On the left, immigration policy is seen as a tool used by the State to form class relations. According to this approach, the Canadian State facilitates the labour needs of the ruling class by implementing policies that ensure that ample, cheap and unorganized workers are readily available. Labour and immigration policy work together to create a hierarchy between workers that benefits ruling class interests. For example, Chinese railway workers, Italian labourers and Caribbean domestic workers have all gained entry to Canada to work in specific, “undesirable” industries in circumstances in which this work was considered intolerable for “authentic” Canadians, presumably White and Anglo-Saxon.

Although such an approach undoubtedly reveals a significant goal of Canadian immigration policy, viewing immigration through this lens alone obscures the gendered impact immigration policies have on the private sphere. The State has structured gender relations through the regulation of human movement. Although immigration is usually seen as part of the public sphere (e.g. labour, the state), immigration policy also works to structure the private lives of those who reside within the borders of Canada.

The Chinese Exclusion Act (1923) is a key example of how State immigration policy shaped gender relations within an immigrant community. The Act prohibited the families of Chinese workers from immigrating. As a result, the Canadian government created a community of male workers who would not organize in their workplaces to demand a “family wage,” would not be able to participate in the privilege of the heterosexual family and would be “emasculated” by being forced to perform domestic (“women’s”) work.

Immigration policy also plays a role in producing the public/private divide. In Canadian capitalism, labour is divided between unpaid work in the home and paid work outside of the home. Immigration Canada reinforces this divide and ensures women’s domestic work is invisible. Although the Canadian State does not see itself as responsible for work in the home, it has actively recruited domestic workers to work for wealthy families from the nineteenth century until today. These workers have primarily been immigrant women. Increasingly, women of colour represent the majority of these workers and changes made by Immigration Canada ensure little possibility of them gaining permanent status in Canada. The Canadian State has contributed to the need for immigrant domestic workers by failing to create a program for universal childcare. Wealthier women can hire poor women of colour to care for their children and homes, allowing them to work in the public sphere which receives more social and economic validation. Through its racist and sexist immigration policies, the Canadian State has reinforced the structure of the public (labour) and the private (home, family) sphere.

Canadian Feminist Movements

Canadian feminist movements have always been concerned with immigration, although not necessarily in ways we would desire or expect. During the “first wave” women’s movement in Canada (1910-1925) women fought for the vote and to be recognized as “persons” under the law. In 1910, a new immigration act was passed allowing the government to restrict immigration based on race, class, occupation or “character.” First wave feminists reinforced and reproduced the Canadian government’s racist policies to pursue their own political agenda. The suffragists argued that they were the “mothers of the nation,” who were able to ensure the racial purity of the nation and thereby should be entitled to the vote. These suffragists, such as Emily Murphy and Nelly McClung, drew on the racism of the Canadian elites, arguing that by giving white Northern European women the vote, the influence of recent immigrants and non-white Canadians would be diminished.

First and second wave feminists demanded women’s rights on the basis of being good and deserving citizens. These movements were primarily composed of and represented the interested of white, middle-class women. This group’s interests were acknowledged by the Canadian government, and allowed feminist organizations of the 1960s through to the 1980s to take on advisory roles on issues pertaining directly and indirectly to immigration policy. Feminist complicity with state interests was clearly shown in their approach to policies on domestic labour. State funded organizations, such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), did not challenge the Canadian government’s neglect of unpaid work in the home. Neither NAC, nor the Canadian government supported a national daycare program, and as a result there was a continuing need for private childcare. The interests of domestic workers, who were primarily migrant and immigrant women, were excluded from NAC’s project of developing women’s rights on the basis of Canadian citizenship.

Currently, domestic workers are primarily immigrants from the Third World, specifically the Philippines and the Caribbean. The regulation of domestic workers’ visa requirements has become increasingly complicated and inequitable. When these workers were primarily European, the government expected them to integrate into the Canadian nation. Now that domestic workers are primarily non-European, there have been successive steps to diminish the possibility of obtaining citizenship/permanent status in Canada. Currently, Immigration Canada’s live-in caregiver programme denies women the possibility of applying for permanent residence until they have worked two years with the same Canadian employer. Like the Canadian government, NAC and other liberal feminist organizations have been primarily concerned with increasing the presence of middle-class women in the public sphere, and have not taken up the needs of immigrant and poor women working in cleaning, food service and childcare.

Currently, institutional feminism, such as feminist social work and academic feminism, are both implicated in and challenge racism and sexism in Canadian immigration policy. Academic feminism and government organizations have a relationship that is mutually, but not equitably, beneficial. The government provides funding for research projects such as York University’s Gender, Migration and Citizenship Project. Funding such projects makes the government appear to be addressing racism and sexism in immigration policy. In exchange, the receipt of such funding validates the work of academic feminists within the university. We acknowledge that many academic feminists, including those involved in the project above, are challenging racism and sexism in Canadian immigration. However there are limits on the extent to which feminist research can challenge its funder: the State.

Feminist-influenced social work, such as women’s shelters, is also limited in its ability to redress the inequities that immigrant women face. Social work is intended to diminish rather than resolve conflict, particularly conflicts which benefit the ruling class and the state. Gender and race conflict are inherent to Canadian capitalism. Feminist social work has tried to smooth over these conflicts by imposing a western feminist understanding of gender relations on immigrant communities. Feminist social service providers partially address this problem by providing anti-racism training and affirmative action policies aimed at hiring immigrant women. In order to fully address the inequities that immigrant women face, feminist social work must undergo radical change and work in conjunction with self-organized immigrant communities.

Grassroots self-organizing of immigrant women is another potential way to transform Canada’s immigration policy. Recently, the Philippine Women’s Centre has been successful in organizing Filipina domestic workers in the live-in caregiver programme. This organizing exists outside institutional/governmental power structures, and thus is able to take on a critical, anti-racist and anti-capitalist analysis of immigration. Social movements and community-organizing can challenge Immigration Canada in ways that institutional feminism cannot.

Concerns about the racism and sexism underlying immigration policy are at risk of being pushed aside by the growing academic interest in theoretical discussions of borders and citizenship. It has become trendy to talk about porous borders and flexible citizenship. Such an argument fails to address how race, class and gender continue to restrict immigration.

Borders and Citizenship

Borders have been and continue to be a colonial project that divide space according to national lines. Borders became increasingly rigid when Canada began to separate from the British Empire. At this time, passports, a device to regulate immigration, were introduced and provided on a restricted basis. This restriction was often based on race, such as the refusal to grant passports to immigrants from India, despite their membership in the Commonwealth (1906-1915). Recent discussions have proposed that national borders are becoming increasingly meaningless and less documentation is required in order to move freely between countries, however this applies only to specific citizens in privileged nations.

The idea of flexible citizenship where people have the ability to claim citizenship, work, or engage in leisure activities in several different countries applies primarily to the global elite. For migrant workers, restrictions on movement both within and between countries have increased. In the case of domestic workers, state regulation of movement and labour extends beyond the public sphere into the home. While borders are becoming more open for the global elite, for immigrant and migrant workers borders dictate where you can live, work and travel.