Family Reunification as an Earned Right: A Framing Analysis of Migrant Workers’ Pathways to Neoliberal Multicultural Citizenship in Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines how the right to sponsor family members’ immigration is framed by migrant caregivers in relation to Canadian legislation and political rhetoric. We focus on official immigration policy and political rhetoric between 2014–2018, a period when Canada imposed stringent language and education requirements on migrant workers seeking permanent residence. By examining how political rhetoric frames migrant caregivers as not earning “enough” to migrate with their families, we illustrate how lawmakers promote tolerance for differential inclusion within multicultural discourse. Migrant caregivers, the majority of whom originate in the Philippines, similarly employ market-based values to position themselves as deserving the right to sponsor their family members’ immigration. They also draw upon traditional ethics of reciprocal obligation, however, to frame their relationship to Canadian employers and the state in ways that reconstruct the terms of multicultural citizenship in Canada.