Uncertain future, unsettled present: suspending and embracing engagement with life among newcomers in Toronto, Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT Contemporary immigration policies in Canada are marked by growing reliance on temporary and conditional migration, as well as increased processing times for immigration applications. More people spend longer periods of time living in Canada with deportability and therefore uncertainty about the future—uncertain if they will be able to remain in Canada and uncertain of how long this condition will persist. This article, based on qualitative research among newcomers in Toronto, Canada, examines the temporalities of living with uncertainty, attending to how experiences of and responses to uncertainty are dynamic across time. The article identifies two salient responses among research participants, either suspending or embracing engagement with life in Canada. Each of these responses entails risks, making both suspending and embracing difficult to sustain. The article expands scholarly understandings of uncertainty in the migration context by showing that uncertainty of duration mediates uncertainty of future presence. Furthermore, it shows that regimes of immigration control not only foreclose access to rights and supports on the basis of formal immigration status, but they also hollow out the value of permitted activities.