Canada’s Façade of Equality: Austin Clarke's More

Mary Ma

doi:10.29173/mruhr554

Abstract

Canada prides itself as a nation welcoming to immigrants, but this multicultural façade cloaks the struggles of immigrants who fight against systemic inequality. This study aims to expose the mechanisms of societal and systemic oppression faced by immigrants in Canada, especially Black immigrants, as well as the psychological isolation they endure living in the diaspora. The study relies primarily on Austin Clarke’s novel More, and investigates economic gatekeeping by Canadian employers who often require Canadian experience and education, relegating skilled migrants to unemployment and underemployment. This illustrates the barriers to upward social mobility faced by Canadian immigrants, a reality portrayed in More by the protagonist Idora’s poverty despite living for thirty years in Canada. This paper also delineates the societal oppression which manifests in the Canadian media’s perpetuation of discrimination and projection of degeneracy on Black Canadians. Furthermore, it investigates the role of unchecked police brutality in continuing psychological exclusion and brutal violence towards Black Canadians. The psychological alienation and denigration experienced by immigrants and those living in the diaspora is also explored through More. In this context, those living in the diaspora is defined by migrants and their descendants who live in one country but feel strong emotional and identity ties to their former country. Therefore, Canada’s image as haven for immigrants is dispelled through its systemic and societal prejudice and exploitation of immigrants, complicity towards acts of brutal violence conducted by police officers, and exclusion towards those living in the diaspora.

Highlights

Canada is known as a haven for immigrants
As stated in the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Policy on Removing the “Canadian experience” barrier, “even after being in Canada for fifteen years, ‘immigrants with a university degree are still more likely than the native-born to be in low-skilled jobs.’” A significant factor of this unemployment and underemployment is the discrimination of Canadian employers
It is known that the: “barriers to employment include a lack of recognition of foreign credentials, lack of recognition of previous work experience or employers’ requirement for Canadian experience, difficulties in obtaining references, and discrimination” (Kaushik and Drolet 4)

Summary

Introduction

Canada is known as a haven for immigrants. Canadian migrants, their children, and their grandchildren live in the diaspora, a physical community who “acknowledge that ‘the old country’ [...] always has some claim on their loyalty and emotions” As stated in the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Policy on Removing the “Canadian experience” barrier, “even after being in Canada for fifteen years, ‘immigrants with a university degree are still more likely than the native-born to be in low-skilled jobs.’” A significant factor of this unemployment and underemployment is the discrimination of Canadian employers. Clarke exposes the brutal prejudice rampant in Canadian law enforcement through the murder of BJ by a racist police officer.

Results

Conclusion