Ellen Maceachen
Biographic Data
| ID | 79134 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ellen Maceachen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ellen |
| FAMILY NAME | Maceachen |
| SIGNATURE | MACEACHEN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Waterloo |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6477-7650 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 197 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Revisiting Sample Size and Saturation Dilemma in Qualitative Research: A Philosophical and Practical Reflection on Reflexive Sufficiency
For both seasoned and novice qualitative researchers, the common question arises: “Is the sample size large enough?” This question is relevant to the purpose, philosophy, epistemology, and ontology behind qualitative research. Unlike quantitative studies, the purpose of qualitative research is not counting opinions or people but rather exploring diverse experiences. The ultimate aim of qualitative research is not to test a hypothesis; hence, samp…
Home-based telework and worker health and well-being across service occupations: A critical interpretive synthesis
The rapid expansion of home-based telework since COVID-19 has diversified the remote workforce to include service occupations centered on real-time interaction with patients, clients, and customers. Yet the literature on telework and health remains largely oriented toward the experiences of knowledge workers, obscuring how home-based telework shapes the health and well-being of interaction-intensive service workers. We conducted a Critical Interp…
Improving LGBT Labor Market Outcomes Through Laws, Workplace Policies, and Support Programs: A Scoping Review
Tackling Paradoxes and Double Binds for a Healthier Workplace: Insights from the Early Covid-19 Responses in Quebec and Ontario
The urgency of managing the COVID-19 health crisis in workplaces led to tensions, work overload, and confusion about preventive measures. This study presents a secondary analysis of qualitative data on paradoxes and double binds (PDBs) experienced by precarious essential workers in Canada who interacted with the public and their supervisors. Based on 13 interviews from a larger qualitative dataset, we examine how workers navigated public health r…
How can you worry about employment and survival at the same time: Employment and mental health among precariously employed cisgender and transgender sexual minority adult men in Toronto, Canada
This study addresses a gap in the labour market and occupational health literatures among sexual and gender minority workers by exploring the relationship between precarious employment and mental health through a political economy framework. Narratives from 20 cisgender and transgender sexual minority men were analysed to uncover the production of employment and mental health inequities. Results are presented temporally, including employment read…
If I Were in his Shoes: Photo-Prompted Storytelling in Interviews With People Living With Dementia
Introduction: Supportive approaches to engaging with people living with dementia in research are needed to ensure that research methods are accessible to and incorporate the experiences of people living with dementia. This study sought to explore how the use of a photo-prompted storytelling technique impacted both the data collected as well as the engagement of people living with dementia in research during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined an u…
Managing the unknown or the art of preventing Sars-CoV-2 infection in workplaces in a context of evolving science, precarious employment, and communication barriers. A qualitative situational analysis…
Introduction: The issue of communications in the public space, and in particular, in the workplace, became critical in the early stages of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and was exacerbated by the stress of the drastic transformation of the organization of work, the speed with which new information was being made available, and the constant fear of being infected or developing a more severe or even fatal form of the disease. Although effective communica…
“It is not just about my work, my identities count”: The Influence of Intersectional Identities on the Employment Experiences of Black African Immigrant Women in Ontario, Canada
Examining the health and wellness of solo self-employed workers through narratives of precarity: A qualitative study
Neoliberalism fabricates a 'precariat' Self-Employed class. This is a social position that is vague, volatile, and contingent, that foreshadows potential threats of the health and wellbeing of a growing population in the changing workforce. The findings in this research facilitate some policy implications and practices at the federal or provincial government level to better support the health and wellbeing of SE'd workers
Precarious Employment: A Neglected Issue Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers
On-Demand and Marketplace Platforms: Gig Care Work Conditions on Two Digital Labour Platform Care Models
With worker shortages and the need for care workers projected to grow, personal care work through digital labour platforms (DLPs) is important to understand. This paper considers DLPs used by gig care workers providing personal care in Ontario, Canada. We recruited 20 women gig care workers for interviews. We examined socio-technical processes such as signing up on platforms, creating profiles, and searching for jobs. We draw on Institutional Eth…
Self-employment, illness, and the social security system: A qualitative study of the experiences of solo self-employed workers in Ontario, Canada
Meagre government-provided formal supports may adversely impact the health and wellbeing of self-employed workers. This study points to ways that statutory social protection programs should be decoupled from benefits provided by employers. Instead, government can introduce a comprehensive program that may compensate or protect low-income individuals irrespective of employment status
Disentangling assumptions: Refugee women's access to and use of social assistance in Canada
Refugee women are often unable to secure meaningful employment on arrival to Canada. As a result, the uptake of social assistance is common among new arrivals as a temporary provision of income whilst attending programs or upgrading skills. This study explored the factors that contribute to the use of social assistance among refugee women with a focus on the women’s views and experience with the current welfare state as a tool for social protecti…
“We need to talk to each other”: Crossing traditional boundaries between public health and occupational health to address Covid-19
Introduction: This study examined how public health (PH) and occupational health (OH) sectors worked together and separately, in four different Canadian provinces to address COVID-19 as it affected at-risk workers. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18 OH and PH experts between June to December 2021. Responses about how PH and OH worked across disciplines to protect workers were analyzed. Methods: We conducted a qualitative analysis to ident…
Work without workers: Legal geographies of family farm exclusions from labour laws in Alberta, Canada
An Alternative Method of Interviewing: Critical Reflections on Videoconference Interviews for Qualitative Data Collection
Qualitative research is an increasingly popular research approach for tackling the evolving complexity of social issues. With this rise in use, methods of qualitative data collection are becoming highly diverse, moving away from conventional approaches and welcoming more innovative and creative methods of data collection in a quest to produce critically and theoretically engaged new knowledge. Although traditional face-to-face interviews remain a…
New and small firms in a modern working life: How do we make entrepreneurship healthy
The interplay between health, entrepreneurship and small and emerging businesses is a research field receiving growing interest. Studies point to both health-related risks and opportunities, which have implications for the social and economic lives of entrepreneurs and employees in small and new firms. Research has been carried out in different disciplines, which have contributed in different ways to the understanding of this inquiry. As the fiel…
Entrepreneurial experiences of Syrian refugee women in Canada: A feminist grounded qualitative study
Understanding the blended impacts of Covid-19 and systemic inequalities on sub-Saharan African immigrants in Canada
Employment integration experiences of Syrian refugee women arriving through Canada's varied refugee protection programmes
This article examines the employment integration experiences of Syrian refugee women arriving to Canada through four common refugee streams: government-assisted, private sponsorship, Blended Visa office referral, and as refugee claimants. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugee women and key informants, we show how differences between streams – eligibility requirements, supports provided, services rendered – facilitate…
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis: Moving Beyond a Social Constructionist Analytic
Although social constructionism (SC) and Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) are well established constructionist analytical methods, this article propose that Foucauldian discourse analysis is more useful for qualitative data analysis as it examines social legitimacy. While the SC is able to illuminate how the 'meaning' of our social action is constructed through our everyday interaction in socio-cultural and political contexts, questions emerg…
Don't take a poo: Worker misbehaviour in on‐demand ride‐hail carpooling
Workers actively negotiate contradictions between discourses of flexibility and entrepreneurialism and actually existing conditions of risk and precarity endemic to online self‐employed work. This article examines how ride‐hail drivers counter‐branded UberPool—a carpool ride‐hail service—as ‘UberPoo’. While marketed as a solution to congestion, UberPool created risky and coercive working conditions for ride‐hail drivers. Our analysis is from a st…
"Can Someone Help Me?" Refugee Women's Experiences of Using Settlement Agencies to Find Work in Canada
The Integrated Health Hub (IHH) Model: The Evolution of a Community Based Primary Care and Mental Health Centre
Employment and work safety among 12 to 14 year olds: Listening to parents
The findings suggest that positive parental attitudes towards working overshadow occupational health and safety concerns. Parents may discount potential hazards based on the presence of certain mitigating factors
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis: Moving Beyond a Social Constructionist Analytic
Although social constructionism (SC) and Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) are well established constructionist analytical methods, this article propose that Foucauldian discourse analysis is more useful for qualitative data analysis as it examines social legitimacy. While the SC is able to illuminate how the 'meaning' of our social action is constructed through our everyday interaction in socio-cultural and political contexts, questions emerg…
An Alternative Method of Interviewing: Critical Reflections on Videoconference Interviews for Qualitative Data Collection
Qualitative research is an increasingly popular research approach for tackling the evolving complexity of social issues. With this rise in use, methods of qualitative data collection are becoming highly diverse, moving away from conventional approaches and welcoming more innovative and creative methods of data collection in a quest to produce critically and theoretically engaged new knowledge. Although traditional face-to-face interviews remain a…
Gendered, Invisible Work in Non‐profit Social Service Organizations: Implications for Worker Health and Safety
Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play an important role in the provision of health and social services. In Canada the nonprofit sector includes 7.5 million volunteers and employs over 1.6 million paid workers. The sector is overwhelmingly female‐dominated — women make up over 80 per cent of workers in these nonprofit services. Work performed by women has traditionally been undervalued and invisible. It has often been considered safe by researchers,…
Health and the Social Relations of Work: A Study of the Health-related Experiences of Employees in Small Workplaces
On the basis of a qualitative study of health in small enterprises, this paper attempts to theorise the social production of illness and injury in the workplace. Particular features of working life in small workplaces, especially their personalised social relations and low polarisation of employer-employee interests, shape workers' perceptions of the employment relationship and of health in relation to work. Strained authority relations at work c…
You are free to set your own hours: Governing worker productivity and health through flexibility and resilience
The demise of repetitive strain injury in sceptical governing rationalities of workplace managers
In the mid-1990s, RSI (repetitive strain injury) loomed as an occupational health epidemic in industrialised countries. A decade later, the problem appears to have faded away, but there has been little explanation for how this problem might have diminished. This paper offers an explanation for the decline of RSI in the social relations of workplaces, in the pragmatic, day-to-day governance of occupational health by workplace managers. Using the c…
"Can Someone Help Me?" Refugee Women's Experiences of Using Settlement Agencies to Find Work in Canada
"Workplace injury or "part of the job: Towards a gendered understanding of injuries and complaints among young workers
Delicate dances: Immigrant workers' experiences of injury reporting and claim filing
Introduction. Immigrants often come to Canada for the purpose of employment and make up a large proportion of our labour force. Yet, these workers' labour market experience may not always be positive – new immigrant workers can have difficulties finding a job in their field and may end up working in ‘survival jobs’ that expose them to workplace hazards. Workers who are new to Canada may not be familiar with legislation designed to protect them at…
Employment integration experiences of Syrian refugee women arriving through Canada's varied refugee protection programmes
This article examines the employment integration experiences of Syrian refugee women arriving to Canada through four common refugee streams: government-assisted, private sponsorship, Blended Visa office referral, and as refugee claimants. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugee women and key informants, we show how differences between streams – eligibility requirements, supports provided, services rendered – facilitate…
Don't take a poo: Worker misbehaviour in on‐demand ride‐hail carpooling
Workers actively negotiate contradictions between discourses of flexibility and entrepreneurialism and actually existing conditions of risk and precarity endemic to online self‐employed work. This article examines how ride‐hail drivers counter‐branded UberPool—a carpool ride‐hail service—as ‘UberPoo’. While marketed as a solution to congestion, UberPool created risky and coercive working conditions for ride‐hail drivers. Our analysis is from a st…
Another Person in the Room: Using Interpreters During Interviews With Immigrant Workers
Cross-language research poses many challenges. When researchers and participants do not speak the same language, meanings expressed by participants might not be understood in the same way by researchers, and the richness of participants' experiences might be lost. This can lead to the misrepresentation and silencing of issues faced by these participants, especially newcomers. In this article, we critically examine our experience conducting qualit…
Precarious Employment: A Neglected Issue Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers
On-Demand and Marketplace Platforms: Gig Care Work Conditions on Two Digital Labour Platform Care Models
With worker shortages and the need for care workers projected to grow, personal care work through digital labour platforms (DLPs) is important to understand. This paper considers DLPs used by gig care workers providing personal care in Ontario, Canada. We recruited 20 women gig care workers for interviews. We examined socio-technical processes such as signing up on platforms, creating profiles, and searching for jobs. We draw on Institutional Eth…
Understanding the blended impacts of Covid-19 and systemic inequalities on sub-Saharan African immigrants in Canada
The Integrated Health Hub (IHH) Model: The Evolution of a Community Based Primary Care and Mental Health Centre
Disentangling assumptions: Refugee women's access to and use of social assistance in Canada
Refugee women are often unable to secure meaningful employment on arrival to Canada. As a result, the uptake of social assistance is common among new arrivals as a temporary provision of income whilst attending programs or upgrading skills. This study explored the factors that contribute to the use of social assistance among refugee women with a focus on the women’s views and experience with the current welfare state as a tool for social protecti…
Work without workers: Legal geographies of family farm exclusions from labour laws in Alberta, Canada
Developmentally Disabled Adults in Community Living: The Significance of Personal Control
Virtually absent from the debate surrounding the benefits and setbacks of community living for the developmentally disabled is an understanding of community life from the viewpoint of the clients. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of seven mildly developmentally disabled adults. The study challenges the assumption that integrated community housing provides an independence similar to that enjoyed by the normal population. I…
Health and the Social Relations of Work: A Study of the Health-related Experiences of Employees in Small Workplaces
On the basis of a qualitative study of health in small enterprises, this paper attempts to theorise the social production of illness and injury in the workplace. Particular features of working life in small workplaces, especially their personalised social relations and low polarisation of employer-employee interests, shape workers' perceptions of the employment relationship and of health in relation to work. Strained authority relations at work c…
The mundane administration of worker bodies: From welfarism to neoliberalism
We are in the midst of a disjuncture between welfarist rationalities which assume collective insurance techniques such as workers' compensation, and neoliberal rationalities which assume a greater burden on individual responsibility to avoid risk. This study examines the mundane administration of the welfarist Canadian workers' compensation system through a qualitative study of how managers in four Ontario newspaper workplaces understand and resp…
The demise of repetitive strain injury in sceptical governing rationalities of workplace managers
In the mid-1990s, RSI (repetitive strain injury) loomed as an occupational health epidemic in industrialised countries. A decade later, the problem appears to have faded away, but there has been little explanation for how this problem might have diminished. This paper offers an explanation for the decline of RSI in the social relations of workplaces, in the pragmatic, day-to-day governance of occupational health by workplace managers. Using the c…
"Workplace injury or "part of the job: Towards a gendered understanding of injuries and complaints among young workers
You are free to set your own hours: Governing worker productivity and health through flexibility and resilience
Gendered, Invisible Work in Non‐profit Social Service Organizations: Implications for Worker Health and Safety
Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play an important role in the provision of health and social services. In Canada the nonprofit sector includes 7.5 million volunteers and employs over 1.6 million paid workers. The sector is overwhelmingly female‐dominated — women make up over 80 per cent of workers in these nonprofit services. Work performed by women has traditionally been undervalued and invisible. It has often been considered safe by researchers,…
Delicate dances: Immigrant workers' experiences of injury reporting and claim filing
Introduction. Immigrants often come to Canada for the purpose of employment and make up a large proportion of our labour force. Yet, these workers' labour market experience may not always be positive – new immigrant workers can have difficulties finding a job in their field and may end up working in ‘survival jobs’ that expose them to workplace hazards. Workers who are new to Canada may not be familiar with legislation designed to protect them at…
Employment and work safety among 12 to 14 year olds: Listening to parents
The findings suggest that positive parental attitudes towards working overshadow occupational health and safety concerns. Parents may discount potential hazards based on the presence of certain mitigating factors
Another Person in the Room: Using Interpreters During Interviews With Immigrant Workers
Cross-language research poses many challenges. When researchers and participants do not speak the same language, meanings expressed by participants might not be understood in the same way by researchers, and the richness of participants' experiences might be lost. This can lead to the misrepresentation and silencing of issues faced by these participants, especially newcomers. In this article, we critically examine our experience conducting qualit…
The Integrated Health Hub (IHH) Model: The Evolution of a Community Based Primary Care and Mental Health Centre
Don't take a poo: Worker misbehaviour in on‐demand ride‐hail carpooling
Workers actively negotiate contradictions between discourses of flexibility and entrepreneurialism and actually existing conditions of risk and precarity endemic to online self‐employed work. This article examines how ride‐hail drivers counter‐branded UberPool—a carpool ride‐hail service—as ‘UberPoo’. While marketed as a solution to congestion, UberPool created risky and coercive working conditions for ride‐hail drivers. Our analysis is from a st…
"Can Someone Help Me?" Refugee Women's Experiences of Using Settlement Agencies to Find Work in Canada
New and small firms in a modern working life: How do we make entrepreneurship healthy
The interplay between health, entrepreneurship and small and emerging businesses is a research field receiving growing interest. Studies point to both health-related risks and opportunities, which have implications for the social and economic lives of entrepreneurs and employees in small and new firms. Research has been carried out in different disciplines, which have contributed in different ways to the understanding of this inquiry. As the fiel…
Entrepreneurial experiences of Syrian refugee women in Canada: A feminist grounded qualitative study
Understanding the blended impacts of Covid-19 and systemic inequalities on sub-Saharan African immigrants in Canada
Employment integration experiences of Syrian refugee women arriving through Canada's varied refugee protection programmes
This article examines the employment integration experiences of Syrian refugee women arriving to Canada through four common refugee streams: government-assisted, private sponsorship, Blended Visa office referral, and as refugee claimants. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugee women and key informants, we show how differences between streams – eligibility requirements, supports provided, services rendered – facilitate…
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis: Moving Beyond a Social Constructionist Analytic
Although social constructionism (SC) and Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) are well established constructionist analytical methods, this article propose that Foucauldian discourse analysis is more useful for qualitative data analysis as it examines social legitimacy. While the SC is able to illuminate how the 'meaning' of our social action is constructed through our everyday interaction in socio-cultural and political contexts, questions emerg…
“We need to talk to each other”: Crossing traditional boundaries between public health and occupational health to address Covid-19
Introduction: This study examined how public health (PH) and occupational health (OH) sectors worked together and separately, in four different Canadian provinces to address COVID-19 as it affected at-risk workers. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18 OH and PH experts between June to December 2021. Responses about how PH and OH worked across disciplines to protect workers were analyzed. Methods: We conducted a qualitative analysis to ident…
Work without workers: Legal geographies of family farm exclusions from labour laws in Alberta, Canada
An Alternative Method of Interviewing: Critical Reflections on Videoconference Interviews for Qualitative Data Collection
Qualitative research is an increasingly popular research approach for tackling the evolving complexity of social issues. With this rise in use, methods of qualitative data collection are becoming highly diverse, moving away from conventional approaches and welcoming more innovative and creative methods of data collection in a quest to produce critically and theoretically engaged new knowledge. Although traditional face-to-face interviews remain a…
Self-employment, illness, and the social security system: A qualitative study of the experiences of solo self-employed workers in Ontario, Canada
Meagre government-provided formal supports may adversely impact the health and wellbeing of self-employed workers. This study points to ways that statutory social protection programs should be decoupled from benefits provided by employers. Instead, government can introduce a comprehensive program that may compensate or protect low-income individuals irrespective of employment status
Disentangling assumptions: Refugee women's access to and use of social assistance in Canada
Refugee women are often unable to secure meaningful employment on arrival to Canada. As a result, the uptake of social assistance is common among new arrivals as a temporary provision of income whilst attending programs or upgrading skills. This study explored the factors that contribute to the use of social assistance among refugee women with a focus on the women’s views and experience with the current welfare state as a tool for social protecti…
Managing the unknown or the art of preventing Sars-CoV-2 infection in workplaces in a context of evolving science, precarious employment, and communication barriers. A qualitative situational analysis…
Introduction: The issue of communications in the public space, and in particular, in the workplace, became critical in the early stages of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and was exacerbated by the stress of the drastic transformation of the organization of work, the speed with which new information was being made available, and the constant fear of being infected or developing a more severe or even fatal form of the disease. Although effective communica…
“It is not just about my work, my identities count”: The Influence of Intersectional Identities on the Employment Experiences of Black African Immigrant Women in Ontario, Canada
Political science (24 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Public relations (14 works) · Medicine (13 works) · Business (11 works) · Qualitative research (11 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Economics (9 works)