Explaining immigration casework in federal Members of Parliament's district offices in Canada

Abstract

In Canada, a majority of federal constituency offices deal primarily with immigration files. The few qualitative studies on the subject show that the resources dedicated to these files and the type of work carried out on the immigration files handled vary between offices, thus contributing to disparities in service between federal electoral districts. How can such variation be explained? Based on the quantitative analysis of unpublished administrative data, this article first highlights the diversity of files handled by constituency offices, as well as the types of intervention carried out by constituency assistants. It then aims to explain the variations in case processing according to the type of case and the volume of requests handled. Studies of constituentsʼ files received and processed at constituency office level have argued that the political ideology, gender and ethnicity of the deputy as well as the demographics of the constituency are explanatory factors. This analysis shows that in the case of immigration files, constituency demography is the most important factor, while the MP's political affiliation plays a very limited role. These results shed new light on the factors involved in the processing of immigration cases at constituency level, and add nuance to previous, mainly qualitative analyses. Our results also contribute to understanding the work of constituency offices for constituents, which appears to be far less partisan than in other countries where similar offices exist.