Romain Schué and Thomas Gerbet have just revealed, on January 4, the influence of the American firm McKinsey on the Trudeau government’s immigration policy and the staggering costs paid to this company. This firm would have advised the reception of 465,000 immigrants in 2023 to reach 500,000 in 2025, of which 60% would be of the economic category. Did she also advise the meteoric increase in temporary workers? Border control and asylum seekers? A demographic transformation of post-national Canada that Justin Trudeau boasts about? A reorganization of the computer system, better management of passports (it would then be a bankruptcy)? The information is blocked for the moment. But what right does all this have?
Should we be surprised at this recourse to a multinational to influence Canadian internal affairs? No, if we relate it to the hegemonic development of a sociological theory of mobility which dominates today to the point of making governments dependent on multinationals like McKinsey.
To understand this paradigm shift, a step back is necessary.
The mobility paradigm adopted by the federal government for decades
The mobility paradigm (mobility studies) has only gone from strength to strength since the late 1990s. In 2005, sociologist John Urry published an edifying and somewhat delirious text in The Cahiers internationales de sociologie to describe the world in motion: asylum seekers, terrorists, tourists, diasporas, international students, entrepreneurs, athletes, hikers, prostitutes are on the move, he wrote. The sociologist criticized his peers for having neglected the phenomenon of mobility and for having so far insisted instead on the role of fixed social structures within society or the obsolete nation-state.
John Urry called for a “reformulation of sociology in its post-societal phase”, whose major object would no longer be societies in their specificity, but “the various mobilities of peoples, objects, images, information and garbage [sic] “. Since then, this paradigm has competed with various “post” perspectives, including the thesis of superdiversity, very fashionable in English-speaking universities, where one speaks with dubious delicacy of “transcultural itinerants”. Multiculturalism is, so to speak, outdated, we are now swimming in the trans universe. All challenge the political and symbolic boundaries of nation states, as well as the meanings of citizenship and belonging.
This movement is to be linked with the creation of the international Metropolis network founded in 1996 on the initiative of Minister Sergio Marchi, and of which Meyer Burstein was co-executive director, as well as with the federal government’s discourse on making multiculturalism profitable and Canada’s innovation strategy. In 2004, the document “Developing the Business Case for Multiculturalism” stated that immigrants are part of a new “creative class”, able to mobilize their international networks for investments and good business practices.
Immigrants and “visible minorities” are seen there as “a reservoir of cultural and linguistic skills that Canadian industries can call on for their operations abroad or to expand in international markets”, wrote in 2004 the former and powerful director of Immigration and Citizenship Canada, Meyer Burstein.
The ties that the various “cultural and racial communities have with almost every country in the world are synonymous with economic prosperity and have helped to spark the Government of Canada’s interest in multiculturalism”, stated Canadian Heritage ( 2005). It is therefore not surprising to resort to the international tentacles of the McKinsey firm. And Justin Trudeau can only agree with this level of interference in a country he conceives and presents as postnational.
The perverse effects of mobility on people and the power of states
International immigration concerns several categories of people with different social and political-legal statuses. However, countries must choose between two main categories of cross-border workers in economic terms: skilled, highly mobile foreign workers and unskilled workers.
The mobility of the former is seen as a sign of openness towards the host country. Desirable from an economic point of view, it poses no integration challenges, it is wrongly argued. From this perspective, the brain hunt (or rather the brain drain, seen from another angle) appears desirable for requesting States and institutions that need professionals or international students in order to encourage investment, research and innovation.
On the contrary, the movement of cheap and often downgraded labor must be controlled so as not to provoke a feeling of invasion in the host society. This is why this labor force is the subject of endless public debate on naturalization, civic integration and linguistic requirements. Not to mention that in North America, for one independent immigrant with residency status, there would be about 50 sponsored immigrants, given the transnational networks and ties of migrants.
Finally, this paradigm of mobility also provokes the obligation to rethink the notions of citizenship and state sovereignty, deemed obsolete in a globalized world. Scholars may well speculate on the beauty of transnationalism, yet we can see that all states aspire to control immigration according to their own interests in terms of security and public order, legality, family reunification, public expenditure and urban issues, social and political integration, and even national identity. In this sense, the paradigm of mobility conveyed by supra-state bodies can only undermine the power of the state.
Finally, it would be interesting to know what the McKinsey advisers think about the dysfunctions and the possible social crisis caused by the mobility embodied by the crossing of Roxham Road. Do the thousands of asylum seekers who arrive at the borders count towards the objective of the desired 465,000 to 500,000 migrants over five years? Despite the fact that this system gives rise to exploitation, known trafficking and well-organized and arguably ruthless international smuggling networks? A situation that the Trudeau government does not seem to have the courage to face and in the face of which Quebec seems powerless.