ABSTRACT
One indicator of migrants’ diminished status is the way in which entitlements are mediated through discourses of deservingness. Within this framework, access to healthcare, security of residence, choice of employment, and refugee protection are not routinely available on the same basis as those present on the territory as permanent residents or citizens but furnished instead as goods that the non-citizen earns, merits, or otherwise deserves because of their own actions, character, or circumstances. The pandemic disrupted settled narratives of whose labour was ‘essential’ to Canada and, by extension, who deserved permanent residence in Canada. These determinations were entwined with the performance of labour related to healthcare and to pandemic exigencies more broadly. This chapter traces the policy outcomes of that disruption, which consisted of short-term schemes for transitioning a small class of refugee claimants and a larger pool of temporary workers to permanent residence on the basis of pandemic-specific factors. It asks whether these novel pathways to permanent residence might create conditions of possibility for further policy reform.
