–The following story was written by Ebere Ahanihu
In 2011, Prince Owusu arrived at Carleton University as an exchange student at the School of Social Work. The school’s structural approach – the idea that broader social issues shape and reshape individual experiences – transformed his academic experience.
In 2014, with a BA in Social Work and Political Science and an MPhi. in Social Work, both from the University of Ghana in Legon, he enrolled in the PhD program to sharpen his research skills, he says, and learn from “the remarkable experience” of Prof. Susan Braedley, his thesis supervisor, whose mentorship he credits for his successes in the graduate program.
Owusu’s research explores the relationship between “whiteness’’ and the experiences of immigrant care workers in rural Canadian residential facilities. Until now, racialization of long-term care workers focused on urban areas.
His research bridges the gap by analyzing experiences of immigrant workers in long-term care facilities in small towns.
Owusu’s interest in the experience of immigrant care workers was spurred by his analysis of Canadian data in a re-imagining project and participation in the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s (CIHR) Summer Program in Aging (SPA).
The re-imagining project was a study conducted by an international interdisciplinary team in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom. While the summer program in aging crystalized his focus on long-term residential care, analyzing the Canadian data set from the re-imagining project exposed him to issues of racism and racialization. This encounter inspired his desire to know more about the experiences of immigrant care workers and their conditions.
Owusu sees the research as timely, especially now that Canada heavily relies on immigrants to care for its aging population. Amid discussion about quality care and making care providers more accountable, Owusu’s research questions why immigrant care workers who perform hard physical and emotional labour are often left out in the discussion.
As he puts it, immigrant care workers perform their tasks in terrains where racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination exist, but are not acknowledged. His objective is to interject with their experiences of care workers and ensure they are covered by policy changes.
For more information about the PhD in Social Work at Carleton, click here.
Friday, January 24, 2020 in Grad Student Research, News
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