The Managerialization of Refugee Determinations in Canada

Although refugees are protected by a myriad of legal norms, this article shows that the domestic process of determining who is awarded this status has become more and more managerialized, even in a country like Canada, which has generally been considered a leader among refugee-receiving countries. This privileging of efficiency-based standards has gradually sidelined an earlier push to judicialize refugee determination procedures to the extent that access to the courts for refugees more generally is now considered problematic and ultimately suspect. The article uses historic institutional tools to highlight the critical role that the external, political environment has played in gradually managerializing refugee determination procedures.