlers in Upper Canada (southern Ontario) from the late 18th to the late 19th centuries. This research synthesizes zooarchaeological data from the region and interprets these alongside historical texts to address how meat was incorporated into early immigrant diets. Previous scholarship generally agreed that pork played a dominant role in Upper Canadian cuisine and that residents first settling in the area were particularly reliant on wild meat resources. Archaeological evidence suggests this was not the case. Results and discussions highlight the influence of British working-class traditions on Upper Canadian identities and the development of regional cuisines in southern Ontario. Parallels are drawn to anthropological and sociological studies of migrant foodways, encouraging archaeologists to consider the importance of maintaining food traditions when examining early immigrant assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An estimated 17% of the Canadian labor force engage in complex/extended employment-related geographical mobility ranging from extended daily commutes to regional, interprovincial and international mobility. The opportunities and challenges of particular types of mobility for family lives have been studied most often in isolation (i.e. daily commutes, fly-in/fly-out or international migration), and attention to mobility is largely absent from the work-family literature. Drawing on presentations and discussions at two recent conferences with a focus on families, work and mobility in Canada, this Research Note highlights some of the gaps in existing knowledge about families, work and mobility and some family-related challenges associated with extended/complex mobility for work from the standpoint of those living it, those studying it and those striving to serve and support these workers and their families. Examples discussed here encompass families where members are employed offshore, in other provinces and in the military. The impact of mobility on the family lives of temporary foreign workers is also discussed. We conclude with a few policy recommendations related to helping workers and their families deal with extended/complex mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines trends in the education–occupation match and earnings outcomes of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)–educated immigrants and compares them with the outcomes of their Canadian-born counterparts. From 1985 to 2010, both education–occupation match and earnings outcomes deteriorated among immigrant STEM graduates while remaining more or less constant among Canadian-born STEM graduates. The decline in education–occupation match was concentrated among recent immigrants entering during the 2000s. Both immigrant STEM graduates and immigrant non-STEM graduates experienced similar declines in relative earnings. Finally, the earnings gap between immigrant and Canadian-born STEM graduates did not close quickly with years in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]