Employment training and women methadone clients: En/countering neoliberal discourse

This thesis explores employment training in British Columbia in relation to the experiences of women methadone clients. This study utilizes critical perspectives and qualitative analysis to focus on the convergence of human capital and therapeutic discourses at the site of employmentreadiness training. The research is based on a discursive analysis of several texts, an interview with the director of a career exploration program designed for those with addiction issues, and interviews with three women methadone clients who took part in a variety of employmentreadiness programs. I illustrate how dominant discourses frame minimal efforts to re-integrate low-income groups and substance users into the labour market. The analysis also shows how practices reconstitute or resist dominant discourses. I argue that human capital theory and therapeutic discourse are powerful frameworks obscuring the structural barriers that women on methadone encounter.