Written by Shannon Hutcheson (McGill University)
The bureaucratic labour and conditionality of international student status
To become an international student, there are many bureaucratic and administrative hurdles that must be overcome, with a bulk of the bureaucracy centering on immigration (Hutcheson, 2024). Bureaucratic labour refers to the labour of completing, submitting, and following up on paperwork to comply with the regulations set forth by national and local governments, as well as international agreements. This labour encompasses not only time and energy but also the emotional impact as students work towards maintaining legal status in periods of uncertain immigration policy evolution. In addition to this bureaucratic labour, is the corresponding conditionality of international student status. Conditionality refers to the ephemeral and tenuous status of international students’ status in their country of study, meaning that their ability to remain, work, and study in a country are contingent on meeting and maintaining established criteria (e.g., not violating the conditions of one’s study permit). However, these criteria are not static and subject to change. For example, during the pandemic, international students were allowed to work full-time in Canada to fulfill a workforce shortage. However, in 2024, students were required to reduce that number to 24 hours a week with limited notice, sparking concern (CBC, 2024).
Laughing (and crying) over bureaucracy
Reflecting on my own immigration journey to Canada at the start of my doctoral career in 2016, I’ve lamented numerous visa setbacks over coffee, tea, drinks, tears, and surprisingly, laughter. Like many of my current and former international student peers, I’ve spent countless hours hauling paperwork to borders, scouring message boards for immigration queries, and sharing experiences with excessive visa wait times, and the mental labour of understanding new policies enrobed in “legalese”. In what feels like the crushing weight of bureaucracy, we sometimes find humour in our shared stories. Most notably, when interviewing international students about how they conceptualize inequity as mediated by their international student status for a research study, one of my interviewees laughed about how she found support with her Brazilian community on a WhatsApp group where they shared tips, tricks, and support for navigating Canadian bureaucracy. Melissa shared that the group in Portuguese roughly translates to “those who suffered, but now celebrate it” and that phrasing really resonated with me as a shared rite of passage to laugh about this bureaucracy and conditionality.
The riddle of bureaucracy
My colleague, who is also an international student, was sharing frustration over decoding the newest roll-out of Canadian immigration policy changes including changes to how one transitions from student to worker. She laughed and explained that the process seemed convoluted, as if she were on a quest, standing on a bridge, asking a weathered troll for safe passage, but only “if she can answer these riddles three”. Metaphorically, bureaucracy and policy are the troll: large, overburdening, intimidating, uncompromising, and awaiting the right answer. But what if that correct answer is always changing? Therein lies the nature of bureaucracy in a rapidly evolving policy landscape, and the core of the under-researched bureaucratic labour. While finding the humour of bureaucracy is a coping and bonding mechanism, I do want to be clear that the labour and emotion of bureaucracy is serious with researchers qualifying this bureaucracy for migrants and temporary visitors as a form of administrative violence (Schmidt et al., 2023).
In Canada, the changes to the immigration policy and the internationalization strategy have been dramatic, including immigration imperatives evolving from ‘come here’ to ‘please leave’. With rising nationalism, anti-immigration, and anti-international student rhetoric, this year brought on unprecedented changes to international student immigration (Harden-Wolfson et al., 2024). Where my research and work is contextualized, Canada is finding itself in a period of rapid changes to internationalization. Perhaps the most notable changes are the imposed immigration cap which seeks to reduce international student numbers drastically.
Research imperatives: Including bureaucratic experiences
During my interviews with international students on how they conceptualize inequity as understood by their international student status, bureaucracy was a starting point for their reflections for life as international students in Canada. As Franklin’s famous adage goes, nothing is certain in life except “death and taxes”, and I’d like to offer bureaucracy as another certitude. Although many people on this planet experience bureaucracy, the supplemental bureaucracy required to maintain life in another country is another barrier. As my participant Sarah said, it’s “just small things like that make it a bit harder to adapt to life in a new country.” However, here, it is important to discern, that there is no universal experience with bureaucracy. Race, nationality and corresponding passport power, language fluency and a number of intersectional dimensions impact how bureaucracy is navigated. To illustrate, African international students accepted to institutions in Quebec have over a 70 percent visa rejection rate. This has prompted calls for unconscious bias training for administrators reviewing these dossiers from the federal government (Government of Canada, 2024).
In addition to these need to understand intersectional nuance, it’s also important to consider international students at different levels of study, different points in their international student career, and international students at transitions. The biggest changes for many, especially those who shifted from student to worker, created significant uncertainty, not knowing, and the corresponding liminality. A friend reaching the end of her doctoral journey also asked me about the process, but my experience was no longer relevant as the steps had just changed. Where, how you can receive the permit, and under what circumstances has changed, highlighting the fluid and often unpredictable nature of the bureaucratic landscape, as well as inequities in the postgraduate employability.. I urge all of us who do research with international students to consider the role bureaucracy and conditionality play in the lives of our international student participants, collaborators, and friends.
This blog post is based in part by data collected for my PhD Thesis International Students, Equity, and Marginalization: Unpacking the Human Impact of Internationalization.
Author bio
Dr. Shannon Hutcheson is a postdoctoral researcher with TRaCE Transborder, writing group facilitator, and project manager at McGill University. Having worked and collaborated in the United States, Canada, France, and the UK, her research privileges a critical lens that highlights pervasive inequities in international higher education policies, practices, and ideologies. Her work centres around international students, working to humanize their narratives.