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In recent years, Canada has moved towards a system of 'two-step' immigration, wherein a growing proportion of new permanent residents are selected from people who are already in the country on a temporary work permit. While the 'two-step' selection approach has been lauded as improving immigrants' labour market outcomes, the process to achieve permanent residence can be complex and the stringent selection criteria prevent many migrants from attaining permanent status. In this paper, we examine the administrative burden that migrants with precarious status encounter in their interactions with state immigration bureaucracies as they try to attain permanent residence through economic programmes. The research is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with 20 migrants with precarious status in the provinces of Ontario, Alberta and Quebec. Participants describe the stressful life consequences resulting from confusing and opaque administrative processes, unpredictable wait times, costly application fees, bureaucratic errors and a lack of accountability. We theorise how such experiences of administrative burden can compound into forms of bureaucratic violence that prolong migrant precarity, exacerbating the legal violence inherent in state immigration categories which deny full social rights to migrants without permanent residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing proportion of immigrants enter Canada on temporary resident permits to study or work, or they enter as asylum seekers—all with limited rights or access to permanent residence. As a result, transnational family separation is a growing phenomenon among immigrants who are unable to migrate as a family or who face barriers to family reunification. Using a systems-centered intersectional lens, the authors examine pathways to transnational family separation among immigrant women who arrived in Canada with precarious immigration status. Analysis draws from qualitative interviews with 35 immigrant women living in different regions of Ontario, Canada. Through examining intersecting social systems and processes, the authors analyze how transnational family separation is constituted through embedded gendered, racial, and class processes in Canada's immigration system and labor market, which normalize family separation as a common experience for racialized immigrants in Canada. Given the harms associated with prolonged family separation, the authors urge the social work profession to advocate for immigration policies that prioritize family reunification and uphold the rights of migrants to maintain family unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a national survey on social workers' attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (N=4,499), we collected information on respondents' perceptions of immigrants as threats and respondents' views on structural inequality as it pertains to immigrants' opportunities for success. Contrary to the Council on Social Work Education's Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards stating the need for social workers to understand the existence and functioning of structural forces of inequality, nearly a third of our respondents denied that immigrants are disadvantaged compared to U.S.-born citizens, and more than a third denied that disadvantage is related to race, ethnicity, or national origin. Those who denied disadvantage were more likely than those who did not to see immigrants as threats. We provide interpretations for these findings and offer some recommendations for social work research and education geared toward deepening practitioners' knowledge of the structural barriers faced by immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the right to sponsor family members' immigration is framed by migrant caregivers in relation to Canadian legislation and political rhetoric. We focus on official immigration policy and political rhetoric between 2014–2018, a period when Canada imposed stringent language and education requirements on migrant workers seeking permanent residence. By examining how political rhetoric frames migrant caregivers as not earning "enough" to migrate with their families, we illustrate how lawmakers promote tolerance for differential inclusion within multicultural discourse. Migrant caregivers, the majority of whom originate in the Philippines, similarly employ market-based values to position themselves as deserving the right to sponsor their family members' immigration. They also draw upon traditional ethics of reciprocal obligation, however, to frame their relationship to Canadian employers and the state in ways that reconstruct the terms of multicultural citizenship in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of emerging scholarship on border governance, this article examines how discourses of "fraud" in Canada merge with public management techniques to produce structurally embedded borders. We focus on regulatory changes introduced between 2010 and 2014 that aimed to deter and punish people who participate in "marriage fraud." We then present the gendered and racialized impact of antifraud regulations through a case analysis of the implementation of Conditional Permanent Resident status (PR) from 2012 to 2017, which required some newly sponsored spouses and partners to remain in a conjugal relationship with their sponsor for two years after immigration. Our analysis of parliamentary proceedings illustrates how public management logics and the use of new digital technologies are mobilized to expand border enforcement practices internally and outside the territorial boundaries of the nation. We argue that despite the repeal of conditional PR in 2017, the deterrence of marriage fraud through structurally embedded borders continues to regulate racialized immigrants in exclusionary ways that disproportionately impact women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the branding of 'Canadian experience' in Canadian immigration policy as a rhetorical strategy for neoliberal nation-building. Since 2008, the Canadian government has introduced an unprecedented number of changes to immigration policy. While the bulk of these policies produce more temporary and precarious forms of migration, the Canadian government has mobilized the rhetoric of 'Canadian experience' as a means to identify immigrants who carry the promise of economic and social integration. Through a critical discourse analysis of Canadian print media and political discourse, we trace how the brand of Canadian experience taps into the affective value of national identity in an era of global economic insecurity. We also illustrate how the discourse of Canadian experience (CE) remains ideologically deracialized, such that the government's embrace of CE as an immigrant selection criterion dismisses the discriminatory effects that this discourse is shown to have for racialized immigrants in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how nongovernmental service providers navigate devolutionary trends in Canada, in both immigration control and integration policy, when responding to migrants who come to them for help and support. Drawing upon conceptualizations of citizenship as a 'negotiated relationship' (), I explore how social service providers, who work amidst a complex interplay of federal, provincial, and local policies, can influence both who is deemed worthy of social membership and what rights an individual can successfully claim from the state. Empirically, this article focuses on observation of community meetings and conversational interviews with service providers in violence against women shelters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada's most populous and diverse city. While service providers navigate different levels of government to advocate for women's rights to seek safety from abuse, I argue that both individual service providers and the organizations in which they work monitor and constrain the degree to which they openly challenge state authority to restrict immigrants' 'right to have rights' (, 296). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this work was to survey social work practitioners regarding their attitudes towards immigrants, and to develop a multidomain scale measuring these attitudes. A convenience sample of 1,124 practitioners in 47 states participated in the survey, which was administered online. The 28 attitude questions were designed as Likert scale items probing five domains: immigrant assimilation, perceived threat, immigration policy, receipt of social services, and responsibilities of social workers towards immigrants. The practitioners exhibited positive attitudes towards immigrants in general, but were less favorable towards undocumented immigrants, reflecting the bifurcation of immigrants into deserving and undeserving populations, a problematic trend evident in society at large. Scale scores for the five domains were all strongly intercorrelated and did not appear to tap into different underlying domains around which attitudes varied. Thus, data from the five domains were collapsed into a single attitudes scale that had a test−retest reliability of 0.97 and a Cronbach's alpha of 0.95. More favorable attitude scales scores were predicted by Hispanic ethnicity, a liberal political outlook, higher income, and more community and professional contact with immigrants. Those working at organizations with “don't ask, don't tell” policies regarding client's documentation status and at agencies that provide services to undocumented immigrants had more favorable attitude scale scores. This study illustrates the need for social work to better address the impact of immigrant policies on access to services and clarify the professional ethics towards both legal and undocumented immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asian populations living in the United States share similar cultural values that influence their experiences with domestic violence. However, it is critical to recognize how differential cultural beliefs in the context of immigration and adjustment to life in the United States affect attitudes, interpretations, and response to domestic violence. This article discusses findings from community, based Participatory action research that explores how Cambodian immigrant women talk about domestic violence, what fonts of abuse contribute to domestic violence, and what strategies they use to cope with and respond to abuse in their lives. The richness of this research lies in the stories that immigrant women tell about their struggle and their strength in addressing domestic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]