One Step Ahead of the Canadian Immigration System: Bureaucratic Chaos and the Development of Migrant Experts Online

Abstract

Getting access to the right information to complete their immigration file, follow-up on their application or appeal a decision is crucial for immigration applicants. However, the Canadian immigration bureaucracy is known for its inefficiency, complexity, and opacity. Applicants often turn to online discussion forums to guide them through the process. Based on interviews with twelve immigrants to Canada and ethnographic observations in four online Canada immigration forums, this article focuses on the development of immigration expertise online. Building on the concept of interpretive labor, we suggest that the violence of the immigration bureaucracy pushes migrants away from official sources of information and paves the way for the emergence of lay experts through their intensive participation in online forums. Online lay experts provide current, essential tips tested and validated through firsthand experience and the experience-based knowledge collected from thousands of users, which allow them to circumvent immigration difficulties and thus, be one step ahead of the system.

Introduction

Professor, I should start to charge people who ask me for advice on their immigration [laughter]. I have become very good at it. (Jonas, an international student at a Quebec university)

Jonas is an international student enrolled in a University in Quebec, Canada. He was admitted into a graduate program a few years ago, but for some highly incoherent reason, the government of Canada refused to grant him a student permit, stating that it did not believe he would promptly go back to “his” country, a country of the so-called “global South,” when he completed his PhD program. Desperate—he had already invested a lot of time, energy, and money into his research project and immigration application—and frustrated by the discriminatory response he was given, he decided not to give up and reapplied. This time, he made sure he responded to all the requirements “perfectly” and “transform[ed] [his] incompetence into strength” (Callon 2005, 313). In other words, he did thorough research to understand what the administration was looking for and was able to dispel the “red flags” that marked his application the first time. After close to a year of procedures, he finally received his student permit. He succeeded thanks to his intensive investigation into the inner workings of the Canadian immigration, which allowed him to be a step ahead of the immigration system. We started to refer other students who were facing problems with their visas to him. “You should ask Jonas,” we would tell them, not realizing the burden we were putting on his shoulders until one day, he told us, laughing, that a lot of people were asking him for support on their immigration applications and that perhaps he should start charging them for his services. His lay expertise was getting more and more recognition from his peers.

This article focuses on information-seeking and information-sharing practices among immigration candidates to Canada and, more specifically, on how these practices pave the way to the development of alternative and popular forms of immigration expertise from below. In Canada, the management of immigration is characterized by complex, opaque, lengthy, expensive, and sometimes contradictory bureaucratic procedures that all regular migrants, permanent and temporary, must confront to have access to a visa and a legal status in the country (Bélanger et al. 2023; Geoffrion 2023). The situation is even more complicated in the case of migrants to the province of Québec since they must go through, and master, two sets of administrative requirements and separate evaluations. Consequently, for most applicants, accessing the right information to complete their file, follow-up on their application or appeal against a decision is extremely difficult and confusing. Contributing to the growing scholarship on bureaucratic violence (Eldridge and Reinke 2018), and more specifically, building on the concept of interpretive labor (Graeber 2012), we document how migrants, when faced with adversity—in this case, the Canadian immigration bureaucracy—develop collective forms of expertise, which allows them to anticipate and circumvent the expectancies and biases of immigration administrators, and the hidden and changing rules of the system. The article first points to the failures of the Canadian immigration system and its inability to properly address applicants’ questions and concerns. As migrants turn online for information and support (Dekker and Engbersen 2014), the article then pays attention to the dynamics of (mostly administrative) knowledge acquisition and validation at the intersection of online and offline processes. Here, we engage with the literature on lay expertise “from below,” particularly how it manifests in online forums and Facebook groups (Epstein 1996, 2023).

We suggest that in the context of increased complexity, opacity and documented failings of the Canadian immigration bureaucracy, immigration forums, and Facebook groups have become an essential source of information and support for immigration applicants and a space where creative immigration strategies are developed and shared. Online migrant experts provide current, essential tips often tested and validated through firsthand experience and through the experience-based knowledge collected online from thousands of users. Their reputation varies and depends mainly on peer recognition (e.g., likes) and their ability to master immigration terminologies. Validation mechanisms such as the forums’ badge system ensure that these noncredentialed experts are trustworthy and that the information they share and create is dependable. They give back to the community by helping others overcome their immigration difficulties. In return, they get recognition from their peers, widen their social capital through the contacts they made in the process and sometimes attract media attention, which helps to push their own file forward.

The Violence of the Canadian Immigration Bureaucracy

Important information: While processing your application, we may ask for more documents and there may be delays if you don’t submit them. Should you fail to respond by the deadline given, your application could be refused for not complying with an officer’s request. ¹ (IRCC)

This message appears on the Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) website (updated on May 13, 2024). Its menacing tone foreshadows dire consequences for immigration applicants should they not comply with the Canadian government’s immigration process. ² A vast literature in anthropology has contributed to highlighting the violent nature of bureaucracies (Eldridge and Reinke 2018; Graeber 2015; Gupta 2012) and, more specifically, the impact of immigration bureaucracies on those concerned (Bhatia 2020; Borelli 2021). Additional delays—what Griffiths (2017) calls “temporal punishments” (51)—have considerable consequences on migrants and their loved ones’ everyday lives, well-being, and futures (Charsley and Wray 2023; Geoffrion and Cretton 2021). The physical removal of applicants who are already on the territory, which is often the case for international students or migrants admitted under the temporary workers’ program applying for a visa renewal or their permanent residence (PR), is another implicit but violent threat of noncompliance to decrees set forth by immigration authorities such as IRCC. As Eldridge and Reinke (2018, 95) remark: “Bureaucratic violence is therefore not merely an outcome of abstract structures, [. . .] but is administered through processes of decision-making, paperwork, knowledge production, inaction, and exclusion [. . .].” The authors explain that the silences or inactions of bureaucracies, such as not providing legal counsel, constitute invisible forms of violence. Bureaucratic violence can also be perpetrated through the “administrative burden” caused by the state’s bureaucratic practices. Moynihan, Gerzina, and Herd (2022), whose work focuses on immigration policies in the United States, define administrative burden as a combination of learning, compliance, and psychological costs for candidates. These costs, as we shall see, are sometimes turned into assets, especially when migrants decide to gather knowledge about immigration laws, policies, and administrative processes, and share this acquired knowledge with the wider community of migrants.

In Canada, structural violence can be observed in the increasingly difficult and elitist access to permanent residence (Schmidt et al. 2023), contributing to the prolongation of temporary and precarious status for many migrants with already limited social rights and protections. In her thesis on spousal reunification in Quebec, Suelves (2023) counts no less than twelve administrative steps, from the verification of applicants’ admissibility to the deliverance of the PR card by the authorities, if the process is successful. Throughout the process and even until their arrival at the airport or at a land border, the result of their application remains uncertain, making this the main source of emotional turmoil for applicants (Geoffrion 2018). The uncertainty of decisions is partly due to the high level of discretionary power immigration agents hold in Canada (Satzewich 2014). The decision to grant PR in the family sponsorship program and in refugee claims is highly dependent on the “feeling” of the “street-level bureaucrats” (Lipsky 1980) analyzing the file (Maskens 2015; Murray 2014), which is often informed by race, class, and gender prejudice (Pratt and Thompson 2008; Satzewich 2015). Even the economic immigration class, based on a point system deemed neutral, has historically been constructed on an amalgam of racial and class stereotypes that define who “merits” to be accepted (Elrick 2022, 125).

The testimonies of twenty migrants who had a temporary work permit between 2010 and 2020 analyzed by Schmidt et al. (2023) show that navigating the Canadian bureaucracy was “confusing” due to its opacity. The main problems stated were the difficulty to contact IRCC employees when they needed to ask specific questions about their file, their forced reliance on web-based applications to guide them through the process, and the instability of migration policies, forms, and selection criteria that changed frequently and without warning. Participants also described the accumulation of financial costs, lengthy processing delays, errors made by IRCC (and the absence of clear processes to address or redress errors), and the emotional distress caused by the process altogether. This cumbersome and opaque Canadian bureaucracy thus burdens applicants and creates long life-disrupting delays ³ (Bélanger and Candiz 2020; Geoffrion 2021). The situation was so critical that in 2022, when processing delays for PR reached an average of forty months, the Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l’immigration (AQAADI), an association of immigration lawyers in Québec, deposited a request to the Federal Court of Canada to challenge what they called “unreasonable delays” causing harm to migrants (Schué 2022). To add to the complexity of the process, most IRCC services were transferred online. Because people do not know where to turn, since 2022, the number of access to information requests regarding simple personal information on claimants’ immigration files has exploded. IRCC had already been warned by the Canadian Information Commissioner that the situation was critical, and that part of the problem was the opacity of IRCC and its inability to provide basic and important information like claimants’ file status and the reasons for a decision (Marquis 2024). With the dematerialization of procedures, the closing of physical offices, the increased automatization of decision-making processes through artificial intelligence programs ⁴ like Chinook (Chartier-Edwards, Blottiere, and Roberge 2024), and very limited access to immigration agents on the clogged telephone line, Canada immigration candidates have fewer resources to find their way within, and out of, the immigration maze (Bélanger et al. 2024).

Interpretative Labor and the Development of Immigration Expertise

It’s that type of pressure that is difficult, because when you do your file [. . .] You tell yourself: “If I make a mistake that is interpreted wrongly by the person that will read my file, I can be. . .My file can be put in the garbage.” (Julie, came as a PhD student, and was on a post-diploma visa until she applied for PR)

Trying to understand what is demanded in terms of both form and content, anticipating bureaucrats’ interpretations of the information and the supporting evidence provided is intensive work called “interpretive labor” (Graeber 2012). According to Alpes (2017), who studied immigration intermediaries in Cameroon, all forms and documents, even those that are legal and officially stamped, “are volatile in that the inclusion of papers into bodies of legal documents always also includes moments of interpretation” (269). As soon as a form is filled and sent, the claimant loses control over the meaning of the words inscribed to answer seemingly neutral administrative questions. Paperwork also induces emotions such as fear and anxiety (Navaro-Yashin 2007)—and sometimes, bursts of joy when claimants are notified that their immigration file is moving to the next step (Geoffrion 2021)—which makes the interpretive labor particularly intense for applicants. The unequal power relation between immigration bureaucracies and claimants can thus be conceptualized as a form of violence. It puts the burden of understanding the intricacies of complicated bureaucratic systems and requirements on the back of people in need of state services or permits regularizing their status. To be successful, claimants must try to think like, and thus, identify with, their tormentors. Graeber (2012) explains:

The unique qualities of violence as a form of action means that human relations ultimately founded on violence create lopsided structures of the imagination, where the responsibility to do the interpretive labor required to allow the powerful to operate oblivious to much of what is going on around them, falls on the powerless, who thus tend to empathize with the powerful far more than the powerful do with them. (105)

Studies of online communities of migrants’ spouses have shown that even as they face state violence, some defend and support the state’s policies and practices, acting as gatekeepers (Longo 2018). They tend to chastise or discredit those who refuse to comply with official rules and delays (Geoffrion 2023). In this respect, immigration candidates become “patients of the state” (Auyero 2011) who conform to the state’s expectations and submit to its violence in the process. Through compliance with official and implicit (read cultural) rules and expectations, some try to express forms of “good citizenship” (Vianelli, Gill, and Hoellerer 2022) in a merit-based immigration system. However, due to the level of complexity, it is extremely difficult for individuals to acquire the “expertise in the management of documents” (Tuckett 2019, 121) necessary to successfully understand and complete the process by themselves. As such, when things do not go smoothly, and they often do not, immigration applicants have no choice but to seek alternative sources of information and support to guide them through the process and build their own expertise.

The Development of Lay Expertise Online

Christian is a highly educated professional migrant to Canada. He, like many others, had the administrative, cultural, and linguistic competencies to properly fill out his application himself, which he did. However, he faced delays, errors and blockades in the processing of his file. He claims that the Canadian immigration system “does not work.” His claim stems from the current context of “information poverty” and “information precarity” (Caidi, Allard, and Quirke 2010; Wall, Otis Campbell, and Janbek 2017), that results, in the case of Canada, from the opacity of the system, in which official information is either unavailable, volatile, contradictory, or simply incorrect. As such, most migrants are dependent on an intermediary, or a sequence of several intermediaries, to migrate (Groutsis, van den Broek, and Harvey 2015; Jones and Sha 2020). As such, “[t]oday brokers are above all experts in the economy and micro-politics of documentation” (Lindquist 2012, 88).

In Canada, only lawyers and immigration consultants are formally recognized to represent a candidate, act on their behalf, and be remunerated for their services. However, their services are very expensive and thus, not accessible to most. Moreover, the Canadian immigration bureaucracy can be defined as unpredictable, since the issuance of a visa relies in part on the discretionary power of immigration officials (Satzewich 2015). Consequently, even accredited immigration intermediaries like lawyers cannot guarantee the success of their work for their clients or explain why what seemed to be a “good file” was rejected (Guay 2023). Thus, migrants look for free and reliable alternative resources. The work of Odasso (2021) in Belgium and Italy has shown the crucial role played by civil rights organizations in supporting migrants. In Canada, Bélanger et al.’s (2024) research has helped to recognize the important role played by Canadian federal constituency offices in providing immigration support to their constituents free of charge. Members of Parliament’s (MPs) direct access to IRCC allows them to quickly find out if there is a problem with the file. However, we know that they have limited power when processing times are still within official deadlines (Geoffrion 2023).

Discussion forums and online groups constitute another significant, easily accessed, and free source of information about immigration processes. According to Odasso (2024), informal online self-help groups began to emerge in the 2000s and started to attract scholarly attention in the 2010s (Oiarzabal and Reips 2012; Schrooten 2012). Online communities of like-minded members such as closed Facebook groups are known to provide emotional support and immigration tips based on shared personal experience (Geoffrion 2021; Savolainen 2015). They also play an important role in decision-making at every step of the migratory journey. For example, discussions online may influence the choice of a country of settlement and integration strategies (Fogelman and Christensen 2022; Gius 2021), allowing migrants to capitalize on “weak ties” (Granovetter 1977; Komito 2011) to find housing and jobs. Social networks also represent a source of legal and administrative information (Kolbasi-Muyan and Rittenberger-Tilic 2023), where the “socialization from below” that takes place creates communities of practice: “petitioners learn behaviors and performative techniques that empower them to overcome administrative hurdles” (Odasso 2024, 305). “Being connected” is especially important for migrants in precarious situations whence “the digital space of flows accommodates affordances to overcome information precarity” (Yüksel 2022, 1838). “Connected migrants” (Diminescu 2005) thus develop “smart” mobility strategies (Dekker et al. 2018), and are empowered (DaPonte 2015), because they can outwit immigration regimes through the extensive and current knowledge gathered and shared collectively. This acquired “practical and empirical knowledge” (Descamps 2022) allows them to resist “dominant structures, such as the increasingly restrictive immigration regimes of advanced societies” (Dekker and Engbersen 2014, 404). According to Epstein (2023), one of the leaders in the development of the concept of lay expertise in online support groups, a characteristic of lay expertise is its “epistemic pragmatism,” which occupies a “pivotal role in addressing social problems by developing elements of expertise that are otherwise sorely lacking, and that credentialed experts cannot provide” (85), namely, through collective mobilization (Odasso 2024). Dekker et al. (2018) add that

social media are a “weapon of the weak” allowing migrants to go beyond the “public transcripts” of national governments and get access to “hidden transcripts” where official information can be challenged and where practical advice can be acquired for successful (irregular) crossings of borders. (3)

However important social networks may be for immigrants at all stages of the process, they, as collectives, are not accredited immigration intermediaries. There is thus a risk that the information shared is incorrect, counterproductive, or even dangerous. As Yüksel (2022), who studied temporary migrants and Syrian refugees in Turkey, explains, information and rumors, whether true or false, travel at “accelerated speed through communication channels” (1847). Nevertheless, based on their study of Syrian refugees in the Netherlands, Dekker et al. (2018, 4) found that refugees considered social media information based on personal experience more trustworthy than information from authorities (see Caidi et al. 2010). Migrants have developed processes of information validation and ways to easily discern which online sources to trust. They engage in the work of evaluating and selecting the information relevant to their own case (Dekker et al. 2018). Numbers of “views,” “likes,” and positive replies to posts are also considered signs of trustworthiness and credibility on online forums (Au and Eyal 2022).

The literature demonstrates that if everybody gets to learn relevant tricks and competencies from online forums, not everybody becomes a recognized lay expert. Descamps (2022), who studies Facebook groups on family reunification, outlines four types of participants: active participants, passive participants, mentors, and lurkers. To become a “mentor” one needs to be able to make sense of the wealth of experiential information available in discussion groups, which necessitates “capacities of abstraction and comparison.” This expertise is grounded in multiple sources: principally their own embodied experience, which is validated by the experience of thousands of members, research (academic studies, journalistic reports), and exchanges with other experts offline (Au and Eyal 2022) such as lawyers, MPs, and other intermediaries. Recognized lay experts are rapidly noticed by administrators, who tend to promote them to leadership positions within the group (Descamps 2022, par.46). These insights into online immigration forums resonate with the literature on immigration intermediaries, which show that they are often ordinary people, themselves migrants, who do not have formal training in immigration law or administration, but who have acquired their skills and local know-how through their hands-on experience of migration (Khosravi 2007; Lindquist 2012).

Methodology

In 2021, as part of a wider research project on the role of federal constituency offices in the immigration services landscape in Canada led by Danièle Bélanger (see Bélanger et al. 2024), we interviewed twelve migrants in Québec and conducted four months of observation on online immigration forums to grasp the perspectives of constituents who had contacted their local MP for immigration reasons. We found that for many, contacting their local constituency office was considered the ultimate solution to accessing in-person support, unblocking any problem on their file or, at the very least, getting useful information on the decision timeline and their next steps. However, this research also shed light on another phenomenon that surpassed the scope of the initial research focus: the circulation and appropriation of crucial immigration knowledge by candidates, both online and offline.

We did not limit the research to only one type of immigration in Canada. Interview participants had come as students, temporary professional workers, investors, and dependents of temporary migrants. All people interviewed were already living in Québec except for one, who was sponsoring her husband’s immigration through the spousal reunification process and had decided to wait with him in a third country. Some had “traveled” from one permit to another while trying to legitimize their stay in Canada. Others had seen their visa expire and were waiting for a response to their application in an uncomfortable state of semilegality. Interviews were conducted in French and in English and lasted an average of seventy-five minutes. The topics discussed followed an interview guide structured by different moments in the immigration journey of participants: (1) the emergence of their immigration project; (2) their administrative experience; and (3) their use of immigration services and intermediaries. To respect the confidentiality of the people interviewed, each of them was attributed a pseudonym reflecting their gender and ethnicity.

We also conducted ethnographic observations online (Pink et al. 2016). These two field sites were articulated together as one, people’s narratives moving back and forth between their online presence and offline activities; building on both to inform their next administrative step. In most of our interviews, migrants referred to their participation in immigration forums online, and online group members referred to actions taken offline, such as paying a visit to their local federal deputy or printing pictures to add to their immigration file. Our methodology was informed by Geoffrion’s (2021) work on family reunification, in which online ethnography in Facebook groups of Canadian women provided rich data that shed light on the emotionality of immigration procedures (for similar methods, also see Leurs and Prabhakar 2018; Marino 2020). Indeed, exploring migrants’ experience of MPs’ immigration services online led us to unearth circuits of information about Canadian immigration procedures, and the processes of development and recognition of lay experts.

We selected two public online forums, and two Facebook groups (one public and one private) specialized in immigration in Canada. The first one is hosted on the website of a law firm. The website also offers other sources of information for immigration candidates to Canada and encourages them to use their free legal consultation services. The second forum covers immigration to Canada broadly. Both host hundreds of thousands of members and thousands of conversation topics. In both forums, users ask questions and share their experiences and personal stories about their immigration to Canada. They all use pseudonyms and do not display any profile pictures that would make it possible to recognize them. The two Facebook groups selected count several tens of thousands of members. Since most are using their personal Facebook account to participate, we made sure we avoided using direct quotations from posts, even in the “open” Facebook group. We privileged general paraphrases that preserved the confidentiality of members. Here also, we use pseudonyms.

Before we started collecting data, we contacted the administrators of the forums and Facebook groups, explained the project, and asked for their consent to take notes on the type of information shared by participants and the frequency of their contributions. They provided us with membership in the forums to facilitate our participation in public discussions. We then posted the information about the research project on the forums, informing members they could contact us if they had any questions or concerns or simply did not want to be included in the research.

Push Factor: Bureaucratic Chaos, Interpretive Labor, Distress, and Disillusion

Rules change very often, and sometimes, we start our file and then, by the time we finish preparing it, rules have changed, and we need to start certain sections over [. . .] Strangely, although I was already used to the procedures, I found the permanent residence [application] really difficult to prepare. What is difficult, I would say, is the huge quantity of information requested, and the level of precision is so high that sometimes, we can’t provide it right away or, it requires a lot of effort [. . .] You don’t know where they want it, in which format. It’s important because if you don’t send it properly, your file risks suffering more delays or being refused. (Julie)

Julie is a French student who came to Québec to pursue a PhD and who then applied for a post-graduation work permit. For migrants who have lived in Canada for a while, have mastered the country’s official languages, have previously dealt with other types of Canadian paperwork, are relatively well-to-do, come from a Western country, and have tertiary education, IRCCs bureaucratic formalities should be easy. However, despite her level of comfort with administrative procedures, things were not clear for Julie. To add to the challenge, interview participants and observations online confirm that it is almost impossible to reach anyone from IRCC to get clarifications. And, when they do get through on the phone: “It’s always subcontractors of subcontractors of subcontractors, who don’t have access to any information. It is the feeling of being helpless and not being able to make things move because it is completely dehumanized. There is no service of proximity” (Louise, an administrative agent who migrated with an open working permit as the dependent of a professional worker).

Emmanuelle, a Canadian citizen who was sponsoring her non-Canadian husband adds that, as a designer, she is very good with computers, but she laments those who do not possess the computer literacy required to fill out their application, pay the fees, format the documents requested, navigate the website, activate their IRCC account, and do all the follow-ups online. The bureaucratic chaos surrounding her file and the delays she faced in the spousal reunification process—during which she got pregnant, had a child and decided to live in a third country with her husband in precarious conditions because she did not want her family to be separated—was enough to drive her into a severe depression. The whole process took six years, during which she appealed for accelerated treatment for humanitarian reasons, to no avail.

Louise, who works as an administrator, was also baffled by the number of documents requested over and over for her visa renewals: “I was crying looking at all the things they were asking for. We had to take pictures again, send this, send a criminal record. . .This is not possible!” As a former civil servant in France, a country known for the absurdity of its bureaucracy, Louise was surprised to find herself in a country where administrative practices were even more chaotic. She and her husband felt they were not welcome. This realization brought disappointment and disillusion, especially because her husband was recruited in France by Canadian officials: “I will hold a grudge toward Canada because of that, that’s for sure [. . .] [they were] presenting Canada as such a welcoming country. . .”

Christian, a research professional who came to Canada to pursue his PhD, had lived in Quebec for nine years at the time of the interview. He had so little trust in IRCC that he regularly took screenshots of his account online, “because it changes constantly, and there is no trace. We can’t even have confidence in the information that is posted. They can say green one day, and the next day, it has been changed, as though they had never given you the go-ahead.” He later stated that the whole procedure creates “a situation of psychological vulnerability, because we think about it all the time. Personally, it affects me. I believe some people are really distressed.” The mental load that drags on for years can be extremely heavy. Once the file has been submitted, and they hear nothing from the authorities for months and even years, applicants start to worry that perhaps they made a mistake somewhere, forgot to include a form, a piece of evidence or a report; that they have done something “wrong.” In other words, they are made to think it is their fault if their file is stuck somewhere in the system. This is an exemplary consequence of interpretive labor: migrants bear the responsibility of understanding what this faceless and confusing administration wants and how it wants it. Hence, the necessity to document every step of the process with photocopies and, in the case of Christian, screenshots.

The testimonies of Christian, Louise, Julie, and Emmanuelle, all relatively privileged immigration applicants to Canada, shed light on the violence of the Canadian immigration bureaucracy and the administrative burden it puts on their shoulders. This load is often so heavy that it is detrimental to their health and well-being, especially if they already live in Canada and are stuck in precarious conditions inherent to their in-between status. To borrow older immigration terminology, we can say that the violence of the process acts as a push factor, in the sense that with the excessive amount of interpretive labor needed to navigate the system, applicants are pushed away from official sources of information. They start questioning the system, and even their choice to immigrate to Canada. They lose their trust in Canadian institutions (Caidi et al. 2010).

Pull Factor: Alternative and Current Sources of Information Online

I have been a member of all the groups on sponsorship since the beginning of our procedures. . .to understand how to do. . .At first, it was to understand how it worked, the little things to be attentive to, all that [. . .] We are lucky such groups exist! There is a lot of mutual aid. (Emmanuelle, a Canadian citizen who has been waiting for a response to her spousal reunification claim since 2017)

The agency of migrants and their capacity to overcome barriers in oppressive border regimes is well documented (Davies, Isakjee, and Obradovic-Wochnik 2023; De Genova 2017). It is also known that migrants both traveling through regular and “irregular” routes, tend to use the services of a range of immigration intermediaries who possess the skills and networks they lack to deal with immigration systems. However useful some credentialed experts like lawyers are for prospective migrants, when looking at the sheer number of users in the forums observed, which exceeds the hundreds of thousands, it becomes clear that many also seek guidance and support online. Some use the platforms like a personal diary, regularly updating other members about their immigration journey. They share their timeline, difficulties, and successes. Pictures of official correspondence and documents from IRCC, with the candidates’ names struck out, are often posted to visually show other members where they are at, and to ask if the documents received mean they should celebrate or worry. Through the cumulated experiences of other applicants, one can get a feeling of the current “normal” in immigration procedures, including processing times, which, since the pandemic, tend to fluctuate a lot (Zimonjic 2023).

Faced with delays that seemed unduly long and that threatened to go beyond the expiration date of her working permit, Louise joined online forums and social networks: “I follow a lot of people online, on the delays that were indicated back then, when we sent our file.” These platforms mainly reassured Louise that her problem—outrageous processing delays leading to the precarization of her living conditions—did not lie in her personal case but was, rather, a generalized problem. Every time IRCC extended the official processing times for her file, she compared her situation with that of people who had submitted their application on the same date. Other people’s experiences thus served as a guideline that helped her not to panic and prompted her to take additional actions offline, such as consulting her company’s lawyer.

Through their participation in online forums, applicants can build their own personalized immigration toolkit with the information available. It consists of sets of bureaucratic practical skills and tips: material evidence to include in the file, answers to provide to ambiguous questions, strategies to deploy if processing deadlines expire or if one receives a refusal (e.g., submitting a request for the notes on their file, appealing the decision), and even attitudes to adopt in dealing with authorities. For example, during our observations, we were attentive to the reasons that led immigration candidates to contact their MP. Since most migrants are not aware of their existence, they often learned about them for the first time in the groups.

Details of the applications that were successful and those that were rejected, when compiled and compared, help users to understand IRCCs expectations and “red flags,” such as marriage on a first visit (Geoffrion 2018). They can thus adjust their application accordingly. As Descamps (2022, para.4) explained based on her work on spousal reunification in France, “the individual becomes ‘expert of their own condition’ through the ‘cumulative knowledge’ that stems from their interactions with various administrations.” When shared on large immigration forums, this personal and experiential expertise “from below” can be expanded and reappropriated by other applicants, thus augmenting their chances of success. As Cynthia, one of the administrators of a Facebook group we observed said: “We understand quite well that we are nothing without a network.” Immigration forums thus represent wealth in numbers. As such, they constitute a great pull for immigration candidates who otherwise find themselves lost in the system.

Compiling, Comparing, and Testing Strategies

The circulation of information online is abundant, with several million posts published since the founding of the forums studied. Since there is always a risk of misinformation, immigration tips shared online go through a trial-and-error process. In congruence with Odasso’s (2024) observations of Facebook groups on family reunification, we found that strategies were “tested and applied in offline interactions” (317). They are tested by applicants, who then share their results online. Thus, contacting one’s MP was one commonly suggested strategy that passed the trial-and-error validation process, although only when files exceeded the usual processing times (Geoffrion 2023). With time, creative tweaks to this strategy were tried with satisfactory results, which contributed to expanding collective resistance to immigration roadblocks. Also, because it is not enough to know what to do, migrants must predict and prevent administrative errors and complications. For example, Awa, a forum member who sponsored her non-Canadian partner, advised members to contact a MP from another constituency if they were not satisfied with the response they got from their own local office. She recommended to give a fictitious postcode that is part of a constituency in Montreal. Some participants posted additional tips: “Make sure you do business with a MP from the ‘good side,’ especially since you live where the Conservatives ⁵ were elected.”

Information available online is hence co-constructed by users and constantly updated and ameliorated. On one of the forums observed, someone created a topic soliciting members to post a list of the questions they were asked during their interview with an IRCC agent. The objective was to guide those who were called for an interview, relieve some of their apprehension, and be as current as possible as to what might be considered a “red flag” by IRCC. Gina, the person who created the topic, started by sharing the narratives and interview transcripts of five successful candidates who had already posted their stories in other discussion threads. She took it upon herself to gather all relevant stories on the forum, evaluate them, and re-post them under one heading to facilitate other users’ information searches.

Gina is considered an expert by her peers. The information she creates and shares is thus believed to be trustworthy, and her work on the forum is appreciated. At the time of the observation, she had accumulated eleven “badges,” including “rare,” “well followed,” “dedicated,” “conversation started,” and “very popular.” The credibility of the information gathered online can thus be assessed by the degree of recognition a member receives on the forum (see Dekker et al. 2018; Yüksel 2022) and the reputation of contributors constitutes an important part of the information validation process. Unreliable members are generally singled out by other members. For example, in response to a member who told another user that her application would most likely be rejected, a recognized expert member wrote that she should not worry because the person “has a reputation in this forum for writing jealous comments.” A new member can thus easily verify whether they should trust the information provided or not (Dekker et al. 2018). As a result, immigration forums thus provide a space where migrants gain practical know-how and, more control over this otherwise uncertain and opaque process through the support of a collective of peers and the guidance of recognized experts.

Learning the Trade, Sharing the Wealth

Since we are at it, we might as well help out others. (Louise)

During fieldwork, we spent many hours combing through online conversations between users. The more time we spent online the more knowledge of the Canadian immigration system we acquired. We had to learn the (in)formal immigration language to understand the strategies some members were proposing, such as “flagpoling” (“faire le tour du poteau”), which means crossing the Canadian border with the USA and coming right back to Canada to (hopefully) have one’s temporary visa renewed; and “la brune,” which represents the letter sent in a brown envelope that announces that your application was successful and your visa is ready to be issued. The gradual learning process we went through by passively participating in several Canadian immigration forums is similar to the process users also go through. We both needed to understand the immigration process, the difference being that, as Canadian citizens, our status, livelihood, family life, security, etc., were not at stake, while for many immigration candidates, the learning process is accompanied by precariousness and uncertainty.

Spending time online is thus very useful for building one’s immigration literacy. However, since most members of these groups are observers only, we have noticed that expertise develops unevenly among group members. On the general immigration forums studied, all users received badges, which evolved depending on their number of interventions in discussions. For example, on one of the forums, new members are labeled “newbies.” They become “full members” after twenty comments. To reach the most advanced “VIP member” stage, one must have contributed to over six thousand discussions.

When someone contributes to a discussion, their basic information, including their pseudonym, badge, date of affiliation, number of posts, and number of thumbs-ups received, is displayed on the left side of the contribution box, visible to all members and observing nonmembers. Their reputation credentials are also computerized in the system by the number of “likes” their posts have received. We noticed that the badge system creates a social hierarchy within the groups, where more senior and active users are identified as experts. Some of them still share their own experience and advice with the community more than ten years after they have obtained their own Canadian permanent residence. Their “VIP” badge testifies to their expertise and grants them the trust of others. Brigitte is one example of a user who gained the reputation of an expert in the discussion forum. She joined the group in 2003. She was then sponsoring her husband through the family reunification program. In 2021, when we conducted the fieldwork, she was still active on the forum and had published more than 23,000 messages in response to users’ procedural inquiries, desperate outcries, and questions about life in Québec. Brigitte acquired her fine understanding of the Canadian immigration bureaucracy first through her own personal experience of filing paperwork and then through the life stories of thousands of other members. The challenges they encountered and the solutions they found and shared online further enriched her own understanding of the Canadian immigration system. Thanks to the positive reactions of other members, she is ranked among the top users of the forum and is one of the most popular.

Expert users like Brigitte often send links to official IRCC guidelines, share relevant newspaper articles (once, an academic article from a Canadian scholar was posted), and advice given by lawyers, MPs, and other credentialed experts. Most administrators and acknowledged experts also ask inquiring members specific questions to make sure they provide informed responses and suggest the most appropriate strategy to overcome the problem. Lay expertise thus stems from both personal and shared experience, and from the synthesis of official guidelines, translated in a “hybrid interlanguage” (Au and Eyal 2022, 32) that is easy to understand. The use of official and unofficial immigration terminology in their responses also testifies to the depth of a member’s familiarity with the Canadian immigration system, which generates trust from other users. Trust is also built through the tone of comments posted online, which, for the most recognized members, tend to be more constructive than critical. These experts are often contacted through private messages by forum members for additional personalized guidance.

Becoming Better Than the Credentialed Experts

The problem, I believe, is that we, who wait, know the procedures more than the people who have the power to find out [information] for us. (Giselle, a Canadian sponsoring her husband)

Thanks to their own experience and cumulated knowledge acquired online, some members of the online platforms come to know the immigration procedures and strategies to overcome impasses to such an extent that it surpasses the expertise of formal actors who are supposed to help them, like IRCC agents, MPs and lawyers. For example, Suzie, a Canadian citizen sponsoring her husband, shared with others how she interacted with her MP and how it went:

I explained our situation to this gentleman who did not seem to know what the word “sponsorship” meant [. . .]. I had to lecture him for 15 minutes on immigration procedures. He ended up understanding that I was talking about my husband. . . I told him exactly what I wanted to know and what I didn’t want him to do: put pressure on IRCC.

Due to his training as a jurist, his own experience, his personal connection with lawyers and other experts, and his participation in many online forums and Facebook groups, Christian has developed such a high level of expertise that: “I feel that I have access to certain information they do not have, because of these peer-to-peer groups.” He also had to teach the IRCC agent he was able to reach on the phone about the newest procedures: “The person did not know about the reimbursement. So, I said ‘Listen, open the memo, you will see that it is written down.’ Because I consult the IRCC site. Some memos are addressed to people, to IRCC employees, on how to treat files, answer requests. . ..”

Their personal and often intensive involvement in those groups and the level of expertise they have developed give them leverage to become advocates for the good of the community of migrants and even impact policies. This is the case of Cynthia, who was one of the administrators in a Facebook group of seven thousand five hundred members. When she moved her family to Québec, she found out that it would take four years to obtain their RP, during which time she and her husband were not allowed to work, nor were they entitled to health insurance. After consulting several immigration forums, she joined a first Facebook group: “From this group, I found another one, and I explained my situation to them. I told them I could help them. I couldn’t work, so I had time. I wanted to help.”

Cynthia became one of the administrators of this Facebook group. She started to collaborate with administrators of other Facebook groups on immigration in Québec. They joined forces—some volunteer ten to fifteen hours a week—to influence policies. The sheer number of testimonies they got from their networks was enough supporting evidence to build a strong claim to present to politicians. They advocated to support temporary workers who were stuck between statuses, unable to work while they waited several months for their PR:

We did a first protest in November 2020. The second one in June. We had a lot of attention from the media: about 50 articles on delays for the PR [. . .]. The problem is that people waiting for their PR have expired working permits. They must apply for a closed working permit, which very few employers offer. Our objective was to speed up the process and allow them to apply for an open permit in the meantime. We succeeded by sending a memo to deputies, who sent it to the Québec government, who sent it to the federal. So, it is us, immigrants in poor working groups, who have been waiting forever, who have succeeded in making such gains for our fellow migrants!

Online platforms networking hundreds of thousands of people who share their experience foster the development of immigration expertise and lay experts and provide some recognized lay experts like Cynthia “with new political opportunities and mobilizing structures” (Leurs and Smets 2018, 11). First, these platforms contribute to making public the structural violence that migrants face in their immigration journey, allowing them to break away from their isolation and realize they are not alone in this mess. Second, sharing problems and strategies not only creates solidarity but also generates new data that can be used by recognized lay experts to produce new insights into the immigration system and create awareness outside the network, such as in the media and the political sphere. For those recognized lay experts, the work they do for the community of migrants increases their social capital, but it is also empowering, as they develop a legal and civic consciousness (Odasso 2024). As Louise said, politicians should listen because: “one day, we will be Canadian citizens. We will also have the right to vote.”

Conclusion

What you should remember is that the information, we search for it everywhere, except where, in fact, it should be coming from. (Christian)

Despite the current favorable liberal discourse on immigration, the multiplication of recruitment campaigns abroad, and Canada’s welcoming reputation, the system is faulty. The complexity and opacity of the process are so great that it is legitimate to wonder if immigrants are truly desired in the country, a question that was reflected in our participants’ narratives, even the most qualified of them. If immigrants were desired, the government would make sure the process was easy to understand and would provide adequate and reliable support in case of problems. Another concern regarding the Canadian immigration system is that the current state of “information poverty”

feed[s] into the neoliberal state’s devolution of responsibility to individuals, who are now expected to fend for themselves by asking out and assessing information [. . .] which diminishes the possibilities of holding traditional experts or governments to account. (Epstein 2023, 92)

Of course, immigration bureaucracies, like all bureaucracies, are culturally specific and require cultural, linguistic, technological, and other practical skills. Immigration candidates must develop a specific immigration doigté or bureaucratic literacy, to successfully find and complete the “right” forms; learn, understand, and use the complex immigration vocabulary; contact the “right” institution or intermediary for help, at the “right” time (Geoffrion 2023); write the “right” information in the “right” spot; provide the “right” type of supporting evidence, and so on. “Right,” here, is highly subjective, cultural, and situation-specific. To do so, applicants must engage in a learning process that requires an intensive investment in time and energy, what Graeber (2012) called “interpretive labor.” This ordeal is especially burdensome for immigration applicants, because they find themselves stuck in a highly unequal relationship with a complex and opaque bureaucracy that can do no “wrong,” even when it loses documents, gives misleading information or assigns applications to inactive immigration officers (Moosapeta 2022).

However, it seems like being conversant with administrative work and immigration procedures is not enough to avoid complications, mainly because the rules appear shifty and elusive. We have seen cases where immigration lawyers could simply not figure out what had gone wrong in a file that was rejected and IRCC agents who were not aware of new memos and procedures and thus, unduly penalized applicants. In such a context, migrants must push their intensive interpretive labor a notch further in order to foresee potential obstacles and nip them in the bud. Our data show that online forums afforded users a space to share and collect relevant and current information, and a network of peers to consult in case of difficulty. The collective experience-based knowledge of the Canadian immigration bureaucracy gathered online led to innovative strategies to ease or fasten the procedure for individual migrants, and even produced favorable conditions to push the government to redress inefficient or detrimental policies.

The sheer number of users represents experiential wealth in numbers, and the information shared goes through processes of “quality control.” When formal access to information is limited, online support networks and discussion forums, based on solidarity, fill the gaps and contribute to the formation of lay expertise and experts on Canadian immigration. Through intensive participation in online groups, these new experts compile and synthesize the experience-based knowledge collected from thousands of members. The strategies developed and shared online are validated through trial-and-error processes, both online and offline. Online networks and the public recognition of these new lay experts thus make it possible to identify reliable information and strategies in a context of quickly evolving immigration policies and measures. They seem not only to invest this time and energy to help others out of solidarity but also for reasons of prestige and reputation (see Claude 2020). Their contribution to online forums sometimes turns them into public figures, as they use the wealth of experience-from-below collected online to propel the cause of migrants to another level, sometimes making political gains. The uncredentialed—and unpaid—labor of immigration lay experts like Jonas is thus extremely valuable, as it not only contributes to their own immigration success but also eases the bureaucratic burden of many others, who do not deserve to be treated in such violent manner by the system whether they qualify to immigrate to Canada or not.