Bureaucratic implementation practices and the making of Canada’s merit-based immigration policy
Bureaucratic implementation practices and the making of Canada’s merit-based immigration policy
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官僚主义的实施实践和加拿大择优移民政策的制定
DOI：
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发表时间：
2020
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
J. Elrick
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Elrick
摘要本文扩展了理论，如何在世纪中期，“择优”的移民政策，选择基于个人的人力资本和社会关系的移民，取代明确的种族主义移民政策，选择国家和种族群体的起源。它参考了加拿大的历史案例，现有的学术研究强调宏观和中观层面的经济、文化和政治因素在推动移民政策变化中的作用。使用定性内容分析的独特档案数据的招生和驱逐出境的上诉，本文确定了高层官僚的实施做法作为一个微观层面的机制，战后移民政策的变化。这一机制允许进行低风险的政策试验，随后为更系统的政策转变铺平了道路。分析还表明，对“优点”等特征的个人水平评估并非旨在“种族自由”，而是作为一种管理种族的方式出现，处于阶级和地位的交叉点。这给了后来出现的正式的基于绩效的政策一个明显的中产阶级转折。虽然侧重于历史上的加拿大的情况下，提出的调查结果是相关的更广泛的辩论，移民官僚在决策中的作用，以及种族如何塑造国家建设下择优移民政策。
ABSTRACT This article extends theories of how, in the mid-twentieth century, ‘merit-based’ immigration policies, which select immigrants based on individual human capital and social ties, replaced explicitly racist immigration policies that selected on national and racial group origins. It does so in reference to the historical Canadian case, where existing scholarship emphasises the role of macro and meso-level economic, cultural, and political factors in driving immigration policy change. Using a qualitative content analysis of unique archival data on admissions and deportation appeals, the article identifies high-level bureaucrats’ implementation practices as a micro-level mechanism of postwar immigration policy change. This mechanism allowed for low-risk policy experimentation and subsequently paved the way for a more systemic policy shift. The analysis also shows that individual-level assessments of traits like ‘merit’ were not designed to be ‘race free’ but emerged as a way of managing race, at the intersection of class and status. This gave the formal merit-based policy that later emerged a decidedly middle-class inflection. While focused on the historical Canadian case, the findings presented are relevant to broader debates about the role of immigration bureaucrats in policymaking and how race shapes nation-building under merit-based immigration policies.