Reinventing Nero's Thumb: Immigrant Vulnerability and The Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot Program


Sarah Vanderveer, York University

Im/migration conditionality has a long, complicated, and problematic history in Canada, including: the construction of vulnerability through institutional and exclusionary racist policies and practices (Paquette et al., 2017; Razack, 2002; Sharma, 2006; Stasilus ,1997; Thobani, 2000, 2007; Treitler, 2015), precarious employment conditions (Fuller and Vosko, 2008), and insecure residency status (Goldring et al., 2009; Goldring and Landolt, 2013; Landolt and Goldring, 2016; Preston et al., 2014; Vosko et al., 2009). Historically founded in ideologies of inclusion/exclusion drawn along racialized and ethnic lines, discriminatory immigration policies and processes are often perceived as historical artifacts. However, internalized, and institutionalized biases are reproduced in policy construction and application, sustaining social stratification and relational power dynamics through policy restrictions. These processes combine with stratified and exclusionary immigration policies, wherein insecure residency, and conditional immigration status, renders im/migrant workers particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Despite Canada’s self-characterization as an inclusive, multicultural nation that claims to centre diversity through immigration, ‘race-neutral’ policy combines with gradations of temporariness and insecure residency status to formalize and obscure categorically differential treatment along lines that parallel the overtly racist policies of the past. This paper explores the historical legacies of racist immigration policies and the correlation with impermanent residency. It discusses how these policies have changed over time, yet continue to be re/created, disguised by the discursive packaging of ‘race neutrality’, community development, multiculturalism, and meritocracy; a new configuration is the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot program (RNIP). Located in twelve rural communities across Canada, the RNIP focuses on supplying skilled foreign workers to small, rural areas through a community-involved settlement process (Government of Canada, Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot: about the pilot, n.d.). This program is incentivized as a potential pathway to permanent residency, and so has significant prospects for attracting skilled, predominantly mid to high wage, workers to rural communities. To be considered, applicants must meet skilled worker, language, education, and financial requirements, find work with an eligible employer in the respective community, and meet community-specific eligibility requirements. To be recommended for permanent residency, applicants must prove both their economic benefit to the employer, and internalized commitment to the community. This ties applicants to their employer and the community, limiting employment and residence mobility, and producing power relations that render the applicant vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation by their employer and community committee members. Migration to rural communities through the RNIP is incentivized by the possibility of permanent residence, a potential pathway towards citizenship, and the inclusion of a community-based committee has the potential to provide a network and support for immigrants as they engage in practices of settlement. However, the decision-making power held by the community committee centres committee subjectivity as a key determinant. It holds a partiality that has the power to re/produce differential treatment and conceptions of difference based on race, gender, and ethnicity (Wright, 2000); a power that re/produces structural violence and sociopolitical liminality (Clisby, 2020). The role, power, and potential impacts of implicit biases are problematic as formal dis/approval is informed by subjective beliefs and potential biases that determine whether an applicant can prove they belong, impacting the potential for securing residency, and increasing the possibilities of discrimination, exploitation, and permanent temporariness. This paper focuses on the theoretical and policy analysis, maps characteristics of key historical immigration policies, related historical legacies, and feedback loops that re/create discrimination and immigrant vulnerability in seemingly neutral modernizations of immigration policy. These foci address key themes of the conference, including the unequal social impacts of policies and practices, policy adaptions that enable ongoing exploitive and discriminatory practices, and makes recommendations to mitigate some potentialities of exploitation and discrimination.

This paper will be presented at the following session: