Chapter One: The Complexities of “Cause and Effect”: Colonization and Modernity

Abstract: This chapter introduces the book’s theoretical frameworks: Coloniality of Power, Coloniality of Gender, and The Colonial Grid. These frameworks will challenge the entrenched ideas that position immigration as “the search for a better life” and Canada as “a safe haven.”

Key Concepts: The Coloniality of Power, the Coloniality of Gender, the Colonial Grid, the Stranger and Orientations.

Introduction

Narratives of migration are fluid and construct the image(s) of both the “immigrant/forced migrant” and the country of resettlement. Canada boasts itself to be a multicultural “nation of immigrants,” “built upon diversity and as having one of the highest levels of receiving newcomers of the countries in the Global North” (Sakamoto et al., 2018). This imagery of welcoming, acceptance and multiculturalism exists in the Canadian psyche and influences people’s formal and informal reception. Migration as an act of movement is constructed and subject to interpretation – as white people (often from Europe) are typically migrating for purposes of “moving up” – financial gain, schooling, or an adventure. These migrants are often referred to as “ex-pats” or living abroad, and European migrants were sought out to build the nation. Whereas those from the Global South who are racialized are understood to be escaping the slow grind of poverty, seeking refuge, desiring the comforts of advancement and development – displaced. The underlying narrative is that they are searching for a “better life.”

Canada has always used migration strategically – from the British Christian migrants who were transplanted to build the nation in England’s image to the white, European, non-Jewish post-WWII economic boom that brought population growth and labour. Immigration systems were designed to resettle those from what is now called the Global North. In recent decades, the faces of people crossing borders have been changing. Pathways to citizenship continue to exclude those who are not considered desirable or an asset. Despite Canada’s move away from the Eurocentric immigration policy in 1978 and the adoption of Multiculturalism (Mahtani, 2002), racialized immigrants/forced migrants remain at a structural disadvantage  (Carranza, 2017). Canada’s response to immigration and re-settlement, including social work, has not kept pace with the global movement of people despite the 45 years of official policies of Multiculturalism. As a strategic policy, immigration continues to be used for nation-building, state renewal, and the promotion of a Canadian image – friendly and welcoming.

Multiculturalism is intended to symbolize belonging. As legislation, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act [1985] codifies the importance of all Canadians maintaining their ethnic and cultural heritages. It further sets out the requirement for equitable participation for all citizens in “Canadian life.” Finally, the Act claims that Multiculturalism is a value of Canadians and a fundamental characteristic of Canada. Those who are accepted via the formal immigration process are considered deserving and are permitted to enjoy the prospers of development in Canada. However, to belong requires the erasure of difference. Difference is that which is not the norm. In Canada, the norm is a homogenous national identity that is white, able-bodied, English-speaking, heterosexual and hailing from the Christian faith. Multiculturalism claims that differences from whiteness are respected and valued (Badwell, 2015). Even in social work, respect for difference becomes uneven, conditional, fabled, and imaginary. One example is practicing some customs and traditions for immigrants/forced migrants  (e.g., specific foods and celebrations), which multiculturalism is intended to respect in Canada, but this acceptance is tenuous at best. For example, celebrations involving traditional foods are welcomed in specific spaces such as Multiculturalism Week but regulated (i.e. scent policies) in others.

 

Social work began as a way for upper-class white women to ‘help’ the poor, alleviate suffering, and reduce social ills – eventually known as the charity model. Help was given to those who were deserving. In these decisions of who was deserving, social work developed its foundational elements of surveillance – determining who is deserving of help. Surveillance has allowed some regulatory components of the profession to collude with and/or become an arm of the state. Early notions of deserving were a companion to who could be helped. The goals of ‘help’ were assimilation, productivity, and the ability to fit into the mainstream notions of being a Canadian. Early social work was intertwined with the advancement of the colonial project and the production of whiteness (Fortier & Hon-Sin Wong, 2018; Saraceno, 2012). As the traits of  ‘goodness’ and ‘caring’ are valued in women, the white female body has become a natural fit with social work (Carranza, 2021). Social work practices of help are rooted in ‘savage-to-civilized’ narratives inherited from European colonization (Badwell, 2015). Working towards achieving ‘white civility’ has been the cornerstone of success.  Social work has promoted these values of belonging and productivity through various interventions, from poverty work to policy analysis (Jeyapal & Bhuyan, 2016). Regarding migration, assimilation is the primary driver of interventions (Sakamoto, 2007). Current approaches to working with immigrants/forced migrants have evolved from positivist frameworks, including the medical model. Social work is still, in some ways, beholden to its roots in positivism and its efforts to be more ‘scientific’ with its established standards of service and care—for example, the use of ‘best practices’ (Abramovitz, 1998).

Positivism is the idea that facts and knowledge can only come from scientific research. Scientific research and the researcher are objective and not influenced by outside factors. All knowledge should be value-free, trustworthy and can be replicated. The medical model, rooted in positivism, helped establish social work as a reputable and standardized profession (Yan, 2008). Professionalization helped validate social work as a profession and social workers as ‘knowers.’  In helping, the social worker acts as the ‘knower’ of ‘how-to. This could be ‘how-to’ raising children, accessing programs, or applying for housing – all of which are uniform versions of achievement and symbolize a good work ethic, employability, ability to maintain housing and exemplifying good Canadians (Carranza, 2021). While practice areas have branched out into community-orientated settings, the governing body and professional practice standards continue to structure the work of social workers. Social work is predicated on the ability to be seen as having the capacity to understand people’s issues and respond. Responding to migration has been a core area within social work and woven into mental health, child protection, and schools. Social work has courses and specializations in immigration at the community, college and university level. Much of what is taught arose out of a desire for cultural competency. Cultural competency, the idea that social workers can ‘know’ how people navigate the world, has been essential to practice and understand the Other or Stranger (Carranza, 2021; Garran & Werkmeister, 2013). Scholarly work challenging migration, assimilation, and integration frameworks has flourished in the past two decades. However, mainstream social work remains trapped in the remaking of whiteness as the ‘knower.’

 

In this book, the social work encounter (the encounter) describes when social workers and other helping professionals engage with people and includes clinical, counselling, community work, and policy. Examining the encounter centres, the idea that social workspaces have been visibly white and, over time, this whiteness has been embedded in relations with migrants. So, as faces change, we remain bound to history, meaning spaces often mirror colonial relations. Unresolved historical violence haunts social work models that no amount of cultural competency, sensitivity, and anti-oppressive practice can fully mitigate (Bermúdez et al., 2019). Anti-oppressive, feminist, critical race, and queer theories have advanced knowledge of structural inequalities; however, to truly decolonize the work, we must look through the lens of history. The modern-day constructions of power and privilege that social work attempts to deconstruct and distance from are not yet “post” (Salazar, 2012). Relationships remain predicated on the ‘knower’ and the ‘known’ and are similar to the rescuer or hero narratives and assume progress, mobility, and achievement are possible – with the ‘right’ help. Key ideas about how social work encourages and enforces progress are explored in this text, as well as how the encounter both supports/is supported by encouraging immigrants/forced migrants to ‘become,’ ‘align,’ or ‘act’ Canadian.

 

The notion that social work is synonymous with helping, as Canada is welcoming, must be problematized. This book aims to understand how families, as a whole and individual members, negotiate their placement on the colonial grid through re-settlement in Canada. We will traverse the history of social work and migration to understand the complicity of the profession in producing and reinforcing the Other. The Other is the person or group that the dominant defines themselves against. The dominant belongs because the Other has been constructed as not belonging due to their foreignness (Spivak, 1985). Of crucial importance is how Canadians, including social workers, are conditioned to believe that racialized people arriving unilaterally need to be thankful and feel safe because they have arrived. Social workers, depending on their history with migration, have been conditioned to understand immigration as ‘moving up,’ the search for a better life”, and Canada as a ‘safe-haven.’ Current portrayals of migration focus on ‘arrival,’ indicating that trauma is negated by achieving safety in Canada. Current understandings of trauma in migration are not reflective of the lived reality. This book documents and understands the global migration of people as the result of imperial conquest and ongoing modernity while challenging notions of ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ geographies. This book also seeks to counter narratives popularized in the Global North of migration, resulting in stealing, invading, and resource-draining. It also brings into the discourse the ways that globalized coloniality is not always international but occurs within national borders.

Chapter One starts briefly with the history of multiculturalism in Canada, which is discussed further in subsequent chapters. This introductory chapter sets the foundation for this text and begins to sort through the key questions that frame each chapter and the following questions:

 

How have social work practice theories constructed the immigrant/forced migrant Other and the

colonial encounter?

 

How do people learn to be a colonial subject?

 

How does social work mirror and engage with this conditioning?

 

How are belonging and exclusion animated in the social work relationship?

 

To answer these questions, the following theoretical frameworks will act as a guide: the Coloniality of Power (Quijano, 2007), the Coloniality of Gender (Lugones, 2007; Salzaar, 2013), and the Colonial Grid (Carranza, 2016). This chapter provides a summary of each in plainer language. Subsequent chapters will apply each theory and put it into action to challenge how we think and the interventions used in social work. The theoretical framework of coloniality and mapping the colonial grid offers the opportunity to discuss the roots of the colonial relationship in social work. Coloniality encourages us to interrogate knowledge, such as social work knowledge – including geographical and political influences. Alternatively, we risk reproducing violence by contributing to the belief that knowledge produced in the Global North applies to everyone (DasGupta, 2011). This is not a history lesson; instead, a philosophical un-doing.

 

This book focuses on immigrants/forced migrants and social work practice. As a reader of this text, you are acutely aware this is relevant to all areas of social work: individual and family counselling, child protection, healthcare, justice, etc. Migration shapes people’s employment experiences, education, and daily lives. Understanding how migration shapes so much reinforces how this knowledge must be included in our work, from individual to community engagement to policy analysis and advocacy. Working from a decolonial standpoint can be used in placements and employment, often as a companion to the organizational approach. Ideally, understanding and integrating the theoretical frameworks will assist in shifting the current practices to enact change at the structural levels to reproduce fewer threads of colonialism in day-to-day practice.

Positionality and Social Location

Positionality and social location are relevant in reading coloniality and social work as these are tools to ‘know ourselves’ by naming our access/barriers to power. These tools can help social workers understand our influences, how we know, what we know, and how we approach help. As social workers, it is imperative to think through how we are placed on the colonial grid and how our positions are shaped amidst privilege, power, and marginalization. Being a social worker does not automatically afford or negate privilege. For example, who is assumed to be a ‘knower’? How do encounters with racism or xenophobia intersect with the social work encounter? As social workers, positionality and social location require scrutiny of how we are viewed by those we work with (consumers, service users, etc.) and how this view frames the social work encounter. It is important to note this scrutiny should not just be a reflection of social work at this moment but also applied to how our personal histories and the history of the profession come to position us.

 

Positionality

is how social workers identify themselves in relation to various identities and groups. This positioning is often in relation to insider/outsider. While identity is the focus for both the social worker and the groups, it is necessary to unpack the underlying power relationships and structural privileges shaping the encounter (Grigg, 2023). For example, a social worker who identifies as female can experience ‘insider’ knowledge as a woman but can be an ‘outsider’ to the specific issues presented. Positioning is complex, as identities are never singular, unifying or fitting into a binary of insider/outsider. Many identities shape experience, for example, racialization and experiences of geographies and migration, particularly citizenship (Bransford, 2011). Positionality is rarely uni-directional, and social workers may take up several different identities and relationships to power within their work.

Social Location

is the articulation of identity amongst the overlapping social constructions within the power relations and how they are positioned concerning the dynamics that shape social categorization. The concept of social location is intended to allow individuals to speak to their historical and current engagement with the co-constituting categories that have provided them with or marginalized them from positions of power and access to privilege (Hankivsky, 2014). When social workers speak to their identities it incorporates the political and historical context of their positioning. Ideally, this opens up space for a glimpse into the social forces at play when constructing their reality (Grigg, 2023).

Positionality and social location are vital components in social work in moving toward equity across identities. Understanding the relations between power, privilege, and who is ‘valued’ connects to historical processes and present ones. When identifying social location and positionality, social workers run the risk of reproducing power and privilege (Jeffrey, 2005). Who has access to naming whiteness, and who can do so without repercussion? What happens after privilege has been named—how does this add to its deconstruction?

Multiculturalism and the Mosaic

Canada has national identity currently promotes a welcoming, friendly brand that embraces everyone (Carranza, 2017; Jeyapal, 2018). Who is Canadian and who is not has a complex relationship to this branding, which goes beyond, as Razack (2005) points out, Tim Hortons and hockey. The national identity is built on a curated process of claiming ‘multiculturalism’ and a cultural mosaic. The following introduces this national narrative, picked up in Chapter Two.

The faces of people migrating have been changing since the post-WWII era, yet Canada’s immigration system has not kept pace. Canada has historically enacted racist measures through its immigration policies as a way to keep the population looking, speaking, and acting Canadian (Sakamoto, et al. 2013). Strategically excluding some populations has long been a strategy for nation-building. In the post-WWII era, while refugees were being accepted and selected “like good beef cattle” (Holmes, 1979. p 6), decisions were based on the intertwining of economic interest and racial bias. This means that considerations based on income attempted to prevent impoverished people from coming to Canada under the guise of preventing risks was an accepted practice. Race and class have multiple intersections, so the government’s direction around excluding those who experience poverty is seemingly race-neutral; it was steeped in whiteness (Narayan, 2017).

During this era, European and non-Jewish migrants were believed to share the same values and political and economic structures as Canada. Many were met with a host of privileges in the newly emerging multiculturalism of Canada – most notably, living amidst people who looked like them and an immigration system designed for their re-settlement. During this era, planning for receiving people’s arrival was more of a transition between geographies and cultures. While there may be differences, the core elements were the same. European communities were encouraged to enjoy their new lives and share pieces of their culture with others, such as traditional food, dance, and customs. As a result, citizenship and legal belonging, access to a passport, and residency were accessible. There are clubs in many cities across Canada to honour and preserve heritage for those from Europe, such as ‘Italian-Canadian clubs’ and the like. The goals of re-settlement were often to learn English, secure employment, and enjoy the rights and entitlements of being a Canadian.

This does not suggest that European immigrants did not struggle or deny their experiences. There are always struggles associated with migration, which were often more pronounced for those from the ‘Eastern Bloc’ or the former Soviet countries, sometimes called “the poor North” (Krivonos & Nare, 2019). Whiteness has been historically contested in Nordic countries, Russia, and the Eastern bloc, with evidence to suggest that those migrating have been locked out of economic success when migrating. However, the global nature of coloniality and visual categorizations of race have positioned these countries as a part of the Global North or the West, including them in whiteness (Krivonos & Nare, 2019; Narayan, 2017). However, from the perspective of arrival, Europeans and those who look white nicely fit the narrative of upward mobility, achieving economic security and adding to a multicultural mosaic – with no structural changes to Canada. In 1978, despite resistance, the shift from European origin – white, nuclear families to those from the Global South, non-white, separated families began in Canada (Lam et al. 1987). This shift is symbolic of the historical process of coloniality – those who have been race(d) as Black, Indigenous, and Racialized intentionally displaced from their lands and ways of being.

One Woman Immigrant said:

“Canadian immigration, they have a three-word logo, “Welcome to Canada”. I think they should change this, it’s not true”.

The shift from settlers on the move to those from previously colonized territories forced into the diaspora has presented a new opportunity for Canada to push its ‘friendly’ brand of ‘saviour’ – especially on the Global stage. The slogan “Welcome to Canada” is intended to encompass the national essence of a nation that welcomes people from all over the world from all walks of life – a feel-good, inclusive approach to immigration. Multiculturalism, the founding philosophy of much of Canada’s social policy, promises respect for diversity, equality, and freedom. The symbolism of the mosaic, where the pieces fit together but stay the same – claims to offer new Canadians the ability to reconfigure their traditions, customs, values, and everything labeled as ‘culture’. Culture symbolically plays several roles in policy and Canada’s collective imagination of whiteness. The mosaic symbolizes what is not required to change, such as ethnic foods, music, and (some) fashions, and is an acceptable expression of diversity. There are several initiatives in Canada on both the government and community levels that intend to promote diversity and advance representation and inclusion. What has gone unquestioned is the ideas and outcomes of diversity, inclusion and equality. Diversity, from what? Inclusion into what? And equality, with whom?

For Canada to remain a ‘safe-haven’ where people can find a better life, there must be people, places, and things classified as dangerous. For example, the “War on Drugs” in the United States, which has influenced Canadian discourses, constructed people from Central America and South America as Narco traffickers. People, intertwined with their geographies, are constructed as a threat—the stranger (Ahmed, 2000).

The stranger is not someone that we do not recognize. Instead, the stranger is a person we recognize, socially constructed to embody difference. Strangers are known through how they are constructed. These identities are intentionally constructed as different and differences are made strange, with some stranger than others. Strangeness is made by increasing the distance to the dominant, everyday and normal ways of doing and being. The stranger strangers are those who are ‘too’ different. Those who cannot be accepted as simply ‘culturally diverse.’ As Ahmed (2000) argues, the dominant culture and citizens come to know themselves as members of the in-group because of, or in relation to, strangers as not belonging. Because they are (e.g. not born here, racialized), it makes the ‘we’ in the collective of the dominant group whatever they are/are not (belong here, are rightful occupants of this space, white). Importantly, the stranger is not unknown; we recognize them through these traits and know they do not belong and are, to some degree, threatening (Ahmed, 2016). The figure of the stranger rests on recognition, those that encounter the stranger already have knowledge of the strangeness. The stranger is someone who is recognized in day-to-day life as ‘out of place.’ Ahmed (2016) explains the stranger is a reminder of people, a place, and a culture that Canada is not – such as narco-traffickers. The stranger and their country of origin, as signified by their culture, are not advanced or modern – backward. Culture, in this instance, is a blurred and far-reaching moniker that can be widely applied. The blurrier the lines, the more bodies can be included (Ahmed, 2014). It is not about becoming familiar, getting to know people or their culture in an effort to reduce differences and increase desirability and acceptance.

Multiculturalism is dependent on the presence of the stranger, and it is an image of the nation itself, a way of ‘living’ in the nation, and a way of living with difference. Living together is an acknowledgement of being aware of ‘cultural’ diversity. Racial differences are often coded under ethnic differences, which are redefined in terms of cultural diversity. Much of multiculturalism in practice serves to erase diversity or have broad overarching categories that minimize non-dominant identities and intergroup differences. Canada maintains a white, Anglo state and nationhood (Ahmed, 2000).

White people migrating are often perceived as ‘moving up’ whereas those migrating from the Global South are ‘escaping’. Immigration narratives rely on the dichotomy of civilization vs. barbarism, a nod to the justifications of European advancement, imperial conquest, and colonization (Gutiérrez- Rodríguez, 2018). Of course, these narratives have changed over time into terms like ‘failed state’, third world vs. first world, and underdevelopment. Modernity is linear. This means that advancement and progress happen sequentially. Those in the Global South are perceived as yet to advance or become civilized in the ways the Global North has, with one benchmark being the degree to which Human Rights are valued. The Global North’s progress hinges on producing the idea that the South is stuck in a more primitive time and has “evolved” through laws governing its citizens, economic structures, human rights, democracy and the idealization of civilization, progress, and modernity. It is this same nation-building project that has historically created the destruction, intentional violence, and exploitation of the lands in the Global South that contributes to forced displacement. The Coloniality of Power helps social workers understand the cyclical nature of colonization in Canada, the role displacing Indigenous people had at the global level, and the continued disenfranchisement within and outside its borders.

The Coloniality of Power

The ‘Coloniality of Power’ (CoP) traces the violence of colonization as the origins of the current configurations of power. Coloniality is the long-lasting and durable ‘remnants’ of colonialism that sustain the current racial hierarchy. The CoP begins an analysis of the pathway to understanding the non-linear ways colonization continues to seep into contemporary times – through laws, policies, practices, and ways of thinking. These are known as colonial continuities. Ongoing coloniality maintains the visibility of race while attempting to hide the invisibility of whiteness. In this school of thought, ‘post-colonialism’ does not exist – as it is not a thing of the past (Salazar, 2012). Colonialism has simply been ‘reworked’ to increase the power and privilege between people within and between nations – based on race (Quijano, 2007) and the hetero-patriarchal system of sex/gender (Salazar, 2012). Colonization is the method of European advancement and is the groundwork for contemporary violence – this ranges from school policies that negatively impact Black youth to Canada’s ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples.

Coloniality shapes everything from our individual thoughts to how Canada operates on the world stage as a humanitarian nation and in the global economy. This may seem like a big leap, but the learnings in this book will demonstrate how Canada’s history of colonialism extends to our present-day reality and highlight how violence still exists within its structures and citizens.

The originator of this theory is Aníbal Quijano, a Peruvian Sociologist who cites the creation of race, Blackness and indigeneity as a tool to classify people. This was the centrepiece of colonization. In his seminal work, he notes the term id-entity (534)—people’s ID (race) as their entity – their distinct and independent existence. Quijano (2007) explores the ways that colonialism not only violently marginalized people but also the ways that colonizers demarcated the conqueror and the conquered. Through specific processes of creating race – coding people as Black or Indigenous – while attempting to make White invisible, these categories legitimized domination and oppression. This was an exercise in meaning-making and a justification for the dispossession of lands from Indigenous people and the creation of slavery. According to Quijano (2007), this was how the world was reordered through colonization – what would later be labeled Black and Indigenous Peoples were reconstructed as the ‘conquered’. In this reconstruction, Indigenous people were deemed weak and inferior. The creation of race became a symbolic expression of the hierarchy of who is considered fully human (Wynter, 2003). This is an important distinction here as it disrupts historical narratives on being equal upon first contact. Europeans did not consider those Indigenous to the lands of Turtle Island or Africa as equals. They had to find a way to justify their violence, positioning themselves as the pinnacle of humanity. Dehumanization cemented superiority vs. inferiority in all the relational patterns that followed.

The centrepiece of achieving control over labour and the economy required the violent dispossession of lands, including natural resources and the people. Understanding the intentional creation of race is inseparable from land and resource seizure. Mignolo (2008) draws our attention to the shift in lifeworld that occurred for Indigenous peoples. Land was a part of the ecological habitat and way of life. One did not live on but with the land. In this worldview, lands and resources are not a source to produce profit. Colonization turned lands into sections and transformed them into property. Dispossession occurred in the physical sense, philosophically and epistemologically. The creation of ‘race’ as a tool to determine worth in relation to labour is inextricably tied to the commodification of the land – where the dehumanization of non-white bodies was needed. Creating race as a hierarchy determined who owned land, who worked on it, and how people could be commodified as property. Simply put, white Europeans wanted to expand their empire of wealth and created a system of justification.

This process evolved into the globalized structure that roots identities into a geo-historical place. One such example is how Indigenous identities are locked into a settler nation-state, such as Canada. The term “Indigenous Peoples of Canada” negates that people were/are connected across the ‘Americas’ before the colonial implementation of borders (Braveheart et al. 2011). The outcome of this is Indigenous peoples are forced to negotiate their rights within the settler nation-state instead of an identity that expands across Turtle Island.

The categorizations of race and identity were embedded into every aspect of life, legal – in laws and policies, aesthetic to determine whose features are considered attractive and labour – what work people are considered for. Categorizations were embedded in science via biological determinism to cement inferiority. This is the system of colonial differentiation. CoP has defined culture, labour, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production (Maldonado-Torres 2007). In turn, this control has shaped and maintained the domination of the Global North towards the South (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2012), which extends to the relations between immigrants/forced migrants and their country of settlement (Carranza & Grigg, 2022).

Key Points: Colonialism never ended. CoP (theoretically) cites that postcolonialism falls short of encompassing the current configurations of power and exploitation. Coloniality sees that those who are considered human, which is protected by force, have economic power and are those with privilege – via race, class, and gender. Those with humanity decide who counts as human and who is deserving. Those born in the Global North [and are visually coded as belonging] are considered ‘deserving’ of rights, entitlements, and access to civilized and safe spaces. It also determines who deserves life and choices and which people or scenarios are worth grieving and mourning. We pause here to note what this means for migration. When people are forced to migrate, the idea of ‘luck’ dominates how people see them, and upward mobility supersedes the grief and loss that accompanies leaving one’s homeland (Carranza & Grigg, 2022). The geopolitical categories of who is human created for colonization have translated into a vision of the modern-day Global North as a modern and advanced society, where people ‘want’ to live. It is the measurement of progress, including equity and human rights. People who migrate are ‘given’ access to these human rights, but such access can also be taken away, as demonstrated in militarized detention centres. As colonialism morphed into coloniality, notions of ‘underdevelopment’ and ‘third worldism’ have evolved as new ways of constructing the image of uncivilized and savagery. Civilization = rights. Rights ensure safety and order. The Global South is understood as yet to achieve civil society and democracy. People from the Global South do not yet deserve safety, human rights, social capital, and the humanity that gives people a choice to stay in their country. Their loss is not valid because living in the Global South is not ‘worth’ grief (Carranza & Grigg, 2021).

The Coloniality of Gender

The gender binary is based on European male and female classifications and was intertwined with the class-based division of labour. Patriarchy is a binary system of gender that was created in Europe to define and enforce social roles in a hierarchy within whiteness to define worth in the capitalist economy. As capitalism flourished, so did the need for various classes of white men (i.e., working-class, middle class) who could advance the economy, and women played a crucial role in social reproduction to maintain this system (Hage, 2005). Men are the economic providers, and women are the nurturers. Women were to manage the home and everything associated with the private sphere/social reproduction, to support men to earn in the public sphere. Men were classed as the strong protectors and providers, contrasting women’s classification as fragile and weak. Intersections of class are essential here – women, as nurturers, were expected to give birth and care for children, continually creating a viable workforce. Also, they were expected to manage their husband’s needs outside of the workforce by supporting them to continue working – cooking, cleaning, and other duties of social reproduction. Therefore, men’s success depended on women’s support and struck a balance that kept the economy going (Valverde, 2016). Reproductive labour was both denigrated and invisibilized by men’s productive labour (Yuval-Davis, 1993).

The economy of Europe at this time was deeply racialized and gendered to form the significant class demarcations that exist today – amidst white and non-white people. Women who needed to work were employed as nannies, cleaners, and other domestic labourers (Oliver & O’Reilly, 2010). Those living in poverty were expected to ‘care for’ other families. This classification awarded value to upper and middle-class white women. Those who provided care were determined to be paid less, undervalued and exploited (McKenna, 2018).

The continuum of white male violence against white women cannot be understated as it is symptomatic of patriarchy and the violence of the hierarchy – yet whiteness and the intersection of gender-based violence remains understudied. This system has been the basis for white women’s struggle in the waves of feminism and manifested as the quest for, amongst other things, equality, equal work for pay, and reproductive rights (McKenna, 2018). The attempt to universalize [white] womanhood represents a colonial desire to naturalize and group all genders under the same rubric – to invisibilize whiteness and mark the Other/stranger. This explanation may seem reductive, and it is and is only intended as a brief introduction to the desired gender roles that have marginalized Black, Indigenous, and racialized women and men.

This system of gender provided predictability and structured the social order via a hierarchical relation of who was more critical to the economy and, therefore, socially (McKenna, 2018). It also determined the quintessential desirable characteristics of each gender for whiteness. White men were, therefore, considered citizens and nation-builders, which awarded privilege to their gendered characteristics. Whiteness and maleness were intended to be universalized and bestowed the ultimate humanness in human rights (Yuval-Davis, 1993). The masculine and feminine gender roles are based on the structures of the bourgeoisie, middle, and upper class (McKenna, 2018; Narayan, 2017).

It is important to note that the goal of violent recreation of sex was to reorder society and enforce (raced) gender roles. This process was far more complex than described in this summary. As a tool of colonization – changing how societies were organized was intended to disengage people from their ways of being – including relationships with the lands, the family and caring for children/elders. In this process, the modern sex/gender system was implemented, tethering gender to biological sex and enforcing heteropatriarchy as a method to erase ways of being and knowing pre-colonization (Lugones, 2007). All of which were intended to destabilize, disenfranchise and destroy, rendering inferior and exploit.

Example: The standard of the feminine for the gender binary was white womanhood. During colonization, white women were the site of nationhood, purity, virginity, and caring (McClintock, 1993). Paradoxically, the land was ‘conquered,’ penetrated and taken symbolically in the image of white womanhood (McClintock, 2013). This purity could not be tarnished or invaded by ‘adding’ non-white women. As Lugones (2007) indicates, Black, Indigenous and Racialized women were not racialized and forced into the European gender system; they were reconstructed as genderless and outside of womanhood. Throughout history, Black, Indigenous, and each form of racialization for women and men have been marked to maintain the invisibility of whiteness. Racialization has a geographical element that creates historical and current tropes related to fabled national identity and transcends borders. This unpacks why women are feminized differently – to simultaneously draw them into femininity while locking them out of the pinnacle (white) of womanhood. These tropes are created to be both foreign and exotic, meeting the standards of womanhood but Othered as non-white (Jeyapal, 2016). Racialized women are never given the reverence of female fragility, especially for Black women (Lugones, 2007).

Important note: Colonization did not follow a classic hierarchy wherein each racial category reproduces the European gender binary. It is not white men/white women; adjacent or under is Black men/Black women. These categories were introduced and exist within communities amidst a complex colonial matrix of relations (Carranza, 2016). CoG challenges common tools used in social work to teach about race (i.e., the Flower Power exercise and unpacking the invisible knapsack). These exercises see privilege and power as a summation of identity – white, cis-gendered men, heteronormative, as having all the power, and each identity removes a degree of access. In this approach, white women are one category away, and Black cis-gender men are different but closer to the power epicentre. Coloniality sees how, via race, gender(s) and sexuality, were structurally non-white, embedding a colonial grid that people move along the axis of power.

The Colonial Grid

Carranza (2016) conceptualized “The Colonial Grid” to exemplify how ‘we’ in the everyday ascribe worth and discern who belongs and who does not belong in specific spaces. The colonial grid provides insight into the multiple axes, lines, striations, overlaps, and intersections that determine the worth of the assemblage of identities – reminding us that historical oppression and marginalization inform our contemporary subjectivities. Thinking about assemblages recognizes that categories of identity cannot be separated or have a zero-sum. Here, we arrive at the current landscape of social work and some of the axes of power and belonging that demarcate the encounter.

Sa’ar (2005) discussed how the historical consciousness is the greatest resistance to postcolonial and decolonial feminisms. Maleness and whiteness emerged as intertwined ways of being to set the foundation of the “historical consciousness” as an organizer of regimes of power and dominance. How do we understand this consciousness in ourselves and the structures that we operate within? The colonial grid exemplifies how people in specific geographies navigate their lived reality, from how gender intersects with re-settlement which impacts how classism and the labour market structure in/exclusion. The Colonial Grid (Carranza, 2016):

 

The colonial grid refers to the direct and subtle, covert and overt ways people are organized along the lines of power and privilege that exist in our psyches. Difference, from whiteness or maleness, as an example, is originally structured on the boundaries between the colonizer/colonized and represents the hierarchal logic of race, gender, class, and abilities. It speaks to our ‘common sense, meaning-making process and people’s worth or lack thereof, which shapes how we in social work perceive the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, class, ability, and sexuality.

The remnants of colonialism – coloniality, the structures we exist in today, inform and are informed by identity(s). This includes orientations (Ahmed,2000), how some bodies come to take up space and are perceived as belonging (white women in social work) while others are considered strangers. These structures have power, bestow privilege, and overlap, providing insights into how the colonial grid structures day-to-day life. For example service received in the fields of healthcare and medicine. Under colonialism, the male body was the pinnacle of functioning and health, whereas bodies marked as the stranger, or those constructed as disabled, were investigated as deviant. Privileging the white male body meant that the modern medical model is based on their physical and biopsychosocial experience (Joseph, 2017). This extends to psychological theories and interventions (Abramovitz, 1998). What is considered the healthy body has access to more jobs, financial security and mobility. Coloniality propels the colonial mentality of one right way (Okun, 2021); therefore, the Western healthcare model is considered supreme.

The lines of the colonial grid and the axis points, where more than one meets, are power, privilege and the colonial difference in action. Colonial difference(s) are the elements of identity in cultures, places, and societies intentionally made strange from those with access to power and privilege, who are viewed as belonging and not a threat. The body is made strange via race and/or disability, languages, culture, and customs – based on beliefs about that body. In the remnants of colonialism, strange-making and Othering are part of a larger process of who is of value to society, the economy and politically. Due to our incorporation of the colonial difference into our thoughts, actions, and behaviours, the colonial grid speaks to our ‘common sense’, meaning-making processes, and people’s ‘assigned’ worth or lack thereof (Carranza 2016). This worth shapes how we perceive race, gender, ethnicity, class, ability, and sexuality. Identity informs the assemblage of the parts and where we have been conditioned to assume people belong.

Conclusion

Canada has used immigration policy to determine who is ‘deserving’, and who is not based on racialization, worth, economic power along the lines of the colonial grid. The determinations of ‘deserving’ exist in a long history of colonial roots. Colonial roots have been refashioned into modern-day coloniality that shapes how Canada and Canadians determine who is afforded rights and freedoms both locally and globally. Deservingness extends to emotions, on who can and should experience grief and joy. Citizenship and legality are some of the foundational elements of belonging. Legal status determines eligibility to work, access services, and move freely within Canada and abroad.

Questions:

What is the Canadian brand, and how have social work and its workers engaged in this ongoing nation-building process?

What structures are most relevant in social work and for you in the helping professions?

How does this impact or shape the assemblage of your identity?