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The Embodied Rhetoric Of Cognitive Labour, Shubhayan Chakrabarti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation traces the roots of neoliberal selfhood to the rationalist ontology of modernity in the 1600s. The historical tension between materialism and immaterialism is expressed in the historicisation of work into Fordism and post-Fordism where embodied factory toil is apparently replaced by immaterial work, recalling Descartes’ mind-body split. If post-Fordist work addresses the Marxist critique of alienation in its emphasis on entrepreneurial inner selves, it does not explain the post-Fordist preoccupation to efficiently “Taylorise” the body through obsessive productivity. I argue that the factory prevails in the entrepreneur’s adoption of factory efficiency as a learnt behaviour from the Fordist …

Exploring The Experience Of Disclosing In The Workplace, Jillian Auger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

An alarming rate of workplace violence/harassment is observed each year, with negative outcomes that affect the organization (i.e., financial loss) and those directly involved (i.e., job loss, financial strain, fear of being blamed, being labeled a ‘troublemaker’). The literature indicates that, for many victim-survivors, there is little hope for positive outcomes following a disclosure of workplace violence/harassment. In fact, some studies show that negative reactions to disclosure can compound and intensify the impact of violence/harassment on psychological functioning. However, minimal research has been devoted to the experiences of victim-survivors regarding the outcomes of a disclosure. Utilizing virtual semi-structured interviews, the …

Examining Long-Term Change In Employment Across Men’S And Women’S Life Course Using The Psid: Employment Stability, Multiple Jobholding, And Women’S Labour Force Participation, Vesna Pajovic

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A growing body of research examines precarious employment characteristics that have grown in in the context of a shifting labour market landscape and de-stabilizing structural and economic developments that have gained momentum in Western economies since the 1970s. However, less is known about how these characteristics manifest across the individual life course. This dynamism is conceptually salient not only because labour market activity necessarily changes for individuals over time, but also because the concept of precarious employment concerns long-term employment prospects beyond short-term conditions. Even less research examines the extent to which younger cohorts experience ever more precarious employment pathways …

Predicting Education-Job Mismatch And Its Consequences For A Cohort Of American Workers, Emily J. Orr

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This paper considers the income and health consequences of education-job mismatch for a cohort of workers. Education-job mismatch is common, but there is little research on how it is related to outcomes for workers. This study uses longitudinal data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine education-job mismatch over a significant portion of the work life course – early career, between ages 25 and 35, and mid-career. Findings suggest that gender, race/ethnicity, and occupational sector are important predictors of experiencing education-job mismatch. Men, African Americans, and workers in office-administrative occupations were more likely to experience mismatch. …

Making Meaning About Reproductive Work: A Narrative Inquiry Into The Experiences Of Migrant Caregivers In Canada, Crystal Gaudet

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This dissertation examines how migrant caregivers ascribe meaning to the (re)productive labour that they provide within Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). Introduced in 1992, the LCP was a temporary foreign worker program that recruited women, primarily from the Philippines, to care for children, elderly people, and people with disabilities in the homes of their employers. Numerous studies have shown how the stipulations of the LCP produce precarious working conditions that render caregivers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse and that result in their deskilling and de-professionalization. The conditions engendered by the LCP reflect and reinforce the devalued status of care and …

Heavy Metal Fundraisers: Entrepreneurial Recording Artists In Platform Capitalism, Jason Netherton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

How do cultural producers square customary understandings of what it means to be authentic and autonomous creators in new contexts characterized by digital-era entrepreneurial pressures and online platform-mediated financial opportunities? This study examines how heavy metal recording artists experience these pressures; how some of them engage in platform-based crowdfunding, argue over its legitimacy, and rationalize varying degrees of acceptance and dependence. First, my analysis centers on a case study which follows the experiences of a progressive metal band as they navigate a new financial relation in conjunction first with the fundraising platform Pozible and then the patronage-based crowdfunding platform …

Organizational Change, Work Conditions And Professional Learning, A Case Study Of Nurses In Ontario, Elise Mcclenaghan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In professions, lifelong learning is essential to providing quality and safe services. Certain working conditions, including work intensification due to rationalization and organizational change, may inhibit professionals’ ability to learn on the job. This study adds to the literature surrounding informal learning that occurs on and off the job by exploring the impact working conditions and workplace change have on learning behaviours for nurses in Ontario, through the analysis of survey data. For a sample of nurses working in Ontario in 2016 it is found through a regression analysis that certain working conditions like experiencing discrimination, participating in policy related …

Professional Gaming And Work: Challenges, Trajectories, And Labour Market Impacts Amongst Professional Gamers, Michael Haight

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Over the last decade the popularity of video games has risen tremendously. A new industry around professional gaming has emerged alongside this growth in the popularity of video games. In professional gaming, individuals play video games competitively while their matches and games are streamed online to a global audience. As a result of the growth in the sector, compensation for some individuals has reached well into six and seven figures. Knowledge of these salaries has resulted in an influx of individuals interested in working in professional gaming. This study investigates not only those individuals who play video games professionally, but …

The General Artificial Intellect, Ramon S. Diab

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In passages of Marx’s Grundrisse known as the Fragment on Machines, Marx suggested that advanced capitalist development leads to the production of autonomous machines that replace labour-power in the direct production process. Autonomist Marxist interpretations of this text have emphasized that the proliferation of immaterial labour is the historical condition that is leading to a crisis in the measure of value based on labour-time and that will lead to a future communist mode of production. Further, Mario Tronti posited that as capitalist development unfolds, it subsumes both the state and society, a concept known as the ‘social factory thesis’. …

Canadians Misbehaving: A Quantitative Analysis Of The Factors Contributing To Perceived Frequency Of Organizational Misbehaviour By Employees And Employers, Brendan S.J. Watts

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Individuals do not always follow the rules at work, yet it is not entirely clear what conditions generally contribute to higher rates of misbehaviour. Much of the research on organizational misbehaviour is ethnographic or based on limited sample populations (single organization, single industry, etc.), so there remains a gap in the literature for findings representative of a wider population and comparison across occupational classes. Additionally, there has been an over-emphasis on the study of misbehaviour by employees, while employer misbehaviour remains relatively unexplored within the literature. Organizational misbehaviour is also often treated as an objective act with little recognition for …

Skills And Student Affairs: A Discourse Analysis, Shannon Mckechnie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Media, industry, and other public actors have claimed that a ‘skills gap’ exists in students exiting post-secondary education and entering the workforce. The Ontario provincial government has developed policy, the Highly Skilled Workforce Strategy, to provide directives to universities in the province to provide skills development to students to aid in closing the gap and providing a workplace relevant education. In this study, I explore the experiences of student affairs and services (SAS) staff responsible for enacting provincial policy related to skills development at the university level by investigating the discourses that shape policy and practices of these staff …

Invisible Labour: Support-Service Workers In India’S Information Technology Industry, Indranil Chakraborty

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation investigates the life, working conditions and urban experience of support-service workers in the Information Technology (IT) sector of India: the janitors, security guards, fast food delivery service professionals and car pool drivers who work in and around technology parks that develop software applications for a world-market. The common experiences of these employees are migration from rural contexts to a radically modern employment setting, where they work long hours with minimal benefits in informal conditions that often violate basic labour laws. The thesis draws on quantitative and qualitative research, and in particular on analysis and interpretation of hundred and …

Industrial Stagecraft: Tooling And Cultural Production, Jennifer A. Hambleton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The tooling of theatrical spectacle requires collaboration between stagecraft technicians and designers in an increasingly globalized and standardized manufacturing process. While hand skills are still used and remain useful, digital fabrication and other tools are now incorporated in labour processes in scenery manufacturing workshops, altering collaborative work in complex ways. This thesis is an inquiry into the epistemological role of software and digital fabrication tools in stagecraft practices and explores how the politics of craft labour intersect with material practices in media production labour. The technical aspects of the fabrication of theatrical spectacles and display environments, the way objects are …

'The Environment Says It's Okay': The Tension Between Peer Support And Police Culture, Cindy Hohner

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study evaluates the implementation and subsequent operation of a peer support program in a Canadian police service. Data was collected from an online survey, available to the police service for a period of one year, and 16 in-depth interviews with peer support team members. There is very little data on police peer support programs in the literature. Thus, the purpose of the survey was to gain an understanding of what issues members believe a peer support program should address, the circumstances under which they would seek help from the peer support program, and the reasons they may or may …

Towards Evidence-Informed Agriculture Policy Making: Investigating The Knowledge Translation Practices Of Researchers In The National Agriculture Research Institutes In Nigeria, Isioma N. Elueze

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This study investigated the knowledge translation practices of researchers in the National Agriculture Research Institutes of Nigeria and the utilization of research knowledge by policy actors in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Nigeria. Data for the study was obtained from agriculture researchers and the policy actors through questionnaires and interviews. In addition, bibliometric and content analysis were carried out on documents from the research institutes and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to gauge the transfer and use of knowledge by the researchers and policy actors respectively. Out of about six hundred questionnaires that …

Creative Management: Disciplining The Neoliberal Worker, Trent Cruz

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This integrated article dissertation examines some of the new managerial practices that have emerged to handle cognitive capitalism’s ongoing need for creative, flexible labour power. The three articles included in this dissertation offer a glimpse into the widespread processes employed by management to regulate and discipline a workforce that must also be granted a degree of relative flexibility, creativity, and autonomy in order to be effective under post-Fordist conditions of production. The first chapter looks at the emergence of corporate improvisational training at the turn of the twenty-first century as an attempt to cultivate flexible and innovative workers, a move …

A Critical Examination Of Immigrant Integration: Experiences Of Immigrants From Turkey To Canada, Guliz Akkaymak

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Drawing upon qualitative interview data, this dissertation critically examines the integration experiences of immigrants from Turkey to Canada, who comprise an understudied immigrant group. I am interested in how immigrants access and develop social networks, how they integrate into the labour market, and how being an immigrant affects their workplace experiences. Relying theoretically on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, I aim to address social inequalities existing among Turkish immigrants in particular and in Canadian society in general.

The first manuscript (Chapter 2) examines immigrants’ intra- and inter-group differences and hierarchies, and their impact on study participants’ access to and development …

Exploring The Career Pathways, Professional Integration And Lived Experiences Of Regulated Nurses In Ontario, Canada, Godfred O. Boateng

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In the context of an enduring shortage of nurses, this study explores the career pathways and experiences of immigrant and Canadian-born nurses in two Ontario cities utilizing a qualitative research design consisting of 70 in-depth interviews. Differences in career entry and experiences of workplace conflict across immigration status and race are explored.

First, I explore successful immigrants’ pathways into the nursing profession and their social and economic integration into the Canadian economy in light of the traditional assimilation and segmented assimilation theories. The study reveals distinct career pathways taken by foreign-born nurses and Canadian born nurses. While Canadian-born nurses have …

Manufacturing Legitimacy: A Critical Theory Of Election News Coverage, Gabriel N. Elias

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To what degree does instrumental reason influence election news coverage? Using Habermas's understanding of system/life-world as a heuristic, I map the rationalization process of political communication. This illuminates the institutional logics at play in the field of politics and the field of journalism, and the way the social dynamics between them enable the framing of political life as a strategic game. This understanding is then contextualized within an analysis of the media frames that informed the Canadian federal election of 2011. I find that news coverage does tend to focus on political strategy; but this is not wholly at the …

Social And Human Capital: The Determinants Of Economic Integration Of South Asian Immigrants In Canada, Muhammed M. Raza

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ABSTARCT

The labor market outcomes of immigrants have been a primary focus of the research to comprehend the integration of immigrants inCanada. The focus of the research is largely on human capital approaches for the investigation of the earnings of immigrants. This thesis takes a distinct approach in three ways: first, unlike traditional research that compares the earnings of immigrants with native born of the same ethnic/racial groups or with white native born population, the dissertation compares the earnings of visible minority immigrants with non-visible minority immigrants. Comparing across foreign born populations is important to neutralize the impact of exposure …

Biopolitics Of Climate Change: Carbon Commodities, Environmental Profanations, And The Lost Innocence Of Use-Value, Emanuele Leonardi

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The analytical core of this study is the historical development of the relationship between nature and the capitalist mode of production. In particular, we aim at shedding light on the process through which the “grammar” of ecological crisis (and consequently of its possible solutions) turned into an exclusively economic one. In addressing this issue we discuss the successive problematisations of the environment that took place since the emergence of biopolitical governmentality (late Eighteenth century). Following Foucault's intuition, and supplementing it with aspects of Marxist analysis, we argue for a profound transformation – based on a crucial leap of abstraction – …

The Cross-Border Migrant Experience In Lang Son Province, Northern Viet Nam, Donald Hickerson

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The crossing of national borders between nations of the developing world provides opportunities for the poor who seek sources of livelihood, while putting migrants, especially women migrants, at risk of exploitation and abuse. It is against the backdrop of these contradictory effects of migration for poor women that this thesis examines the experiences of a group of daily cross-border migrant women in northern Viet Nam. The study focuses on the role of networks in their lives. Based on 22 in-depth interviews with Vietnamese women migrants who work at the Viet Nam-China border region, I develop an analytical framework that seeks …

"Proving Yourself" In The Canadian Medical Profession: Gender And The Experiences Of Foreign-Trained Doctors In Medical Practices, Vanessa Noelle Dolishny

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years the medical profession has become feminized. Additionally, there has been an increased representation of foreign-trained professionals in the Canadian medical profession; many of which are women. Thus, there is a significant number of female medical practitioners who are foreign-born and foreign-trained. This demographic faces many barriers, which are often characterized as a “double disadvantage”. This paper investigates the experiences of foreign-trained medical professionals once they have gained access to the profession and whether the feminization of medicine has impacted the experiences of these individuals. Immigrant status was found to be highly significant to one’s experiences in the …

Flexible Workplace Practices In Small It Firms: A Multiple Case Study, Catherine E. Gordon

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Flexible workplace practices (FWPs), such as flex-time and working from home, facilitate employees’ work-life balance or integration and enhance their quality of work. Yet, their use is constrained by time-oriented and gendered workplace cultures. Typically past research involves either a quantitative analysis of individual-level data or a qualitative examination of a single large firm. Meanwhile inCanada, small businesses (with less than 100 employees) employ 48 percent of the total labour force in the private sector (IndustryCanada, 2010). In this dissertation, I investigate the FWPs available and used at small information technology (IT) firms. Cross-firm comparisons are made with respect to …

Aesthetic Labour At The Coffee Shop: Exploring Young Workers' Perceptions Of The Service Encounter, Diana Judit Szabo

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Using qualitative data gathered from in-depth interviews, this research aims to elucidate how young coffeehouse baristas experience the service encounter. As "aesthetic labourers," baristas are hypothesized to possess a certain level of embodied capital, which empowers them in their interactions with customers. However, many young interactive service workers are stopgap workers who do not intend to make careers out of their part-time jobs. How does their unique position in the labour market influence the ways in which these workers experience employment in the lower tier of the service sector? The findings suggest that age and class intersect in the coffeehouse …