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Branding ‘Canadian Experience’ in Immigration Policy: Nation Building in a Neoliberal Era

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Abstract

This paper examines the branding of ‘Canadian experience’ in Canadian immigration policy as a rhetorical strategy for neoliberal nation-building. Since 2008, the Canadian government has introduced an unprecedented number of changes to immigration policy. While the bulk of these policies produce more temporary and precarious forms of migration, the Canadian government has mobilized the rhetoric of ‘Canadian experience’ as a means to identify immigrants who carry the promise of economic and social integration. Through a critical discourse analysis of Canadian print media and political discourse, we trace how the brand of Canadian experience taps into the affective value of national identity in an era of global economic insecurity. We also illustrate how the discourse of Canadian experience (CE) remains ideologically deracialized, such that the government’s embrace of CE as an immigrant selection criterion dismisses the discriminatory effects that this discourse is shown to have for racialized immigrants in Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, 246 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, M5A 1V4, Canada

    Rupaleem Bhuyan

  2. School of Social Work and Human Services, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, Canada

    Daphne Jeyapal

  3. Women’s Studies/Sociology & Anthropology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada

    Jane Ku

  4. Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Izumi Sakamoto

  5. Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada

    Elena Chou

Authors
  1. Rupaleem Bhuyan
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  2. Daphne Jeyapal
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  3. Jane Ku
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  4. Izumi Sakamoto
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  5. Elena Chou
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Correspondence to Rupaleem Bhuyan.

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Bhuyan, R., Jeyapal, D., Ku, J. et al. Branding ‘Canadian Experience’ in Immigration Policy: Nation Building in a Neoliberal Era. Int. Migration & Integration 18, 47–62 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-015-0467-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-015-0467-4

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