ABOUT THIS EVENT
Co-presented with the BCIT Faculty & Staff Association.
The panel will examine federal and provincial international student policy, immigration policy, and solidarity efforts amid conjunctural crises affecting community members from outside of Canada. Speakers will contextualize the post-war rise of policies aimed at international student recruitment, the lived experience of international workers in Canada, and those organizing for justice and policy reform.
Panelists
Evelyn Encalada Grez
Dr. Grez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology and in Labour Studies at Simon Fraser University. For over 20 years she has been advocating for the rights of migrant farmworker from Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean and co-founded an award-winning collective, Justice for Migrant Workers, that is at the forefront of the migrant justice movement in Canada. Recently she led a project on the exclusion of Internationally Trained Physicians from the medical profession in British Columbia. Dr. Encalada Grez is driven by her own family’s immigrant working class struggles to effect change and impact through community-oriented research, transformative pedagogy, organizing across borders.
Gurmandeep Kaur, One Voice Canada
Originally from Punjab, India, Gurmandeep came to Canada in 2019 as an international student. She completed her post-graduation diploma from Vancouver Community College in 2020 and started working with a digital marketing company in Vancouver. Gurmandeep has been with One Voice Canada for the past three years. She is a Student Advisor.
Dale M. McCartney
Dale is an Assistant Professor in the Arts and Integrated Studies department at the University of the Fraser Valley. Before joining UFV, he worked as a sessional for more than a decade, including at a private, for-profit international college attached to Simon Fraser University. While working there he was inspired to investigate the history of international student policy in Canada. His dissertation examined this history after World War II, and found that international student policy has played a key role in shaping post-secondary institutions for decades. His talk today examines the policy context that has made international students into workers as well as students, with devastating effects for many of the students.
Register Now
Register below. This is a hybrid event. If you need access to the Zoom link, please contact us.
ASL interpretation will be provided. Please let us know if you have any additional needs to participate. This session is open to all members of the BCIT student, staff, faculty, and internal partner (e.g. student association, alumni association) community.
Expectations for Behaviour
Diversity Circles, as part of the BCIT Respect, Diversity, and Inclusion (RDI) Office, has outlined the Expectations for Behaviour for our events and initiatives.
Diversity Circles has always benefitted from the empathy, sincerity, and respectful curiosity of our community, and this has helped create events and initiatives where we hold productive and authentic discussions, advancing our knowledge and utilization of equity, diversity, and inclusion principles.
As our events and initiatives continue to reach out to diverse audiences which include BCIT employees, students, and partners (BCIT Student Association, BCIT Alumni Association, and industry guests), and as we have moved towards presenting events both in person and via teleconferencing platforms, we realize that having a set of expectations for behaviour will help maintain the accountable, respectful spaces our community has come to expect from Diversity Circles events and initiatives.
Please take the time to review our Expectations for Behaviour prior to your upcoming participation.