Putting “Canadians First”: Problematizing the Crisis of “Foreign” Workers in Canadian Media and Policy Responses
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12453 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
Putting “Canadians First”: Problematizing the
Crisis of “Foreign”Workers in Canadian
Media and Policy Responses
Amrita Hari*
ABSTRACT
Research into media constructions of migrant crises has noted when, where, and how migrants
become illegalized, criminalized, and securitized, exposing the relationship between media,
migration, and state power. News media, through narratives and lexicon, can portray some
migrants as a threat to the fabric of society. This article applies the framework of policing the
crisis (Hall et al., 1978) to discuss the discursive construction of Temporary Migrant Workers
(TMWs) in Canadian media and policy. Content and textual analysis of front-page coverage of
newsprint on the Moratorium on TMWs implemented in 2014 demonstrates this process of
collective problematization. The Moratorium responded to a concern of replacing Canadians,
which was largely unsupported by data. Since then, news coverage has shifted their representa-
tion of TMWs from a threat to victims, signalling a critical moment to reimagine TMWs and
re-direct discussions towards granting substantive citizenship rights.
INTRODUCTION
Canada’s migration and refugee determination laws, in tandem with citizenship laws, determine
who is included in or excluded from the territorial state and the national imaginary. The Canadian
state and its citizenry have broadly rejected explicitly discriminatory policies that maintained
“White Canada”nationalism. Canada also takes pride in its global image of a tolerant haven for
refugees fleeing persecution and hardworking individuals seeking better opportunities. These objec-
tives were articulated in Canada’s most recent sesquicentennial celebrations, highlighting several
acts such as the group settlement of overseas refugees provided to Vietnamese “boat people”,
Ugandan-Asians refugees (Kelley and Trebilcock, 2010), and more recently Syrian refugees
(Government of Canada, 2017b), as well as the adoption of the Points System in 1967 to select
new Canadians (Liston and Carens, 2008).
Contemporary migration management in Canada includes a range of programmes to admit Tem-
porary Migrant Workers (TMWs),
1
which assign differential rights and entitlements based on their
perceived utility and social status (Weiss, 2005; Grugel and Piper, 2011). Canada has a long history
of using TMWs to fill its labour needs (Boyd and Vickers, 2000) and this trend has persisted. The
majority of TMWs are categorically denied access to pathways to permanence. This is particularly
concerning since permanence designates a migrant’s access to a range of substantive citizenship
rights, including the right to work indefinitely, to social assistance, political rights such as the right
to vote, and the right to stay. Canada, under the former Harper-Conservative government, pushed
* Carleton University, Ottowa
doi: 10.1111/imig.12453
©2018 The Author
International Migration ©2018 IOM
International Migration Vol. 56 (6) 2018
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
an agenda of “Canadians First”, while simultaneously making citizenship unstable and pathways to
permanence lengthier, more complicated, and more onerous.
A distinguishing feature of TMWs is that they are primarily racial and ethnic minorities. Between
2007 and 2012, TMWs entering the food services sector overtook all other occupational categories
(ESDC, 2014a). This group became the focus of public and media scrutiny when major news outlets
exposed employers of primarily fast food chains in Alberta for allegedly replacing Canadian workers
(Hees, 2013; Bailey, 2014). In response, on April 24, 2014, the government announced a Moratorium
on all new work authorizations for the food services industry (ESDC, 2014b; Gollom, 2014).
This article discusses the ways in which anecdotal evidence was mobilized to form social consen-
sus on viewing particular migrants as a threat to the moral and societal fabrics of the Canadian
nation. This collective problematization (Hall et al., 1978) surrounding the Moratorium was remi-
niscent of Canada’s historical concerns with preserving a “White Canada”hostile to racial and eth-
nic minorities. This broader ideological concern with viewing some groups of foreigners as a threat
would seem analogous to the contemporary vision of “Canadians First”, thereby pushing out lower-
skilled racial and ethnic minorities from a neoliberal Canada. The umbrella of “us”distinguished
from “them”constituting the TMW crisis often included particular groups of “acceptable”or
“deserving”foreigners who were seen as contributing positively to the Canadian economy and
society, and the nation’s efforts to internationalize and compete in the global market. These groups,
discussed in detail later in the article, included international students, high skilled TMWs, and eth-
nically white foreign workers, arriving through Working Holiday programmes and involved in
Canada’s tourism industries.
The government lifted the Moratorium in June 2014 and simultaneously announced major
reforms to the system, including caps and restrictions to numbers of successful work authorizations,
higher fees and lower duration contracts for employers hiring lower-skilled TMWs, the Four-year
Maximum/Cumulative Duration rule, restricting workers to working four years and not being able
to apply for work authorization for another four years, and restrictions on applications for TMWs
with little education or training in sectors and regions where unemployment was below six percent.
These measures were intended to push employers and organizations to hire “Canadians First”. The
Cumulative Duration rule was revoked by the current Trudeau-Liberal government in December
2016, after sustained criticism from activists and academics alike (Canadian Council of Refugees
[CCR], 2016; HUMA Committee, 2016).
The purpose of this article is to reveal the integral role of news media in constructing domestic
crises, using overt and inferential forms of racism to portray migrants as a threat to the moral and
social fabrics of society. Media scrutiny of the Moratorium contributed to mechanisms of collective
problematization (Hall et al., 1978) as described above. Media remains a critical actor in defining situ-
ations, selecting targets, initiating and structuring campaigns, and selectively signifying actions to the
public at large (Hall et al., 1978). This is evident in the shift in media’s representations of how
migrants are depicted and understood by the general public before, during, and after the moratorium,
and importantly during the build up to the 2015 federal elections. Content and textual analysis of
front-page coverage of newsprint is employed to reveal the factors and actors informing media discus-
sions before, during, and after the Moratorium with the intention of showing the social construction of
the “Canadians First”hiring agenda. The Moratorium touched on broader ideological concerns of
Canadians about the threat of foreign workers. Moreover, a discourse of victimization of already vul-
nerable groups (youth and Aboriginal communities) was used to mobilize decisive action against
employers (and by effect TMWs) to protect the collective Canadian citizenry. In addition, specific
groups of “foreigners”were distinguished from the discourses of the TMW crisis.
As the media coverage reveals in time, there was a discrepancy between threat and reaction, what
Hall et al. (1978) called an ideological displacement contributing to a moral panic, as these drastic
actions were the result of misleading data and little anecdotal evidence. News media not only
responded to the moral panic but also took part in its development. The article concludes by
192 Hari
©2018 The Author. International Migration ©2018 IOM
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