‘Slotting’ Chinese Families and Refugees, 1947–1967

Abstract

Abstract: This article explores the changing policy and legal frameworks governing migration from China to Canada from 1949 to 1967. The transition period between exclusion and universal access was characterized by slow and contested change, as the Canadian state persistently resisted pressure from community actors and religious groups to facilitate the entry of Chinese migrants, concerned as it was with the domestic stability of the nation. By exploring the intersection of the campaign to expand family sponsorship rights for Chinese Canadians, led by the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver, and church interest in refugee resettlement from Hong Kong in the 1960s, this article demonstrates the critical role that civil society actors played in effecting change in the face of entrenched suspicion about immigration from China and growing state intervention in all aspects of Canadian family life in the postwar period. The debates that took place over expanded family migration from China were rooted in a fundamental conflict between family reunification as a basic human right and the state's desire to control the shape and character of the Canadian nation and suggest that the liberalization of Canada's immigration system in the postwar period was far from certain.