Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
stretch Canada westwards to Asia. National immigration policy followed
the same economistic formula, with a new prioritising of economic migrants
and relegation of the family class in immigrant selection (Arat-Koc 1999).
Among economic migrants, business families arriving through the Business
Immigration Programme, with its commodification of citizenship (Harrison
1996), became a principal instrument of the enterprising state to harness
the human energy of Asia Pacific and draw its benefits into Canada's
national territory. The state's pre-supposition was entirely consistent with
the impoverished geographical postulates of globalization, for it was antici-
pated that a successful entrepreneur in East Asia had skills that were per-
fectly portable, and could be transferred without attrition across the surface
of a flat world to Canada.
The Other Globalization
It is not always clear in social research where ideal types end and convenient
fictions begin. Aihwa Ong (1999) observes that in California transnational
ethnic Chinese have not disabused the lofty view of their enterprising busi-
ness acumen as
homo economicus
, and certainly the Canadian state has kept
alive belief in the commercial success of the Business Immigration Programme
through its audit culture and press releases. The annual scorecard of jobs
created and investments sunk into Canadian business through the BIP
claims the considerable authority of measurement and large numbers. Our
research certainly confirms that investments were made and jobs created,
and this is the reason the programme has been so popular with provincial
governments. But the gains have been much less impressive than the num-
bers declare, as is well known to the street-level managers who operate the
programme on a day-to-day basis. Double counting from flipped businesses,
subversion in the informal economy by creating 'paper ownership' of estab-
lishments, the spillage of investment funds into opportunistic pockets, and
manifold commercial failures, all strip away the aura of success.
The governmentality regimen of both surveillance and accountability
built into the language of the BIP faltered in practice because of a lack of
state capacity. Only limited monitoring of businesses was possible with
insufficient resources and personnel, while a failure by entrepreneurs to
comply with the published terms and conditions of their business agree-
ment was invariably forgiven. This case at least suggests that neo-liberal
governmentality may be rich in discourse but poorer in operational capac-
ity, for the rules of the game for millionaire migrants were nullified both by
inadequate monitoring and by forgiveness when the regulated terms and
conditions were not met. I agree with Nonini (2004: 38) who noted in a
related Australian context that 'governmentality is an unfinished project',
