Making Middle-Class Multiculturalism: Immigration Bureaucrats and Policymaking in Postwar Canada

This talk took us inside the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (currently Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) in the 1950s and 1960s, at time when Canada was facing strong economic and political pressures to change its immigration system. Specifically, it examined the role played by high-level immigration bureaucrats in crafting the move from a selection system centred on national origins to one emphasizing individual merit and social ties. It argued that the overlooked interplay between immigration case processing and policymaking provides new insights into the timing and content of this paradigmatic policy shift. This is especially important for understanding how notions of race and social class shaped new immigrant selection criteria and made Canada multicultural along middle-class lines. The talk concluded with a discussion of the contemporary implications of this historical case study.