Bureaucratic Emotionalities: Managing Files, Forms, and Delays in the Canadian Spousal Reunification Process

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of Canadian women’s intimate relationships with a racialized man from the Global South, this article focuses on their experiences of the spousal reunification process. More specifically, I examine how the women emotionally and materially engage with spousal reunification procedures and administrative temporalities and how interactions with the Canadian immigration bureaucracy affect their subjectivity as women and citizens. I look at three embodied modes of involvement with bureaucratic procedures—waiting, working and fighting—each bringing forth its own set of emotions and creative coping strategies. I argue that love is central to the experience of the administrative procedures, as an ideological and technological tool used both by the state to regulate and discredit non-desirable relationships and by applicants to make sense of their position (of vulnerability) and to create meaningful narratives within state-imposed categories. A form of defensive agency emerges in women whose enormous application files, filled with “proof” of the authenticity of their relationship, shows how they have endorsed social anxieties about North-South intimacies and the strategies they have developed in order to legitimize their union.

Birth of a virtual community: Supporting Turkish couples' migration during COVID‐19

“…We realized that even if the main motivation of the virtual community was information exchange, as social beings, members also sought social support, a sense of belonging, and intimacy (see also Wellman & Gulia, 1999b, p. 173). As Geoffrion (2021, p. 10) clarified for the Canadian context, the waiting periods resulting from the bureaucratic processes during the marriage migration led to exacerbated emotions. We noticed that “stress,” “fear,” “disappointment,” “anger,” “demoralization,” and “sorrow” were the words or emojis members of the group used most often to express their feelings.…”

“…This manifests in the existence of income, housing, age, and integration exam requirements (Bonjour & Kraler, 2015; Pellander, 2021; Strik et al, 2013). The legal and policy framework is often implemented in a more restrictive way via the wide discretion of street‐level bureaucrats (D'Aoust, 2022; Geoffrion, 2021; Kolbasi‐Muyan, 2020; Lipsky, 1980; Scheel & Gutekunst, 2019, p. 851).…”

“…In addition, individuals also have the capacity to challenge national legislation and develop coping strategies by invoking the EU legislation, which have a more liberal perspective on marriage migration (Kolbasi Muyan, 2020;Groenendijk, 2015). The restrictive marriage migration requirements have had consequences at the individual level not only related to emotionalpersonal feelings that resulted from waiting periods and proof of a real relationship (Charsley et al, 2020;Geoffrion, 2021) but also led to the development of coping strategies such as preference for the "Europe route" to bypass the restrictive requirements and getting married on paper only for a marriage migration application (for further discussion, see Kolbasi-Muyan, 2017;Kulu-Glasgow & Leerkes, 2013;Sterckx et al, 2014;Strik et al, 2013).…”

Doing family online: (In)formal knowledge circulation, information‐seeking practices, and support communities

“…The articles featured in this issue show that online communities for parents or those that focus on family matters are also spaces of support, guidance, and empathy. Emotions are expressed in writing and through the use of images, “likes,” and emojis (see Geoffrion, 2021a; Kolbaşı & Tılıç, 2023; Moyano Dávila et al, 2023).…”