Race, Gender and Canadian Immigration Policy: Blacks from the Caribbean, 1900-1932

Abstract

This study examines two movements of Caribbean blacks to Canada between 1900 and 1932 from a political economy perspective. The first group of workers migrated to Nova Scotia to work in the coal mines and the coke ovens of the Sydney steel plant. Second, domestic workers were recruited from Guadeloupe and the British Caribbean to help fill the demand for cheap labour in Quebec, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. The essay demonstrates that the process of immigration control was structured by a dialectic of economic, political, and ideological relations: the demand of employers for cheap unskilled labour and the state’s desire to exclude blacks as permanent settlers. Perceiving blacks as likely to create permanent economic and race-relations problems, immigration officials sought to avoid the problem by restricting the entry of black settlers to those whose services were in urgent demand.