Informal Learning of Highly Educated Immigrant Women in Contingent Work

This paper describes two methods of informal learning that are used by highly educated immigrant women working in low-paid, contingent positions in Canada. These are positions that have "no benefits, social security, labour standards, or other guarantees" and are "unrelated to the professional backgrounds" of these women.

• Conformative learning occurs when workers "conform to the workplace expectations so that they could continue the jobs for financial and survival reasons." In this context, the employers rather than the employees benefit.
• Transgressive learning occurs when workers "make use of contingent work to better their life and work opportunities." Through transgressive learning, the worker utilises the learning to his or her own future benefit.

With each type of learning, workplace skills and knowledge are passed informally through observation or speaking with other workers, or through self-learning at home. This informal learning, according to the paper, can benefit either employers, or workers, depending on the motivation for learning and way that the knowledge is used.

The authors' discussion of these learning types draws on Glenn Rikowski's variation of Marx's concept of "labour power". Marx, according to the authors, saw labour power as the totality of a person's "mental and physical capabilities", and Rikowski notes that this value is increased through labour power learning. Rikowski, according to the authors, further argues that the advantage of this learning is not, however, solely to the employers, but that workers can subvert "the manipulation and exploitation of the worker's labour power by catering it to their own personal and social development."

The responsibility of learning is, the authors state, "increasingly downloaded to the individual workers who are investing in their own skill and knowledge enhancement in order to sustain themselves." Additionally, in the contingent sector, the employer is even less likely to provide adequate training. The authors illustrate this point with quotes demonstrating how workers are left to their own devices to learn, often on their own time. Some workers learn through observation or through a "buddy-system" that allows information to pass from older to newer employees. Many spend time at home, often memorising codes needed in retail sector sales or learning the English they need on the job.

Other interview quotes, however, support their argument that workers are not merely "conformative or submissive to the employer’s needs." The interviews uncover examples of women who have used learning opportunities to assert their rights. Other women have used the workplace environment as an opportunity to gain skills useful to their future lives or careers, thereby transgressing "the limits and confinement imposed by the manipulative capitalist production processes."

The authors conclude with some implications for policy making:

• The state should address the under-utilisation of the skills of highly educated workers who end up working in low-skill jobs.
• Employers should provide better workplace training.
• Employees should "come together, exchange information and knowledge, learn from each other, and form collective actions among themselves to deal with labour issues."