Life history research: A contribution to processes of adult learning ...

Life history research: A contribution to processes of adult learning among
Mexican immigrant women in Toronto, Canada
Martha Viveros
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
mviveros@oise.utoronto.ca
Paper presented at: ESREA Life History and Biography Network Conference “Wisdom and knowledge in
researching and learning lives: diversity, differences and commonalities”, Milano, I, March 12-15, 2009.
Abstract
Migration is a worldwide phenomenon that faces governments in several developed countries with the
need to offer services to new segments of population coming from diverse cultural and social
backgrounds. From the perspective of education, understanding immigrants’ lives before migration is
useful in order to offer educational contents that are relevant for adult immigrants in their integration to
the new society, and that foster the development of skills that will allow them to increase their quality of
living after migration.
In this paper, I analyze identity narratives of women that have emigrated to Canada from Mexico using
life history methodology as proposed by Cole & Knowles (2001), in order to explore their lives growing
up in Mexico and moving to Canadian urban centers as adults. As an educator, I look at the women’s
lives through sociological and cultural lenses in order to understand formal and informal learning
experiences that affected their sense of self in Mexico, and later on, in Canada. The work places a
particular emphasis on the impact of immigration in their disposition to acquire cultural capital from the
dominant society, a major factor of adaptability to life in the host society. The work uses John Ogbu’s
(1990) notion of voluntary vs. involuntary minorities and looks at the impact of immigrants’ social
location in their willingness to learn the ways of the new society and assimilate, while keeping their own
identities and acceptance within their ethnic communities.
The relevance of biographical research in education becomes evident in this work through the exploration
of the women’s lives in a continuum, from their acquisition of cultural and social capital in their culture
of origin to the transformation of these elements as they came in contact with Canadian society’s policies
and discourses about immigrant women. Through out the work, several examples of the women’s
disposition towards the acquisition of host society’s cultural capital are analyzed in terms of the women’s
biographies in order to understand their emerging identities as immigrant women in Canada.
Introduction
Immigrant women’s resettlement across borders provides them with an opportunity to see themselves away from the
social and cultural structures in which they grew up. This experience may lead them to question their meaning and
that of the social and cultural locations in which they find themselves after migration. There is an enormous
educational potential for women in the reflection on this experience. This paper is based on my doctoral dissertation,
in which I studied aspects of cultural and gender identity in the immigration experiences of four educated women
who emigrated from Mexico to Canada as adults. Due to the multiple effects of society and culture in the lives of
women, it is appropriate to establish a distinction between these two aspects of life in community. In this study, the
cultural refers to the way members of a society make meaning of themselves and the context, while the social refers
to the struggle for power between different members of the social structure (Fiske, cited in Gilbert & Taylor, 1991,
p. 7). From a cultural perspective, the move into a new country can trigger a reflection on acquired ways of being.
Reflection on this aspect of self can be deepened by the different social location in which women often find
themselves after immigration.

There is a vital interconnection between voice, identity, and place. The analyses of the four participants’ experiences
of identity modification after immigration consisted of observing what they expressed about themselves in
connection with the different places in which they have lived. In telling their stories I included my own, since the
search for self-understanding after the experience of immigration was the initial inspiration for this project. The
unravelling of labels like Mexican, woman, Latin American, Canadian, immigrant, middle-class, and educated, was
part of the process; they are layers that I encountered when exploring the sense of who I am because of these social
locations and beyond them. Life away from Mexico offered the four participants and myself the opportunity to
identify and analyze these labels, and to become aware of the ways in which they shaped us in our country of origin
and the new one as well.
Informal conversations with other Mexican women living in Canada sparked my interest in the topics of gender and
identity. My friends spoke about the way life in Canada helped them discover parts of themselves they were not
aware of before. I heard friends speak about how their choice to live in Canada was not necessarily based on
financial opportunities, but rather on the quality of the lives they lead in Canada, which they felt was not attainable
in Mexico. Gender-based expectations can be a considerable source of pressure for women; a change in cultural
context can alleviate some of that pressure (Espin, 1999). Even though the four participants are adult women whose
ages range between mid-thirties and early sixties, their stories remind me of Karen Close’s (2001) concept of the
unfinished woman. Regardless of their age, these women intuitively knew there was a part of themselves that was
missing in order to launch lives that fully represented their convictions and potential. For a variety of reasons, the
Canadian context offered them this possibility.
Adela, Papalotl, Gloria and Erica’s life histories are stories of individual lives shaped by history, politics, society
and culture in Mexico and Canada. Characteristics of their Mexican context such as class, education, age and
personal values are all ingredients in the recreation of their new life in Canada. Their stories are as much about what
it took them to settle in the country as immigrants as about the path each one of them took in order to find “their
place” in Canadian society. Initially, the lack of personal networks and a solid, Mexican community in the Canadian
cities in which they live posed a challenge; yet, at the same time, the lack of a familiar ethnic community was
liberating. For them, the interaction with unknown cultural and social ways stimulated the self-definition
mechanisms (Reygadas, 2002). In these conditions, immigration represents an opportunity to re-imagine the self,
individually and collectively—as Mexicans, as women and at different levels of their personal lives.
The research questions that initiated this work were the following: How do immigrant women recreate themselves
after migration? What do they learn about themselves as women by being in Canada? How have they been affected
by the context in which they now live (socially, professionally, physically, and emotionally)? My interest was to
understand whether the participants experience immigration as an opportunity to revise their previous knowledge
and create new one – both about self and context—from a gender perspective. Life history methodology was ideal
for this purpose, since the revision of their biographical stories allowed for the identification of previous and new
conceptions of self. In order to do this, I explored the concept of identity, as well as notions of colonialism and the
connection between gender and immigration. The theoretical lenses included elements of critical theory and
feminism, as well as cultural studies theory that explain the connections between culture and identity (Hall, 1996).
In educational settings, the understanding and acknowledgement of immigrants’ cultural backgrounds can lead to
more effective ways of creating educational contexts that truly support them to become active, integrated members
of their new society. The four study participants, like a vast majority of immigrants to Canada, can be placed under
the category that John Ogbu (1990) calls voluntary minorities. In this context, immigrants’ belief that life in Canada
will bring about improvement for themselves and their families predisposes them to acquire different kinds of
knowledge that will favor their transition into Canadian society. The four participants’ stories offer numerous
examples of ways in which the women actively sought to learn “Canadian ways” in order to become part of their
new society in meaningful forms that are in line with their values and identities. Educators must be aware of the fact
that, in spite of immigrants’ willingness to embrace the ways of the new society, their original identity, values and
knowledge must be recognized, respected, and drawn upon in order to support their integration into the new society.
This is the only way of contributing to immigrants’ integration while keeping them whole and healthy as individuals
and in communities.
The Method: Voice, Knowledge and Life History

Life history methodology was organic to the nature of this inquiry; its emphasis on the intersection of individual
lives and context made it an excellent way to explore the meaning of the immigration and settlement experiences in
women’s lives (Cole & Knowles, 2001). It was precisely this intersection that revealed information about women’s
oppression, and at the same time, their windows of agency. When I speak about context, I refer to multiple
dimensions: the physical locations that are crucial to the participants’ lives, my position and biases as researcher, the
historical, cultural and ideological milieu in which the participants’ lives are lived and lastly, the ways in which the
women shaped their context (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1997). The lives of immigrants do not start when they reach the
host country, but in the country (ies) that shaped their sense of self throughout their lives. The participants’ prior
locations, both geographic and social, were key to understanding their current locations in Canadian society, as well
as any changes in their sense of identity after immigration. A biographical study with an emphasis on the women’s
historical, social and cultural locations provided the key to see them in this light. My interest was to understand the
aspects of culture in Mexico and Canada that affect educated women when they immigrate; my position as a new
immigrant allowed me to explore this experience from the inside.
About The Researcher and Other Aspects of the Research Process
From a traditional, positivistic perspective, the researcher holds a position of power: that of seeing without being
seen. I did not follow this stance in my research process; instead, I followed the principles of relationality, empathy
and mutuality described by Cole & Knowles (2001). Part of my initial difficulty was my fear of “losing face” as
researcher by sharing my experiences with the participants. Yet, the fact that I have shared aspects of my life with
the participants made writing the life history an exercise of giving voice, both to the other women and myself. This
idea in itself summarizes the way research and life merge: giving voice to the women, the researcher and the self as
a way of finding balance in the academy and in life. The mixture of personal and professional, individual and social
was a powerful way to gain insight on the lives of the four immigrant women. The mix of scholarly analysis,
solidarity and self-expression brings scholarly work closer to people beyond academic settings (Featherstone, cited
in Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1997, p. 10).
My choice of participants reflected a personal intention: to understand the transition and the experiences of
transformation I sensed through my own experience of life in Canada. Following an intuited perception that I could
not articulate at the time, I selected participants that were at different stages in their lives and that reflected various
aspects of myself. Gloria represented the importance of developing a career as an independent woman. Papalotl,
who is a professional dancer, represented my affinity with embodied knowledge through my yoga practice. Adela
reconnected me with the vibrancy of the arts and culture that I was familiar with in my years as an undergraduate
student. Erica’s accounts helped me reflect on some aspects of social privilege that shaped my life directly and
indirectly. I wrote about their stories hoping that other Mexican women who live in Canada could see themselves in
them. It is difficult to come across writings about immigrant women from relatively privileged
backgrounds. It may be that people think their privilege outside Canada makes them immune to hardship
or oppression when they immigrate, or that they need less support from the system and are therefore not
studied as intensely. However, these women also go through transformation and challenges that force
them to adapt and grow and that eventually affects their sense of who they are. The women’s stories
revealed the complex nature of privilege and its impact on individual lives.
The four women I interviewed went through extensive processes of reconstructing their lives in Canada
after immigration. Listening to them allowed me to shape a narrative—of which I only include small
sections here—that tells their stories as well as mine, weaving in the socio-cultural similarities and
differences that shaped their lives before and after immigration, and that allowed them to “become
Canadian” in diverse manners. For them, life in Canada was a transforming experience; in this new,
Northern country they found pieces of themselves they were not aware of in Mexico. Adela emerged as a
social activist, Papalotl incorporated her full ethnic identity into her life, Gloria became a mother and a
transnational businesswoman, Erica had her dream of professional advancement in the developed world
come true in Canada. For me, this time allowed to find and articulate my voice as an academic and an
immigrant woman. The life stories in this work evidence the process of finding voice in order to gain
control over lives (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger & Tarule, 1986).

Immigration: The Power of a Transition
Immigration can be a powerful catalyst for self-transformation because it causes the reorganization of
immigrants’ sense of who they are. Immigrants relate to the new context in different ways; they may
choose to separate, assimilate or integrate to the host society (Walters et al., 2007). If they choose to
separate from the main stream they may cling nostalgically to the past and refuse to become part of what
is new. If they choose to assimilate, they may tend to remain detached from their ethnic communities in
the country in order to merge with the main group in society. If they integrate they will choose a
combination of elements of both cultures in the recreation of their new lifestyle and sense of self. The fact
that immigrants have choice in the way they relate to the new context points to the interplay between
individual agency and the shaping forces of the context, both in their native country and in the new one.
In adulthood, this interplay defines a person’s sense of identity. As Giddens (1971) says, identity has a
prominent position within the debate about the relationships between structure and individual agency.
Oftentimes, people think the learning that immigrants experience is exclusively related practical matters
such as language or professional training; yet, immigration involves learning how to cope in the new
culture from a cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral perspective (Rong & Brown, 2002). When I first
arrived in Toronto I spoke English; I was very familiar with grammar and vocabulary; I studied English in
a Mexican classroom for seventeen years. Knowing the structure of a language though, does not mean
that one knows its nuances well enough to communicate with the same ease with which one uses the
mother tongue. In spite of my language skills, I did not know how to navigate social situations with the
right words and phrases when I first arrived in Toronto. Seven years later, I am still learning. Crosscultural
experience involves awakening, transformation of identity and overlapping of cultural meanings,
landscapes and languages (He, 2002 in Koehne, 1995). Learning to communicate with others and find a
place at the university required much more than the language skills offered in bilingual education
classrooms. Host countries must consider these dimensions of the immigration experience when
designing educational contents to easy immigrants’ transition into their new country.
Understanding the changes in sense of self and lifestyle that come about as a result of immigration
implies the observation of the individual and the social, the realms of family and culture, the
psychological and the sociological. The exploration of one took me to the other, back and forth, in order
to understand the complexity of (re) developing a self that lives in two different cultures. There are many
aspects to this duality: personal ones such as the sense of self and self-worth, and social ones, such as
cultural identity and the politics that surround it. The study focused on both the personal and the social, as
they relate to the (re)formation of an individual identity in relationship to the context in which the life is
lived. At the center of this exploration lies to notion of the genealogy of discourse: the way power
structures manufacture particular subjectivities that individuals internalize and transform into the truth
about themselves (Foucault cited in Koehne, 2005). We are the product of all the stories we have heard
and lived, and of many that we have never heard (Taylor, 1996). The biographical study of immigrants’
lives offers the possibility to uncover and explore these stories. Through the life stories of four women, I
explore the question of the role of agency in the face of various possible identity discourses for
immigrants in the Canadian context. In Canada, Papalotl, Adela, Gloria and Erica each saw their lives
take turns they would not have expected in Mexico. They all spoke about limiting boundaries Mexican
culture imposed on them in different areas of their lives: professional development, parenting practices, or
decision-making in general. The four women connected limitations in these and other areas of their lives
to gender-related values that are part of the Mexican cultural context.
Immigration to the “Developed World”: Motivations
The quality of the four women’s experiences in Canada is very different; the differences stem from the

motivations that led them to immigrate, as well as from their location in Mexican society. Papalotl and
Adela emigrated seeking personal growth; self-expression and answers that they did not find in Mexico
and hoped to find by moving into a new context. It was not that someone or something in Canada would
have the answer, but that being in Canada would create the space for the answer to become apparent.
Erica by contrast, had a much more pragmatic approach; she went to Ottawa looking for better financial
opportunities. She had a stable job in her field in Mexico but she and her husband believed they would
find even better opportunities in Canada. Gloria came to Canada for the first time in the 1970s, seeking
both relief from burdening social pressure for becoming a single mother in Mexico, as well as educational
opportunities for professional advancement. I came to Canada looking for a safe space to do selfexploration.
My experience was semi-structured. I went to graduate school and simultaneously found time
to explore other aspects of my life that were important to me, such as expressive art and meditative
practices. The interplay between structural conditions and individual choices is present in each one of
these lives. For each one of the women, agency involved individual decision-making, as well as the
creative orchestration of cultural elements (Lester cited in Ruiz & Sanchez Korrol, 2005). Papalotl, Adela,
Gloria and Erica negotiated identity and location at every step of the way.
Despite Erica’s or Gloria’s desire for a brighter financial future, none of us—myself included—were
economic migrants. We all had access to jobs that provided enough money to live and certain career
development perspectives yet, we were all looking for “something else” that did not translate exclusively
into higher financial gains. After listening to the stories, I realized that the four women’s decisions to
immigrate revealed deeper values and ways of living. In the context of the developed world, Richard
Florida (2002) has spoken about place as the social organizing unit of our time. None of these women had
a strict necessity to leave Mexico. None of them suffered from violence or political prosecution yet, they
all felt they needed to find a different place to live. For career-ambitious women like Gloria and Erica,
who looked for the best place to thrive professionally, Oakville and Ottawa were highly appealing. For
Adela and Papalotl, whose interests gravitate towards social and cultural work, Toronto was an attractive
city. Toronto’s diversity generates tolerance towards difference, as well as community work aimed at
supporting immigrants and fight issues that arise in the context of a multicultural society. In this sense,
Toronto was an ideal place for me as well.
Immigrant Women: Who Defines Our Identities?
The well-known Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldua described the conflicts of living in the borderland
between two or more cultures accurately. She writes about mestizas being the product of two cultures,
having yet to embrace a third one. Embracing the third culture, in this case a possible version of Mexican
culture in Canada, implies making a synthesis of the previous being, knowing what one wants to keep and
what one does not, in order to create the new self. In this context, the creation of an identity is involved in
a game of mirrors—the way I see myself versus the way others see me based on their social location.
Interestingly enough, Canada’s identity as a nation is also part of a game of reflections with a status as a
white, settler nation, and its imagined self-identity as a nation of immigrants that, at the same time has a
difficult history as the colonizer of various aboriginal communities (Epp, Iacovetta & Swyripa, 2004).
Anzaldua (1987), who lived in the United States, spoke about knowing how to be a Mexican from an
Anglo point of view. Among people in the developed world, there is a stereotype of Third World women
as poor, submissive and uneducated (Thobani, 1998). Increasingly, immigrants to Canada come from
developing countries (Statistics Canada, 2006); a lot of women enter the country and are seen through the
lens of this preconception. Socio-economic differences in the country of origin are oftentimes unseen by
people in Canada who tend to imagine all Mexican women under a similar socioeconomic category. The
participants in this study do not fit into traditional stereotypes of Latinas, as they are, in varying levels
and degrees, educated, progressive women. Those women are not a representative majority in the country
but their realities are very different from the stereotypes of the typical “Third World woman” that is

present in the developed world. At a personal level, these stereotypes affect relationships; at a systemic
level they affect women’s well-being and opportunities for advancement.
Immigrant women need to develop their voices and re-create themselves consciously; the creation of
women’s life histories can be what Chandra Mohanty calls "a discourse of oppositional consciousness and
agency". The practice of remembering "against the grain of 'public' or hegemonic history" suggests a
rethinking of sociality (Mohanty, cited in Anh, 2000). Rewriting and remembering history are crucial;
they are part of the process which is significant not merely as a corrective to the gaps, erasures, and
misunderstandings of hegemonic masculinist history, but because the very practice of remembering and
rewriting leads to the formation of politicized consciousness and self-identity. Writing often becomes the
context through which new political identities are forged. It becomes a space for struggle and contestation
about reality itself (Anh, 2000). One of the main benefits I gained from the process of writing this work
was an increased sense of social and political consciousness, the emergence of the decolonized voice
Anzaldua (1987) speaks of. Introducing and guiding this work of biographical writing could be an
effective educational practice among immigrant women, as it would offer the space for them to reflect on
previous identities and life experiences, and to think about fresh possibilities of being in their new
context.
The racialization of immigrants that come into Western nations is generalized, regardless of national
origin; this also holds true for immigrant women (Thobani, 1998). The four participants in the study are
university educated. After a number of years in Canada, Papalotl, Gloria and Erica developed their
professional activity of choice in their new country. At the same time, all of them, except for Papalotl,
said that most of members of their personal social networks are people from other Spanish speaking
countries. Initially I thought this was merely a matter of preference, but when I started seeing my stay in
Canada as something permanent, it became important to seek friendship with other Spanish-speaking
people. One of the reasons was the similarity in the cultures; another one was the fact that, with one’s conationals,
it is unnecessary to fight ethnic stereotypes. It takes a degree of emotional strength to venture
into circles of white people and deepen friendships when one perceives biases, or deep lack of
understanding—oftentimes unconscious, against people from one’s ethnic origin.
Immigrant Women: Understanding Internal and External Images
In order to understand immigrant women’s lives, it is necessary to study them before and after
immigration. The notion of identity can be divided into “auto-identity” and “exo-identity” (Gimenez
Montiel, 2002, my translation). An individual or a group’s identity is defined by the negotiation between
these two definitions. Naturally, the entity with more political and social power has the right to define the
others. Immigrant women need to translate themselves for the system, the effort towards communication
does not happen the other way around. The four participants are all “Mexican women” yet; they built their
identities differently in Mexico and in Canada based on the nuances of their lives in their particular social
locations.
The rupture in continuity implied in the immigration experience provides an opportunity for women to
reflect on their lives. From an educational perspective, the practice of writing about this experience—
before and after immigration—can be a powerful exercise for them. Feminist thinkers use exile as a
discursive metaphor for women’s experiences of social exclusion (Karpinski, 1999). The metaphor does
not necessarily imply physical displacement, nor the narrow definition of exile related to political
prosecution. The classical feminist writer Elene Cixous urges women to reclaim the bodies they have
been alienated from through the practice of writing (Cixous cited in Conley, 1984, p. 80). Writing is a
practice that can ground the self and help people maintain wholeness during, and after this significant
transition. The theme of exile is woven throughout; the four participants and myself chose to leave
Mexico, not by force, but because something was missing in our lives there. The missing part was related

to gender. Adela, Papalotl, Gloria and myself came to Canada looking for a space to open up aspects of
ourselves that we hid—even from ourselves—in the Mexican socio-cultural context. In describing their
experiences of self-expression in Mexico, Papalotl and Adela spoke about “coming out”. They did not
refer to their sexual preferences, but to lifestyle choices that were different from the mainstream, such as
being a single mother by choice, or simply living in ways that were different from the expectations for
women their age in the Mexican communities to which they belonged.
Relocation to Canada was a long process. It took time to understand I was in a truly different context
where I was seen in ways I was not aware of. In Mexico City, I was a professional, middle-class,
mestiza; 1 in Toronto I became a female, non-white, graduate student living on a limited budget. I was
away from everything that was familiar: class context, community, and language among others. I lost the
sense of class-based power I experienced in Mexico. In exchange for that, I had a space to reflect
extensively about my life and context. I also had opportunities to get to know myself in different
situations; for the first time, I faced the challenge of becoming fully independent. I gradually came to the
understanding of how different combinations of social locations play out in one’s sense of identity (Hall,
1993. The process implies understanding the different categories that society uses to classify us as “the
other”: immigrant woman, Latin American, woman of color, graduate student, professional, artist,
mother. The lived experiences described in this work amount to a balancing act between socially imposed
definitions of self and immigrant women’s desire to find and enact their agency.
Immigration from the developing into the developed world has powerful social, political and cultural
connotations for women. Speaking about identity and social location Joan Borsa (2006) said:
[By] articulating our specific experiences and representing the structural and political spaces we occupy,
we offer concrete accounts of where and how we live, what is significant to our experience of cultural
identity, how we have been constructed and how, in turn, we attempt to construct [and reconstruct]
ourselves (p. 17).
From a cultural perspective, immigrants often live in the third space; a hybrid and always changing
location (Escobar, 2000; Bhabha, 1990) in which the immigrant reconstructs herself continuously in
response to both the influences from her native culture and the cultural context in which she now lives.
This is a translation that goes beyond language, in an attempt to translate each culture into the other
(Anzaldua, 1987). Hyphenated identities such as Mexican-Canadian allude to this reality, where migrants
are not Mexican in the way they were in Mexico, nor Canadian as people who have been in this land for
generations. Third space educators are practitioners that have crossed borders, either metaphorically or
physically, between North and South, colonizing and colonized, and become aware of what their presence
means for learners in the midst of all these social intersections (English, 2005). A better understanding of
the cultural experiences of immigrant women can enrich curricula and in general offer an improvement
tool for educators in a variety of settings.
Creating a life history text that describes the identities of immigrant women in Canada requires
addressing the women’s lives pre-immigration as a way of understanding who they are and the ways in
which they negotiate their presence in Canadian society (Epp, Iacovetta & Swyripa, 2004). Identity is
defined by the influence of the social structure and its play with each person’s agency for self-definition
based on their particular values and aspirations (Woodward, 1999). Each one of the participants created
her own way of being in different communities in Canada; the Mexican and/or Spanish-speaking
communities, and various business, cultural, and social circles. Finding a community not only meant
looking for other Mexican people; affinities in terms of class, educational background and life values also
played a role in these women’s choices of groups to socialize and build community. In my seven years of
life in Canada, I have constantly experienced situations of “trial and error”, trying to find my place within
1 Mestizo refers to the ethnic mix between Spanish and native blood in Spanish-speaking Latin America.

the context. The search has taken the shape of friendships, romantic relationships and, more recently, job
searches. These experiments gave way to lifestyle changes and a different sense of self. The changes
result, in varying degrees, in a reconstruction of self: old understandings of who I was had to give way to
new ones in order to settle in this new cultural context in a fulfilling way. At the core of this process is a
re-negotiation of the way I saw myself and the way I am seen by others (Woodward, 1999).
An immigrant’s place in society can offer an interesting view of both one’s society of origin and the new
country. Gloria Anzaldua explains that living between cultures results in seeing double, which renders
both cultures transparent. My awareness of gender-related power structures and cultural beliefs in Mexico
and Canada has become more refined as a result of immigration. Papalotl and Adela spoke clearly about
issues of discrimination in both contexts; both of them were aware of social injustice in Mexico as well,
however, in Canada things are more difficult, because it takes a long time for an immigrant to acquire full
participation in her host society. In this sense, we became “outsiders within” (Collins, 1998), that is, we
gained knowledge but not necessarily a proportionate level of social power to act on the knowledge we
acquired. In a positive light, knowledge separated from power can be a trigger for increased social
awareness and motivate social change. However, the other side of this increase in awareness is a stifling
situation where immigrants lack voice in their new country. From the perspective of adult education
and—more specifically—citizenship education for new comers, an increased awareness of issues of lack
of voice among immigrants could result in a more effective way to integrate immigrants successfully into
the new society.
Colonialism: Its Trace in Individual Lives
It is only after reflecting on my experience of life in Toronto, almost seven years after relocating, that I
realized the significance of this move for a person born in the developing world. Carmen Boullosa
explains the dichotomy between “two worlds” and its implications for the colonized understanding of
power relationships in her novel Sleeping Beauty:
The world is divided in two. The Old and the New. Light and Darkness. Silence and Noise. White and
Black. Water and Land. Good and Evil. Men and Women. Europeans and those of other races. No
one becomes aware of this last division who never leaves her own land. (Cited in Buyze, 2005, p. 60)
From a postcolonial perspective, crossing from Mexico into Canada is a symbolic crossing from one side
of the world to another; it means stepping over the line that divides the world by color and culture; the
line that determines labels like developed and developing, the west and the rest (Rosaldo & Flores, 1997).
For immigrants, the recreation of the self is presided by the challenge of understanding the nature of the
colonized world and their place in it. Postcolonial feminism describes oppression as a consequence of this
system that minimizes the colonized through categorizations based on gender, class, ethnicity, race, and
sexual preference. (Guruge & Collins, 2008). Different combinations of these elements generate a variety
of experiences for women. The participants shared how people label them as exotic Latinas based on their
skin and hair color. Certain combinations of class and gender can prove advantageous for immigrant
women. This was the case with Erica—an upper-middle class woman married to a successful Mexican
professional—who was able to take advantage of her ethnicity in order to advance professionally.
Crossing the line is not easy. Mexicans, like other immigrants, are rarely aware of all the implications of
crossing the multiple dimensions of this boundary until they actually cross it.
For Third World women that cross the border into the developed world, increasing awareness and
knowledge is a liberatory practice (Guruge & Collins, 2008); it is a way of understanding that limiting
individual living conditions, such as poverty or lack of opportunity, oftentimes cannot be blamed on the
individual, but should be understood in the context of the systemic conditions that permeate their lives by

placing them in intersections of factors like class, race and gender that translate into disadvantage in their
daily lives. Telling the stories of immigrant women is a way of educating women—and immigrants in
general—about the place where the system locates them and the effects those locations have in their lives.
Initially a number of newcomers may not think about their race or ethnicity. However, immigrants need to
learn how to classify themselves as a part of the process of “becoming Canadian” (Rong & Brown, 2001).
Women and Gender: Parallels between Two Societies and Cultures
In social gatherings with the people I met at The University in Toronto women did not automatically take
charge of serving or picking up leftovers and dishes, as I had seen and done in Mexico countless times.
Although I do not have outstanding culinary knowledge—a typically expected ability for women in
traditional contexts—it was easier for me to join other women in the kitchen during a social gathering, do
simple support tasks like chopping or cleaning, and fit into my role as a woman in that way. When I came
to Toronto I realized that this behavior was not expected among the women I did my graduate studies
with. By looking around me I gradually realized that women lived gender roles differently in my new
context. When I first arrived in Toronto, I sensed that the gender socialization I had in Mexico resulted in
limiting behaviors in social interactions; there were too many parameters or models to follow. In Toronto,
I had the painful realization that, although I intellectually believed in gender equity, I was not emotionally
ready to live it. I craved acceptance so strongly that I did not dare to act in ways other than the traditional
gender expectations I was familiar with, hoping this would give me a much desired sense of adequacy and
belonging. The transition from deeply embedded notions of being the woman my society of origin wanted
me to be to a woman in tune with a more open society in Canada was a significant accomplishment
during my first years in Canada.
In conversational exchanges with other Mexican heterosexual females living in Toronto I gradually
realized that the boundaries of acceptability for women in the city were much broader than what I was
used to in Mexico. As single or newly married women we spoke about how our gender socialization
affected our romantic relationships with men. In our Mexican, middle-class context, common-law
relationships were taboo because they endangered the respectability of the woman and the family. In
Toronto things were different, first, because our extended families were not present to make judgments
about our lives, and second, because mainstream Canadian society in general does not judge common-law
unions in the same manner. Perhaps this is due to the individualism prevailing in the culture, and to the
distance many Canadian-born people in the younger generations have taken from religion (Milan, 2003).
Educational programs for immigrant women should include material on the gender-related aspects of the
host society. It is a matter of choice whether immigrant women will adopt new values or to what extent;
yet, an acknowledgement and explanation of the differences is equivalent to offering them a map that will
allow them to walk the territory with ease.
Gender-based oppression has affected women in Canada as in Mexico; yet cultural values around family,
as opposed to individuality, along with the strong influence of the Catholic Church in Mexican society
may be some of the causes for the prevalence of restraining expectations for Mexican women at a cultural
level. Canada is a country where the women’s movement reached broader sectors of the population, as
well as the policy level, since the 1970s and 1980s. A good example is the abolition of the abortion law in
1988. Another example is the access to help and resources to prevent and/or remedy violence against
women, which is more readily available in Canada than in Mexico, due to historical and social processes
in both countries that I will not describe here in detail. In the face of such different notions about gender, I
as an immigrant and a single woman, felt the need to (re) construct parts of my identity in order to be part
of my new Canadian context. During this process, my view of self and my experience of gender changed
in important ways. After exploration came the need to articulate my new insights and experience; this
amounted to a constant translation of self in order to communicate my identity in the new context. While
talking to the four participants, I repeatedly heard stories of the translation of self—both for others and

oneself—that often follows immigration (Schild, 1999). I constantly learn new ways to articulate this
transformation and to translate it for people that knew me before; it also affects the ways other see me in
various contexts. Educational materials for immigrant women should be aimed at accompanying and
offering them information in this transition. This information should include both the social and cultural
aspects of this transition.
Many of the elements that seemed immobile in the culture of origin change in the new context, and allow
immigrant women to see new possibilities. In some cases the change is favorable and women gain
freedom, while in others they fall in situations of hardship or abuse, depending on their personal
circumstances. The incorporation of immigrant women to Canada in this context is complex; poverty is
racialized in the country, and women still have lower incomes than males in comparable positions
(Gleason & Perry, 2005). These challenges affect immigrant women in varied ways, depending on their
cultural capital, their social networks, age and marital status upon migration, among others (Parrado et al,
2005). The four study participants describe their overall experience of immigration to Canada as positive.
Their experiences—although not free from challenges—generated considerable growth and learning in
their personal and professional lives. Immigrant women will be affected differently by the new context,
depending on their personal circumstances and their cultural and personal values, yet, offering
orientational materials that take into account the cultural aspect of the gender perspective can be useful
and comforting for women.
I came to Canada because I intuited I could use this environment to generate a change in my perception of
who I could be as a woman. Eventually, I realized that I needed to cultivate new gender awareness in
order to live my life in a different manner. Toronto offered me the freedom of being away from the
familiar in a place where the boundaries of social acceptability for women are broader. I soon realized
that, although the context made me feel freer, the oppression I felt was internalized and I would have to
transform it gradually through a combination of consciousness-raising and “re-appropriation” of more
aware and positive notions of gender identity (Tappan, 2006). 2 This is what I call the process of
deconstruction and reconstruction of identity that can bring immigrant women, Mexican or otherwise, to
more expansive notions of themselves as women within the Canadian context.
Educated Immigrant Women: Questions of Privilege
Educated women are a group that is not mentioned very often in accounts of immigrant women’s lives
and struggles. Perhaps the fact that they made it to an institution of higher learning and that they qualified
to enter Canada as legal, skilled immigrants, makes people think our integration into Canadian society is
smooth. Being a university educated woman has such connotation of privilege that it would seem like
these women have nothing else to ask for (Josselsson, 1996). Access to a university education is often
linked to class background. In Latin America, it is mostly middle and upper-middle class families that
benefit from the subsidies to virtually free university education (Hunter & Brown, 2000). In spite of free
access to public universities, the majority of the population in these countries cannot afford to be away
from the labor force in order to continue their education. Perhaps many would argue, if a woman like
Gloria attained professional success as a business consultant in Mexico and Canada, or Papalotl integrated
into Canadian society smoothly, both in her personal and professional life, what is there to look at, when
there are other women that face much more challenging conditions, such as the lack of legal status or the
constant presence of abuse in their lives? While the latter are two examples of situations that make
women highly vulnerable, educated women also face challenges due to gender oppression, in Mexico for
2 Tappan explains how the appropriation of internalized oppression is a collective, socio-cultural process,
as opposed to an individual one. In my case, partially because I was living away from Mexican culture,
the awareness-raising process began individually, although at later stages, I started connecting and
having conversations on the topic with the participants and other Mexican women in Toronto.

eing women, and in Canada for being women, and immigrants. The participants’ lives offer examples of
combinations of circumstances that build lack of equity for educated women. Maitra and Shan (2007)
describe how oftentimes educated, immigrant women end up working in minimum wage jobs that are
unrelated to their job expertise and how they end up paying for training in order to improve their situation
in Canada. Adela’s career as a photographer in Mexico vanished when she came to Toronto. Gloria took
over twenty years of traveling back and forth, and getting Canadian education, before she could launch a
successful business practice in Oakville. Papalotl had to go back to school in order to gradually launch her
dancing career in Toronto and find other types of jobs. Despite the career-related challenges, the four
women cherish their lives in Canada because of the exposure they get to a context where there is more
freedom for them as women, and where they are exposed to possibilities for personal and social
development that were not available in Mexico.
I know many Mexican women in Canada and Mexico who are university educated. Yet, the fast-paced,
goal oriented lifestyle many of them lead, together with a middle-class upbringing that did not emphasize
critical thinking, made us into women that wish to find ways to fit in socially, rather than question who
we are and what we truly want or where we need to be. The Mexican system is patriarchal and colonized.
The Canadian system is historically constructed as a white supremacist, patriarchal, system (Epp,
Iacovetta & Swyripa, 2004). The world hegemony is based on these principles. Women, Third World
people and other vulnerable populations can be most exploited when we lack a firm grounding in self and
identity (hooks, 1993). The importance of allowing immigrant women space and encouragement to voice
and reflect on their stories relies in the possibility of grounding their identity in order to live authentically
in the midst of a world that does not fully recognize their needs.
African American author bell hooks (1993) links the individual and the social dimensions of life
brilliantly by identifying the sense of identity and the choice of wellness as acts of political resistance.
The connection between a strong sense of identity, wellness, and political and social change is that, when
people are clearly aware of who they are and where they come from, they do not accept alienating values
and practices such as standards and goals that do not match their realities and needs. It is clear that the
study participants live with varying degrees of privilege. Yet, privilege does not come together with
awareness, and people can live alienated, without understanding the dynamics of power in the world and
how this affects their lives and the lives of those around them. I am a university educated Mexican
woman. In all of my school years, I never heard about the effects colonialism had on our people.. To
optimize their life opportunities in Canada, women need to come together, exchange information and
knowledge and to learn from each other (Maitra & Shan, 2007). In this sense, further study and
implementation of educational programs for immigrant women that stress the narration and critical
analysis of their stories will empower them by taking away alienation and replacing it with the
consciousness of their identity, their personal value and the rightful place in the social fabric of life in
Canada.
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