Negotiating Social Rights and Social Membership on the Frontlines of Service Delivery to Migrants with Precarious Status

This is a CERIS Final Report published in 2011. At the time the paper was under review for publication in an edited volume by Luin Goldring and Patrcia Landolt, The Production and Negotiation of Precarious Legal Status in Canada.While Canada welcomes migration for economic purposes, a growing number of migrants remain excluded from the rights of citizenship and thus comprise a vulnerable population with limited access to social and health services. Through an interpretive policy analysis of service delivery to women with precarious immigration status in Toronto, this paper examines the role of anti-violence against women service providers in negotiating social rights and social membership for women with precarious migratory status in Canada. Service providers‟ discretion in their everyday interactions with immigrants provides opportunities to advance the human rights of migrant women. Amidst devolutionary trends and the privatization of social services, however, I argue that both individual service providers and the organizations in which they work exercise self-discipline to monitor and constrain the degree to which they openly challenge state authority to restrict immigrants‟ rights in Canada.This research was funded by CERIS—The Ontario Metropolis Centre. The research also received support from Royal Bank Fellowships for Dr. Tracy Smith-Carrier and Daphne Jeyapal