The Work-Life Experiences of Black African Immigrant Nurses in Vancouver: Everyday Racisms and Acts of Resistance

Abstract

This analysis is based on semi-structured interviews examining the work–life experiences of Black African immigrant nurses in Vancouver, British Columbia, conducted from June 2013 to June 2014. The article argues that nurses experience systemic barriers in which their sense of Canadian belonging and professionalism are called into question by patients, colleagues, and managers. Using the framing device of everyday racism, findings suggest that nurses navigate and counter these socio-cultural barriers by repurposing their daily actions into powerful subversive acts of resistance. The article uses the concept of everyday racism to relate the day-to-day experiences recounted by Black nurses to the larger macrostructural contexts that define the intersecting inequalities they describe. Grounded in Black Canadian feminist theory, this article contends that the lives of Black nurses offer critical insights to challenge structures of dominance. This article builds on existing scholarship discussing experiences of racism among Black and largely Caribbean nurses in Canada. The contribution is important because it offers the opportunity to analyze the lived realities of continental African nurses in Vancouver, in the historical context of a racialized Canadian state policy.