Diane Yvonne Dechief

Recent Immigrants As an "Alternate Civic Core": Providing Internet Services, Gaining "Canadian Experiences" Diane Yvonne Dechief

How are Canada?s most recent immigrants coping with our workforce?s need for "Canadian experience"? And how do community networks and federal initiatives influence newcomers during their periods of settlement? By examining volunteer interactions at Vancouver Community Network (VCN), this thesis demonstrates how a charitable internet service provider offers opportunities for individual newcomers to broaden their technical and communication skills as well as their social networks. Recent immigrants are established as a technically savvy ?alternate civic core?, and indeed major contributors to VCN?s volunteer program. Based on research conducted in Vancouver during the Spring and Summer of 2005, findings are analyzed and contextualized by theories from the fields of community informatics (e.g. Gurstein, 2004; Warschauer, 2003), and immigration studies (e.g. Kunz, 2003; Mwarigha, 2002). Conclusions suggest that in Canada, a country where immigration and the economy are functionally intertwined, placing the onus of becoming employable on individual immigrants is increasingly ineffective.