Language, networks, and inequality: Iranian immigrants' labour market experiences in Canada

Despite Canada's success in attracting highly educated immigrants (Finlayson and Globerman, 2025), many newcomers face challenges in finding jobs that match their premigration experience and credentials. This situation leads some immigrants to leave the country. This dissertation looks at how Iranian immigrants understand, navigate, and are affected by the Canadian labour market. It mainly focuses on social capital, networking, habitus, neoliberal labour market ideologies, and English language skills. Using an interpretive qualitative approach informed by a critical lens, this research examines how personal experiences are connected to larger structural and ideological contexts. The dissertation consists of three related manuscripts. Manuscript One explores immigrants' views on networking and connections through the concepts of habitus and field. It shows how mismatches between past experiences (habitus) and Canadian labour market norms can initially create confusion, anger and frustration although habitus can be modified over time to match the norms of the new context. Manuscript Two critically examines neoliberal ideologies about employability and English language skills. It reveals how participants' internalized neoliberal beliefs can reflect a blame-the-victim approach by placing the burden of not finding employment on immigrants. At the same time, they hide the larger structural and systemic barriers. Manuscript Three shifts focus from understanding to results. It demonstrates that unequal access to social capital is a form of structural inequality that can influence immigrants' job opportunities beyond individual effort or merit. Together, the three manuscripts provide a layered understanding of how immigrants integrate into the labour market although each manuscript focuses on different dimensions of the process. This explanation goes beyond deficit-based explanations that focuses on what immigrants lack (like skills and education). By connecting individual personal experiences with structural inequalities, this dissertation argues that immigrants' success in finding employment in Canada could be influenced not just by skills and qualifications but also by hidden cultural mismatches, unequal access to networks, and neoliberal language ideologies.