NCJ Number
238243
Journal
Law & Policy Volume: 34 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2012 Pages: 211-236
Date Published
April 2012
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This article examines how nongovernmental service providers navigate devolutionary trends in Canada, when responding to migrants who come to them for help and support.
Abstract
This article examines how nongovernmental service providers navigate devolutionary trends in Canada, in both immigration control and integration policy, when responding to migrants who come to them for help and support. Drawing upon conceptualizations of citizenship as a "negotiated relationship" (Stasiulis and Bakan 2003), the author explores how social service providers, who work amidst a complex interplay of federal, provincial, and local policies, can influence both who is deemed worthy of social membership and what rights an individual can successfully claim from the state. Empirically, this article focuses on observation of community meetings and conversational interviews with service providers in violence against women shelters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada's most populous and diverse city. While service providers navigate different levels of government to advocate for women's rights to seek safety from abuse, the author argues that both individual service providers and the organizations in which they work monitor and constrain the degree to which they openly challenge state authority to restrict immigrants' "right to have rights" (Arendt 1951 [1979], 296). (Published Abstract)