Researching, Monitoring, and Managing: Immigration Policy Work in Canada

Based on interviews with bureaucrats involved in policy work at the Canadian immigration department, this article describes how their work may have influenced the content of policies between 2006 and 2015. In dialogue with historical accounts of bureaucratic immigration policy making in Canada and with concepts from the study of policy work, the findings highlight the importance of maintenance tasks (research, monitoring, and stakeholder management) and identify two pathways of bureaucratic influence: bringing problems to the agendas of decision makers and formulating solutions based on expertise. These results show that bureaucratic influence and the activities of a generally pro-immigration bureaucracy should be further explored as a contributor to Canadian immigration exceptionalism. They also shed a different light on patterns of immigration policymaking during the successive terms of the Canadian Conservative government (2005–2015).