Profile
Keywords: socially engaged research, intersectionality, migrant movements, temporary labour migration, gender, care migration, migrant care workers, international students, race, critical discourse theory, ethnography, social policy
Ethel Tungohan is a Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism and an Associate Professor of Politics at York University. Her work looks at temporary labour migration policies, migrant justice movements, and everyday practices of citizenship using critical ethnography, mixed methods, participatory action research and socially engaged research methodologies, as well as critical discourse analysis and Intersectionality Policy Analysis. In 2023, she released two monographs: Containing Diversity: Canada and the Politics of Immigration in the 21st Century, co-authored with Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Christina Gabriel and published by the University of Toronto Press, and Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building and Communities of Care, published by the University of Illinois Press and winner of the 2014 National Women's Studies Association First Book Prize.
Outputs Show only Author
Title
Category
Date
Authors
Projects
Tolerated, threatening and celebrated: How Canadian news media frames temporary migrant workers York University Publication 2022-12-02 Acknowledgments University of Alberta, Concordia University, York University Publication 2025-06-17 AFTERWORD: Beyond Knowledge, Power, and Migration University of Alberta, Concordia University, York University Publication 2025-06-17 INTRODUCTION: Knowledge, Power, and Migration: An Overview University of Alberta, Concordia University, York University Publication 2025-06-17 6 Transforming public policy with engaged scholarship: better together York University Publication 2025-07-23 Leah Levac, Alana Cattapan, Tobin LeBlanc Haley, Laura Pin,
Tungohan, E. , Sarah Wiebe
‘Flying Grannies’ and Human-Capital Citizenship: Care in Humanitarian and Compassionate Cases Given Canada's child care deficit, economic migration remains contingent on the unpaid care work of grandparent migrants, particularly grandmothers or ‘flying grannies’, who arrive through temporary pathways such as the super visa and often juggle multiple transnational caring obligations. However, routine pauses to the parent and grandparent sponsorship program render humanitarian and compassionate applications one of the few options available for grandparents seeking permanent residence. Yet this discretionary tool and grandparents’ multiple caregiving roles continue to be understudied. This socio-legal study, therefore, unpacks narratives of care in 171 humanitarian and compassionate grounds cases involving grandparents who applied to, considered applying, or were referred by judges and immigration officers to apply for the Super Visa. Drawing on Ellermann , we argue that the types of care that are valued and, subsequently, which ‘exceptional’ cases are granted permanent residence, reflect a human-capital citizenship logic and membership status. The subjective criteria used by judges and other ‘gatekeepers’, especially when determining the best interest of any child and hardship, reveal multiple tensions, inconsistencies and a limited notion of care that entrench stereotypes based on race, gender, culture, class and other vectors of social location. Ultimately, family reunification is deemed conditional, and grandparents are rendered temporary. York University, Carleton University Publication 2025-07-23 Transforming public policy with engaged scholarship: better together York University Publication 2025-07-23 Leah Levac, Alana Cattapan, Tobin LeBlanc Haley, Laura Pin,
Tungohan, E. , Sarah Wiebe
Transforming public policy with engaged scholarship:: better together York University Publication 2025-07-12 Leah Levac, Alana Cattapan, Tobin LeBlanc Haley, Laura Pin,
Tungohan, E. , Sarah Wiebe
1 “Diversity Is Important, but Only When It Is the ‘Right’ Type of Diversity”: Canadian Political Science and the Limitations of an Additive Approach to Equity York University Publication 2024-06-20 Book Review Symposium on Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Communities of Care, and Movement Building York University Publication 2024-03-01 Postdoctoral Supervisor of the Year Award York University Award 2024-12-06 Honourable Mention, Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award For 'Containing Diversity'.
In Containing Diversity, Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Ethel Tungohan and Christina Gabriel offer a critical and much needed update to the literature on immigration policy in Canada. Their consideration of immigration policy is deeply historic and comprehensive, covering multiple dimensions of the immigration system and how they have changed over time. The result is a book that disrupts dominant narratives regarding Canada as an inclusive and accepting country but instead proposes that policy-makers have sought to “contain diversity” through immigration policy. The justice-oriented policy prescription as well as research agenda will most certainly shape future scholarship on immigration policy in Canada. University of Alberta, York University Award 2024-09-03
YouTube
