About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
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Description
Every year, over 1.3 million people apply to visit, work, or settle in Canada. It falls to visa officers to determine who gets in – and who stays out. In the face of this enormous responsibility, how do these gatekeepers use their discretionary authority to assess eligibility, credibility, and risk?
Seeking answers to this question, Vic Satzewich conducted interviews with 128 visa officers, locally engaged staff, and immigration program managers at eleven overseas offices. He reveals how the organizational context within which they work shapes their decision making. When something in an application does not “add up” – somber photographs from a supposed wedding celebration, for example – an officer conducts follow-up interviews with the applicant.
In a world where no two visa applications are the same, and in the context of complex and shifting population movements and pressures, this is a fascinating look at how visa officers do their work.
Contributor Notes
Vic Satzewich is a professor of sociology at McMaster University and the author of a number of books and articles, including Racism in Canada (Oxford University Press Canada). He is also co-editor of Transnational Identities and Practices in Canada (UBC Press). He is past president of the Canadian Sociological Association and was awarded its Outstanding Contribution Award in 2007.
Awards
- Winner, John Porter Award, Canadian Sociological Association
Editorial Reviews
Points of Entry is a well-written, accessible volume. It makes transparent the formerly hidden exercise of decision making on the part of Canada’s admissions officers and, in so doing, challenges an often critical literature that has presumed entry bias without the test of evidence.
— BC Studies
This carefully researched and well-written book makes a major contribution to the field of immigration policy and its implementation.
— CHOICE, February 2016
Points of Entry is an ethnographically rich study which brings to life, at times sympathetically, the remote experiences of immigration officers. While offering an entree to the broader implications of how discretionary powers and the organizational culture of visa offices oscillate alongside experiential accounts of racism within Canada’s immigration system, the study also calls for further research into the motivations and intentions of immigration officers.
— International Journal, Vol. 71 No. 4, December 2016
Satzewich’s first-hand account of the inner workings at the Department of Immigration is not merely timely, it is excellent. Satzewich visited 11 Canadian visa offices abroad, interviewed 128 staff and witnessed 42 interviews with immigrants. It was unprecedented access … Points of Entry is crisp and compelling, written with objectivity and an extraordinary eye for detail. To read it is to understand why Syrian boys died on a beach, and why politicians lament that “doing the right thing is not always easy” — and then feel slightly ashamed.
— Blacklock's Reporter, September 2015
