Guest Workers, Family Members or Both?: The Role of Canada's Family Reunification Programs in Meeting the Caregiving Needs of Newcomer Households


Rajdeep Sidhu, York University

Since 2016, there has been an influx of young and racialized (im)migrants to Canada – including many with young families (Census, 2021; StatsCan, 2023) – who struggle to meet their daily caregiving needs without the support of their families which left remain in the home country. Due to the restrictive nature of Family Reunification Programs (FRPs), (im)migrants engaged in precarious employment, many of whom face challenges accessing and affording childcare across Canada (Prentice and White, 2018; Ma, 2021) – also struggle to meet the households’ caregiving needs (Evergeti and Ryan, 2018). To help meet these needs, many newcomer (im)migrant families opt to sponsor their parents and/or grandparents. Parents and grandparents (P&GPs) can be sponsored on a Super Visa by citizens/permanent residents, or they may be self-sponsored for a Visitor Visa. The Government of Canada has long committed to uniting family members who are separated by (im)migration on humanitarian grounds through programs like the (FRPs). However, policies within FRPs often neglect the caregiving and reproductive needs of recent (im)migrant families. This research paper examines the role of the Government of Canada’s FRPs in supporting the caregiving and reproductive needs of recent (im)migrant families. It investigates three FRPs – the Parent and Grandparent Sponsorship Program (PGSP), the Super Visa (SV), and the Visitor Visa (VV) – and seeks to develop an understanding of the caregiving and domestic work undertaken within newcomer (im)migrants’ households in the context of increasing employment-based (im)migration. I ask: what are the implications of Canada’s Family Reunification Programs for Parents and Grandparents in meeting newcomer households’ household work and childcare needs? Who bears the burden of unpaid care work and how are daily survival and reproductive needs managed in newcomer households? This research utilizes the conceptualization of social reproduction emerging within feminist political economy and decolonial feminist scholarship to analyze unpaid and paid care work that supports newcomer (im)migrant households. In exploring how P Casas-Cortes et al., 2015), which I argue, following Vosko (2020), allows for conceiving inclusion and exclusion as continuous processes. Vis a vis my case study of P&GPs, particularly those on temporary visas, the conceptual framework of differential inclusion is useful in addressing the continuum of inclusion and exclusion as it relates to age/ageism, an under-explored axis of (im)migration policy. This research adopted a mixed-method approach, which includes the quantitative analysis of census data and policy analysis of the various migration mechanisms. This research explores that, by enabling P Family; Parents and Grandparents, Caregiving; Childcare; Newcomers; (Im)migrants; Social Reproduction; Precarity; Exploitation; Policy Making; Temporary Residency; Labor Market

This paper will be presented at the following session: