Abstract
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) in Canada has set the stage for inclusive policy. Health literacy, language spoken, and gender are among the selected differential resettlement determinants of refugees’ access to health resources and opportunities. Gender-based analysis (GBA) is a priority for IRPA for promoting inclusive settlement policies. However, these legislative structures do not reflect language and health literacy as important intersections for immigrant integration. The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that intersectionality as a policy tool can help structural and political processes to promote social justice and integration commitments to settlement and health care policy.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2002 the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) replaced the former Immigration Act of Canada, 1976. After several amendments, Bill C-31 (now Bill C-11) is known as the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) and was formalized in 2002 (Canadian Healthcare Association 2012). The IRPA is currently the legislation framework that allows for Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) (under the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) to admit refugees. The IRPA became an historical landmark in Canadian immigration because it allowed large-scale resettlement of refugees who would have previously been denied access based on high barriers to integration into Canadian society.
- 2.
(Re)Settlement and settlement are often used interchangeably; however resettlement can refer to secondary or third-country relocation of refugee groups. Settlement in general refers to the beginning of adaptation and adjustment in countries which offer permanent residency and/or citizenship for refugee groups (CCR 2006).
- 3.
Equity and equality: These terms are often conflated and can converge in meaning, we wish to make distinctions. Equity represents a normative ethical value for social justice and fairness. Equity is particularly salient for social groups who have different levels of advantage/disadvantage that is different positions in social hierarchy (Braveman and Gruskin 2003). Health inequities, for example, are structurally produced and avoidable. Equality is referring to social levels of advantage and disadvantage and ability to realize full human rights. Not all women and men are equal in their social experiences and life patterns. It is therefore the social conditions that shape equality (e.g., access to health resources) or social determinants of health. In the field of gender equality policies, the difference of concern is usually related to measuring gender equality by social, economic, or political status between men and women. This ontology constructs men/women in binary, homogenous categories which reinforce inequities (Verloo 2013).
- 4.
Measures of population literacy are taken from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). IALS focusses on pros (ability to read and write), document literacy (ability to find and understand and use information), and quantitative and/or numeric literacy (ability to read and understand arithmetic numbers embedded in print). These levels of literacy are measured by benchmarks on a 0–500 point scale: level 1 = 0–225; level 2 = 226–275; level 3 = 276–325; level 4 = 326–327; level 5 = 376–500. According to the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), literacy level 3 is the minimum level to function effectively in our contemporary knowledge-based economy (HRSD n.d., as cited in Hoffman-Goetz et al. 2014, 47). Adapted from Modified Literacy Basics (n.d.). Measuring complexity using IALS 500 point scale and HRSDC five point scale. Community Literacy of Ontario. In Hoffman-Goetz, Laurie, Lorie Donelle, and Rukhsana Ahmed. Eds. 2014. Health literacy in Canada: A primer for students. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars Press.
- 5.
We are cognizant of the fact that while we critique the primacy placed on gender in GBA and refugee women as our main category for analysis, we are excluding existing alternative sex/gender identities (Johnson and Repta 2012). In this chapter, we define gender as a social construct which “includes not only biological distinctions, … but is constructed by relations of power that dictate the choices and chances available to women, men, boys and girls” (Vissandjée et al. 2001, 57). In this regard we concur with the view that gender is a relation between social structures and a symbolic system (Connell 2012; Harding 1995). Similarly, Hankivsky (2005) and Verloo (2013) call attention to non-essentialist views of gender which allows for understanding multiple forms of discrimination in order to mitigate stigmatization of a particular group. In this regard we wish to provide a comprehensive exposure of the diversity within groups of refugee women and expand on dominant values shaping their social exclusion.
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Clark, N., Vissandjée, B. (2019). Exploring Intersectionality as a Policy Tool for Gender Based Policy Analysis: Implications for Language and Health Literacy as Key Determinants of Integration. In: Hankivsky, O., Jordan-Zachery, J.S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Intersectionality in Public Policy. The Politics of Intersectionality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98473-5_28
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