Informational Practices of Recent Immigrants Seeking Employment in Quebec
This report is about a partnership research project between a research team, led by Professor Nicole Gallant, from the UCS Center at INRS and a team of MTESS professionals. The mandate of the research team was to better understand and document the informational practices of recent immigrants and young adult native-born Quebecers seeking professional integration in the province of Quebec. By joining the research team, the goal of the internship was twofold: to work as a research assistant and to experience the role of interface agent. For the “research” component, the goal was to provide scientific knowledge on the informational practices of recent immigrants. We will see that the informational practices of the respondents in our study are largely focused on their social network, the Internet and employment insertion organizations, but to varying degrees, which depend to a large extent on the level of education and knowledge of the labor market in Quebec. The “knowledge mobilization” component involved observing and applying different facets of the functions of an interface agent. Throughout this internship, I thus observed the role of “liaison” agent between the scientific and the practice communities, as well as participated in various activities of knowledge transfer and dissemination. In the end, I offer a critical reflection on the main concepts addressed in the PRAP Masters program, through a critical review of my internship. Among other things, I wish to demonstrate that an interface agent from the scientific community is most relevant in the context of a partnership research project with a non-scientific actor, whether this project is part of a process of mobilization or co-construction of knowledge.
Stephanie Atkin
Degree: MA/MSc / Master es arts/Master es science
Status: Completed (2018)
Supervisor: Nicole Gallant
Department and University: Urbanization Culture Society, Institut national de recherche scientifique
Email: stephanie.atkin@ucs.inrs.ca
Link: https://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/7612/