The colour of skill: contesting a racialised regime of skill from the experience of recent immigrants in Canada

Abstract

This article contests a racialised skills regime in Canada. Canadian studies of the labour market transitions of skilled immigrants are analysed through the lens of critical race theory. The analysis shows that knowledge and skills of recent immigrants in Canada are racialised and materialised on the basis of ethnic and national origins. Skin colour is a central basis of social marking. Through processes of de-skilling and re-skilling, a racialised regime of skill has become a social engineering project for manufacturing normative, white, docile corporate subjects who conform to Canadian norms and workplace cultures. The study demonstrates that skill is not colour-blind; it is coloured. Skill is not only gendered and classed, but it is also racialised. The findings move us beyond the traditional colour-blind, gender- and class-based analyses of skill that fail to account for racial differences in the social construction of skill.