{"title":"One Step Ahead of the Canadian Immigration System: Bureaucratic Chaos and the Development of Migrant Experts Online.","authors":"Karine Geoffrion, Roxane Guay","doi":"10.1177/08912416251313535","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Getting access to the right information to complete their immigration file, follow-up on their application or appeal a decision is crucial for immigration applicants. However, the Canadian immigration bureaucracy is known for its inefficiency, complexity, and opacity. Applicants often turn to online discussion forums to guide them through the process. Based on interviews with twelve immigrants to Canada and ethnographic observations in four online Canada immigration forums, this article focuses on the development of immigration expertise online. Building on the concept of interpretive labor, we suggest that the violence of the immigration bureaucracy pushes migrants away from official sources of information and paves the way for the emergence of lay experts through their intensive participation in online forums. Online lay experts provide current, essential tips tested and validated through firsthand experience and the experience-based knowledge collected from thousands of users, which allow them to circumvent immigration difficulties and thus, be one step ahead of the system.</p>","PeriodicalId":47675,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","volume":"54 3","pages":"364-390"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12065603/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Contemporary Ethnography","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416251313535","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/23 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Getting access to the right information to complete their immigration file, follow-up on their application or appeal a decision is crucial for immigration applicants. However, the Canadian immigration bureaucracy is known for its inefficiency, complexity, and opacity. Applicants often turn to online discussion forums to guide them through the process. Based on interviews with twelve immigrants to Canada and ethnographic observations in four online Canada immigration forums, this article focuses on the development of immigration expertise online. Building on the concept of interpretive labor, we suggest that the violence of the immigration bureaucracy pushes migrants away from official sources of information and paves the way for the emergence of lay experts through their intensive participation in online forums. Online lay experts provide current, essential tips tested and validated through firsthand experience and the experience-based knowledge collected from thousands of users, which allow them to circumvent immigration difficulties and thus, be one step ahead of the system.
期刊介绍：
The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography publishes in-depth investigations of diverse people interacting in their natural environments to produce and communicate meaning. At its best, ethnography captures the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange. JCE is committed to pushing the boundaries of ethnographic discovery by building upon its 30+ year tradition of top notch scholarship.
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