Ram, Angeline2026-06-122026-06-122026-06-122026-05-25https://hdl.handle.net/10012/23607Background: In Canadian air transportation organizations, employee safety reporting programs (ESRPs) are used as formal channels for all workers, including aircraft maintenance engineers and pilots, to raise occupational health and safety and aviation safety management system concerns. However, reportable issues are narrowly defined, so workplace incivility falls outside of sector safety reporting criteria. Although participation in ESRPs is framed as a moral duty within non-punitive, policy-driven safety cultures, policies do not necessarily create environments where workers feel safe to speak up. Instead, workers navigate these environments through constrained agency, intentionally remaining silent. In many cases, workers prioritize coping strategies that support their wellbeing over participation in formal reporting systems. From a labor geography perspective, this gap reflects how socio-spatial relations, shaped by culture, hierarchy, and colonial, imperial, and patriarchal legacies, normalize incivility. Though the Canadian air transportation sector has largely treated workers as a homogeneous group, further investigation is necessary to understand how socio-spatial relations, intersectional identities, and constrained agency shape workplace experiences, wellbeing, and participation in safety reporting. Objectives: Most sector literature examines gender-based incivilities experienced by women pilots through a homogeneous lens, assuming identical experiences regardless of race, occupation, immigration status, or sexual orientation. Workers’ experiences shaped by intersectional identities (race, gender, occupation, occupational status, immigration status, sexual orientation) remain under-examined. Situated within feminist epistemologies, this research asks: How do the lived experiences of air transportation workers in Ontario shape their participation in Employee Safety Reporting (ESR)? Objectives are: 1) explore how occupational identities shape air transportation workers' experiences in the workplace; 2) explore how intersectional identities shape air transportation workers' experiences in the workplace; and 3) investigate how identity-based incivility shapes ESR participation. Methodology: This exploratory qualitative research draws on labor and feminist geographies and Black intersectionality theory to expose power relations and agency. I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers of diverse statuses and identities. Interviews were video- and audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed in NVivo. Analysis used Hollinda et al.’s (2023) blended methods (summative content analysis + thematic analysis) and draws on Nash (2018) to use intersectionality as a methodological tool to generate inter-categorical profiles. Findings and Discussion: Three findings emerged: 1) occupational hierarchies shape incivility and wellbeing; 2) socio-spatial relations through incivility target intersectional identities, and shape wellbeing; and 3) incivility constrains agency, leading to coping over reporting. Workers in the same occupation are not monoliths: interlocking identities shape who is targeted, and incivility shapes how wellbeing is experienced. AMEs reported more identity-based incivility than pilots, and wellbeing impacts increased as occupational status decreased, reflecting power geometries that normalize disrespect toward subordinates. Incivility influenced wellbeing through six connected subthemes: stress and anxiety, frustration and powerlessness, exclusion, obsessing about interactions, self-doubt, and adverse effects on home life. Rather than reporting iv through ESRPs, workers, especially in lower-status roles, used constrained agency to protect wellbeing through overlapping coping strategies of adaptation, tolerance, and withdrawal. These strategies reflect a transaction in which employment security or advancement can outweigh the perceived benefits of reporting, challenging assumptions that policy requirements alone ensure participation. Conclusion: Socio-spatial relations among AMEs and pilots are shaped by hierarchical histories and colonial and patriarchal cultures that normalize identity-based incivility. When workers are targeted because of their intersectional identities, their already constrained agency becomes further limited, and they cope in ways that support their wellbeing rather than participate in safety reporting. Organizations need to integrate psychological safety into Safety Management Systems (SMS) as a foundational aspect of safety across teams and daily operations, and the sector should view workers through an intersectional lens, as occupational status and intersecting identities shape both exposure to incivility and the capacity to raise concerns. Policymakers must address the gap in which normalized incivility continues to cause distress and deter reporting. Recommendations include revising SMS and safety culture requirements to encompass employee wellbeing; training leaders and crews to recognize and address subtle incivility; and linking occupational health reports with safety data to ensure accountability, follow-up, and ongoing evaluation.enlaborlabourintersectionalitywellbeingfeministaviationsafetyDoctoral Thesis