The Mobile Citizen: Canada’s Treatment of Mobility in Immigration, Citizenship, and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Mobility, as the ability among newcomers and citizens to move temporarily and circularly across international borders and between states, has become a pervasive norm for a significant portion of Canada’s population. Despite its pervasive nature and the growing public interest, however, current research has been limited in how Canadian policies are reacting to the ability of citizens and newcomers to move. This thesis seeks to fill that gap by analyzing Canada’s treatment of mobility within and across policies of immigration, citizenship and foreign affairs. An analytical mobility framework is developed to incorporate interdisciplinary work on human migration and these policy domains. Using this framework, an examination of policy developments in each domain in the last decade reveals that they diverge in isolation and from a whole-of-government perspective around the treatment of mobility. In some instances policy accommodates or even embraces mobility, and in others it restricts it.