Kon Kornelio Madut

DISSERTATION TITLE:

Help Not Wanted: (Un) Employment Experiences of Visible Minority Migrants in the City of Ottawa, Canada

This dissertation examines the experiences of visible minority migrants as they attempt to integrate into the local work force in Ottawa, Canada. Prior research on this targeted group‘s access to economic opportunities and success in the local workforce has been largely quantitative, focusing primarily on percentages of unemployed and underemployed. Research has paid little attention to the social, economic, and cultural experiences of the visible minority migrants who are looking for work, and even less attention to their accounts of these experiences. In this qualitative grounded theory research, migrants consistently tell stories of long-term struggles to find and keep a job—of sensing that they are unwanted. This work interpreted participants‘ perceptions, utilizing many of the words of the migrants themselves.