Circumventing Border Control and Restrictive Immigration Policies: The Transnational Labour Migration and Mobility of Filipino Nurses to Canada from the Philippines and via the United States, 1957 to 1969

In this empirical study, I examine the transnational labour migration process of nurses who immigrated to Canada from the Philippines and via the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Using institutional ethnography as a method of inquiry and historical research methods, I conducted in depth life history/oral history interviews with Filipino nurses who were recruited to work in hospitals in North America between 1957 and 1969. I also analyzed historical documents (i.e., correspondence between authorities at federal and provincial levels of government) obtained from archival repositories in Canada and the United States, including Archives of Ontario, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Despite Canadian state securitization, strict border control, and the enforcement of restrictive immigration policies which prioritized white immigrants, I argue that nurses who had trained in elite private nursing schools in the Philippines attained lateral and/or vertical labour mobility in Canada between the late 1950s and the latter years of the 1960s. Notably, among the fifteen nurses I interviewed, a small number arrived prior to the commencement of the liberalization of Canadian immigration policy in 1962. Albeit Canada’s explicit prioritization and preference for white immigrants (i.e., British, French, and American citizens), as well as its imposed restrictions on and discrimination against Asian migrants during the post 1962 period, nearly half of my participants were appointed to supervisory positions (i.e., head nurse, nurse coordinator, nurse supervisor, director of nursing) or nurse educator positions (i.e., nursing instructor, clinical instructor, professor of nursing). I argue that historical, structural, and social influences prefigured the labour mobility of these nurses to and within Canada during the mid-twentieth century. Using a meso-level analytical approach, I illustrate how their appointment in Canadian hospitals was organized by social institutions (i.e., government, education, healthcare, family), state policies in the Philippines, United States, and Canada (i.e., immigration, labour, and healthcare), and influenced by the American colonial history of the Philippines. Moreover, the data reveal that a lack of uniformity existed in the manner by which the credentials, skills, and employment experience of my participants were evaluated. Instead, the evaluation and admissions process was individualized and Canadian immigration authorities maintained flexibility in their assessment practices in accordance with economic and labour need in the country. Although this study points to the exemptions that Canadian immigration officials made on behalf of Filipino nurses and illustrates the flexibility they employed in their practices for this particular ethnic group of nursing professionals, it still, however, represents a racialized system. The Canadian state continues to privilege local labour market needs and seek immigrants or racialized groups who are equipped with various or specific forms of capital (i.e., economic, social, human, cultural). Although the nurses I interviewed attained occupational mobility, their successful career trajectories do not suggest a labour or immigration policy that is post racial. The findings of this study confirm that the practice of identifying and hiring ‘ideal immigrants’ for labour market shortages and demands nonetheless continues in a racialized manner.

Advisor: Mirchandani, Kiran