Lindsey McKay | Thompson Rivers University (original) (raw)

Papers by Lindsey McKay

Studies in Social Justice, 2016

This article addresses transplant tourism as one facet of the international organ trade. It asks ... more This article addresses transplant tourism as one facet of the international organ trade. It asks whether mainstream media portrayals of Canadian transplant tourist journeys convey messages supportive of stronger efforts to stop extraterritorial organ purchase. A postcolonial theoretical approach using Mary Louise Pratt's study of travel writing is employed to conduct a discourse analysis of Canadian media and cultural representation from 1988 to 2015. The public learns that transplant tourism is " bad " but understandable, and either not our problem or a symptom of another problem. Three forms this message takes are: the broader organ trade is a distant and insurmountable problem; transplant tourists are innocent victims; and, resolution of a larger, national organ scarcity problem will end transplant tourism. I conclude that the media generates ambivalence towards the issue of transplant tourism. Reader attention is drawn away from health outcomes and human rights, especially of organ providers – reasons Canada might do more to stop transplant tourism – towards the challenges faced by transplant tourists, with the effect of eclipsing public discussion of whether and how to stop Canadians from buying organs in other countries.

http://jir.sagepub.com/content/58/4/543.full.pdf+html Canada has two parental leave benefit progr... more http://jir.sagepub.com/content/58/4/543.full.pdf+html
Canada has two parental leave benefit programs for the care of a newborn or adopted child: a federal program, and, since 2006, a provincial program in Québec. Informed by a social reproduction framework, this article compares access to parental leave benefits between Québec and the rest of Canada among employed contributors by family income and by its two different programs. Our analysis of quantitative data reveals that maternal access to leave benefits has improved dramatically over the past decade in the province of Québec, especially for low-income households. By contrast, on average 40% of employed mothers in the rest of Canada are consistently excluded from maternity or parental benefits under the federal program. We argue that one key explanation for the gap in rates of access to benefits between the two programs and between families by income is difference in eligibility criteria. In Canada, parental leaves paid for by all employers and employees are unevenly supporting the social reproduction of higher earners. Our article draws attention to the need for greater public and scholarly scrutiny of social class inequality effects of parental leave policy.

In P.Moss (ed.), International Review of Leave Policies and Research 2015, 2015

Theoretical resources regarding the creation of objects and orientations in ideology and mate... more Theoretical resources regarding the creation of objects and orientations in ideology and material practice are drawn on to develop an original, theoretical account of organ transplantation. This analytical lens is then used to advance understanding of the social relations that enable and inhibit the exchange of kidneys for transplantation. The argument is that customary claims about how to increase organ donation, set within an altruism versus market framework, deflect attention from a significant variable: the legitimacy and limits of removing kidneys from their owners – in other words, alienability. Two sets of rules are revealed, with one set, the rules of altruism, requiring and eliciting public engagement, and the other set, the rules of alienability, being pushed by experts within their realm of authority. Both sets of rules demarcate boundary lines through a fundamental tension between recipients, intermediaries and donors that is demonstrated to be imbalanced by a recipient-centric orientation.
As a result, public discourse is focused on a small set of variables and distanced from a far more complex set of dynamics predominantly emerging from the relationality of donors and recipients.
Seeing the deflection of attention challenges both the legitimacy of conventional wisdom about transplantation, especially as it informs public policy, and the common view of a complete distinction differentiating altruism from capitalist modes of body part exchange. It also raises new questions about persuasion and public knowledge that trouble altruism, and shows how efforts to alleviate the suffering of some, (potential) recipients, has largely unintentionally led to a structured forgetting of the suffering of others, (potential) donors. This is demonstrated for both deceased donation and living donation using a case study of one organ, the kidney, in one jurisdiction, Ontario, Canada, from 2000 to 2014, with a focus on donors and intermediaries.

In this paper, we compare Quebec and Canada with regard to parental leave and place them separate... more In this paper, we compare Quebec and Canada with regard to parental leave and place them separately within a typology, even though both are from the same country. We group the province of Quebec together with countries that promote work-life balance, most of which are Nordic countries. We do so on the grounds of Quebec’s new parental leave program, which, introduced in 2006, includes a non-transferable paternity leave. Indeed, since the introduction of the program, the participation of Quebec fathers in parental leave has increased significantly, namely from about one in five fathers to four in five fathers. Building on that, we postulate that the French part of Canada, i.e. Québec, has engendered social innovation and discuss the evolution of Quebec toward a family-work relationship model that is based on work-family articulation or reconciliation. This is in opposition to English Canada and especially the United States, which subscribe more to a laissez-faire approach. Canada, it should be noted, is also associated by some authors with what is called here the alternation model, which leads mothers to work part time or leave the market when they have children. (Hantrais et Letablier, 1997, 1996). If parental leaves are financed and supported by the State, their implementation is the result of a long process where Québec social actors, mainly women’s groups and unions, have been very vocal and active in requesting changes in the leaves, which leads us to speak here of social innovation.

Vancouver: UBC Press , Dec 1, 2012

Father Involvement in Canada brings together more than a dozen leading scholars of fatherhood iss... more Father Involvement in Canada brings together more than a dozen leading scholars of fatherhood issues to examine the role of the Canadian father. They look at the experiences of fathers from all angles, considering different ages, ethnicities, marital statuses, and economic brackets, and examining issues such as the impact of poverty, access to paternity leave, and the availability of support from social institutions. By coalescing these approaches, the book creates a map of interlocking individual, familial, and socio-economic systems in which fathers are embedded. National in scope, Fatherhood Involvement in Canada is the first book to summarize and challenge current scholarship of Canadian fatherhood and offer new concepts, theoretical frameworks, and research directions.

Fathering: A Journal of Research, Theory, and Practice About Men As Fathers, Vol.8(3): 300-320., Jan 1, 2010

p. 33-50 in The Politics of Parental Leave Policies: Children, Parenting, Gender and the Labour Market edited by Peter Moss and Sheila Kammerman, Jul 1, 2009

... at-home parents in Canada; the decision on the part of Canadian parents to have one parentsta... more ... at-home parents in Canada; the decision on the part of Canadian parents to have one parentstay at home ... to care for their children with the requirement that the nanny must live in the home of her ... Fathering, care, and domestic responsibility, Toronto: University ofToronto Press. ...