LAUSR

ABSTRACT This article extends theories of how, in the mid-twentieth century, ‘merit-based’ immigration policies, which select immigrants based on individual human capital and social ties, replaced explicitly racist immigration policies that selected on national and racial group origins. It does so in reference to the historical Canadian case, where existing scholarship emphasises the role of macro and meso-level economic, cultural, and political factors in driving immigration policy change. Using a qualitative content analysis of unique archival data on admissions and deportation appeals, the article identifies high-level bureaucrats’ implementation practices as a micro-level mechanism of postwar immigration policy change. This mechanism allowed for low-risk policy experimentation and subsequently paved the way for a more systemic policy shift. The analysis also shows that individual-level assessments of traits like ‘merit’ were not designed to be ‘race free’ but emerged as a way of managing race, at the intersection of class and status. This gave the formal merit-based policy that later emerged a decidedly middle-class inflection. While focused on the historical Canadian case, the findings presented are relevant to broader debates about the role of immigration bureaucrats in policymaking and how race shapes nation-building under merit-based immigration policies.