Experience and transitions: A relational perspective on migration in adulthood

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the movement across national boundaries from a relational ‘doing transitions’ and ‘doing migration’ perspective. Of particular interest is the engagement of individuals with ‘Canadian experience’ as a boundary-making challenge to be dealt with and as an interplay between discourse and subject that shapes individuals’ sense of self and preconfigures opportunity spaces for belonging. Data were gathered through narrative interviews and were analyzed using the Documentary Method. Various forms of engaging with the challenges and boundaries are emerging, one of which will be highlighted and discussed here as a form of inbetweenness or hybridity.

Full text

CASAE/ACÉÉA 2022 Annual Conference/conférence annuelle 2022 Hosted by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Organisé par la Fédération des sciences humaines et sociales Edited by Roula Hawa

2022 Meeting of CASAE. Conference of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education(CASAE)/ Association canadianne pour l’étude de l’éducation des adults (ACÉÉA) held virtually from May 14th to May 17th, 2022. Edited by Roula Hawa. Copyright belongs to individual authors. Please contact individual authors for permission to reproduce and distribute their work. Cover image credit: Nick Morrison on Unsplash Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) 260 Dalhousie Street Suite 204 OTTAWA, ON K1N 7E4 Telephone: 613.241.0018 FAX: 613.241.0019 E-mail: casae.aceea@csse.ca

About CASAE/ACÉÉA CASAE/ACÉÉA was established in 1981as a vibrant and energetic
organization that provides a supportive network for graduate students,
faculty members, researchers practitioners and policymakers who are
engaged or interested in adult education scholarship.
Membership to our association is open to all individuals and
institutions–both formal and informal–who are interested in the field of
adult education. We hold an annual conference in May or June, often in
conjunction with the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social
Sciences’ Congress.
CASAE/ACÉÉA also publishes an academic journal, The Canadian
Journal for the Study of Adult Education (CJSAE). CJSAE publishes
original reports of research, critical reviews of the literature of adult
education, biographical and autobiographical reflections on the field and
practice of adult education and book reviews. CASAE/ACÉÉA
maintains active links with comparable organisations around the world,
including the Adult Education Research Conference (AERC), the
European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) and
the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the
Education of Adults (SCUTREA).

Message from the President Cindy Hanson, PhD President, Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education/ Association canadienne pour l’étude de l’éducation des adultes (CASAE/ACÉÉA). I can hardly believe almost a year has gone by with me performing the role of President to CASAE. I am a professor at the University of Regina. The University of Regina’s motto, dating back to the early years of extension divisions is,
as one who serves
. It has been my honour to serve CASAE and it is my hope that this year’s conference will be memorable for you. Normally when a CASAE conference ends, there is some idea about where the conference will be in the upcoming year. This year was different. It wasn’t until October that the Federation of Social Science and Humanities (the folks who organize Congress) told us they were going completely online and we’ve been playing “hurry up and catch-up” ever since. I would be remiss to not thank Shan Hongxia for her role as president last year in preparing me for co-hosting this conference and to Robert McGray as incoming-president for his co-leadership and collegiality in moving us to this point. Many good people, all members of CASAE, have helped pull off this conference and I’d like to especially thank the Board of Directors for their assistance and service. Congress’ theme,
Transitions
, became our own for the opening session at this conference. This theme is focused on recommitting to and advancing equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization which in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare long-standing inequalities. The 2022 CASAE conference team joins in Congress’s efforts to “re-imagine the world we inhabit, so that together we can build a future that is more diverse, sustainable, democratic, and just” (https://www.federationhss.ca/en/congress/congress-2022#theme). As you read and engage with the abstracts, papers, roundtables and poster presentation abstracts presented in this set of proceedings (edited by Dr. Roula Hawa) we ask you to consider how many of the writers engaged with the theme of transitions or to consider what transitions mean for re-imagining CASAE. In Solidarity Cindy Hanson (President)

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Table of Contents PAPERS ................................................................................................................ 4 Kusai Alsahanie, Jonathan Easey, Hyunok Ryu, Jude Walker ......................................................5
Theodora Balmon .................................................................................................................... 12
Laurie Barnas, Niels Agger-Gupta, Catherine Etmanski ............................................................ 20
R. Allana Bartlett, Christina Flemming ..................................................................................... 31
Amanda Benjamin, Kendra Haines , Amy Urquhart .................................................................. 37
Michael Bernhard.................................................................................................................... 44
Susan M Brigham, Ajoke Laseinde, Randy Headley, Hanseung Kim, George Frempong ............. 50
Sheena Cameron ..................................................................................................................... 54
Alan Chaffe ............................................................................................................................. 64
Shurla Charles-Forbes .............................................................................................................. 74
Sharon Clancy, Iain Jones......................................................................................................... 82
Maureen Coady ....................................................................................................................... 90
Vanessa L. Daether, Catherine Etmanski .................................................................................. 97
Audrey Dahl, Renée Jackson .................................................................................................. 102
Maya Daniel ......................................................................................................................... 109
Suriani Dzulkifli ..................................................................................................................... 116
Leona M. English ................................................................................................................... 123
Catherine Etmanski, Kaustuv Bandyopadhyay, Wanda Krause, Susan Cline, Helen Martin ...... 130
Laura Formenti, Silvia Luraschi, Gaia Del Negro ..................................................................... 137
Eluza Gomes, Marlon Sanches ............................................................................................... 148
Janet Groen........................................................................................................................... 158
Ash Grover, Nancy Taber, Monica Drenth .............................................................................. 165
Cindy Hanson ........................................................................................................................ 173
Katherine Hardin ................................................................................................................... 181
Roula Hawa, Jennifer Dunn, Saundra-Lynn Coulter, Wendy Goldsmith, Reeti Chopra .............. 192
Dörthe Herbrechter, Eva Hahnrath, Annabel Jenner ............................................................... 200
Kaela Jubas, Francesca Patten, Donna Rooney ....................................................................... 210
Lois Kamenitz ........................................................................................................................ 218
Laura Lane ............................................................................................................................ 228
Ling Lei, Shibao Guo .............................................................................................................. 235

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Jingzhou Liu, Shibao Guo ....................................................................................................... 245
Sam Madesi, Colleen Kawalilak ............................................................................................. 254
Stephanie Mason .................................................................................................................. 263
Elizabeth A. McNeilly............................................................................................................. 273
J. Adam Perry, L. Rachael Bethune ......................................................................................... 280
Carole Roy ............................................................................................................................ 289
Hyunok Ryu, Yu Guo, Hongxia Shan, Michelle Stack ............................................................... 296
Hongxia Shan, Elena Ignatovich, Siyi Cheng, Agnes d'Entremont, Thomas Tannert................ 305
Nancy Taber .......................................................................................................................... 314
Monique A. Walsh ................................................................................................................. 321
José Wellington Sousa ........................................................................................................... 330
Christina White Prosser, Andrew Mardjetko .......................................................................... 338
Tannaz Zargarian .................................................................................................................. 345
ROUNDTABLE .................................................................................................. 354 Darlene E. Clover, Kathy Sanford, Dorothea Harris , Kerry Harman, Sondra Cuban, Catherine Etmanski , Gaia del Negro, Laura Formetti, Silivia Luraschi, Lauren Spring, Nancy Taber ......... 355
Stacey Crooks, Paula Elias, Annie Luk ..................................................................................... 359
Jann Houston ........................................................................................................................ 363
Lyliam J. Jardine .................................................................................................................... 368
E. George Tsirigotis ............................................................................................................... 373
POSTERS .......................................................................................................... 376 Heather Cote-Soop ................................................................................................................ 377
Hanseung Kim ....................................................................................................................... 378
Ajoke Laseinde ...................................................................................................................... 379

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EXPERIENCE AND TRANSITIONS: A RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON MIGRATION IN ADULTHOOD Michael Bernhard
Goethe University Frankfurt (GERMANY)
Abstract In this paper, I explore the movement across national boundaries from a relational ‘doing transitions’ and ‘doing migration’ perspective. Of particular interest is the engagement of individuals with ‘Canadian experience’ as a boundary-making challenge to be dealt with and as an interplay between discourse and subject that shapes individuals’ sense of self and preconfigures opportunity spaces for belonging. Data were gathered through narrative interviews and were analyzed using the Documentary Method. Various forms of engaging with the challenges and boundaries are emerging, one of which will be highlighted and discussed here as a form of in-betweenness or hybridity. Keywords: Migration, mobility, relationality, doing transitions, doing migration, Canadian experience INTRODUCTION Transitions across socially constructed boundaries are commonly accompanied by the need to reconstruct biographies and an engagement with the New. This paper explores a particular aspect of individuals’ experience with the ambivalent Canadian immigration system. While Canada is seen by many as a country welcoming of immigration, there are a range of systemic barriers, challenges, and exclusionary mechanisms that individuals encounter as they arrive in this country (Nohl et al., 2014; Shan, 2013; Simmons, 2010). One such challenge is the discourse on ‘Canadian experience’, which newcomers are expected to possess in order to gain adequate access to the labour market. Research suggests that this phenomenon enables ‘racism without racists’ (Ku et al., 2018), acts as a foundation for neo-liberal nation-building (Bhuyan et al., 2017) and can be seen as a canon of implicit knowledge to be acquired (Sakamoto et al., 2010). Building on this discussion, I will center on the engagement of individuals with ‘Canadian experience’ as a boundary-making challenge to be dealt with and as an interplay between discourse and subject that shapes individuals’ sense of self and preconfigures opportunity spaces for belonging. In doing so, I aim to contribute to a richer understanding of the ways in which adults engage with challenges as they transition across socially constructed boundaries into new spaces as they search for a better world. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
Doing Transitions
In this paper I study transborder mobility from a ‘doing transitions’ perspective. Drawing on praxeological traditions, this approach asserts “that transitions are shaped and produced through social practices, and that transitions emerge and are constantly reproduced and transformed through the interrelation of discourses, institutional regulation […], as well as individual processes of learning, education and coping” (Walther et al., 2022, p. 2). Transitions are thus not

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presupposed but the very process of bringing about and shaping transitions through social practices are of concern. While analytically, one can discern levels of individual coping, institutional regulation, or discursive framing, it is the relational interplay between those domains that results in the doing of transitions. At the individual level, expected pathways, discursive framing and institutional supports and constraints interact with biographies. Here “[i]ndividuals become subjects in a double sense: they are subjected under these expectations, but also turn into subjects, enfolding agency in new ways” (Settersten et al., 2022, p. 2). This ambivalence of being subjected to normative expectations as they relate to migration pathways, yet finding agency to engage with and negotiate boundaries will be of particular interest here.
Migration
The movement across national boundaries can be explored as a particular form of doing transition. Following the doing approach, ‘migration’ in this study is conceptualized as a socially embedded performative act which is reflected in practices, interactions, and relationships. As Geier and Mecheril (2021) observe, migration irritates and at once emphasizes and de-emphasizes the validity of boundaries. The authors further assert, that it is this crisis-ridden irritation of boundaries that transforms mobility into migration. Analytically, this irritation can be looked at from the individual perspective as an engagement with “all social practices that, being linked to specific categorisations and narratives of belonging, membership and deservingness (i.e., discursive knowledge), turn mobile (and often also immobile) individuals into ‘migrants’” (Amelina, 2020, p. 2). The key tenet of a ‘doing migration’ perspective is to not objectify ‘migration' through its study, but rather focus on the performative and relational modes of producing, shaping, and coping with transitions into new geographic spaces. This includes taking into account the agency of individuals as they engage with challenges and navigate the transition. Taken together, the research perspectives of ‘doing transition’ and ‘doing migration’ form the analytical lens through which I study the individuals’ engagement with the boundary-making effects of the Canadian experience-discourse. METHODOLOGY Data were gathered through 20 interviews between February and August 2021 with individuals who moved to Canada in adulthood. As this study is interested in processes post-arrival and in the (non)transfer of previously acquired skills and experiences, participants were selected based on having moved to Canada three or more years ago and having obtained postsecondary education outside of Canada prior to initial arrival. Theoretical sampling (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 45) was conducted iteratively along with the data analysis, aiming to include participants from different countries of origin, genders, and occupations. Interviews were conducted following the approach to narrative interviews as outlined by Schütze (1983) with an intentionally open narration-generating impulse, immanent and extrinsic questions. The data analysis follows a qualitative approach in the tradition of the reconstructive social research through the Documentary Method (DM). The DM builds on the work by Karl Mannheim, was further developed for group discussions by Bohnsack (2010), and expanded for the analysis of interviews by Nohl (2010). Applied to the reconstructive analysis of interviews, DM presupposes that “what is communicated verbally and explicitly in interview texts is not the only element of significance to the empirical analysis, but that it is above all necessary to reconstruct the meaning that underlies and is implied” (Nohl, 2010, p. 200). Thus, I am interpreting not only what is being

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said but also analyse how it is being said. Following this approach, I first interpret individual cases, then conduct comparisons across cases along the different modes of shaping one’s own life praxis in relation to the norms conveyed through the Canadian Experience-discourse and associated boundary-making processes. RESULTS In analyzing the empirical material from the ‘doing migration’ perspective, the aim has been to reconstruct and contrast different forms of dealing with challenges of belonging against the backdrop of boundary-making to which the Canadian experience discourse contributes. Four main types are emerging that for now I am calling “enduring in-betweenness”, “finding belonging in unexpected places”, “navigating boundaries” and “solidifying boundaries”. There were passive elements of being stuck in a state of in-betweenness and exclusion from full participation, while at the same time individuals actively engaged with and navigated boundaries, drawing on their own biography and prior experience, and developing new practices. To illustrate, I will share two excerpts from an interview with Madhu (pseudonym). Although he has acquired Canadian citizenship, possesses post-secondary education, and has gained Canadian experience, his experience is marked by being stuck in a place of in-betweenness, not being – quote - a “full-fledged citizen” in Canada while feeling that he can no longer return to his country of birth. Soon upon his arrival, he unsuccessfully looked for a “survival job”. The absence of further explanation of what this means points to a tacit knowledge of immigrant pathways which he has acquired and follows. He discards warnings by his friends about the challenges upon arrival, such as the need for Canadian credentials and work experience. The discourse on Canadian experience enters Madhu’s narration when he is specifying and emphasizing that it is “Canadian work experience” which is required, not just any work experience. He grounds his optimism in his sense of merit but encounters disappointment, rejection, and the need to lower his aspirations: “I started looking for a survival- what we call a survival job. Uhm I was pretty optimistic I was very hopeful because […] before I moved to Canada, I was told by my friends who had already been to Canada that it'll be- it is very tough to get a job in Canada even if you have a master’s degree or whatever education you have uhm from [country of birth] or from any other country. Because you have to get the credentials from Canada (.) and you have to have work experience, Canadian work experience. But deep inside me I was very optimistic that if I have the merit (.) then I would be able to find something. But after I landed in Canada, I was wrong, it was very tough. I applied for a number of jobs I did not hear back or even if I heard back, I was downright rejected so after some time then I started looking for you know a survival job (.) and it was tough to get a survival job in Toronto. Uhm then? I decided to get a license for security guard. Then I started working as a security guard (.) for a month or so.” (Madhu, l.76-89) Further on, he talks about a period by which he had obtained Canadian citizenship and was pursuing a PhD. Here, questions by others in Canada about his origin and possible return serve as reminders to Madhu that he does not and may never – quote - be “really accepted as (.) the typical Canadian”. He shared: “A couple of times this happened when I had a conversation- chance conversation they say ‘oh what's your background?’ […] when the conversation went on, I remember one person said ‘oh you're you're doing a PhD so do you want to get back to your country after your PhD or stay here?’ And then (.) °aah° what does this mean ‘do you want to get back to your country?’ So that means this is not my country. (.) That is my country (.) but if I go back again if they know- find out that I'm a Canadian citizen now they will treat me as a traitor (.), right? Renouncing your citizenship that's equivalent to trait- traitor- being a traitor. (2) So, I wouldn't be accepted, right?

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And I don't tell anybody only a few people know that I'm a Canadian citizen now. (2) But […] I am not treated- I am not really accepted as (.) as the typical Canadian (.) right? So (2) yes, I mean there- (.) there are moments when you know this becomes really acute the sense of being split or the sense of not belonging (.) to either of these spaces right?” (Madhu, l. 305-317) The possibility of being expelled from Canada after having renounced his prior citizenship results in a permanent sense of precarity in which neither full participation in Canada nor an honorable return to his country of birth seems possible, rendering him “not rooted anywhere” and experiencing, a sense of “being split”. While the door might have been opened for him, he feels he could always be expelled again. CONCLUSION This glimpse at the narrative of Madhu points to the common challenge of partial and often asymmetric affiliation: while individuals may no longer self-identify as immigrants, their accents, skin colour, names, or (ostensible) lack of Canadian Experience may perpetuate an otherness and configure the degree of possible belonging, often expressed in various forms of hyphenated identities, such as Somali-Canadian, or more generally, ‘New Canadian’ as opposed to those who became Canadians by birth. This problem of inside/outside then, so Homi Bhabha, “must always itself be a process of hybridity” (Bhabha, 1990, p. 4). By adopting the narrative of a ‘typical Canadian’ and by ruling out a dishonourable return to his birth country, Madhu at once makes visible and validates the boundaries between which he remains stuck even as he continues to gain Canadian experience. Practices of boundary negotiation can thus be seen as a relational process that constitutes migrants and within which individuals actively (re)position themselves regarding markers of differences. Further, not only is there a continued boundary between the so-called established Canadians and the immigrant ‘others’ – often called ‘New Canadians’ – but also a less visible boundary excluding those who are not even eligible for consideration of membership, “other others” as Sarah Ahmed calls them (Ahmed, 2000, p. 106). Obtaining Canadian Experience, then, may be seen as a way for the ‘other’ to actively pursue their path toward recognition and participation, which may never be fully realized. For the ‘other others’ beyond the margins – groups excluded from permanent residency such as people with a disability (Hanes, 2010) or migrant workers (Perry, 2021) – this path does not even exist. In constructing and shaping their transition across boundaries, individuals engage with the challenges, such as the oblique requirement to possess Canadian Experience, and put into relation their individual experience, interpretation, and practices. This is manifested through new circumstances in life, image of self and practices that draw from the past and are modulated through the new present. In this process of ‘doing migration’, individuals are confronted with a variety of learning demands acting both as a barely escapable imposition and an opportunity space for human flourishing. For adult educators to support the latter, attention must be given to the boundary-making effects of discourses and the relationality of doing migration through which mobile individuals are turned into migrants. While we as researchers and adult educators explore our role as contributors to decolonizing efforts, we may also need to ask: How do we study phenomena like migration without perpetuating othering and exclusion? I suggest that a relational view on adult migration prompts reflexivity and critical engagement. It illuminates how categories and processes that we might take for granted – such as migration, New Canadians, immigrants – are produced and shaped. With these perspectives, we may be better equipped to contribute to decolonizing efforts and pursue the rich emancipatory traditions of adult education.

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