Congratulations to Chen Wang for the successful defense of her doctoral thesis entitled Highly Skilled Chinese Immigrant Women’s Labour Market Marginalization in Canada: An Institutional Ethnography of Discursively Constructed Barriers last June 21. Chen was studying under the supervision of HRREC member Professor Jamie Liew and former HRREC member Professor Angela Cameron. She expressed her gratitude to her supervisors who have supported and guided her, the committee members, and HRREC.
Chen’s research reveals the lived experience of highly skilled Chinese immigrant women in the Canadian labour market and analyzes how the barriers to their career restoration were constructed. It adopts postmodern feminist theory and Institutional Ethnography methodology to interview highly skilled Chinese immigrant women in Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, and understands the barriers to their career restoration as discursively constructed outcomes.
We would also like to congratulate Julie Ada Tchoukou for the successful defense of her doctoral thesis entitled Legal Development and the Democratization of Human Rights in Post-modern Africa: A Case for the Legal Regulation of Cultural Violence against Girls. Julie Ada was studying under the supervision of HRREC Member Professor Mona Paré.
Julie Ada's dissertation addresses the problem of cultural violence against girls in Nigeria, with a focus on the practice of child marriages within Muslim communities in Northern Nigeria. The conflict between the need to preserve minority culture and the protection of rights forms the basis for how legal reforms have failed to reach the real issues affecting girls within cultural communities. Using a critical legal studies and feminist framework, the thesis analyzed the complexity of the problem of cultural violence through a focus on co-existing institutional frameworks, that is, formal and informal legal structures and the roles they play in shaping the experiences of girls within cultural communities.