Seeking Equity: Disrupting a History of Exclusionary Immigration Frameworks

Tolerated, threatening and celebrated: How Canadian news media frames temporary migrant workers

“…Following the passage of these programmes, it becomes clear that compared to ‘citizen‐track’ immigrants, migrant workers in Canada encounter varying ‘gradations of temporariness’ (Chartrand & Vosko, 2021). Although the official reason given by the Canadian government is that the nature of the work affects their access to these entitlements, scholars observe that these differences emerge from larger ideologies regarding migrant ‘deservingness’ (Fernando & Rinaldi, 2017; Goldring & Landolt, 2021; Perry, 2020; Polanco, 2016). With the entrenchment of human capital approaches to immigration that emphasizes the use of immigration as a tool for economic growth rather than nation‐building and, with it, the growing use of ministerial discretion in setting immigration policies, divisions between citizen‐track and non‐citizen‐track migrants—and, within this group, migrants who are deemed as more or less deserving of accessing pathways to citizenship—are more pronounced.…”

Springing Amir

“…An intersectional lens on the sliding doors scenarios reveals how migrants and refugees experience racial violence, particularly anti-Black racism, on top of immigrant injustice and the violence of detention. Raced, classed, gendered, ableist, neoliberal, and post/neo-colonial biases construct legal and policy categories of "illegal, " "inadmissible, " and "criminal" people, creating barriers to equality for migrants and for citizens (see, e.g., Chan 2005;Clutterbuck 2015;Fernando and Rinaldi 2017;Goldring et al 2009;Sharma 2001;Silverman 2019;Silverman and Kaytaz 2020;Tam 2017). Tryon Woods (2013 reminds us that anti-Black paradigms ("prostitution, human traffi cking, international drug trade, or even feminist analyses of the larger historical context of globalization") continue to delimit South-to-North migrants into either victims or perpetrators, thereby injuring them in countless ways before they arrive at a prison or detention center.…”

Negotiating "cultural" identities: exploration of young Asian women's racialized-gendered experiences and mental well-being

“…Racist and exclusive immigration policies were developed and maintained to support the building of a White British colony that was, and still is, deeply racialized because it privileges British middle-and upper-classes. From the late 1800s to the 1960s, consistent mechanisms of racism were embedded in immigration policies, favouring immigrants who could assimilate into and embrace the Canadian society: those who were educated and spoke English (Fernando & Rinaldi, 2017). Immigrants, who did not socially reproduce European heritage on the basis of their ethnicity, were subjugated to substandard, low-paying working conditions (Roy, 2008), denied the right to vote, work in professional occupations, or own property (McGibbon & Etowa, 2009).…”

“…Despite the changes in Canadian immigration policies in the 1960s, justification for excluding specific groups of migrants (those who are considered undesirable) continue to be legalized within the immigration points system (Tannock, 2011) and Temporary Foreign Worker program (Sharma, 2006) to name a few. This selection process played an influential role in Canada's racialized ethnic, gender, and class landscape that continues to affirm the centrality of Whiteness and cultural inferiority of the racialized Other (Fernando & Rinaldi, 2017;Kumas-Tan, et al, 2007).…”