Development of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program Since 1990

As the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) has evolved into a fixed feature of Canada's economic immigration landscape, extensive scholarship has examined its outcomes, especially the program's impact on migrants. The scholarship, however, has failed to analyze the TFWP itself. Through a content analysis of government documents, this research fills this gap by investigating how the TFWP itself and the surrounding environment have influenced the program's development since 1990. Guided by Mahoney and Thelen's (2010) "Theory of Institutional Gradual Change" and Brenner and Theodore's (2002) "Actually Existing Neoliberalism", the analysis of the TFWP's objective, rules, and structure resulted in the illumination of the development process and the significance of internal and external factors. It was found the TFWP developed gradually through the mode of layering and that this process was influenced by its existing framework and the social-economic-political environment.