Geoffrion Karine, Guay Roxane
Department of Anthropology, Université Laval, Quebec City, QC, Canada.
School of Social Work and Criminology, Université Laval, Quebec City, QC, Canada.
J Contemp Ethnogr. 2025 Jun;54(3):364-390. doi: 10.1177/08912416251313535. Epub 2025 Jan 23.
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.
获取正确信息以完成移民文件、跟进申请或对决定提出上诉，对移民申请人来说至关重要。然而，加拿大移民官僚机构以效率低下、程序复杂和不透明而闻名。申请人常常求助于在线讨论论坛来指导他们完成整个过程。基于对12名加拿大移民的访谈以及对四个加拿大移民在线论坛的人种志观察，本文聚焦于在线移民专业知识的发展。基于解释性劳动的概念，我们认为移民官僚机构的暴力行为使移民远离官方信息来源，并通过他们在在线论坛中的密集参与为外行专家的出现铺平了道路。在线外行专家提供经过亲身实践检验和验证的最新、重要提示，以及从数千用户那里收集的基于经验的知识，这使他们能够规避移民困难，从而在移民系统中领先一步。
