Speaking welcome: A discursive analysis of an immigrant mentorship event in Atlantic Canada

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of a business mentorship event in Fredericton, NB, which targeted immigrants sponsored through the New Brunswick Provincial Nominee Program (NBPNP)—an economic revitalization program designed to attract foreign business people and skilled workers to settle in the province. Applying Derrida’s concept of hospitality as a technology of whiteness, we examine the stated and implicitly understood expectations for the NBPNP, including the mechanisms at play for regulating newcomer’s behavior and comportment. We locate our analysis in the context of a regionally expressed Canadian multiculturalism, extending the relevance of our findings beyond Fredericton to Atlantic Canada. We ask: how do associated discourses of whiteness, multiculturalism and hospitality come into play to shape dynamics of power existing between hosts (settlement workers, various shadow state actors and mentor volunteers) and racialized newcomer guests? As a racialized threshold event, the Sip, Greet and Meet facilitated an exchange of hospitality such that the New Brunswick native hosts marked newcomers as perpetual arrivants, while holding the immigrants responsible for the success of their settlement in the Fredericton region. We show how the discourses regarding newcomers’ duties cleared nativist inhabitants of any accountability for the success of immigrant settlement. We also show how the process of welcoming conveyed a message that the future success of the local community, the province and even Atlantic Canada depended on the business class immigrants’ ability to serve as dutiful and grateful guests.

Live, Work, and Stay? Geographies of Immigrant Receptivity in Atlantic Canada’s Aspiring Gateways

“…Unlike NIDs, they are not surprised by new populations, but pre-emptively embark on projects to rebrand and to remake themselves as welcoming destinations. Atlantic Canada's low immigration numbers, for example, persist despite two decades of policy effort to attract immigrants as a remedy for population aging, out-migration, and slow growth (Akbari 2015;Allain et al 2019). Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs) -federal-provincial immigration agreements -have been in place in the Atlantic provinces since 2002 (Paquet 2019).…”

“…Writing from the Atlantic Canadian province of New Brunswick, for example, Allain et al (2019) warn that an overall climate of "conditional welcoming" has emerged in which host society attitudes hinge on the ability of newcomers to rescue the region's struggling communities. Through an analysis of a "sip, greet, and meet" immigration networking event in Fredericton, they underscore the unequal power relations between white settler hosts and racialized newcomers.…”

“…LIPs and other welcoming projects "leverage stories of place" (Walton-Roberts et al 2019, 353) to encourage communities to view migration as part of their local identity. While these efforts involve "well-rehearsed" discourses of Canadian multiculturalism (Allain et al 2019), they also engage with localized understandings of migration and gateway status. In smaller communities accustomed to decades of youth outmigration and isolation from contemporary immigration other than temporary workers, LIPs must convince residents that immigration is an opportunity.…”

“…Job offers attached to visas may promise economic integration, but aspiring gateways also recognize that other spheres matter for long-term retention. But employer hospitality can also be disciplinary (Allain et al 2019), and place-based visas may bind immigrant workers and their families to places with few resources. Further research is needed to examine newcomers' experiences of the support services they access and in the communities in question, as well as on the local economies of integration as organized by employers.…”

“…In this way, the Atlantic region has acted as a laboratory for new regional immigration policy models.The AIPP exposes ongoing tensions between the potential of multi-sector relationships in enabling the positive incorporation of newcomers, and the dilemmas introduced when employers have more power in the realm of immigration. Receptivity hinges on economic participation, asAllain et al (2019) emphasize. This program also recognizes that the successful retention of immigrants in aspiring gateways requires attention to many other dimensions of community support.…”