ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the narratives of Indian migrant women’s decision-making processes around choosing Canada as their destination and their experiences navigating the Canadian immigration system and the labour market, highlighting the role of gender, class, race, and caste-based structures and hierarchies. Migrants chose Canada over other countries for multiple reasons, including a variety of comparatively easy pathways for immigration with their spouses, permanency, and growing diasporic communities. Canada also offered “model minority” status, wherein Hindu Indian migrants felt preferred within a multicultural and multiracial workplace and society, while being relatively protected from racist violence and discrimination. Adopting this image of model minorities, Indian migrants appeared to position themselves as superior workers as compared to other racialized and migrant workers. They also assumed an attitude of “migrant gratitude” and seemed to accept discriminatory and exclusionary practices within Canadian society, as a pragmatic measure to navigate Canadian institutions and structures.
