Future agendas in studying bureaucratic boundary-work: prevalence, institutionalization, and methodology

ABSTRACT

Jennifer Elrick’s terrific book argues that changes in Canadian immigration policy – and national identity – derive not just from politics, foreign relations, and economic pressures, but also lie in the culturally-infused boundary work of civil servants. This boundary work occurred through thousands of decisions about who “deserves” to migrate or stay in Canada, and what criteria were used to judge deservingness. This important book (1) invites comparison with other countries and time periods to identify scope conditions for bureaucratic policy-making, (2) raises questions of where bureaucratic culture comes from and how it is institutionalized in politics, and (3) opens up rich methodological conversations over how scholars should read, analyze, and understand boundary-work in archives and other qualitative data. We are also confronted with normative questions: whether and in what contexts should bureaucrats drive policy? This question is especially salient as populist, anti-immigrant politicians win office around the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration policy
• bureaucratic politics
• boundary-work
• Canada
• deservingness
• methodology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 https://www.asanet.org/annual-meeting/2022-annual-meeting/theme, last accessed 30 August 2022.