Domesticating the Other or the Fabrication of the “Perfect Immigrant”
In Canada, the management of immigration is achieved through subtle technologies of control that reduce immigrants to two stigmatized categories; that of “commodity” and “threat.” Several mechanisms are at play to ensure that the danger that immigrants may pose is contained and that at the end of the process of immigrant selection, the result will be a “perfect immigrant,” someone useful and able to respond to expectations of him or her. On the basis of ethnographic research carried out within Canadian immigration institutions, I show how the fabrication of the “perfect immigrant” takes shape through the principles of commodification and securitization.