Interview demographics

Most of the interview participants who provided occupational information identified as front-of-house (FOH) workers who are customer-facing, like servers and bar tenders; 24% of frontline participants are back-of-house (BOH) and employed in occupations such as cook or dishwasher (see Table 1). Participants were representative of the food service workforce: young, white, and female (see Table 2). The average age of interview participants was 25.5 years (SK = 25.8, ON = 25.2), and most were women (74.2%). This is consistent with the food service and accommodation labour force across Canada: 56.4% of those with income who work in this sector are female (ON = 56.4%, SK = 58.2%), and in Canada, 61.5% of the industry are not visible minorities (ON = 56.6%; SK = 58.1%) (Statistics Canada 2022a; data obtained by special request and calculations performed by research team).

Table 1.

Interview participant occupations

***The percentages and numbers are representative of the interview participants who divulged occupational and demographic information. In total, there were 93 interview participants. FOH occupations include bartenders, servers, hosts, supervisors, servers, and baristas. Some of these occupations might occupy more than one role, such as supervisors who also hold server positions. BOH occupations include cooks and dishwashers. Managers might serve and provide frontline servers, but their principal role is managerial in nature.

Table 2.

Interview participant demographics

***The percentages and numbers are representative of the interview participants who divulged occupational and demographic information. In total, there were 93 interview participants. ‘Frontline’ food service workers include FOH and BOH non-managerial occupations.

How businesses manufacture ‘fit’

Fit at first emerges in our interview analysis as a common sense understanding of the ideal food service worker: competent, hard-working, and flexible, all of which are requirements that have appeared in industry-focused literature attentive to human resource practices (Warhurst and Nickson Reference Warhurst and Nickson2007). And like soft skill requirements, fit is notably subjective and linked in the research to employer discrimination against particular races and ethnicities (Zamudio and Lichter Reference Zamudio and Lichter2008). As in every industry, expectations and requirements fluctuate across enterprise and occupational classifications. We find that communication skills and personal attributes shape the gendered, racialised, and status-based hiring preferences based on real and perceived notions of what constitutes cultural competency and aptitude for work in this industry (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich Reference Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich2011; Delgado and Stefancic Reference Delgado and Stefancic2017). Fit is in many ways a performance meant to appeal to employers and customers alike. Our findings also suggest that race and gender do not always affect hiring decisions identically. Put succinctly, ‘not all stereotypes are alike’ (Fiske et al Reference Fiske, Cuddy, Glick and Xu2002, 878). Occupational demands, position within the establishment (i.e., FOH or BOH), and individual biases shape recruitment decision-making. Data also point to racism and race-based discrimination manifesting in the relationships between co-workers, between managers and frontline staff, and between workers and customers (Brewster and Nowak Reference Brewster and Nowak2019). As Stanley (Reference Stanley, Gebhard, McLean and St. Denis2022, 129) insists, a structural explanation of racism ‘departs from common sense views of racism as only involving prejudiced, ignorant or badly intentioned individuals’, with these structures producing negative consequences for those being excluded. ‘Fit’, then, is understood as the characteristics associated with the ideal candidate, capable of enduring precarious working conditions that involves a form of exploitation and discrimination (Holmes et al Reference Holmes, McAdams, Gibbs and D’Angelo2022). More than work experience and other credentials, employers appear to seek nebulous qualities that invite exclusion (or invitation) based on what biases determine the appropriate fit.

Findings from our study conclude that resume credentials can be undermined by less definitive and highly subjective cultural attributes and social networks that are sought after by employers in their review of job applications. ‘Whiteness’, scholars argue, can be expressed as a dominant social norm that constructs particular racial attributes as either ideal or pejorative (McLean Reference McLean, Gebhard, McLean and St. Denis2022) – or, as Dar et al. (Reference Dar, Helena, Martinez Dy and Brewis2021, 696) advance, a ‘regime of power that normalises white dominance’. Who is considered a ‘legitimate’ candidate in the food service industry is both gendered and racialised (Mirchandani Reference Mirchandani2003). A willingness to conform to low wages, uncertain schedules, and otherwise precarious circumstances populates the list of characteristics that define the ideal food service worker, which aligns with research on why migrant workers constitute an ‘ideal’ work force in Canada (Polanco Reference Polanco, Choudry and Smith2016). Fit, one interviewee insisted, transcends sex and race in a tight labour market where good workers are seen as difficult to attract and retain. Work ethic is more important than anything for one ten-year food service industry veteran, who stated simply: ‘If you’re the right fit, you’re the right fit’ (SK Hiring Manager 6). Frontline workers and employers shared this perspective, adding that this specification existed along an intersectional axis. Racialised workers might be hired, but only for BOH duties.

Managers made it clear that good employers face fewer challenges when looking for good workers. This speaks to the value of reputation, of providing a good working environment, and offering entry-level positions close to what might be considered a living wage at the time of the interview. Job interviews were conducted with the intent of securing an understanding of the applicant’s personality, and whether or not they could work successfully in a team. Employers privileged face-to-face introductory meetings and interviews for the same reason (Martin and Groves Reference Martin and Groves2002). However, that preference also positioned employers to ascertain fit and cultural affinity during the hiring process, introducing another vector of exclusion. Or, as one food service worker put it, an opportunity to wield ‘pretty privilege’.

‘Pretty privilege’ and the appeal of aesthetic labour

Labour force data make clear that women are overrepresented yet underpaid compared to men in the food service industry (Statistics Canada 2021). Gendered traits, research finds, provide female applicants with advantages in securing employment in this industry due to traits that employers deem as desirable (Fiske et al Reference Fiske, Cuddy, Glick and Xu2002). However, women are also likely to suffer from wage inequity due to the very stereotypes and occupational segregation that provide these advantages (Cave and Kilic Reference Cave and Kilic2010; Skalpe Reference Skalpe2007; Zhong et al Reference Zhong, Couch and Blum2011). ‘Sexy women’, as a subgroup, has appeared in previous research as being recognised as ‘warm’ and thus possessing certain competencies in particular circumstances (Fiske et al Reference Fiske, Cuddy, Glick and Xu2002, 898). Our findings suggest that employer biases towards particular physical characteristics and other social attributes as affecting hiring decisions more than the experiences outlined in resumes, women who are deemed attractive by male managers are seen as sexual subjects that render advantages to the business that hires them (Warhurst and Nickson Reference Warhurst and Nickson2007). Sexualisation, interviewees suggest, is normalised. The same can be said about race as a determinant of being considered for a position in food services.

Frontline workers generally assumed that women have a better chance of being hired for FOH positions because they are perceived as being more polite, organised, and provide better customer service (Hochschild Reference Hochschild1983) in a sexualised and segmented intra-industry labour market (Bernard-Oettel et al Reference Bernard-Oettel, Leineweber and Westerlun2019). For Mirchandani (Reference Mirchandani2003) and their work on small-business owners in Canada, emotional labour also possesses a racialised dimension, emphasising the importance of an intersectional lens when unpacking the lived realities of service sector employment. More recent literature has drawn parallel conclusions about the intersectional sociality of affective labour in the hospitality industry as a whole (Farrugia et al Reference Farrugia, Coffey, Threadgold, Adkins, Gill, Sharp and Cook2022). Labour market data demonstrate the industry’s preference for women, but why? Interviewees maintained that attractive servers bring in more customers in full-service restaurants, leading one participant to label this trend ‘pretty privilege’ (SK Food Worker 11) – a particular aesthetic that is both managed and commodified. In the service industry, ‘bodies become the target of discipline’ (Oluyadi and Dai Reference Oluyadi and Dai2022, 714) and uphold the image of what embodiment of what fit must look like. An interviewee’s recollection of a restaurant owner’s comments about female employees is telling: ‘If you don’t feel like you should be Instagram ready, like taking an Instagram picture, then you shouldn’t come to work’ (SK Food Worker 14). Additional personal expenses came with these expectations, as a food service worker in Ontario recalled: ‘It sounds so silly, but it was like an expense of working (at the restaurant), I would get my nails done all the time’ (ON Food Worker 16).

Men, on the other hand, are seen as less friendly, less nurturing, less patient, and less physically attractive, and thus less likely to be hired for FOH server positions (Restaurant Opportunities Centers United 2015). This has a consequence for earning potential and advancement potential (Labour Force Survey 2022). But BOH working conditions are also defined by masculinity and the sexism that permeate male-dominated workplaces (Connell Reference Connell1987; Sachs et al Reference Sachs, Allen, Terman, Hayden and Hatcher2014). When asked why men typically occupy these roles, and women do not, one interviewee remarked, ‘I think when you have a kitchen staff that is mostly male, for the two female kitchen staff we had, I think that there was definitely some probably-not-great workplace environment situations in the BOH, which I think would probably maybe deter if any females wanted to work in the kitchen, just because it is so male-dominated’ (SK Food Worker 15). The distribution of men and women across BOH and FOH food service occupations aligns with these interview findings (Loyser Reference Loyser2018). Physical capabilities and limitations associated with a worker’s sex also condition what employers conceive as a natural division of labour in the workplace – part of what scholars have labelled hegemonic masculinity (Moreo et al Reference Moreo, Pan, Cain, Kitterlin-Lynch and Williams2022). Processes of socialisation and the gendering of particular occupations is as much a consideration here as explicit forms of discrimination. ‘I think experience for sure, first would be the experience, and the second would be – it depends, like if the position requires lifting or if it requires a lot of manual work, they would prefer hiring a guy, and if it’s light work, I think it’s going to be female’, said one Ontario food service worker (ON Food Worker 19).

While managers interviewed for the study were split on their gendered hiring preferences, employment outcomes suggest that women experience an advantage when looking for work in food services (Douwere and Lu Reference Douwere and Lu2021). But this was not without some contradiction and a poignant caveat: depending on the type of restaurant and clientele, gender diversity (i.e., men working in the establishment alongside women) helps to maintain a safe workplace, particularly if customers are seen as a challenge, according to hiring managers. ‘If you’re working at a super rowdy bar or maybe a club’, said a hiring manager in a response to a question about why they might prefer certain genders, ‘it’s… always nice to have a … large male present in certain scenarios and just for safety reasons’ (SK Hiring Manager 10). This manner of paternalism might steer hiring decisions under certain industry conditions. Managers’ preferences hinged on assumptions that women are more competent with multi-tasking – a soft skillset that is required in table service restaurants (Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association 2010; Lindsay et al Reference Lindsay, Adams, Sanford, McDougall, Kingsnorth and Menna-Dack2014; Restaurants Canada 2021). These conventions work to shape managers’ biases that are reflected in hiring decision and thus shape the gendered wage gap that permeates the industry.

Some participants concluded that these hiring decisions affect pay, as servers typically make more money due to tips than BOH workers – managerial roles excluded. Others offered contradictory statements. Men, this group of respondents argue, are more likely to secure BOH positions that receive higher rates of pay, such as supervisory roles, and that males are taken more seriously in the workplace. ‘They are hiring for management positions, they are hiring men’, said one manager (SK Manager 8). And, as one frontline food service worker commented, ‘I would say if a restaurant is looking for servers, ideally they’re probably looking for females’ due to the industry’s preference for attractive workers (SK Food Worker 13). Sexism – or rather, sexualisation – played a role in these hiring and staffing decisions (Kübler et al Reference Kübler, Schmid and Stüber2018; Petersen and Togstad Reference Petersen and Togstad2006). Not only are hiring decisions informed by gendered assumptions and sexual inequality but so too are the experiences of women employed in food services.

Examples of discrimination featured prominently in interviews with food service workers in both provinces. These actions were intersected along racial, status, sexual identity, and gender lines. Sexual harassment, in particular, was referenced at length by participants. Dealing with this lived reality prompted some interviewees to rationalise decisions to exit the industry altogether – particularly when COVID rendered these workers unemployed due to pandemic restrictions. High-profile incidents related to an emergent #metoo movement were referenced at length by Saskatchewan frontline workers (Latimer Reference Latimer2020). Sexism and sexual stereotypes permeated both the hiring practices observed by supervisors and managers, as well as the day-to-day work experiences, leading some researchers to conclude that a combination of individual employers and industry culture ‘create an environment which can encourage inappropriate attitudes, crude language, and egregious behaviour’ (Moreo et al Reference Moreo, Pan, Cain, Kitterlin-Lynch and Williams2022). The notion of hegemonic masculinity helps to explain the normalisation of gender inequality and male dominance over women in the employment setting (Connell Reference Connell1987, Reference Connell2005). ‘Pretty privilege’ might provide an advantage when seeking employment, but it comes with a cost. ‘You have an advantage for being a girl’, said one interview participant, ‘but then there is that disadvantage that you’re always being objectified no matter what you do, and threatened with “There goes your tip”’ (SK Food Worker 12).

When race doesn’t fit

Race and racial stereotypes similarly generate contradictory outcomes in food services. That the industry is the site of nearly a quarter of all workplace discrimination human rights cases in Canada’s most populated province between 2014 and 2022 is telling in this regard (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2022).Footnote ² Labour market data do make clear that race and ethnicity condition employment and income outcomes. Interview responses account for why. ‘If you don’t look a specific way, you don’t get promoted into the lounge’, (SK Food Worker 14) as one worker said about racism that permeates the industry. This is of significance for racialised newcomers and Indigenous workers. Part of these opportunities and experiences of marginalisation are prefigured by biases that are constructed by employers and rank-and-file workers about the perceived competencies of these demographics. New and existing workers might be streamed into particular roles according to fit, not accomplished human capital attributes.

Interview participants reflected on the anxiety experienced by racialised applicants, and the reality that resumes submitted by non-white applicants might be discarded without much consideration by employers. Decades of audit studies in numerous national contexts have identified similar outcomes in the resume-vetting process (Bertrand and Mullainathan Reference Bertrand and Mullainathan2004; Oreopoulos and Dechief Reference Oreopoulos and Dechief2012; Riach and Rich Reference Riach and Rich2002). ‘I know actually multiple people who dreaded going to an interview because on paper, their name was, let’s say for instance, Paul Stevenson, it sounds white passing, but they were actually of Indian heritage’, said a food service worker in Saskatchewan (SK Food Worker 12). ‘Resume whitening’ is deployed as a conscious strategy aimed at rendering the applicant more acceptable to employers in response to real or perceived biases, and ultimately to amplify their fit and desirability in the labour market (Kang et al Reference Kang, DeCelles, Tilcsik and Jun2016). Accomplishments or awards that might signal the racial or ethnic identity of an applicant could compromise their chances of securing an interview, even when these credentials boost their human capital potential.

‘Resume whitening’ also functions as act of subversion aimed at building acceptance and signal fit, like Anglicising a name ‘just to be more accepted’ (ON Food Worker 19), or to make it easier for employers to pronounce. In the context of critical race theory, it can be seen as a means for highlighting important human capital characteristics like experience and credentials, while at the same time concealing resume features that disclose a race or ethnicity that could be deemed undesirable by employers. ‘(My) one friend doesn’t use her real name, she’s Vietnamese and it’s like, Hoi, but she uses Joy because it’s easier for people to read’ (SK Food Worker 27). White and racialised participants reflected on why these and other means of subverting discrimination might be deployed. For neo-liberal economists like Becker (Reference Becker1957), this represents a missed opportunity for employers that overlook the true economic potential of qualified workers – a shortfall that he argues can be overcome with information.

But race might also be mobilised as an asset for employers, where racialised workers are ‘exoticised’ and offered a selling point for the businesses due to their inviting, and attractive difference. Their utility is one of commodification and desirability in the eyes of employers (Bauder Reference Bauder2001), not to empower racial inclusion in the workplace. Indeed, as Kundnani (Reference Kundnani2023) observes, racism can be a profitable enterprise for capitalist regimes. Discrimination itself can be mobilised to service political-economic objectives. Aesthetic labour, Warhurst and Nickson (Reference Warhurst and Nickson2009) argue, is the corporeality of workers that is appropriated for commercial benefit. We recognise this as the racial equivalent of ‘pretty privilege’, where race can function as an advantage in the hiring process, albeit a double-edged benefit. On the one hand, employers are keen to hire racialised workers who might then bring acclaim to their establishment for being ‘diverse’, while at the same time demonstrating that stereotypes and racial biases have indeed penetrated hiring decisions ‘“Oh, you’re the Spanish girl.” As soon as you say that, you’re immediately the Spanish girl. You’re no longer (personal name), you’re the Spanish girl. I think it deters them from hiring other minorities when they already have one that’s like you said, the token minority’, said a Saskatchewan worker (SK Food Worker 12). Diversity is seen as a favourable business decision when desirable hiring racialised workers who fit, as economic value is assigned to the Other in a process of commodification (Evans Reference Evans2020) advanced by a white majority (Leong Reference Leong2013). Employers build up and maintain this aesthetic image in what bell hooks (1992) describes as the commodification of otherness by dictating how racialised workers should look and act. Tokenism provided an advantage that some racialised workers struggled to accept.

Such conclusions of tokenism or advantage cannot be generalised to include Indigenous workers.

Indigenous labour: Overlooked and excluded

Governments have historically used paternalistic and coercive measures to mobilise Indigenous labour into particular sectors of employment through a process Laliberte and Satzewich (Reference Laliberte and Satzewich1998) describe as ‘Native proletarianisation’. Racism and human capital factors continue to perpetuate labour market discrimination and the marginalisation of Indigenous peoples (Bleakney et al Reference Bleakney, Khanam and Kumar2024; Howard et al Reference Howard, Edge and Watt2012; Mills and Clarke Reference Mills and Clarke2009). Research also points to structural forms of discrimination in knowledge-based and skill-intensive organisations like post-secondary institutions, where marginalisation is in part facilitated by the exclusion of Indigenous knowledge systems and worldviews through colonial hegemonic philosophical systems (Bastien et al Reference Bastien, Coraiola and Foster2023). These outcomes cannot be disentangled from colonial political-economic relations that define the Canadian state (Anderson Reference Anderson1997; Bourgeault Reference Bourgeault1983; Satzewich and Wotherspoon Reference Satzewich and Wotherspoon2000). Available policy and academic literature, however, focuses on determinants of labour market participation – from housing and health to education (Wannell and Currie Reference Wannell and Currie2016). What is not accounted for in these analyses are biases that might refuse Indigenous people access to employment even when their human capital criteria are met and possess equal standing with non-Indigenous applicants.

Anti-Indigenous discrimination was a centrepiece of our interviews, which is informed by Cannon and Sunseri’s (Reference Cannon and Sunseri2011, 234) claim that ‘structural racism sustains “the toxic gulf” between Aboriginal and settler communities’. Participants largely believed that Indigenous job seekers were treated differently by prospective employers (SK = 75%, ON = 66%) and that Indigenous candidates experience discrimination during hiring. Some interviewees, however, were simply unaware of special treatment or recognition either way. Workers commented broadly on the visual absence of Indigenous peoples in the industry as a whole, which is consistent with available labour market data (Anderson Reference Anderson2019). Some of this is attributable to the fact that not all Indigenous peoples are easily discernible as ‘racialised’ by other workers (Anderson Reference Anderson2019). And while Indigenous workers were not seen by all as being treated any differently than other racialised groups, biases were certainly present.

Some participants concurred that racism plays a factor in why they do not see many Indigenous people working in the industry, even without having witnessed or experienced this kind of discrimination. Attributes like drug and alcohol addiction generate stereotypes that are not easily overcome, confirming that historical ‘facts’ presented about Indigenous peoples are both inaccurate and degrading (Reading Reference Reading2014). ‘Indigenous people’, said a food service worker, ‘are definitely given an unfair first impression a lot of the time … Actually in school, we are learning about intergenerational trauma and how that has really affected them and people don’t understand that necessarily and they will be really quick to judge and push them away and say no’ (SK Food Worker 6).

Indigenous people, one manager answered, were stigmatised by stereotypes that characterise them as prone to criminal behaviour and substance use in major urban centres. Such observations can then lead to more entrenched biases against a particular community (Wall Reference Wall2018), which is attributable to ‘relations of inclusion and exclusion’ tethered to holders of what might be deemed to be appropriate (or inappropriate) forms of cultural capital (Swartz Reference Swartz2013). Others maintained that they are indifferent to Indigeneity when reviewing resumes. Racism was, however, recognised as a reality in their respective communities. A Toronto-based food service business owner believed that the perception of Indigenous people suffering from addictions and social problems was enough for them to make a conscious decision to never hire Indigenous applicants. ‘They come from wherever it is they come and there’s nothing but crime’ (ON Hiring Manager 3). As Brewster and Nowak (Reference Brewster and Nowak2019, 160) write in their study of anti-Black racism in the food service industry, the prejudiced person rationalises or excuses their biases as the ‘outcome of anything but race (e.g., market forces, crime, work ethic, individual choices, culture)’. These biases also existed among frontline workers, and it speaks to the prevalence of racism as a whole in Western Canada (Kiprop Reference Kiprop2017). ‘The prairies, they’re a hot bed for anti-Indigenous racism’, a Saskatchewan-based manager reflected (SK Manager 9), pointing to the general acceptance of negative stereotypes haunting Indigenous peoples in the region.

Frontline workers who identified as Indigenous spoke about strategies deployed to cope with these attitudes. As a food service worker commented, ‘I try to turn a blind eye at it, and I know that’s not necessarily the right thing to do because it’s alive and well and what am I going to teach my daughter when she grows up?’ (SK Food Worker 28) Another Indigenous worker spoke of the need to endure: ‘there’s always one dick and it doesn’t matter if it’s the racism or whatever it is, there’s always something with some individual, and you have to find a way to work with them’ (SK Food Worker 24). Indigenous food service workers who fit, in this regard, are the ones who develop coping mechanisms to survive discrimination in the workplace, or who successfully disguise their Indigeneity.

The foreign worker (dis)advantage?

Foreign-born workers – temporary and permanent – play an important role in Canada’s service sector. The country’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) was even adjusted in the early 2000s to accommodate a shortage of low-wage food service labour in oil-extractive regions (Stevens Reference Stevens2022). Special migrant streams similarly exist at the provincial level to facilitate the production of workers destined for jobs in the industry. Demand for foreign workers even persisted throughout the pandemic, when unemployment reached double digits (Employment and Social Development Canada 2022). Labour market data reveal that the employment of newcomers in food services and accommodations differs across provinces, but also that immigrants are an important source of workers for this industry by measure of their contribution as a percentage of the food service labour force (Labour Force Survey 2022; Stevens Reference Stevens2022). Immigrants and migrant workers alike have certainly become fixtures of this industry in helping to fill short and long-term labour market shortages and even constitute a pillar of the country’s economic development strategy. But are newcomers uniformly welcomed by food service employers?

The reasoning for rejecting newcomer applicants takes several forms. Outcomes, we argue, are conditioned by the type of food service establishment and the associated role (FOH and BOH) within the industry and therefore inconsistent. Some employers assume that newcomers require additional time and training and thus forgo the opportunity to hire applicants they perceive to be non-Canadian due to their race or ethnicity (Rydgren Reference Rydgren2004). A frontline food worker in Ontario commented on this intersectional vector of labour market exclusion as follows:

Interview respondents indicate that the perception of cultural differences manifests as the understanding that newcomers struggle with acclimatising themselves to work in Canadian restaurants. ‘Some international workers, they come from different backgrounds, cultures, they have very little communication with other Canadian workers’ (ON Food Worker 14). Language and communication barriers – real and perceived – were recognised by managers and frontline food service workers as the principal reason why newcomers might struggle to secure employment in this industry. Disadvantages, where they exist, are generated by a notion that resumes and other employment-related documents could be falsified by newcomers – or what Bonilla-Silva (Reference Bonilla-Silva2019) describes as an expression of cultural racism, where discrimination is justified due to cultural differences or behaviours. This is tethered to the construction of fit.

Attitudes about newcomers are complex. In one establishment, managers were said to harbour biases against foreign labour, but, at the same time, the company would sponsor migrants from other countries and help them secure visas to extend their stay in Saskatchewan. On the other hand, English language competency was cited as a source of bias against immigrant workers. I think a lot of assumptions are made about newcomers about ‘is English their first language? What country did they come from? What were the standards like in their country of origin?’ (ON Food Worker 33) Some countries of origins and ethnicity were assigned value based on their perceived ‘work ethic’, thus constructing a migrant division of labour in the food service industry (Fiske et al Reference Fiske, Lin and Neuberg2018). These workers possessed the required fit despite an employer’s apprehension about hiring newcomers.

Frontline interview participants suggested that newcomers have an advantage when seeking employment in restaurants that align with their ethnicity and country of origin (i.e. an Indian newcomer working in an Indian restaurant). Interviewees further indicated that racialised managers were more likely to hire racialised workers of the same heritage, which implicitly provides an opportunity for this demographic (ON Food Worker 29). Foreign workers, however, are not necessarily treated well by employers who share their ethnic, cultural, or national origins – contrary to these workers’ expectations (Connelly Reference Connelly2023). There was also recognition that newcomers may possess skills and credentials that are overlooked or not valued by Canadian employers. Workers end up with precarious jobs in food service or retail, as a consequence.