The Revolving Door of Im/Migration: Canadian Refugee Protection and the Production of Migrant Workers
| Published date | 01 August 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639231210270 |
| Author | Azar Masoumi |
| Date | 01 August 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The Revolving Door
of Im/Migration: Canadian
Refugee Protection and the
Production of Migrant
Workers
Azar Masoumi
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Abstract
This paper places the seemingly distinct projects of refugee protection and temporary
foreign worker programs alongside one another to reveal their interlinked relationship.
I argue that despite its seeming humanitarian exceptionality, refugee protection is deeply
implicated in the production of both the category and supply of temporary foreign
workers for the Canadian economy. I demonstrate that the defining limitations of refu-
gee law in relation to questions of class and economic deprivation are integral to the
conceptualization of the category of the migrant worker. I then engage with statistical
data to show that patterns of refugee adjudications in Canada have contributed to main-
taining the supply of temporary foreign workers. In particular, I show that Canada has
consistently rejected refugee claims from key source countries of migrant workers,
namely Jamaica and Mexico. By refusing these claims, Canadian refugee protection has
constituted Jamaican and Mexican nationals as inappropriate subjects of permanent pro-
tection and, subsequently, primed them for incorporation as temporary foreign work-
ers. In effect, Canadian im/migration has operated like a revolving door: pushing some
nationalities out of the permanent protection of refugee status while pulling them
into the precarious opening of temporary labour migration.
Keywords
refugee protection, temporary foreign workers, Canada, precarious citizenship,
neoliberalism
Corresponding author:
Azar Masoumi, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
Email: azar.masoumi@carleton.ca
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2024, Vol. 33(4) 582–600
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09646639231210270
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
Introduction
If one was to take the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951)at face value,
the refugee would be a non-citizen legally entitled to protection due to well-founded fear
of persecution. What makes the refugee a refugee, according to the Convention, is the fear
of persecution launched against her person, rather than any internal characteristic of the
refugee herself. Rich or poor, skilled or unskilled, employable or likely to rely on public
assistance, the 1951 Convention would have the persecuted entitled to protected resi-
dency. In Canada, refugee protection often translates to permanent residency with
clear pathways to naturalization and citizenship. This has made refugee protection an
anomalous opening in the otherwise labour and economy focused history of Canadian
migration law and policy (Bauder, 2008). Unlike almost any other stream of Canadian
immigration, family reunification partially notwithstanding,
1
the refugee is not con-
ceived, and cannot be done so legally, on the basis of her potentiality for labour and eco-
nomic contribution. This, of course, does not mean that the potential economic
contribution of the refugee is completely left out of policy discussions. Contrarily, in
recent years the potential economic value of refugees has been increasingly harnessed
in discussions of refugee protection and resettlement. For instance, since 2018, the
Canadian government has formally combined the practices of refugee resettlement and
economic immigration through the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot program, which
facilitates the identification and resettlement of highly skilled refugees (Government of
Canada, 2022b). The increasing weight of economic logics of employability in discus-
sions of refugee resettlement is also evident in emerging conceptualizations of refugees
as ‘talents’(examples include the Refugee Talen Hub in the Netherlands and Jumpstart
Refugee Talent in Canada), highlighting refugees as possessors of valuable professional
skill and human capital. While these developments signal the increasing economization
of refugee protection and resettlement, they have not, as of yet, eroded the primarily
humanitarian basis of refugee protection. In other words, although highly skilled refugees
are presented as particularly attractive candidates for resettlement, those who exhibit no
particular talent, skill or employability cannot be denied protection. Thus, in exceptional
incongruence with the explicit and implicit requirement made of nearly all other adult
newcomers, the refugee is not necessarily destined for capitalist value production and
neoliberal self-responsibility. Put differently, even if the refugee never becomes self-
sustaining and value-producing, she will remain entitled to protected residency. As
such, refugee protection moves against the overwhelming current of Canadian immigra-
tion regulation.
The exceptionality of the status of the refugee becomes perhaps even more pro-
nounced when measured against the steady growth of positions of citizenship precarity
and temporary residency in recent times. As critical scholars have convincingly outlined,
Canadian policy has transitioned from a primary focus on permanent immigration of
to-be citizen workers to a programme that largely facilitates the temporary migration
of perpetually non-citizen labour (Goldring, 2010; Goldring and Landolt, 2013;
Goldring et al., 2009; Sharma, 2001, 2018). This transition has afforded inordinate
levels of flexibility to Canadian employers by opening a global market of cheap and dis-
posable labour from which they may choose (Bridi, 2013; Faraday, 2014; Hennebry and
Masoumi 583
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