Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
globalization game. For in its attempts to recruit millionaire migrants, the
state has acted as if the world is borderless. It has assumed the end of geog-
raphy, that Thomas Friedman's (2005) 'flat world' is an adequate description
of global space. But as geographers know from the earlier adventures of spa-
tial analysis with its own level playing field, the idealized isotropic plain with
its substitutability of locations is only a theoretical assumption, not an empir-
ical actuality. So when the state assumes the existence of capitalists
sans fron-
tières
, that skill sets are perfectly portable, allowing a successful businessman
in Hong Kong or Taiwan to become
ipso facto
a successful businessman in
Canada, it is overlooking geographical differentiation, the fundamental spa-
tial breaks in culture, politics and society that intervene and provide barriers,
most obviously in the disabling complexity of different languages.
Neo-liberal ideology has worked its way into all policy fields, including
immigration (Arat-Koc 1999; Ong 2003). In an era of dwindling birth rates,
and with the spectre of a declining labour force, immigration bureaucracies
are pro-actively recruiting migrants who can be self-sufficient and require
little in return from the state. The rapid escalation of temporary migration in
Australia, Canada and other countries represents a flexible response to sea-
sonal and short-term labour needs. The nation state bears minimal respon-
sibility for those who toil transiently within its borders, limiting the citizenship
rights of temporary workers (Bauder 2006). While the intake of permanent
residents landing in Canada has been relatively stable at 200,000-250,000
for over a decade, temporary migration is rising rapidly and in 2007 for
the first time temporary foreign workers plus foreign students exceeded the
numbers of new permanent residents (CIC 2008). Temporary migration is
part of the UN's new immigration paradigm, and as we shall see later, a
number of business immigrants landing as permanent residents in fact hold
much shorter time horizons for their Canadian sojourn.
In another sign of the growing preference for self-sufficient citizens,
Canada's tripartite commitment to humanitarian protection, family reunion,
and labour force replenishment in immigration selection has moved steadily
toward economic migrants (Arat-Koc 1999). The share of all immigrants and
refugees landing in Canada through the economic streams rose from 39 per-
cent in the 1980s to 58 percent in 2000-06, while proportions in the family
and humanitarian categories fell. Careful selection processes screen out
economic migrants unless they are well educated and adaptive skilled work-
ers, for assessments confirm that skilled migrants speedily make net eco-
nomic contributions to their 'host' societies.
10
Canada is part of a competitive
global marketplace for skilled workers (Wong 2003), or as they are disarm-
ingly called in Singapore, 'foreign talent' (Yeoh 2006). While immigrant-
receiving countries like Canada, Australia and the United States have
historically been successful in recruiting skilled workers, other competitors
are now making their pitch (Mahroum 2000; Salt and Millar 2006). The
European Union promises to harmonize its recruitment of skilled workers
