Roxana Chu-Yee Ng (1951–2013) was an activist and scholar for fair migrant labour, gender and racial equality, and decolonising

pedagogy Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...

. She is noted for her research on the

garment industry Clothing industry or garment industry summarizes the types of trade and industry along the production and value chain of clothing and garments, starting with the textile industry (producers of cotton, wool, fur, and synthetic fibre), embellishmen ...

in Canada and its relation to immigration, gender, race, and class, as well as her contributions to

institutional ethnography Institutional ethnography (IE) is an alternative approach of studying and understanding the social. IE has been described as an alternative philosophical paradigm, sociology, or (qualitative) research method. IE explores the social relations that st ...

, embodied learning and

critical pedagogy Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture. It insists that issues of social justice and de ...

. Ng grew up in

Diamond Hill Diamond Hill is a hill in the east of Kowloon, Hong Kong. The name also refers to the area on or adjacent to the hill. It is surrounded by Ngau Chi Wan, San Po Kong, Wong Tai Sin and Tsz Wan Shan. Its northeast is limited by the ridge. It is p ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, and immigrated with her parents and two brothers to

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

in 1970. She trained in sociology and taught at the

University of New Brunswick The University of New Brunswick (UNB) is a public university with two primary campuses in Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick. It is the oldest English-language university in Canada, and among the oldest public universities in North Ameri ...

, Queen's University, and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She taught

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

, adult education, and

community development The United Nations defines community development as "a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems." It is a broad concept, applied to the practices of civic leaders, activists ...

, and directed the OISE Centre for Women's Studies in Education (2009–2013). Ng was active in immigrant women's and garment workers' organising from the mid-1970s onwards. Her work informed advocacy for the protection of homeworkers in Toronto. Notably, she served as a board member of Inter Pares, and as board member then President (1994–95) of the

Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) is a Canadian not for profit, charitable organization founded in 1976 which provides research to the public about relevant feminist issues. CRIAW is the only Canadian research i ...

(CRIAW).

Life

Early years

Roxana Ng was born in 1951 in

, a hill in the east of

Kowloon Walled City Kowloon Walled City was an ungoverned and densely populated ''de jure'' Imperial Chinese enclave within the boundaries of Kowloon City, British Hong Kong. Originally a Chinese military fort, the walled city became an enclave after the New ...

which used to be a large urban squatter village. In 1968, she left to attend The Mount School, a Quaker boarding school in York, England. There, she was asked to change her name from Ng to Wu (the Mandarin translation) to make pronunciation easier for native English speakers. Ng refused. After graduation in 1970, she moved to

with her family. When they immigrated, Ng kept her last name; the rest of her family took on the Mandarin translation ("Wu").

Education and teaching

Ng trained in

at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...

for her Bachelor's and

Master's A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

degrees. During her final years of study in Vancouver, Ng dedicated a large portion of her time to caring for family during her mother's sickness. In 1977, she co-founded Vancouver Women's Research Centre (VWRC), an independent feminist organisation known for its participatory approach to research. Participatory research emphasises "knowledge for action" (in order to help resolve the problem being researched) and self-awareness on the part of the researcher as a participant with power and influence in research settings. VWRC was "founded on the principle that all research on women must start with women and must include their perception on the project, the parameters, the process, and the questions raised". VWRC's work helped identify and address problems faced by women—particularly immigrant women—in economic development, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. Its publications included a report (1980) on sexual harassment in the workplace undertaken in collaboration with the

British Columbia Federation of Labour The British Columbia Federation of Labour (BCFED), often shortened to the BC Federation of Labour, is a central organization for organized labour in British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in 1910 and claims to have a membership of 500,000, wi ...

. Ng went on to set up similar centres for immigrant women across Canada. In 1978, Ng moved to Toronto for her PhD at

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) is Canada's only all-graduate institute of teaching, learning and research, located in Toronto, Ontario. It is located directly above the St. George subway st ...

(OISE), which she received in 1984. She was mentored by

Dorothy E. Smith Dorothy Edith Smith (née Place; 6 July 1926 – 3 June 2022) was a British-born Canadian ethnographer, feminist studies scholar, sociologist, and writer with research interests in a variety of disciplines, including women's studies, feminist t ...

, and became involved with Women Working with Immigrant Women (1979) and INTERCEDE (1980) during this time. In the years that followed, Ng taught at the

and Queen's University. She returned to OISE in 1988 as professor, first teaching sociology and later, adult education and

. Ng directed the Centre for Women's Studies in Education (CWSE) from 2009 to 2013.

Death

On January 12, 2013, Ng passed away at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Ontario after a short and courageous fight with cancer. She left behind her parents and two brothers.

Scholarship and activism

Scholarship

Ng is noted for her scholarship on the

in Canada and its relation to immigration, gender, race, and class, as well as her contributions to

, embodied learning, and

. One major strand of her work documented the experiences of migrant women in Canada and their identity construction in a globalised world and labour market. Another strand of her work sought insight from Eastern philosophy and practice to integrate the mind-body-spirit segregation (often assuming Cartesian mind-body duality) characteristic of traditional academia and higher education. Ng has also written on the experience of academia from the standpoint of a minority, immigrant woman. Ng's 1999 study, conducted on 30 Chinese-speaking homeworkers, found that wages were frozen at early 1980s levels (below minimum wage for homeworkers); none were receiving overtime pay (instead being paid per piece); and all reported work-related injuries. Ng estimated that there were around 8,000 women, many of them from Asia, who were homeworkers in the Toronto garment industry. These homeworkers, who were paid by the piece, "regularly ha their piece rate reduced as their productivity increase . Many garments sewn by homeworkers " idnot have retail and manufacturing labels, making their employers difficult to trace and regulate", such that only two of the 30 interviewed workers reported labels on garments. The study was cited at a press conference at Queen's Park. In a "representative (if non-exhaustive)" review of Ng's scholarship which contextualises and connects the major strands of Ng's work, Elaine Coburn has considered Ng "one of Canadian sociology and political economy’s most underappreciated theorists" whose research and theorising "was and remains relatively marginalised within more mainstream academic publications". In regard to the unity of Ng's scholarship and activism, Coburn wrote:

Ng’s work is motivated by a commitment to socially just change. Arguably, this commitment informed her efforts towards analytical rigour and clarity, since the stakes of social change do not allow for sloppy analyses that might mislead solidarity work with and for the exploited and oppressed. This rigour included a reflexive awareness of the personal costs of social change, since struggles with and for dominated actors inevitably face the countervailing powers of dominant actors whose interests are threatened by the possibilities of fundamental social transformation. Sometimes, Ng observed, even forms of civility are dangerous for social change, as when empathetic desires to maintain harmonious relationships with “those close to us” lead us to mute our critiques of social justice (Ng, 1993, p.200). Likewise, Ng examined the ways that dominated actors–and even we who think of ourselves as working for social justice–may reproduce unjust inequalities and relations of exploitation, despite our best intentions.

Organising work

Ng was active in immigrant women's and garment workers' organising from the mid-1970s onwards, and "continue to refine her conceptualization of race, gender, and class relations based on her organizing experiences." Notably, she served as a board member of Inter Pares, and as board member then President (1994–95) of the

(CRIAW). The organisations she supported included:

Selected works

* "Decolonizing Teaching and Learning Through Embodied Learning: Toward an Integrated Approach." In ''Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization'', edited by Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2018. doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991919.01 ( Open Access - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) * "Lifelong Learning as Ideological Practice: An Analysis from the Perspective of Immigrant Women in Canada." ''International Journal of Lifelong Education'' 29, no. 2 (2010): 169–184. doi: 10.1080/02601371003616574 * "Toward an Integrative Approach to Equity in Education." In ''Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking Education for Social Justice'', 197–210. New York: Routledge, 2003. doi: 10.4324/9780203465547 * "Integrating Community Diversity in Toronto: On Whose Terms?" In ''The World in a City'', edited by C. Michael Lanphier and Paul Anisef, 373–456. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. * "Toward an Embodied Pedagogy: Exploring Health and the Body through Chinese Medicine." In ''Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World'', edited by George J. Sefa Dei, Budd L. Hall, and Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg, 168–183. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. * ''The Politics of Community Services: Immigrant Women, Class and the State''. 2nd ed. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1996.
Available through Internet Archive's Open Library
* ''Anti-Racism, Feminism, and Critical Approaches to Education'', edited by Roxana Ng, Pat Staton, and Joyce Scane. Westport: Bergin & Garvey, 1995.
Available through Internet Archive's Open Library
* "Racism, Sexism, and Nation Building in Canada." In ''Race, Identity, and Representation in Education'', edited by Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, 50–59. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Available through Google Books
* "A Woman Out of Control: Deconstructing Sexism and Racism in the University." ''Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation'' 18, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 189–205. doi: 10.2307/1495382 * ''Community Organization and the Canadian State'', edited by Roxana Ng, Gilian Walker, and Jacob Muller. Toronto: Garamond Press, 1990.
Available through Internet Archive's Open Library
* ''Immigrant Housewives in Canada: A Report''. Toronto: Immigrant Women's Centre, 1981. *

Notes

References

External links

Roxana Ng fonds at the University of Toronto Archives

Homeworkers Association records at the University of Toronto Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ng, Roxanna 1951 births 2013 deaths Academic staff of the University of New Brunswick Canadian women academics Canadian women non-fiction writers 20th-century Canadian non-fiction writers Hong Kong emigrants to Canada University of British Columbia alumni University of Toronto alumni 20th-century Canadian women Academic staff of Queen's University at Kingston