Racialization and Marginalization of Immigrants: A New Wave of Xenophobia in Canada

The four books reviewed in this essay share a common theme: exploring the links between immigrants, especially women immigrants, and race/racism in Canada. The titles of three of the books — those by Agnew, Das Gupta, and Dossa — reveal racialization as a process embedded in the labour market and in socio-economic-legal-political sectors in Canada. Most current anti-racist scholars¹ use the term "racialized women," although the concepts of "visible minority," "women of colour," "black women," and "immigrant women" are often used interchangeably. Racialization refers to systemic and structural processes — social, economic, cultural, and political — that exclude, marginalize, inferiorize, and disadvantage certain groups and populations based on the categorization of biological features.

Choudry et al.'s book title portrays immigrants as active agents in the workplace, fighting for social justice through myriad strategies. Undoubtedly, Canada is a country of immigrants, and its capitalist development and economic growth are inextricably connected not only with the history of colonization and subjugation of the First Nations population who are the original settlers, but also with the labour of immigrants. After the colonization of the First Nations people, which began happening with the arrival of the first Europeans, immigration policies developed as a significant tool for building Canada as a nation. About fifteen million people have immigrated to Canada since 1867, and Canada has adopted numerous immigration laws and policies. In the past as well as in the 21st century, immigrants and migrants' labour have been deemed necessary in Canada in order to address shortages of labour and stimulate demographic growth. At this time, Canada has an Annual Immigration Plan through which 225,000 people and more enter the country each year as permanent residents. Currently, more than 50 per cent of these immigrants are from Asia. Despite the orchestrated annual plan, more labourers are brought in as migrant workers due to shortages of labour in agriculture, restaurants, tourist industries, construction, and so on, even during this current world-wide economic recession.

A number of scholars have argued effectively that Canada's immigration policies have been discriminatory in nature and that these policies perpetuate gender inequity, racism, and class-based social divisions.² For example, during the second half of the nineteenth century, hundreds of Chinese male labourers were admitted for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Once the railroad, a vital link in Canada's economic-political unification, was completed in 1885, Chinese labour was deemed disposable. The head tax on Chinese immigrants that was then imposed and continuously raised severely limited Chinese immigration, which was then stopped completely with the passage of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, allowing only diplomats, merchants and students even temporary status in Canada. Similarly, the Immigration Act of 1908, commonly known as the Continuous Journey Act, controlled the entry of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent and resulted in a steep decline in the number of South Asian immigrants. Further, the First Domestic Scheme that recruited about 100 female domestics from the Caribbean countries was introduced in 1910-1911. Later on, in the 1950s, the Second Domestic Scheme was introduced to bring in more Caribbean domestics. Unlike domestics from Europe, Black domestics from Caribbean countries — mostly from Jamaica and Barbados — faced discriminatory requirements for acquiring permanent residence, including being tested for venereal disease or being returned to their countries of origin if considered unsuited for the job. Historically, as these examples illustrate, Canada's immigration policy and structured labour market have reinforced the exploitation of racialized women and black women within an already existing gendered and racialized labour force.

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