A wave of South Asian racism is sweeping Canada — and the Liberals’ missteps on immigration helped fuel the problem

2024/12/11 Leave a comment

Not convinced that much of the concerns about immigration levels are racist or xenophobic. After all, housing, healthcare, infrastructure etc affect immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Agree with Cochrane’s comment that governments, not immigrants, are responsible for the pressures:

…York University Prof. Tania Das Gupta has observed a shift in public discourse, especially after some politicians started making statements about how immigrants are contributing to the affordability crisis, framing migrants, especially international students, as interlopers.

“They are not Canadians. They are outsiders within. And they are using our services. They are using our housing. They’re using our food banks. They’re taking away jobs,” says Das Gupta, who researches on South Asian diaspora, migration and labour issues. “These are old racist tropes that have been surfacing again.

“In the popular psyche, migrants are being now visualized as being South Asians,” especially people from India, the largest source country of migrants in Canada, Das Gupta says.

She noticed a shift in the rhetoric in the wake of last year’s mass deportation of Indian students who claimed they were duped by an unscrupulous education recruiter and used fraudulent admission letters to apply for student permits to Canada, which she says feeds into the stereotypes that the group was taking advantage of Canada.

By association, an entire group is flagged and viewed through a different lens. And that kind of division and hate will spread if normalized, she warns. This can be felt not only by newcomers, but all Canadians of South Asian ancestry.

Reena Kukreja, an associate professor of global development studies at Queen’s University, is researching the linkage between hateful discourse, its normalization and how that manifests in abuse in people’s day-to-day interactions.

Her research is focused on South Asian men working in the gig economy, such as rideshare drivers and food delivery, or what she calls “hyper-visible” jobs. She says her findings show a “sharp rise in hate” — some report they’ve experienced a rise in overt racism, such as slurs, while others say they feel it in more passive-aggressive behaviours from customers.

“One of the guys told me it’s the way they look at you, and then slam the door shut … it’s a continual reinforcement of two things: One is that Canada is a white-dominant country. And you do not belong here.”

She says while such microaggressions can be hard to prove as outright discrimination, it creates a “continual trauma that accumulates over time, where you feel as less worthy.”

“The moment when hate becomes banal, it is highly dangerous,” she says. “It becomes everyday, which is what I’m seeing right now.”…

“There’s a considerable amount of research out there that shows that online hate doesn’t stay in the online space,” says Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who edited the report.

She points to a study from the University of Warwick in England that showed tweets targeting Muslims and Latinos by then-U.S. President Donald Trump correlated with an increase in hate crimes against those same groups. 

In Canada, police-reported hate crimes against South Asians have increased every year since 2020, with 228 incidents in 2023, compared to 135 in 2020.

But these statistics likely only represent a fraction of what is really happening, as many people don’t report their experiences, and a comment like “Go back to your country” doesn’t typically meet the threshold of a hate crime, unless it precedes an act such as vandalism or assault, which could then be deemed hate-motivated. …

While it’s valid to criticize Canada’s immigration system, it becomes problematic when people start blaming the individuals who are coming here, rather than a deliberate government policy that welcomed them, and seems designed to keep wages low, says Christopher Cochrane, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.

“It’s governments that are responsible for this,” he says. “It’s not the fault of the students that are coming here and paying these massive tuitions that are subsidizing all of the students from Ontario who are going to university.”…

Source: A wave of South Asian racism is sweeping Canada — and the Liberals’ missteps on immigration helped fuel the problem

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Canada’s costly housing market leaves international students open to exploitation

2023/05/02 Leave a comment

No questioning, of course, of whether or not Canada should set levels for students, along with temporary foreign workers, to reduce housing and other pressures. Or whether the government should review existing designated learning institutions (DLI), particularly private colleges, given their recruitment practices:

Skyrocketing rent prices in Canada’s major cities are leaving more and more people struggling to find an affordable place to live. National conversations about the housing crisis often overlook a growing segment of the population that is extremely vulnerable to housing discrimination, rent gouging, rights abuses and sexual harassment: international students. 

Canada had more than 807,000 international students in 2022, around 40 per cent of whom come from India. While all these students need housing, many face discrimination in the rental market. Tania Das Gupta’s ongoing research into Punjabi newcomers in Canada has found that some landlords discriminate against international students based on gender and ethnicity. 

Discriminatory ads

An online search for rentals shows many ads for properties that are available to international students. In addition, many ads are aimed at Indian students with landlords seeking tenants who are vegetarian or from particular regions of India. 

The wording in the ads seems innocuous, but many can be discriminatory and prey on international students. Landlords often demand large upfront payments. And international students are often sought because their relatively recent arrival in Canada and temporary migration status means they are less likely to complain. 

Housing as a human right

Even though these ads violate the Ontario Human Rights Code, they continue to be posted on public websites. The code defines the right to be free from discrimination in housing as “not only the right to enter into an agreement and occupy a residential dwelling, but also the right to be free from discrimination in all matters relating to the accommodation.” 

Das Gupta’s ongoing research features in-depth interviews with students and service providers. Respondents have shared that many live-in landlords tend to infantilize and over-monitor them. Others, especially female international students, have experienced sexual harassment and assault as well as sexual exploitation.

A 2018 survey at McGill University found that 38.6 per cent of international students experienced sexual harassment and 23.6 per cent experienced sexual assault. 

Sub-standard, illegal and overcrowded housing

Accommodation aimed at international students can often be sub-standard, over-crowded and unsafe. Many often lack fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors and have pest infestations. Many secondary units in single-family homes, like basement suites, are built without permits and not to code. 

Brampton, Ont., a city where many Indian international students reside, had a vacancy rate of 0.8 per cent in 2019, which is well below the minimum of three per cent considered acceptable. It is no wonder then that Brampton has an estimated 50,000 illegal units. 

This is dangerous and can lead to tragic outcomes. In January, an international student in Cape Breton, N.S. died in a fire in an overcrowded international student house. In December 2022, Cape Breton University advised international students to defer coming to Canada because of the shortage of suitable accommodation.

Another common issue with housing for international students is overcrowding. With rental costs increasingly unaffordable, many students are renting single rooms with others. Some online ads even offer a room with only one bed that is to be shared with another tenant the student does not know. One ad on Kijiji stated: “looking for 1 Indian girl to share one room with another Punjabi girl.”

Screenshot of an ad on the website Kijiji for a shared room in a house in Brampton, Ont. Author provided

Stories of landlord harassment and wrongful evictions are common across Canada. These incidents combined with the costly rental market mean that homelessness is a common experience for students. A 2018 study found that more than 31 per cent of post-secondary students experience some type of homelessness. 

While the study did not focus on international students in particular, Das Gupta’s ongoing research shows that homelessness is common with stories of some students sleeping in their cars because they cannot afford rent.

Ending the culture of exploitation

A recent CTV W5 investigation exposed how international students at Cape Breton University and other Canadian post-secondary institutions are strategically recruited because they pay significantly higher tuition fees than Canadians.

The extreme nature of the crisis at the university led students to speak out and advocate for the rights of international students, including raising awareness that complaining about human rights abuses, sexual assaults or other crimes will not hurt their chances of staying in Canada.

But such advocacy can only go so far. Structural changes by governments and post-secondary institutions are required and municipalities need to better regulate illegal rental units. And importantly, international students eager to voice solutions must be consulted and heeded.

Source: Canada’s costly housing market leaves international students open to exploitation

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