Francophone immigration is prioritized within Canadian immigration policy,
with community organizations receiving government funding to support the
integration of French-speaking immigrants. These organizations serve as
intermediaries between governmental social policies and individual immigrants, brokering immigrants’ occupational possibilities by offering specific
services and emphasizing some occupations over others. As part of a critical
ethnography, government documents were critically reviewed and in-depth
interviews were conducted with six representatives from governmental and
community organizations operating within the London, Ontario Francophone
minority community. Findings highlight how characteristics of neoliberal
governance shape the provision of government services through third party
service providers, including community-based non-profit organizations. These
organizations currently face neoliberal pressures of decentralization, decreased funding, and increased accountability. Findings specifically address how
immigrant integration is constructed in government documents and how
respondents viewed the role of their organizations, the particularities
organizations face by being embedded within a minority setting, and the
challenges this context creates for immigrants. The ways government policies
are enacted via organizations have implications for immigrants’ occupations.
Examining the role of organizations adds an important scale of analysis to
considerations of international migration within occupational science, which
to date have largely attended to the experiences of individual migrants