Struggles over Citizenship and Inclusion for Migrants Amidst COVID-19 in Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to discursive openings and a mixed record concerning the potential expansion of migrant rights and access to citizenship and safety in Canada. This paper examines civil society, state and political party approaches to migration and citizenship in Canada articulated during and emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic through a critical discourse analysis of publicly available documents produced by these actors. These indicate a highly contested political realm whose outcomes hold tremendous significance for the rights of many residing in Canada with precarious status. Right to far right actors have continued in an intensified manner to target asylum seekers, including coupling anti-vaccine sentiments and conspiratorial beliefs amongst sectors of the population with anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism politics that have been intensified by the pandemic. Simultaneously and often confusingly, in a settler colonial state with some degree of “pro-immigration consensus” alongside substantive tiers of citizenship, centrist, left and centre-right actors have recently employed similar language concerning the merits of immigration and important questions such as access to permanent residence and refugee protection, but with meanings and emphases that are significantly different in practice. For example left civil society responses have included demands for wider access to permanent residence and citizenship, including “status for all,” and to maintain or reclaim the right to asylum. This occurs while - amidst positive pandemic sentiments about the contributions of migrant workers - business groups and Canada’s Liberal government have spoken in what would might appear to be compatible language of “pathways” to permanence residence and citizenship while in many ways restricting such pathways and access to asylum as they advocate for or facilitate businesses’ enhanced access to exploitable migrant labour in practice. This paper will examine these tensions identifying both troubling threats to migrant and immigrant confusion and some realms where discursive openings offer opportunities for more inclusive citizenship practices.