The unsuspected ties between linguistic affiliation and professional distress in healthcare social workers

This article explores the role of linguistic affiliation in the representation of the professional distress of francophone healthcare social workers in minority settings. Faced with a contradictory literature on the influence of linguistic affiliation on mental health and workplace well-being, we conducted 30 semi-directive interviews with healthcare social workers in three provinces: Manitoba, Ontario and New-Brunswick. A thematic analysis of content was performed on the interview transcriptions and organized through the NVivo platform. Overall, our results indicate that linguistic affiliation relate to the social representation of professional distress on matters of recognition, discrimination, employment precarity and role boundaries. These findings were discussed in terms of their ties to professional identity, the lived experience of our participants and the power relations that they involved.