UNI320Y: Canadian Questions: Issues and Debates

1. UNI320Y: Canadian Questions: Issues and Debates Week 3: Non-Citizens and Flexible Citizens Professor Emily Gilbert http://individual.utoronto.ca/emilygilbert/

2. Non-Citizens and Flexible Citizens • Context • Non-Citizens: Domestic Workers • Flexible Citizens: Business Migrants

3. I: Context Rise in global migration • 2002: 175 million migrants • Europe: 56 million • Asia: 50 million • Northern America: 41 million • 16 million refugees worldwide Reasons for global migration include: • Conflict, ethnic cleansing and statelessness • Global capitalism, ‘underdevelopment,’ and the export of labour • Family reunification • Education

4. II: Non-Citizens: Domestic Workers Domestic workers • Turn of the century: British live-in domestics (6 month term) granted landed immigrant status • WWII: East European refugees and DP: 1-year indentured contract, but landed immigrant status • 1950s: domestics from Caribbean, given right to landed status but: • Subject to medical tests • Could be returned if unsuitable (Jamaica, Barbados)

5. 1973: Temporary Employment Authorization Program: short-term work permits • 1981: Foreign Domestic Movement (FDM) • ‘visitor’ status but eligible for landed immigrant status after 2 years of continuous live-in service with designated employer • self-sufficiency requirements

6. 1992: Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) and new requirements: • Equivalent to Canadian grade 12 • 6 months of full time formal training, or experience in related occupation—later changed to 12 months practical experience • Compulsory live-in requirement

7. Concerns that live-in workers are exploited: • Precarious status and threat of deportation • Overtime • Privacy • Sexual, physical and emotion abuse • No legal employer/employee contract: arbitration • No legal protection over wages, EI, Canada Pension Plan • Families that have been left behind • Role of gatekeepers: policing role, racism

8. Citizenship: • As dynamic rather than static process • Hierarchical: race, gender and class biases • Reflects unequal relations between ‘First’ and ‘Third’ world countries • Reflects method of entry (legal, illegal…) • Monitored by gatekeepers

9. Aihwa Ong on flexible citizenship: “refers to the cultural logics of capitalist accumulation, travel, and displacement that induce subjects to respond fluidly and opportunistically to changing political-economic conditions. In their quest to accumulate capital and social prestige in the global arena, subjects emphasize, and are regulated by, practices favouring flexibility, mobility, and repositioning in relation to markets, governments, and cultural regimes. These logics and practices are produced within particular structures of meaning about family, gender, nationality, class mobility, and social power” (Ong, Flexible Citizenship, 1999:6) III: Flexible Citizens: Business Migrants

10. Business Immigration Program • 1978: Entrepreneur category: business experience and net worth of $300,000, with 1/3 ownership of business and creation of one job • 1986: Investor category: business experience, net worth of $800,000, and investment of $400,000 • Increase in number of business migrants in 1990s, especially from Asia (and Hong Kong)

11. Can apply to be Canadian citizens 3 years after permanent residency is granted (half time can be spent overseas) Importance of cultural capital (Bourdieu) to migrants • Importance of family (familial loyalty) • Education opportunities • Language skills • Security of Canadian passport

12. Experiences of astronaut families and satellite kids • Participation in schools, community • Appreciation of Canadian ‘way of life’ Flexible citizens and multi-national allegiances • Impact on sovereignty? • Impact on citizenship?