The Gendered and Racial Effects of Criminalizing Spousal Immigration in Canada

Background: In 2012, Canada created a new probationary period for immigrants who are sponsored by a spouse or conjugal partner in Canada. Similar to the U.S. Immigration and Marriage Fraud Amendment of 1986, Conditional Permanent Residence (CPR) requires some newly sponsored spouses/partners to cohabitate with their sponsor in a “conjugal” relationship for two years, or risk losing their right to live in Canada. Since this policy was first introduced, anti-violence against women advocates have argued that conditions on spousal migration disproportionately target racialized immigrants. Previous research already identified that immigration policies produce conditions that exacerbate partner abuse and family violence. 

Purpose and Methods: In this paper, we examine the gendered and racialized effects of CPR as a means to justify the exclusion, confinement and removal of immigrants from the state. We draw upon Leanne Weber's (2015) characterization of “structurally embedded borders” to consider in what ways immigrant “deportability” recruits both state and non-state social actors (e.g. immigration officers, family members and community members) to police non-citizens who are subject to the disciplinary regime of immigration enforcement. This research employs feminist and post-structural theories to examine the effects of CPR on spousal immigration in Canada. Our methods of analysis include: a) descriptive statistics for sponsored spouses/partner who received CPR from 2012 to 2014; b) intertextual analysis of Canadian immigration policy and regulations for CPR, c) discourse analysis of twenty-three interviews with key stakeholders who are front-line service providers, legal advocates or policy makers who work with immigrant women. Interview participants were recruited through targeting and snowball sampling in the provinces of Ontario and Alberta. All interview notes and transcripts were analyzed using inductive and deductive thematic analysis.

Results: Between 2012 and 2014, an average of 28% of all sponsored spouses and partners (n=28,945) and 1,973 dependent children received CPR. The vast majority of people who received CPR, 66%, were overseas spouses/partners who are waiting to reunite with their Canadian spouse/partner. People who originated in South Asian or Muslim majority countries (e.g. Turkey, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Morocco, India) were twice as likely to receive CRP than the average. We also found that immigrants from Muslim majority countries must up to four years for their sponsorship application to be approved, which is more than twice the average wait time. 

Conclusions and Implications: The compound effect of CPR and spousal sponsorship policies create different rights of immigrants based on their country of origin. These policies reinforce systemic policing of racialized and Mulsim communities as suspicious of criminal intent and thus less deserving of the full rights of citizenship and permanent residence. Although family migration is positioned as a cornerstone of Canadian immigration policy, the compound effects of CPR and immigrant regulation at “multiple borders” produces gender and racialized inequality, even when the policy instruments are rhetorically race and gender neutral.