Globalization, paradox and the (un)making of identities: Immigrant Chartered Accountants o

Description
We study the labour market experiences of immigrant accountants in Canada, to reveal the
tensions contradictions and paradoxes embedded in neoliberal globalization. Drawing on
themes within pragmatic sociology (Boltanski & Thévenot, [1991] 2006), we argue that
globalization has differentially impacted on the moral orders underpinning the identity
projects of the Canadian state and the elite sector of the accountancy profession and this
has in turn created three paradoxes: paradox of the state, paradox of the market and paradox
of place.

Globalization, paradox and the (un)making of identities: Immigrant
Chartered Accountants of India in Canada
Marcia Annisette
?
, Viswanath Umashanker Trivedi
Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada
a b s t r a c t
We study the labour market experiences of immigrant accountants in Canada, to reveal the
tensions contradictions and paradoxes embedded in neoliberal globalization. Drawing on
themes within pragmatic sociology (Boltanski & Thévenot, [1991] 2006), we argue that
globalization has differentially impacted on the moral orders underpinning the identity
projects of the Canadian state and the elite sector of the accountancy profession and this
has in turn created three paradoxes: paradox of the state, paradox of the market and par-
adox of place.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
We recognize we need an immigrant base to ?ll jobs
moving forward. The need for accountants, auditors,
and ?nancial specialists will far outstrip the ability to
?ll those jobs (Rod Barr, CEO of the Institute of Char-
tered Accountants of Canada quoted in Bottom Line,
October 2011).
It’s been a constant challenge to ?nd quali?ed accoun-
tants in the past few years and there aren’t enough
quali?ed folks in Canada, so we have been focusing
our recruitment efforts not only across the country,
but globally as well (Donna Khawaja, national director
of recruiting for Ernst & Young quoted in Ottawa Busi-
ness Journal, August 18, 2006).
Selladurai Premakumaran [. . .] the UK-schooled
accountant has been trying to ?gure out how to recover
the $60,000 it cost his family to relocate, how to pay off
a $100,000 credit-card debt, why his two professional
degrees can’t get him a job and how a growing family
of six can survive in a two-bedroom apartment. The
courts, he hopes, will have his answer. Premakumaran
—Prem—and his wife Nesamalar have launched a
$225,000 lawsuit against the federal government, alleg-
ing they were misled by Canadian immigration of?cials
who assured them they’d have no trouble ?nding pro-
fessional jobs to support their family in Canada (The
Edmonton Journal, October 22, 2003).
Introduction
The state and the professions have been critical partic-
ipants in the construction of some of the most salient iden-
tities of late modernity. They are also important sponsors
of each other’s identity project. On the one hand, obtaining
state sanctioned monopoly over a particular area of work is
fundamental to the success of a professional project
(Larson, 1977; Macdonald, 1995: 101). States collaborate
in the further honing of a professional identity by granting
an occupational group the exclusive right to a certain title
(Abbott, 1988: 62). Such is the case in the Canadian prov-
ince of Ontario where members of the Institute of Char-
tered Accountants of Ontario (ICAO) have exclusive rights
to the title ‘Chartered Accountant’ (CA) and until very re-
cently held exclusive rights to practice public accoun-
tancy.
1
This ‘dual monopoly’ (Freidson, 2001: 79) has been
enjoyed by Ontario CAs for almost 50 years and has been
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2012.08.004
?
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 416 736 2100x77925.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M. Annisette),
[email protected] (V.U. Trivedi).
1
On June 22, 2010 that right was extended to the members of the Society
of Certi?ed General Accountants of Ontario and on January 25, 2012 to the
members of the Certi?ed Management Accountants of Ontario. Members of
these bodies are referred to as CGAs and CMAs respectively.
Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
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critical to the elite identity of the ICAO and its members
within the professional accounting landscape of Ontario.
Occupational groups on the other hand, can be seen to play
a crucial role in the state identi?cation project – the making
of the citizen. This is because it is widely accepted that the
identity ‘citizen’ is far broader than a mere legal status con-
ferred on an individual by the state and instead is associated
with a number of rights, the full exercise of which hinge on
the enjoyment of a minimum standard of social rights
(Marshall, 1950). And since social rights include the right
to work, then it can be argued that the practices of occupa-
tional groups can enable or thwart an individual’s enjoy-
ment of social rights and so impact on the full gamut of
experiences associated with the identity ‘citizen’.
2
Yet the process of identi?cation is always un?nished
business. Identity is, inthe words of Knights andVurdubakis
(1994) ‘‘of necessity always a project rather than an
achievement’’. The boundaries of the multiplicity of identi-
ties that inhabit contemporary social space are constantly
being ‘‘drawn and redrawn in ?exible, historically changing
and sometimes ambiguous ways’’ (Gieryn, 1983: 781).
Given that globalization in its current neoliberal form has
brought about signi?cant transformations both in the state
(Cerny, 1997) and in the professions (Allsop et al., 2009;
Cooper, Greenwood, Hinnings, & Brown, 1998) as well as
in the relationship between the two (Arnold, 2005;
Suddaby, Cooper, & Greenwood, 2007), one concern of this
paper is to gain some insight into the impact of neoliberal
globalization on the identi?cation projects in which state
and profession are reciprocally involved. We consider this
a pertinent concern since it has long been established that
the making of the social categories ‘profession’ and ‘citizen’
are inextricably bound up with the making of the nation-
state (Castles &Davidson, 2000; Johnson, 1982), meanwhile
in some quarters, globalization has come to represent the
retreat (Strange, 1996) or indeed the end of the nation-state
(Ohmae, 1995). Whilst we do not adhere to the thesis of the
withering state, this paper is grounded in the view that
neoliberal globalization is an uneven, differentiated, and
paradoxical process that is fraught with contradiction. The
case of Selladurai Premakumaran highlighted at the open-
ing of this paper, though extreme with respect to the course
of action undertaken by the individual, in all other respects
embodies the contradiction which lies at the core of this
paper.
3
Although immigration has long been an important force
shaping Canada,
4
the neoliberal transformation of the Cana-
dian state into what Cerny (1997) calls ‘the competition
state’ has recently brought about signi?cant changes in the
country’s immigration policy. The state’s reinvention into a
quasi-enterprise association (Cerny, 1997) has been accom-
panied by the abandonment of its century old Anglo-confor-
mity immigration policy model (Green & Green, 1999) and
its gradual replacement by a skills-based model which be-
came fully operational in the early 1990s.
5
Despite the dra-
matic increase in the skill and educational achievement of
immigrants to Canada since the 1990s, a recently released
report published by Statistics Canada (Picot et al., 2007) re-
vealed that post-1990s immigrants were more than three
times as likely to face chronic low income than Canadian-
born and that professionally skilled immigrants faced no
economic advantage over non-skilled, non-professional
immigrants to Canada. Indeed the report con?rmed earlier
data released by the Ministry of Training Colleges and Uni-
versities which revealed amongst other things that:
60 per cent of foreign-educated professionals take jobs
not related to their training when they ?rst came to
Canada, and many hold the same job three years later;
and less than 25 per cent of those who were actually
employed were working in the ?eld for which they
had been educated (Walsh, 2004).
These recent ?ndings thus con?rm that the devalua-
tion of foreign credentials is a real and pervasive prob-
lem in Canada which not only threatens the country’s
image as the model of multiculturalism
6
but for those
who see skilled immigration as the key to Canada’s eco-
nomic prosperity, also threatens the country’s long term
economic wellbeing. As noted by Ontario Premier Dolton
McGuinty:
Too often, highly educated new Canadian professionals
who live and pay taxes here face barriers gaining the
on-the-job training and work experience they need to
become certi?ed in their profession. They might be
architects or accountants or engineers who have been
trained elsewhere . . .today they are driving taxi cabs
and mopping ?oors instead of utilizing all their skills
to help grow our economy and create more jobs (Bottom
Line, October 2011: 29).
2
In his seminal work, Marshall (1950) argued that citizenship involved
the enjoyment of three interdependent rights (i) Civil rights (freedom of
movement, expression, and religion, equality before the law, protection
from unlawful acts by the state); (ii) Political rights (the ability to actively
participate in the democratic process) and (iii) Social rights (the right to
work, equal opportunity, etc.). The fact that some social groups are
incapable of exercising certain rights—say political rights—by dint of their
social condition, has led authors to make sharp distinctions between formal
and substantive citizenship (e.g. see Castles & Davidson, 2000: vii).
3
This is now quite a celebrated case within some sectors of the
immigrant community because even though the case was dismissed (see
judgmenthttp://reports.fja.gc.ca/eng/2006/2006fca213/2006fca213.html
accessed November 2009) Selladurai and his wife Nesamalar continue to
?ght their cause in the court of public opinion. See their story on Canada
immigration farce websitehttp://www.immigrationcanadascam.com/
index.php?page_id=1015 accessed November 2009. See also http://
www.thannesans.com/Coporate_Pro?le.html.
4
According to the 2006 Census of Canada, immigrants make up 19.8% of
the nation’s population and accounted for two-thirds of Canada’s popula-
tion growth in the 5 year period 2001 and 2006 (Statistics Canada, 2007: 5,
6).
5
For example whereas in 1992, 16.7% of immigrants to Canada had
university degrees, by 1997 that ?gure was 29% (Picot, Hou, & Coulombe,
2007) and by 2007 it had risen to 43% (Citizenship, 2008).
6
For example websites such as NotCanada.com and Canadaimmigra-
tionFarce.com present the experiences of many of Canada’s skilled immi-
grants’ struggles to ?nd work in Canada. These websites aim is to warn all
would-be skilled immigrants against selecting Canada as an immigration
destination (see for examplehttp://www.notcanada.com/ and, http://
www.immigrationcanadascam.com/index.php?page_id=1000) (accessed
November 2009). See Also ‘‘Broken Promises’’, CTV report video: Part 1:

; Part 2: http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgNIdhOrhnM; Part 3:http://www.you-
tube.com/watch?v=aCqMWgzaJUI.
2 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
Studies on the devaluation of foreign credentials are not
new to the ?elds of migration research and social geogra-
phy. For instance the case of nurses in the UK has been well
documented (Smith, 2007). In Canada much attention has
focused on the case of engineers (Bambrah, 2005; Boyd &
Thomas, 2001, 2002); social workers (Yee, Wong, Janczur,
2007); doctors (Grant & Oertel, 1997) and nurses (Ogilvie,
Leung, Gushuliak, McGuire, & Burgess-Pinto, 2008). To our
knowledge none of the extant research in Canada or
elsewhere has studied the case of accountants. Yet as the
evidence in this paper suggests, the devaluation phenome-
non appears to be at play with respect to foreign profes-
sional accountancy credentials in Canada—or at least for
some of them. More critically, quite unlike those occupa-
tions where foreign credential devaluation has been recog-
nizedandstudied, accountancy is anoccupationfor whichit
is claimed that Canada has long suffered a chronic skills
shortage (Pritchard, 2006). Indeed it is in recognition of this
skills de?cit that accountancy was one of 38 occupations
listed as ful?lling the eligibility criteria under the Skilled
Worker Immigration Program.
7
So to the extent that foreign
accountancy credentials are devalued in the Canadian labour
market, then accountancy represents a particularly interest-
ing case for, unlike a number of high status occupations, it
is one which renders its holder highly eligible for immigra-
tion to Canada and ultimately full Canadian Citizenship.
8
This paper focuses on the experiences of a signi?cant
sub-population of foreign trained accountants in Can-
ada—immigrant Chartered Accountants of India (CAIs) res-
ident in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). We focus on this
group of foreign educated accountants for two reasons.
Firstly, Toronto is Canada’s leading immigrant-receiving
centre (Troper, 1999) and, re?ecting its status as the ?nan-
cial capital of Canada, the GTA has been the most popular
destination of immigrant accountants. Over the period
1995–2005 for example it attracted over 62% of immi-
grants entering Canada with a declared intent to work as
?nancial accountants and auditors accountants (TIEDE Fact
Sheet March, 2009).
9
Secondly, we study Indian accountants
living in the GTA, not only because India has been the most
popular source country of migrants since Canada immigra-
tion policy changed from race/place-based to skills-based
admission criteria, but also because it is the most popular
source country of Ontario bound immigrant accountants.
10
By revealing the immigration experiences of Indian
Chartered Accountants in Canada, this paper responds to
Gendron and Spira’s call for accounting research to exam-
ine situations which professional accountants experience
with dif?culty so as to better understand how broader so-
cial trends impact on and are interpreted by them
(Gendron & Spira, 2010). As well, our paper responds to
their even broader appeal for accounting researchers to
study the sociology of globalization which they note has
been ‘‘only super?cially explored in accounting research’’
(Gendron & Spira, 2010: 297). In this regard, this paper
aims to make a theoretical contribution, for in addition to
the rich and illuminating insights about globalization that
can be gained from migrant stories (Halfacree & Boyle,
1993), such stories, as Lawson (2000: 174) points out can
be theoretically informative given their power to reveal
the paradoxes and contradictions embedded in globaliza-
tion which are rarely voiced in ruling-group discourses.
Globalization, paradox and skilled immigration
Underlying this paper are three claims about globaliza-
tion in its neoliberal form. Firstly, that it is an inherently
contradictory and paradoxical process; secondly that it is
uneven in its spread and impacts, and thirdly as a result,
it is associated with new if not deepening forms of inequal-
ity. We intend to capture these qualities about neoliberal
globalization by studying the experiences of Toronto-based
Chartered Accountants of India (CAIs) who migrated to
Canada under its skilled workers immigration program.
11
In
what follows, we discuss how our focus on this group will
serve to illustrate the above claims and the methods de-
ployed to analyze the making and unmaking of their identi-
ties in Canada.
Skilled immigration and the paradox of ‘place’
Linking neoliberal globalization with skilled labour
immigration as we do in this paper, is not novel, for
although neoliberal globalization is most usually associ-
ated with the hyper-mobility of capital, it is well acknowl-
edged that its attendant economic restructuring processes
have had profound consequences on the movement of peo-
ple – in particular on the international movement of highly
skilled professionals (Flynn, 2005: 476). For instance, re-
search on the impact of transnational corporations (TNCs)
on globalizing processes has pointed to a new pattern of
migration emerging amongst highly skilled professionals.
Namely, replacing the traditional expatriate, is an emerg-
ing transnational managerial elite depicted as mobile
careerist circulating within and between TNCs as inter-
company transferees in response to TNCs preference for
frequent short term circulation (Beaverstock, 2005: 245,
246). The characteristic hyper-mobility of the transna-
tional managerial elite is facilitated by an unfettered trans-
fer of their educational credentials from one locality to
another, leading some authors to suggest that TNCs are
7
Since the initiation of this research the skilled occupational list has
been revised. In the original list of 38, accountants were speci?cally
mentioned under category # 1111 Financial Auditors and Accountants. In the
current list of 29, accountants are included in the broader category # 1122
Professional Occupations in Business Services to Management.
8
Whilst it is the case that three engineering specializations are listed in
the top 38 occupations, i.e. (1) mining engineers, (2) petroleum engineers
and (3) geological engineers, the devaluation phenomenon which has been
observed does not pertain to these specializations but to electronics,
electrical, mechanical, civil, computer, and chemical engineering (Bambrah,
2005).
9
Ontario has historically been the province of choice for new Canadian
immigrants, attracting more than half (52.3%) of the 1.1 million newcomers
who arrived in Canada during the 5 year period 2001–2006 (Statistics
Canada, 2007: 16).
10
For the 10 year period 1995–2005, India was the place of birth for 21.6%
of Ontario bound immigrant accountants. Other source countries were
Pakistan (9.3%) Philippines (8.9%). China (8.7%) Hong Kong (4.1%) Iran
(3.1%) Jamaica (3.0%) (TIEDI Fact Sheet March 2009).
11
See ‘‘‘‘New immigration’’ and con?icting orders of worth’’ for eligibility
criteria for the skilled workers immigration program.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 3
increasingly coming to supplant the state in de?ning
expertise and skill (Nagel, 2005: 199).
Another body of research focusing on the impact of
globalization on the state has shown how the neoliberal
state’s move towards a knowledge-based economy has dri-
ven many Western governments to adopt immigration pol-
icies based on a ‘‘talent for citizenship exchange’’ (Shachar,
2006: 164). Canada and Australia, as Cohen (2006: 187)
points out, are the two countries which, by structurally
linking their economic development; manpower and
immigration departments, have perfected the system of
immigration shopping – a system designed to select mi-
grants purely on the basis of labour market needs. The re-
sult of the concerted effort by Canada, Australia, and
Western states to attract highly skilled immigrants has
been to signi?cantly change the demographic character
of migrant ?ows. Typically, the individual migrating under
these immigration regimes is a highly skilled individual
who obtained their professional education and experience
in the Global South.
12
However quite unlike the hyper-
mobile professionals who experience a frictionless transfer
of their credentials across national borders, many of those
migrating under state driven immigration regimes, experi-
ence a marked devaluation of their professional credentials
and experience leading to accentuated class and status
demotion in their new home countries.
13
These contrasting fates of highly skilled migrant labour
suggest that contrary to the hyper-globalist mantra of the
contemporary irrelevance of ‘place’ (Friedman, 2006;
Ohmae, 1995; Scholte, 2000); in some contexts, ‘place’ still
matters in our contemporary globalized world. Thus by
focusing our attention on the experiences of accountants
who fall into the latter group of skilled migrants, the paper
will illustrate one of globalization’s paradoxes – the para-
dox of place. That is, whilst in some spheres of activity
globalization forces impose a collapse of spatial distinction,
that very act provokes action in other spheres, which ren-
der distinctions based on ‘place’ profoundly relevant.
The boundary as an analytic device
Our study then is one that ultimately attempts to ex-
plore how issues of identity, social inequality, and ‘place’
dynamically interact in the context of neoliberal globaliza-
tion. With respect to identity, we examine the interplay of
logics underpinning the construction of the Canadian ‘citi-
zen–immigrant’
14
and the construction of the ‘Chartered
Accountant’ in Ontario, and will attempt to show how the
free market ideology of neoliberal globalization has con-
founded these logics in the Canadian environment. Although
the making of social identities is an enormously complex
social process, we study one feature of identi?cation – the
boundary rules – which, because they refer to inclusion–
exclusion dynamics, are central to the process of identi?ca-
tion (Lamont & Molnar, 2002). Our focusing exclusively on
boundary rules in this paper can be particularly insightful
because unlike as is the case with a host of other social iden-
tities (say racial identities) where informal boundary rules
apply, with respect to the identities that concern this paper,
inclusion–exclusion rules are formally laid down, thereby
rendering them easily discernible and available for critical
analysis. Moreover, given that boundary theorists have illus-
trated the centrality of the boundary to the study of social
inequality (see Lamont & Molnar, 2002), studying the
boundary affords us the opportunity to explore with a single
analytical devise, the dynamics of identity and social ineq-
uity in the context of neoliberal globalization.
In seeking to identify globalization’s impact on the
boundaryrules underpinningthis paper’s relevant identities
we follow theorists from a number of disciplines who ob-
serve that boundaries and the identities they help construct
are subject to change as a consequence of developments in
the social, political, economic, and ideological spheres. His-
torians of race for instance have demonstrated howpolitical
and economic factors can bring about changes in racial
boundaries as the case of the US where the racial boundary
of ‘white’ has expanded over time so as to incorporate Irish
immigrants (Ignatiev, 1995) and Jews (Brodkin, 1998),
groups previously cast as racial ‘non-whites’. Meanwhile,
accounting historians have shown how early accounting
associations often recalibrated the boundary constituting
‘the accountant’ so as to meet political exigencies of the
day (Chua & Poullaos, 1993) or reconstituted the content of
what was deemed accounting work so as to exclude certain
constituencies (such as women) from the accountant iden-
tity (Kirkham & Loft, 1993). Finally institutionalists have
highlighted how ideological movements can transform the
boundaries constituting identities within a ?eld and thus
the nature of relations within it, as was the case of French
gastronomy (Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003). In addition, and
as a consequence of the above, spatial context – that is the
issue of ‘place’ –is cruciallyinvolvedinsetting the boundary
rules of identi?cation. Thus the US rule that ‘anyone with
black blood is de?ned as ‘black’ ’, which stands in stark con-
trast to the Haitian rule that ‘anyone with white blood is de-
?ned as ‘white’ ’, is explained by differences in the relative
ratio of the slave and planter class in each context during
the period of racial formation and the imperative (in Haiti)
to include the mixed group into the white category for the
purposes of social control (Allen, 1994). The Irish case is also
particularlyinsightful withrespect totheroleof ‘place’ inthe
making of social categories, for whilst the 19th century sig-
ni?ed the period of their racial ‘‘whitening’’ in the US, across
the Atlantic inBritainthis was one of the most active periods
of their racial ‘‘othering’’ (Hickman, 1995).
15
Turning to the
12
According to International Organization for Migration Regional and
Country Figures, 2005, China, India and the Philippines are the top three
source countries.
13
A noted exception to this however is the case of Indian, and Chinese
immigrants in Silicon Valley who experienced no such class or status
demotion (see Saxenian, 2001).
14
In Canada, immigrant status and citizenship have never been identical.
Prior to the passage of the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act all peoples who
settled in Canada were considered British subjects. Contemporarily, legal
immigrants to Canada are accorded permanent residence status which
gives them and their immediate dependent family rights to live, work and
move freely within Canada. They have the option to apply for Canadian
citizenship after three years of becoming permanent residents. For the
purposes of this paper, it is reasonable to equate permanent resident status
with citizenship since permanent residence is the pathway to citizenship.
15
Indeed during this period as Curtis (1971) vividly shows the Irish were
consigned to a place closer to apes.
4 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
impact of ‘place’ in the making of professional identities,
accounting historians have shownthat whereas the 19thcen-
tury British accounting elite drew a very narrow boundary to
de?ne who was or was not an ‘accountant’, in the case of Aus-
tralia characterized by very thin markets for accountancy ser-
vices at that time, their accounting elite was forced to
construct a boundary that was far wider than their British
counterparts (Chua & Poullaos, 1998).
16
Likewise institution-
alists examining mutual funds in different US cities (Boston
and New York) have illustrated the vast differences in the
occupational identity of the money manager born out of dif-
ferences in the social organization of the industries and mar-
kets in the two cities (Lounsbury, 2007). Thus it is well
recognized in a variety of literatures that a host of issues re-
lated to processes of identi?cation and in particular the craft-
ing of relevant boundaries is eminently related to matters of
‘place’. In this paper therefore we will draw attention to how
the free market ideology of neoliberal globalization on the
one hand inspires the making of identities in which ‘place’ is
decentered but in so doing promotes identi?cation processes
which undeniably hinge on hierarchies of ‘place’.
The moral dimension of boundaries
As the above has suggested, this paper recognizes that
identities such as the Canadian ‘citizen–immigrant’, the
Ontario ‘Chartered Accountant’ are not pre-given but are
made and that aspects of the social, including the social
nature of ‘place’ are deeply implicated the making of such
categories. Yet the making of social categories also involves
a profound moral dimension which is often hidden. In that
regard Bowker and Star (2000: 5) remind us ‘‘each category
valorizes some point of view and silences another’’, thus
our analytical interest in the boundaries constituting these
identities concerns revealing their underlying moral
apparatus.
Examining the moral dimension of boundaries has lar-
gely been the purview of boundary theorists who have
repeatedly pointed to the role of morals in the making of
social identities and the institutionalization of inequality
(Bourdieu, 1984; Lamont, 1992; Lamont & Molnar, 2002).
In this body of work, morality is one of the bases upon
which social groups distinguish themselves from others
so as to render themselves superior (Lamont, 1992). Such
practices of moral distinction (Bourdieu, 1984) can be en-
acted by privileged groups, such as the case of engineers
depicting manual workers as poorly motivated, lazy or
careless in their work habits (Vallas, 2001) or it can be en-
acted by groups at the margins as revealed in Espiritu
(2001) where Filipino immigrants assert their superiority
over the mainstream, by constructing white women as
promiscuous. As Lamont points out, morals, like socio-
economic and cultural attributes, are distinctions drawn
by social groups to ‘‘de?ne and discriminate between
worthy and less worthy peoples’’ (Lamont, 1992: 1, 4).
They are symbolic boundaries that individuals draw when
they categorize people and represent ‘‘different ways of
believing that ‘we’ are better than ‘them’ ’’ (Lamont,
1992: 2). Whilst the drawing of moral and other types of
symbolic boundaries to differentiate self from the other
will be evident in some of the narratives which we will
present in this paper, our interest in the moral dimension
of boundaries goes somewhat further than that explored
in extant boundary work, since our concern is not with
symbolic boundaries but with formally established bound-
aries, what boundary theorists refer to as social boundaries
(Lamont & Molnar, 2002; Tilly, 2004). These, as Lamont and
Molnar (2002: 168) point out are ‘‘objecti?ed forms of
social differences manifested in unequal access to and
unequal distribution of resources’’. Thus whereas symbolic
boundaries exist at the inter-subjective level and thus do
not necessarily translate into social boundaries, the latter
are widely agreed upon and take on a constraining charac-
ter (Lamont & Molnar, 2002: 168–169). Social boundaries,
the ones which are the focus of this paper, are therefore the
socially ‘real’ boundaries, those which in the words of
Charles Tilly ‘‘separate us from them’’ (Tilly, 2004: 211).
Since such boundaries are associated with unequal access
to and unequal distribution of resources (Lamont & Mol-
nar, 2002: 168), and so serve a privileging role in Canadian
society, then our analytical interest in the formal boundary
rules underpinning the identities ‘citizen–immigrant’ and
‘Chartered Accountant’ is to reveal the underlying moral
anchors which have socially legitimated them. In so doing
we turn to the insights and methods of French pragmatic
sociology – a body of theory aimed explicitly at exploring
the moral dimensions of how people engage with the so-
cial world (Blokker, 2011: 252).
French pragmatic sociology – revealing the moral dimension
of action
In describing the challenges of globalization for one of
the identities that concern this paper, Castles and Davidson
(2000: vii) observe:
[m]illions of people have multiple citizenships and live
in more than one country. Millions more do not live in
their country of citizenship.
Their observations point to the declining signi?cance of
‘place’ as a boundary rule in the making of the citizen in
the contemporary world. Indeed their observations seem
consistent with the broader discourse on globalization sig-
naling, if not celebrating, the demise of ‘place’ as a socially
salient feature of the contemporary world and epitomized
by treatises such as The World is Flat (Friedman, 2006) and
The Borderless World (Ohmae, 1995). But what has been the
moral basis for supporting ‘place’ as a socially legitimate
boundary rule in the ?rst instance? And, if ‘place’ is being
replaced by an alternative boundary rule, then what is
the moral anchor from which that new boundary rule de-
rives its social legitimacy? We explore these questions
using the concept of orders of worth (recently referred to
as justi?cation logics) – a concept formulated by French
pragmatic sociology to study the moral claims that under-
lie social arrangements.
16
Thus whereas British chartered bodies were explicitly associations for
public accountants (i.e. self-employed accountants), from its inception the
Australian IIAV included both public and non-practicing accountants (Chua
& Poullaos, 1998).
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 5
According to Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot – the
major proponents of French pragmatic sociology – regimes
of justi?cation represent one of a variety of regimes of
action.
17
As a regime for action, justi?cation comes to the
fore where action is performed in the public domain thus
rendering it open to interpretation and critique. In their
in?uential 1991 treatise On justi?cation, Boltanski and
Thévenot suggest that in such situations, human beings,
aware their actions are open to criticism, will behave in a
manner such that their actions can withstand the test of jus-
ti?cation ([1991], 2006: 37).
18
Focusing their attention on
public disputes, Boltanski and Thévenot observed that legit-
imate arguments in a dispute were never idiosyncratic. In-
stead protagonists would divest themselves of their
personal circumstances and ground their opinions in a broad
set of commonly held values, generally seen as just. In short,
justi?cation and critique always appealed to some value giv-
ing principle of justice that supported the general interest or
a common good (Thévenot, Moody, & Lafaye, 2000: 236) and
as a consequence, morality could be de?ned as a set of rep-
ertoires of justi?cation.
Pragmatic sociology maintains that by focusing our
attention on justi?cation reinserts into sociological inquiry
‘‘the reasons for acting and the moral exigencies that [p]er-
sons give themselves, or want to give themselves’’
(Boltanski, 2005: 20 quoted in Blokker, 2011: 251). In
contrast to Bourdieusian sociology which they regard as
based on the hermeneutics of suspicion (Boltanski &
Thévenot, [1991] 2006: 153), Boltanski and Thévenot take
actors’ universalistic claims seriously and do not regard
them as hiding particular interest. Their aim is not to
uncover secret or hidden motives for action (Boltanski &
Thévenot, [1991] 2006: 37) but to provide an understand-
ing of the moral basis for action.
Based on their analysis of disputes, Boltanski and
Thévenot suggest that there is a ?nite set of moral anchors
upon which actors ground their justi?cations/critiques
and, referring to them as ‘orders worth’ they identify six –
domestic, industrial, market, civic, inspirational and fame
– which they suggest are suf?cient to describe justi?ca-
tions and critiques performed in the majority of ordinary
situations. These six orders of worth therefore represent
six alternative bases of rationality, or stated differently,
six different con?gurations of social arrangements that
could be deemed just and fair (Boltanski & Thévenot,
[1991] 2006: 38). Critically, Boltanski and Thévenot note
that since these six moral orders are by de?nition incom-
patible, ‘‘their presence in a single space leads to tensions’’
(Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006: 216). Thus in a social world
inhabited by a limited plurality of incompatible moral
frames, the ?eld of moral justi?cation is one that is
multi-vocal and con?ictual (Mesny & Mailhot, 2007). As
McInerney (2008) neatly puts it:
If all reasons for behaving in a certain way were
equally valid (an in?nite number of anchors), the case
in a world of pure moral relativism, one could not
effectively condone or denounce the behaviour of any-
one else. On the other hand, if there were only one
moral anchor, only one course of action would be jus-
ti?able in all circumstances, an equally untenable
stance.
Boltanski and Thévenot’s present their six orders of
worth as ideal types, each representing an institutionalized
system of beliefs based on a ‘‘hypothetical model of a good
society constructed on a singular basis of merit that acts as
the sole standard for determining what matters or what is
worthy within that hypothesized society’’ (Annisette &
Richardson, 2011: 232). Brie?y speaking, where organizing
principles are based on the domestic order of worth, the
medium through which the social world is interpreted is
trust. Worth is attached to precedent/tradition, proxim-
ity/familiarity and authority, values re?ecting the tempo-
ral, spatial and hierarchical aspects of trust (Thévenot,
2001b). Being based on locality and tradition (Thévenot
et al., 2000: 250), domestic worth places greater value on
things and people which are viewed as more acquainted
and proximate, assigning worth to persons on the basis
of their belonging, to a family, a lineage, or a patrimony
(Thévenot, 2001a: 2).
In social arrangements based on the logic of an indus-
trial worth, the medium for evaluating and framing action
is ef?ciency. Planning, expertise, and long term growth
are highly esteemed values, and, social actors are evaluated
in terms of their status as professionals, experts, and spe-
cialists. Market worth like industrial worth is grounded in
the economic realm (Boltanski & Thévenot, [1991] 2006),
however a critical difference between the two is industrial
worth’s long term focus and market worth’s short-
termism. Competitive performance is the interpretive
frame deployed when the market world unfolds. The free
market ideology of neoliberal globalization in which the
market is the principal arbiter for all relations is thus
?rmly grounded in the moral order of the market.
Turning to organizing principles based on civic worth
supreme value is placed on the collective beings (Boltanski
& Thévenot, [1991] 2006: 185, 186). Worth therefore is
attached to sacri?ce of particular/self-interest for the ben-
e?t of the collective and depends ?rst and foremost on
membership (Boltanski & Thévenot, [1991] 2006: 191).
Finally with respect to the last two orders of worth—worth
based on inspiration and worth based on fame in the former,
value is assigned to creativity, singularity, and grace;
whereas in the latter, worth is assigned on the basis of
public opinion and renown and its measurement depends
on conventional signs of public esteem.
In elaborating their justi?catory regime model, Boltan-
ski and Thévenot provide an analytical grid for identifying
the orders of worth present in a particular setting. As illus-
trated in Table 1, each order of worth is associated with a
‘world’ or ‘commonwealth’ that is inhabited by a unique
set of beings (subjects and objects) which when identi?ed
in discourse, provide telling clues about the particular
moral order at play.
17
The others are regimes of violence, regimes of planned action, and
regimes of love (Thévenot, 2002).
18
Although the treatise was written in 1991 the English translation of this
work was only published in 2006. Our referencing style therefore re?ects
that our source is the 2006 translation of Boltanski and Thévenot’s 1991
book.
6 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
For instance where social actors are framed as buyers,
sellers, competitors or clients then a market order of worth
is being drawn on to render meaning to the social world.
On the other hand when those same actors are reconsti-
tuted in terms of their technical skills, competencies and
productive ef?ciency or otherwise framed as specialists/
non-specialists; experts/amateurs then industrial worth is
at play. Finally where social actors are referred to in terms
of common bonds of kinship (or lack thereof) domestic
worth is involved. Here neighbors, family and kin would
be highly valued, whereas individuals deemed foreigners
would be less worthy beings. Meanwhile in the world of
work, domestic logic would value experience over creden-
tials (Boltanski & Thévenot, [1991] 2006: 246–247).
19
Stark contrasts between the domestic and market or-
ders of worth can therefore be observed when applying
this framework to social processes involving ‘place’, for in
a moral order underpinned by domestic worth, high value
would attach to places that are near/proximate, familiar or
otherwise connected though some tradition or heritage.
Conversely places which are distant or deemed foreign
would be lowly valued or stigmatized. Such issues of famil-
iarity have no role in a world of market morality, where the
only measure of worth is competitive performance. Thus
foreign/unfamiliar places which would be worthless in a
moral order framed by domestic worth can be highly valo-
rized in the market order if they manifest the higher com-
mon principle of ‘‘competition’’.
It is important to underscore that the organizing princi-
ples described above are ideal-types. Like others before
them (e.g. Streeck & Schmitter, 1985: 119) Boltanski and
Thévenot recognize that even the institutional embodi-
ment of these organizing principles – the church, the fam-
ily and the ?rm – involves a minimum of two orders of
worth coexisting in compromise (Boltanski & Thévenot,
1999).
20
The term compromise denotes ‘‘attempts to overlap
and make compatible justi?cations from two orders of
worth’’ (Thévenot et al., 2000: 237). The social and institu-
tional world is thus populated by a host of compromise
arrangements be they at the level of discourses, practices,
objects, and institutions. For instance at the level of dis-
course, compromise re?ects that some justi?cations do not
?t easily into one and only one order of worth. The concept
workers’ rights therefore is a compromise concept involving
industrial and civic orders of worth (Boltanski & Thévenot,
[1991] 2006: 279). At the level of practice the Fordist mass
production systems represent compromise arrangements that
reconcile the demands of ef?cient production (industrial
worth), with the need to satisfy a demand in the market
place (market worth) (Boltanski & Thévenot, [1991] 2006:
333). Finally compromise objects, like boundary objects
(Star & Griesmer, 1989) comprise elements stemming from
different worlds without privileging any of the worlds in
contention. As a consequence they can be differentially
interpreted by the diverse constituencies to which they re-
late. A copyright law which draws together the values of
the market world and the world of inspiration could thus
be considered an example.
Methods and objectives
In revealing the moral underpinnings of the boundary
rules involved in the construction of the Canadian ‘citi-
zen–immigrant’ and the ‘Chartered Accountant’ of Ontario,
we will follow a number of recent theorists who have come
to appreciate the role of discourse and text in revealing
moral points of view and so have employed Boltanski and
Thévenot‘s justi?catory taxonomy as an analytical tool
Table 1
Orders of worth.
Market Industrial Domestic Fame Civic Inspired
Mode of evaluation (worth) Price Productivity ef?ciency Esteem, reputation
trustworthiness
Renown Collective
interest/the
verdict of the
vote
Innovation
creativeness
Format of relevant
information
Monetary Measurable criteria,
statistics
Oral exemplary
anecdote
Semiotic Formal of?cial Emotional
Higher common principle Competition Ef?ciency Engenderment
according to tradition
The reality
of public
opinion
The pre-
eminence of
collectives
Outpouring of
inspiration
Subjects Competitors,
clients,
buyers
Professionals, experts,
specialists
Superiors and inferiors
a
Stars and
their fans
Collective
persons and
their
representative
Visionaries
Quali?ed objects Wealth
(goods and
services,
luxury items)
Means (Technical
objects methods,
budgets, criterion, tool,
standards, tests,
examination)
The rules of etiquette
(good manners, proper
behaviour, rank title,
habits, customs,
traditions)
Sign media
(brand,
bulletin,
public
relations)
Legal forms
(rights,
decree,
legislation)
Emotionally
invested body
(mind, dream,
unconscious
drug)
Time formation Short-term
?exibility
Long term planned
future
Customary Path Vogue
trend
Perennial Rupture,
revolution
Adapted from Thévenot (2001a) and Boltanski and Thévenot ([1991] 2006).
a
More worthy beings: Father, king, ancestors, family, grownups, boss. Less worthy beings: Unmarried persons, foreigner, woman, child, pet.
19
Experience represents the temporal aspect of trust whilst credentials
are an object of the industrial world.
20
As Thévenot (2001: 411) argues, without the necessity of compromis-
ing market coordination with other modes of coordination, there is no need
for the ?rm.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 7
(Dromi & Illouz, 2010; Henson & Wasserman, 2011;
McInerney, 2008). Whilst it has been pointed out that as
a means of characterizing discourse and argumentative
frameworks, pragmatic sociology ‘‘employs simply a raw
coding of interpreted narrative data that are then evaluated
for its underlying logical structure’’ (Henson & Wasserman,
2011: 45), the orders of worth taxonomy has nonetheless
been increasingly used since its rich descriptive language
for delimiting each world provides a framework that is suf-
?ciently detailed to render a straightforward identi?cation
of each world of worth present (Cloutier & Langley, 2007:
16). Accordingly, the major sources of evidence for this
paper are discursive in nature; and consistent with
Boltanski and Thévenot’s analytical focus, we pay particu-
lar attention to the justi?cations and critiques that emerge
in public disputes surrounding the inclusion–exclusion
rules applicable to the construction of the Canadian
‘citizen–immigrant’ and the ‘Chartered Accountant’ of
Ontario. Our aim is to reveal the multiple moral orders that
have underpinned the identi?cation projects of these two
social categories and to show how they came to be chal-
lenged by the market morality of neoliberal globalization.
We will examine speci?c Canadian immigration acts
which identify inclusion and exclusion rules, and based on
justi?cations and critiques of those rules gleaned primarily
fromcontemporary press sources, we will use Boltanski and
Thévenot’s taxonomy to tease out the moral frames implied.
We perform a similar analysis to the eligibility rules sur-
rounding the construction of Canada’s accounting elite with
particular emphasis given to the construction of the Char-
tered Accountant of Ontario. We search extant historical re-
search as well as contemporary press articles to locate any
public debates on membership criteria so as to reveal the
justi?cation logics that have underpinned the crafting of
membership eligibility rules over time. It is important to
note that our purpose is not to provide comprehensive his-
torical analyses of the development of Canadian immigra-
tion policy and the making of the Ontario accountancy
elite. Instead our purpose is to understand the moral frames
used in the identi?cationprojects involving these two social
categories and to reveal how neoliberal globalization has
impacted on them. In so doing we illustrate globalization’s
differential impact on the social worth of ‘place’ in the iden-
ti?cation projects of state and profession.
Turning to the paper’s second objective, namely to
illustrate the human consequences of con?icting state-
profession identi?cation logics, we draw on the
immigration and labour market experiences of immigrant
Chartered Accountants of India (CAIs). Prior to embarking
on this research, the authors, themselves Canadian immi-
grants with non-Canadian professional accountancy cre-
dentials, had anecdotal evidence that low evaluation of
professional credentials and experience was an issue in
their respective professional accounting communities.
21
Given that this appeared more of a critical issue for the
membership of the local branch of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of India, in 2008 we interviewed two ‘‘in the
know’’ (Creed, De Jordy, & Lok, 2010: 1340) members of
the Toronto Chapter of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of India (ICAI). On the basis of these interviews
and other preliminary research, we developed and pilot
tested an electronic questionnaire survey which we then
administered to the membership of this group in 2010.
The summary results of the survey were published in
Annisette and Trivedi (2010) and amongst other things con-
?rmed that CAIs faced signi?cant devaluation of their cre-
dentials and foreign accounting experience in the Canadian
labour market. The electronic questionnaire survey was
completed by a total of 134 members of the Toronto Chapter
of the ICAI (124 male and 10 female) and was completely
anonymous. On completion of the survey, participants were
directed to an independent website where they provided
contact details if they wished to participate in an in-depth
interview. It is from this pool of survey respondents that
the remaining 15 of our interviewees were selected. We
contacted both early and late responders to the survey to
control for any effects correlated with the time of their re-
sponse to the survey. All individuals contacted agreed to
be interviewed, either in person or via telephone. Most
interviews were conducted via telephone with each typi-
cally lasting between 40 and 60 min. Except for the ?rst
two interviews which were conducted in 2008 the rest were
conducted in 2010 and 2011.
22
The interviews were semi-
structured so as get some essential demographic data about
all interviewees but at the same time to allow each the space
to voice their opinions and narrate their unique experience.
All of our interviewees were highly cooperative during the
interviewee process, given that they had ?rst completed
the survey and had volunteered to be interviewed. As indi-
cated in Appendix 2, many of our interviewees were holding
or had held manager/senior manager/director positions in
Canada, and thus had tasted a modicum of success in their
profession in Canada. Nonetheless, some had turned cynical
consequent to their experience in Canada. For example, JM,
interviewee #3, a senior manager at a mid-sized accounting
?rm, vented his frustration at us at the onset of the inter-
view stating:
What is the point of starting it [this research]. I mean
I’ve been here for a while. I mean what’s the point of
you doing [this research], you are doing research for
yourself now, right. You’re not going to help anyone.
[. . .] Yeah. But does anyone care?
23
All the interviews were ended by us upon eliciting the
required information. Interview recordings were then tran-
scribed. The authors compared the transcripts with the ori-
ginal recordings to ensure the veracity of the transcripts.
Transcripts were mailed to interviewees with a self-ad-
21
Marcia Annisette is a member of the UK based Chartered Association of
Certi?ed Accountants and migrated to Canada from Trinidad via the USA.
V. Umashanker Trivedi is a member of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of India and migrated to Canada from India via the USA. Both
authors are members of the Toronto branch of their respective professional
accounting associations.
22
Between 2008 and 2010 we were negotiating with the local chapter of
the ICAI to obtain access to their database.
23
We had to reassure JM that in addition to producing academic papers
we were committed to making the results of our study available to the CAI
community. While, JM was clearly angry at the way he was treated in
Canada, he was fully cooperative. The interview with him lasted 40 min and
like the rest of our interviewees, he indicted his willingness to talk to us
again if we needed further clari?cation.
8 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
dressed return envelope and they were asked to return the
transcript if changes were warranted. None of the tran-
scripts was ever returned.
The remainder of the paper is as follows. In the next sec-
tion we refer to Canada’s Immigration Acts and draw on
public defenses of Canada’s immigration policy to identify
the moral orders which have underpinned the boundary
rules for the making of the Canadian ‘citizen–immigrant’
and show how with the replacement of domestic logic by
market logic, distinctions based on place have become
attenuated.
24
In ‘‘Socially constructing the Chartered
Accountant: balancing multiple logics’’ we turn to examining
the moral orders supporting the construction of the Canadian
accounting elite and illustrate the continued salience of
domestic logic and hence the continuing salience of place
as a boundary rule in the identi?cation project of Ontario’s
accounting elite. ‘‘Con?icting logics and confronting new
identities in Canada’’ presents the experiences of CAIs who
migrated to Canada under the state’s market informed immi-
gration policy only to confront a corporate and professional
environment underpinned by a domestic logic. We show
how their CAI credential is one stigmatized by place and
illustrate some of the strategies they employed to navigate
the confounding environment. In ‘‘Discussion: Globalization
and its paradoxes’’ and ‘‘Conclusion’’ we discuss and con-
clude on the paper’s major ?ndings and in ‘‘Postscript’’ we
end with a post script of recent developments.
Making the Canadian ‘citizen–immigrant’: an interplay
of domestic, industrial and market logics
Canadian Immigration policy has been historically
shaped by the pressing concerns of population growth
and long term economic development.
25
The country’s ?rst
Immigration Act passed in 1869 was silent on which catego-
ries of persons should or should not be admitted into Canada
focusing instead almost exclusively on matters of passenger
safety and health (Knowles, 2007). The formal boundaries of
inclusion/exclusion developed incrementally over time, ?rst
by the Act of 1872 which prohibited entry of criminals and
other vicious classes, and then in 1879 by order of councils
which excluded paupers and destitute migrants (Knowles,
2007). By the 1906 Act, disabled people and prostitutes were
added onto the list of prohibited classes and so by the begin-
ning of the 20th century, access to Canadian citizenship was
only formally available to able bodied men, women, and
children, whose productive capacity would lead to the eco-
nomic development of the nation. Formally therefore an
industrial logic—which placed emphasis on the productive
capacity of the would-be citizen—informed early Canadian
immigration policy. There was nonetheless a taken-
for-granted domestic logic that underpinned the ‘citizen–
immigrant’ identity but which was not formally enacted un-
til the 1910 Act which prohibited ‘‘immigrants belonging to
any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of
Canada’’ (Act 1910 section 38 (c)). A 1910 policy document
went on to explain that:
The policy of the Department of the interior at the pres-
ent time is to encourage the immigration of farmers,
farm labourers and female domestic servants from the
United States, the British Isles and certain Northern
European countries, namely, France, Belgium, Holland,
Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and
Iceland. On the other hand it is the policy of the Depart-
ment to do all in its power to keep out of the country
undesirables. . .those belonging to nationalities unlikely
to assimilate and who consequently prevent the build-
ing up of a united nation of people of similar customs
and ideals (Manpower, 1974: 9–10).
Whilst industrial logic rendered Canadian identity
accessible to a potentially wide range of able bodied indi-
viduals with the complement of skills required for the long
term development of the nation, domestic logic however
acted as a check on industrial logic imposing very narrowly
de?ned limits on which peoples out of able-bodied mem-
bers of the human population could potential qualify for
the Canadian identity. It is noteworthy to observe that
whereas the 1910 Act expressed the boundary rules for
the Canadian ‘citizen–immigrant’ in terms of race, the pol-
icy document supporting to the Act explicitly focusses on
place, thus underscoring the social salience of place in a
domestic order of worth. Privilege was therefore accorded
to places on the basis of proximity/familiarity (the United
States) and tradition/heritage (British Isles and Northern
European countries).
At times however, economic considerations would
trump the constraint imposed by domestic logic and there
would be a relaxation of the race/place constraint on immi-
gration. This was the case in the 1880s when some 16,000
Chinese males were allowed into British Columbia for the
construction of the Canadian Paci?c Railway (CPR) making
Chinese immigrants the fastest-growing segment of the
West Coast at the time of the railway’s completion in
1885 (Moore, 2006: 52). But although they both concern
the economic realm, market and industrial logics did not
always coincide, for whilst the successful completion of
the CPR in 1885 by low cost, highly ef?cient Chinese work-
ers suggested that future Chinese immigration would be
bene?cial to the long term development of Canada, politi-
cians and union workers nonetheless deployed a market
logic to argue for its curbing. Further pumping of cheap
Chinese labour into the market, they argued would arti?-
cially depress wage rates and take away job opportunities
from the whites (Knowles, 2007; Li, 2003). The most pow-
erful counter to further Chinese immigration however
came from the sphere of domestic logic. Joseph-Adolphe
Chapleau, the 1885 Canadian Secretary of State in his pre-
amble to the passage of the 1885 Chinese immigration Act
argued
26
:
24
For ease of exposition and consistent with more contemporary
vocabulary of the French pragmatic school, we will also refer to Boltanski
and Thévenot six orders of worth as justi?catory logics.
25
Re?ecting the fact that it was considered crucial to agricultural
development and land settlement, Immigration was part of the Department
of Agriculture from Confederation in 1867 to March 1892 when it was
placed in the Department of the Interior which eventually merged with the
Ministry of Labour in 1917 (Li, 2003: 18).
26
The Act sought to restrict Chinese immigration by imposing a tax on all
Chinese entering Canada. The Act also restricted the terms of Chinese
citizenship by depriving Chinese in Canada the right to vote.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 9
It is a natural and well founded desire of the white pop-
ulation of the Dominion. [. . .] that their country should
be spoken of abroad as being inhabited by a vigorous
energetic white race of people (quoted in Moore,
2006: 52).
And in 1947 some 62 years later, Canadian Prime Min-
ister Mackenzie King defending the country’s immigration
policy would reiterate this strong domestic logic:
With regard to the selection of immigrants, much has
been said about discrimination. I wish to make it quite
clear that Canada is perfectly within her right in select-
ing the persons whom we regard as desirable future cit-
izens [..] There will, I am sure, be general agreement
with the view that the people of Canada do not wish,
as a result of mass immigration, to make a fundamental
alteration in the character of our population (Canada,
House of Commons Debates, 1 May 1947: 2644–6).
Up until the 1960s, Canadian immigration policy as en-
shrined in the Immigration Acts and as played out in prac-
tice therefore re?ected an interplay between industrial,
domestic, and market logic. Formally there emerged a
fairly stable industrial–domestic compromise, which de-
nied access to immigrants on the basis of production capa-
bility and race/place and this combined with a market
logic, which took practical precedence in the face of short
term labour market ?uctuations. In instances where the
labour shortage was acute, Canada would relax the con-
straint posed by domestic logic and turn to non-traditional
sources for recruitment into the Canadian nation.
27
In peri-
ods where there was high domestic unemployment, immi-
gration would grind to a halt.
But a dominant normative order is not ?xed and is al-
ways open to challenge by an alternative moral order. Thus
a decisive shift came in the 1960s. Immigration policy be-
came part of labour market policy displacing previous
objectives of population growth and long term economic
development.
28
The shift toward market logic was accom-
panied by the purging of any reference to a domestic logic
in immigration policy documents.
29
Thus the Immigration
Act of 1962 eliminated the previous race/place requirements
for Canadian immigration, replacing it with an education
and skills based requirement, and in 1967 the points system
was introduced. Potential immigrants were assigned points
based on a range of occupational and personal qualities
and if they attained a predetermined pass mark, they were
granted immigration access to Canada. To further under-
score the close link between immigration practice and la-
bour market policy, points attached to speci?c occupations
were constantly under review and were changed in the light
of changing labour market conditions (Green & Green,
1999). As Table 2 indicates, in 1967 being a member of the
‘right’ occupation could provide an applicant with as much
as 80% (i.e. 40 points) of the passing mark for Canadian
immigration.
30
The 1960 policy shift which privileged market logic
continues to inform a substantial aspect of contemporary
immigration policy in Canada, and, with the 1999 removal
of the ‘personal suitability’ factor in the points system, any
vestiges of the race/place criterion have been entirely re-
moved. Public rationales for contemporary immigration
policy are therefore infused with the language of market
logic. For instance in defending the high educational
requirements demanded in the 2001 Immigration Act the
(then) immigration Minister Elinor Caplan argued:
Bringing the best and the brightest is in Canada’s inter-
est. We are competing with the rest of the world for
those people. [. . .] the mythology about the hard-
working, blue collar immigrants who built this country
is a thing of the past, and it’s time to raise the threshold
to attract the world’s best. [. . .] there must be a shift in
thinking about the kind of immigrants Canada needs to
attract. [. . .] Part of that is mythology of a different time.
At the time when we populated the West we needed
people to till the land and open the West. Right now,
we know that the economic competitive advantage for
Canada is that we have a knowledge-based economy
here. We are looking to bring people here that will inte-
grate and succeed quickly (quoted in Toronto Star Dec
20, 2001: A.01)
31
.
Market conceptions of immigrants abound, be they con-
strued as an economic draw to globally minded companies
(Ontario Regulators for Access, 2003); the sole source of la-
bour force growth by 2011 (Citizenship, 2001) or the solu-
tion to the continued and persistent labour shortage
among many small and medium-sized enterprises
throughout Canada (CFIB, 2002). Whilst a variety of con-
ceptions of ‘the nation’, ‘the citizen’ and ‘the immigrant’
are likely to coexist at any one point in time, differing
emphases have been given to domestic, industrial, and
market logics in the conceptions of these identities over
time. In the contemporary conception, the principles of
domestic logic seem to have disappeared and the citizen
is reconstituted as a seller of services to the national labour
market. Likewise the immigrant is seen as a global market
27
The 19 century Chinese case is only one example of this occurrence. In
1925 the government relaxed its policy and encouraged a search for
immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe. Then in 1923 a two tiered
system was introduced in which source countries were divided into
preferred and non-preferred groups. Admission from preferred countries
was based solely on country of origin, whereas prospective immigrants
from non-preferred countries were admitted under a variety of conditions
(Green & Green, 1999: 428).
28
The policy shift was re?ected in the 1966 merging of the Department of
Citizenship and Immigration with the Department of Labour to create the
Department of Manpower and Immigration whose primary task was
‘‘linking the level and composition of immigration to the immediate needs
of the domestic labour market’’ (Green & Green, 1999: 431).
29
Green and Green (1999) suggest that Canada’s change from race/place
immigration was largely fueled by the decline in the ?ow of skilled
immigrants from Europe – a trend linked to the prosperity in Canada’s
preferred European countries. Hawkins (1974) further suggests that at this
time a racially discriminatory policy simply was not consistent with the
role Canada wished to play in the international community – neither with
its role as a trading nation, nor with its planned future relationships with
the Asia and the Caribbean.
30
Calculated as follows: speci?c vocational preparation (10), occupation
demand (15), arranged employment or designated occupation (10), desti-
nation, i.e., intended destination in Canada has a labour market shortage
(5).
31
In the taxonomy of pragmatic sociology, the italicized words in the text
refer explicitly to a market order of worth.
10 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
actor, scanning the globe for access to the national labour
market which would most highly value and remunerate
her/his skills. Thus:
Attracting and retaining the best international talent to
address existing and future labour market challenges is
critical to Canada’s long-term economic success (Rob
Moore, Minister of State Small Business and Tourism,
quoted in Government of Canada, 2010).
The above quote also suggests the conception of the na-
tion as market place and the ‘citizen–immigrant’ as seller
of labour services exists in compromise with the concep-
tion of the nation as a productive enterprise. Hence citizens
and immigrants are valued as well in terms of their poten-
tial contribution to the productive enterprise of nation.
This gives rise to an immigration policy which emphasizes
education, training, and credentials, objects of the indus-
trial world of worth, and credentials are seen as the basis
of competitive position in the market. Hence in further
defending the legislation the Minister Caplan later went
on to explain:
..the new legislation seeks to attract skilled workers who
can outperform the Canadian-born population in the
labour market within a few years of their arrival (Min-
ister Elinor Caplan quoted in Tornoto Star, Jan 4
th
2002
italics our own)
Contemporary Canadian immigration policy and in par-
ticular the skilled-workers program is an important part of a
strategy toward enhancing Canada’s competitive position
in the global economy. Therefore as Abu-Laban and Gabriel
neatly put it in Canada’s current policy framing ‘‘the ideal
citizen is de?ned as someone who is economically produc-
tive and can contribute to Canada’s national and global
competitiveness’’ (2002: 53). However as the experience
of immigrant CAIs will show, the state’s idealized view of
the likely trajectory of skilled immigrants in the Canadian
labour market, overlooks the deep embeddedness of mar-
kets in general and professional markets in particular, in
social relations governed by logics of a domestic order of
worth.
Socially constructing the Chartered Accountant:
Balancing multiple logics
The history of the Canadian Accountancy profession is a
complex one partly because of the multiplicity of account-
ing bodies that have inhabited the occupational
landscape
32
and partly because the profession is regulated
and differentially organized provincially.
33
Nonetheless
what is intended here is to give a broad trajectory that illus-
trates the multiple orders of worth that were involved in
securing the elite status of the Chartered Accountant in the
province of Ontario. Before doing so, it is necessary to high-
light some general trends in professionalization more
broadly.
Profession: A compromise of con?icting orders of worth
By its very de?nition, the concept ‘profession’ is anti-
market. Profession refers to an occupational group which
succeeds in establishing a ‘‘double monopoly’’ (Freidson,
2001: 79), that is monopoly over a particular area of
work—for example attestation of ?nancial reports—and
monopoly over who can perform that work. But in order
Table 2
The points system over time. Sources: Ngo (2001),http://www.workpermit.com/news/canada_points_changes.htm,http://www.workpermit.com/canada/
points_calculator.htm,http://www.wweis.com/immigration/passmarks/,http://www.karas.ca/press/immigration_minister_eases_entry_criteria.pdf
Factors 1967 1974 1978 1986 1993 1996 1999 2001 2003 2009
Education 20 20 12 12 15 20 16 25 25 25
Experience – – 8 8 8 9 8 21 21 21
Speci?c vocational preparation 10 10 15 15 17 – – – – –
Occupational demand 15 15 15 10 10 – 10 – – –
Labour market balance – – – – – 10 – – – –
Age 10 10 10 10 10 12 10 10 10 10
Arranged employment or designated occupation 10 10 10 10 10 4 10 10 10 10
Language 10 10 10 15 14 20 15 24 24 24
Personal suitability 15 15 10 10 10 20 10
*
– – –
Levels – – – 10 6 – – – – –
Relative 5 5 5 – – 5 5 10 10 10
Destination 5 5 5 – – – – – – –
Demographic Factor – – – – – – 8 – – –
Education/training factor 18
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Pass mark 50 50 50 70 67 74 70 75 67 67
Note: The table shows maximum points possible in each category. Maximum points and pass mark have been rescaled in 1993 and 1996 to put the system
in terms of points out of 100.
*
Personal suitability is considered as ‘‘additional points’’ that would be rewarded by the visa of?cer at interview. Applicants, however, are required to have
at least 60 points on the other 9 factors (excluding personal suitability) to merit further considerations.
32
For instance Richardson (1987) notes that in the 1940s there were
around 10 accounting associations in Canada.
33
In Canada, CAs are admitted to the profession through one of the ten
provincial or three territorial Institutes, which are responsible for estab-
lishing and administering the quali?cation process. In some provinces and
territories, Certi?ed General Accountants (CGAs) and Certi?ed Management
Accountants (CMAs) have been given public accounting practice rights. This
paper focuses on the CAs as they are acknowledged to be the elite sector of
the profession (Edwards & Walker, 2008; Richardson, 1987, 1989).
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 11
to enjoy this dual monopoly, an occupational group must
obtain and retain sanction of the state which often requires
that they conduct themselves in the market in a manner
far different to that of a monopolist. It is in connection with
this unique relationship with the state, that internal ten-
sion in professional organization as a mode of occupational
control can be seen. Firstly in order to claim state sanc-
tioned monopoly over an area of work, the aspiring occu-
pational group must convince the state that insulating
such work from the competitive forces of the market and
restricting practice only to their membership will serve
the collective public interest as opposed to their parochial
self-interest. Thus the value cluster that Suddaby, Gendron,
and Lam (2009: 414) describe as constituting a profession’s
‘‘ideology of service’’, can be thought of as the underlying
promise/expectation of civic logic brought to bear in the
delivery of the reserved area of work. But as participants
in the market exchange for their services, professions are
constantly confronted with the logic of the market, and
so the much discussed commercialization of professional
accountancy (Hanlon, 1998; Suddaby et al., 2009) recog-
nizes that modern day professional ?rms have increasingly
succumbed to the logic of the market.
Also conceived as collective mobility projects (Larson,
1977), professions inhabit the civic world where the ‘‘pre-
eminence of the collective’’ (Boltanski & Thévenot, [1991]
2006) is the guiding logic. As Boltanski and Thévenot
([1991] 2006: 191) point out, civic worth depends ?rst
and foremost on membership, thus associations fully com-
mitted to civic logic continuously strive for broad based
membership. However, studies of early professionalization
movements indicate the inherent tension associated with
an unrelenting pursuit of civic logic. That is, by including
in its membership ‘‘anyone with a reasonable claim to
expertise [..] brings in marginal practitioners who lower
the status of the members’’ (Macdonald & Ritzer, 1988:
257–258). Thus the histories of successful professional
accountancy movements consistently indicate the opera-
tion of domestic logic acting as a constraint on civic logic
in the crafting of the boundary rules for membership, the
strength of which is evidenced by the high degree of self-
selection in the composition of early members (Annisette
& O’Regan, 2007; Carnegie & Edwards, 2001; Lee, 1996;
Richardson, 1989; Walker & Shakelton, 1998). This com-
promise between civic and domestic logic re?ects the clas-
sic ‘‘dilemma of exclusiveness versus market control’’
(Macdonald & Ritzer, 1988: 257–258) that is well estab-
lished in studies of the professions (Carnegie & Parker,
1999; Chua & Poullaos, 1993).
34
For a variety of reasons
however, including the need to maintain status and state
privilege, as well as to legitimate claims to expertise, profes-
sions have introduced meritocratic procedures for admis-
sion—typi?ed by the introduction of the professional exam.
In the case of accountancy associations, despite the now uni-
versal application of industrial logic (that is, the professional
exam) to obtain ingress into the profession, the salience of
domestic logic in constructing the identity of the elite can-
not be overemphasized. For one, compared to other high sta-
tus occupations, accountancy has been relatively late in
using the professional examination as a basis of recruitment
into the profession relying instead on social origin factors
(Geddes, 1995). Several studies highlight how crucial are
the socialization processes taking place within professional
practices in imbuing professional accounting identities with
the appropriate values (Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson,
2000; Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2001; Grey, 1998;
Power, 1991).
35
Indeed based on his study of what it means
to be a professional in elite accounting practices, Grey ar-
gues that rather than being concerned with the possession
of expertise and technical skills, being a professional is more
‘‘being embedded in a series of issues such as fairness,
appearance, gender, sexuality and hierarchy’’ (Grey, 1998:
570)—attributes which pragmatic sociology would assign
to the domestic realm. Thus at a time when many have come
to expect claims to expertise to be linked to a professional
exam, the elite branch of the accountancy profession has
still been able to maintain a compromise arrangement be-
tween domestic and industrial logics by instituting a period
of mandatory apprenticeship whilst completing the profes-
sional exam.
36
Professionalization is therefore an inherently complex
and contradictory enterprise. At different times in their
histories occupational groups have had to privilege differ-
ent logics (or combinations thereof) in order to secure
the goal of occupational mobility. Indeed a successful pro-
fessionalization project (Larson, 1977) can be considered
the triumphant outcome of a balancing act involving mul-
tiple and competing logics. In the language of pragmatic
sociology, profession therefore represents a stabilized
compromise of con?icting orders of worth.
37
Making the Ontario CA
The development trajectory of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of Ontario (the provincial branch of the Cana-
dian Institute of Chartered Accountants) very much re?ects
the phenomenon of orders of worth in compromise
arrangement. Coming to being in December 1879 as the
Institute of Accountants and Adjusters (Creighton, 1984:
6) and re?ecting the wide ‘‘ring fence’’ (Walker &
Shakelton, 1998) needed to establish the profession in
Ontario, the founding ?ve members of the Institute
34
A classic instance of getting the balance wrong is the case of the elite
English ICAEW which in drawing too narrow a membership boundary line
at its inception in 1880 provided the opportunity for the emergence of the
Society of Incorporated Accountants 5 years later (see Johnson & Caygill,
1971).
35
Given the questionable relationship between professional knowledge
and professional competence in general (Collins, 1979), and studies of
accountancy knowledge processes in particular (Geddes, 1995; Power,
1991) it has been argued that the professional exam might have more to do
with socialization than with imparting any professionally relevant knowl-
edge (Power, 1991).
36
For example Annisette and Kirkham (2007) point out that training for
the elite Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW)
can therefore only take place if the trainee has obtained a training contract
from one of the ICAEW member ?rms.
37
Paradoxically, despite the contention that the professional enterprise is
based on a logic that is inherently anti-market, extant theorizing on the
professions in general and on accountancy in particular, highlights a
growing trend toward commercialization (Hanlon, 1994) with its associ-
ated value system which clashes with the logic of professionalism (Suddaby
& Greenwood, 2005). It is however our contention here that the logic of
professionalism has always been a composite of values in tension.
12 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
included three public accountants, one insurance agent
and one manager of a savings and loan company—the
latter who was to become the Institute’s ?rst president
(Creighton, 1984: 2–6). Very early in its history, the
Institute grappled with de?ning the boundaries of mem-
bership—should it be restricted to only practicing public
accountants or should it include all accountants ‘‘whether
in industry, trade or public practice’’ (Creighton, 1984:
49)? Choosing to fully pursue a civic logic that is, wishing
to ‘‘speak for all accountants in the province’’ (1984: 7), the
?edging Institute adopted the latter model, but in so doing
sacri?ced the status bene?ts that it was established to pro-
cure. For this, the Institute was heavily criticized:
The Institute of Accountants in Ontario headquartered
at Toronto has made the mistake in allowing bookkeep-
ers and in fact clerks of almost any description enter
their association. The consequence is the standing of
their association is not what it should be. Their presi-
dent, I believe is a secretary of a brewing company,
and it was for these reasons that their best accountants
left their association and were instrumental in the orga-
nization of the Dominion Association of Chartered
Accountants, which like our Montreal association is
composed solely of bona ?de practicing accountants
(A.F.C. Ross treasurer of the Dominion Association of
Chartered Accountants, 1905, quoted in Creighton
(1984: 53)).
Despite this initial misstep with regards the ‘appropri-
ate’ boundaries of membership, by the time the profession
was rationalized in 1910, and the Ontario Institute became
part of a national CA Institute, membership came to be lim-
ited to public accountants. Mandatory examinations
(industrial logic) were instituted by the turn of the century
and served to distinguish members from ‘lesser’ practitio-
ners and this was combined with a system of apprentice-
ship which was fully in place by the 1920s (Creighton,
1984: 150). The domestic logic inherent in the CA system
of apprenticeship resulted in ‘‘the backgrounds of mem-
bers being highly skewed in terms of ethnic, gender and
religious representation’’ (Edwards & Walker, 2008;
Richardson, 1989, 1997: 640). And being a boundary rule
underpinned by the logic of domesticity, the system of
apprenticeship ensured the trustworthiness of members
to the professions’ clients for they shared the same demo-
graphic pro?le (Richardson, 1997: 640–641).
The industrial–domestic compromise which came to
underpin the construction of the Ontario CA was also re-
?ected in the establishment of informal reciprocity agree-
ments with elite British accounting associations which
according to Creighton (1984: 67) was a long desired goal
of the Ontario Institute. Similar informal agreements were
established with the accounting elite of the US and other
countries of the ‘old Commonwealth’.
38
Thus by the early
1980s, 7% of membership admissions were from ‘‘quali?ed
(CA) immigrants from countries such as the United States,
the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Australia’’ (Creighton,
1984: 314). As with the case of early Canadian immigration
policy what again is evident here is the in?uence of domes-
tic order in rendering social salience to place thereby valo-
rizing elite accountancy credentials on the basis of
proximity of place (the United States) or places of tradition
and common heritage (United Kingdom, South Africa, and
Australia). And as recently as 2008, ICAO President Brian
Hunte would celebrate the Institute’s recognition of other
CAs based on distinctions of place:
[w]e’ve been negotiating mutual recognition agree-
ments since the 1950s, when Canadian Chartered
Accountants and CAs in other Commonwealth coun-
tries, such as the U.K. and Australia, agreed to recognize
each other’s training and standards (Brian Hunte in
Globe and Mail, Wednesday 18
th
June 2008, p. CA5).
By the late 1980s however, developments linked to con-
temporary globalization would begin to unsettle this stable
industrial–domestic compromise. This started with the 1st
January 1989 coming into force of the Canada–US Free
Trade Agreement (FTA). Articulating that ‘‘It is no longer
possible to talk about the free trade in goods without talk-
ing about free trade in services’’ the agreement enshrined
the principle of national treatment for the provision of
accounting and auditing services for nationals of both
countries (article 1402) and encouraged the mutual recog-
nition of licensing and certi?cation requirements for
accountants and auditors of both countries (article 1403
(3) and annex 1408).
39
While the FTA in itself did not strike
at the heart of the existing industrial–domestic compromise
that underpinned the boundary rules for access to the
accounting elite in Canada, it provided the template for
the 1994 North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
which did. Thus in 2002, to honour the Professional Mutual
Recognition Agreements of the NAFTA, the CICA (and by
extension the Ontario Institute) included members of the
Instituto Mexicano des Contadores Publicos (IMCP) into its
ranks, establishing with it a reciprocity agreement similar
to the ones formalized with US state licensing bodies under
the requirements of Canada–US FTA.
40
Later, in the light of
the developing transnational ?nancial architecture involving
countries with signi?cant capital markets, the CICA went on
to establish reciprocity agreements with other elite account-
ing bodies of the non-Anglo Saxon accounting world (such
as Japan, Belgium and the Netherlands). Currently reciproc-
ity agreements exist with 14 such associations which the
ICAO classi?es as recognized accounting bodies meaning that
they are deemed to be ‘‘meeting a standard substantially
equivalent to that of Canadian CAs’’ (OFC, 2008). In part, this
new wave of widening the ring fence of eligibles recognizes
that with other actors in the professional arena (i.e. the CMA
38
These informal agreements of recognition and reciprocity were estab-
lished by the respective accounting bodies through their bylaws or
regulations and in some cases through an exchange of letters (May 2011
communication from Brian Leader, ICAO Vice President of Learning.).
39
The text of the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement is available at http://
www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/assets/
pdfs/cusfta-e.pdf.
40
Admittedly the recognition of the IMCP was not automatic upon the
1994 signing of the NAFTA and only came after the IMCP instituted
examination and experience requirements in its certi?cation process (Peek
et al., 2007). However it is fair to state that in the absence of the NAFTA it
would have been unlikely that such a move for recognition would have
taken place at all.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 13
and the CGA), the Canadian CA must set an access policy for
foreign accounting credentials that is neither too narrow
that foreign trained accountants turn to competing Canadian
accounting bodies and so bolster the latter’s claims to repre-
sentativeness; nor too wide so as to damage the exclusive
image of the CA—a contemporary variant of the previously
mentioned tradeoff between domestic logic (exclusiveness)
and civic logic (market control). Appendix 1 identi?es the
bodies deemed ‘recognized’ and ‘non-equivalent’ by the ICAO.
Except until recently (see ‘‘Postscript’’) all other
international accounting bodies fall into the category of
non-assessed and Table 3 indicates the access requirements
for the respective categories.
As an illustration of the often contingent factors that
determine the ICAO’s conferring of competence, it is inter-
esting to note that until April 2011 recognized bodies
include:
Any state boards of accountancy in the United States
with reciprocity that exempts Ontario CAs from the
requirement to pass the American Institute of Chartered
Public Accountants Uniform CPA Examination (see
Appendix 1 for list of recognized bodies)
41
Yet, as will be seen on Appendix 1 non-equivalent bodies
include:
Any state boards of accountancy in the United States
that require Canadian CAs to write the American Insti-
tute of Chartered Public Accountants Uniform CPA
Examination as a condition of membership.
42
This anomaly in the case of the US CPA underscores the
continuing salience of domestic logics in achieving recog-
nized status by the ICAO. That is, the establishment of rec-
iprocity agreements between professional accounting
bodies is not solely the outcome of activities associated
with industrial logics—i.e. establishing equivalence in edu-
cation, examination, and experiential requirements be-
tween bodies. Rather, it is also the outcome of activities
underpinned by domestic logics—skills in diplomacy;
power relations between associations; and the assessment
of a credential’s local esteem and reputation. Thus whilst
equivalence in the technical sense may be a necessary con-
dition for establishing formal reciprocity agreements be-
tween professional accounting bodies around the globe, it
is unlikely to be a suf?cient one. Much still rests on the
negotiating power of the parties concerned which itself is
contingent on a number of factors that are unrelated to
how their respective quali?cation routes ‘match up’
against each other.
Beware the foreign accountant
Whilst as the above suggests, the domestic order of
worth is one of the moral orders underpinning the formal
boundary rules determining who is or is not a Chartered
Accountant of Ontario, it is equally important to point out
the operation of domestic worth in erecting symbolic
boundaries. That is the labeling of immigrant accountants
as ‘‘foreign-trained’’ or ‘‘internationally-trained’’ is in itself
part of the everyday practice of separating ‘‘us’’ from‘‘them’’
thereby constructing the immigrant accountant as one
whose training and experience being labeled as ‘‘foreign’’
is ‘‘not known and suspicious’’ (Goldberg, 2006: 6) are of
low worth in the domestic order (see Table 1). Low worth
in the domestic order is then translated into to low worth
in the industrial order by juxtaposing foreign training with
text suggesting low competence or as Goldberg (2006: 6)
puts it ‘‘inferior and not ‘up to Canadian standards’’’. Thus:
Through bridge training programs, skilled newcomers
can bridge their international training and experience
to Ontario requirements (Michael Chan Minister of Cit-
izenship and Immigration quoted in The Globe and Mail
Wednesday June 18 2008: CA3).
Can the general public tell the difference between an
Ontario-regulated designation and one obtained
abroad? [. . .] Consumers should not be expected to have
the expertise to judge the relative competencies of
accounting practitioners (Rod Barr, President and CEO,
ICAO quoted in ICAO (2010)).
Table 3
Education requirements for canadian and foreign trained accountants. Source: PRISM (2003),http://www.icao.on.ca/Admissions/InternationallyTrainedAc-
countants/1010page1359.aspx
Ontario requirements Canadian-trained
applicants
IQAB appraisal of foreign credentialing body
Recognized Non-equivalent Not
assessed
University degree with adequate
coverage of business and
?nance subjects
Required Required, but normally also a
condition for credentialing by
foreign body
Required, but normally also a
condition for credentialing by
foreign body
Required
17 University level courses Required as part of
university degree or as a
supplement
Exempted May be exempted from up to 16
courses
Required
Core knowledge exam (CKE) Required Exempted Required Required
School of accountancy Required Exempted Required Required
Examination UFE CARE UFE UFE
CARE = CA reciprocity exam.
UFE = uniform ?nal exam.
41
In April 2011 the language was changed to read: ‘‘Any State Boards of
Accountancy in the United States of America which have adopted the 150 h
education requirement for the CPA designation or for the CPA designation
and licensure and which exempt Ontario CAs from the requirement to pass
the uniform CPA examination.’’
42
This language was changed in April 2011 to read ‘‘Any State Boards of
Accountancy in the United States of America which do not meet the
requirements for reciprocity outlined above’’.
14 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
In Canada, while no one can call themselves doctors or
lawyers without meeting the requirements of those
self-regulating professions, newcomers – or residents –
can call themselves an ‘‘accountant’’ or a ‘‘bookkeeper’’
without anyquali?cations whatsoever. [. . .] So, incertain
respects, some parts of Canada actually have ‘‘thrown
openthe doors’’ and allowedpeople withunprovenskills
and no standards for professional conduct to enter into
the ?eld of accounting (Brian Hunt, President and CEO
ICAO, The Globe and Mail June 18 2008).
Whereas the immigrationof accountants toCanadais not
a new phenomenon, the widespread labeling of the immi-
grant accountant as ‘‘foreign trained’’ or ‘‘internationally
trained’’ is a contemporary phenomenon. For example no-
where in Creighton’s 1984 history of the ICAO’s ?rst
100 years, are the immigrant accountants of the US, the
UK, South Africa and Australia referred to as ‘‘foreign’’ or
‘‘internationally’’ trained. Critically therefore, as part of the
Canadian master narrative, the terms ‘‘foreign trained’’ and
‘‘internationally trained’’ and the skills de?cit that they con-
note are considered only appropriate for characterizing
skilled immigrants of Canada’s new immigration regime.
Inother words ‘‘foreign’’ is reservedfor certainoverseas stig-
matized places, as illustrated by the commentator below
(publicly criticizing the Canadianmedical profession’s inap-
propriate blanket use of the term foreign-trained doctors):
It is ridiculous [..] when an American who went to Har-
vard medical school [..] and a Canadian cannot practice
medicine here either, even if that education is in the US
or Western Europe, Australia or other countries with
?rst class medical systems. They are lumped in with
those educated in India Africa or Eastern Europe as for-
eign-trained doctors (Francis, 2002).
This popular linking of low competence with ‘place’ is
also evident in justi?catory arguments of the ICAO:
Internationally trained professionals are welcome to
come to Ontario, with the proviso that to achieve the
CA designation they’ll have to meet the established
standards, which are set to match those of our interna-
tional trading partners in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and
elsewhere. The public interest demands nothing less
(Brian Hunt, CEO Institute Chartered Accountants of
Ontario The Globe and Mail June 18 2008).
The ‘‘foreign-trained’’ therefore is a short hand for the
undertrained or untrained thereby rendering accountants
so de?ned as posing a huge risk to public welfare:
Regulatory professions such as accounting have a
responsibility to maintain standards to protect the pub-
lic interest [..] It’s about ensuring that the credentials of
internationally trained professionals are fairly assessed
and that those individuals have access to any required
bridging programs to meet our standards.(Tobin Lambie
spokesperson for the CICA 2011 quoted in Bottom Line
2011: 29).
The CA profession fully recognizes that Ontario needs
international professionals to work here. But our prov-
ince must also strike a balance between that need and
the protection of the public (ICAO, 2010).
The last two sections have illustrated the ?uid and con-
tingent nature of identity construction by focusing on how
in?uential actors in the process of identi?cation—the Cana-
dian state and the elite sector of the accountancy profes-
sion—have grappled over time with multiple and
competing moral orders in setting the formal boundaries
of membership. We suggest that up until the period of
the 1960s where a domestic order of worth underpinned
both state and profession identi?cation projects, there
was little disharmony in the institutional environment
for immigrant accountants, hence absent from the accoun-
tancy labour market was the phenomenon of foreign cre-
dential and experience devaluation. In the next section
we go on to illustrate how the contemporary con?ict of
identi?cation logics between state and profession is mani-
fest and experienced by Canada’s new immigrant accoun-
tants and give some insight into the strategies they used
to navigate the confounding institutional environment.
Con?icting logics and confronting new identities in
Canada
Agreeing to the terms of fate or destiny. [. . .] I started
working with a temporary agency in night shifts. [. . .]
day time searching for better jobs. . . babysitting. [. . .]
Cursing my decision of immigrating to Canada. [. . .] I
saw Engineers, Doctors, Chartered Accountants and
other esteemed professional (sic) around the globe,
sweeping the factory ?oors, lifting and sorting in our
warehouses. . .and trying to recreate their shattered
dreams in this Promised Land. (Prasad Nair, Testimony
to the Standing Committee on their deliberations on Bill
124, Fair Access to Regulated Profession Act, 2006)
During the period
43
1995 to 2005, a total of 20,142
immigrants who landed in Canada planned to work as ?nan-
cial auditors and accountants. Of that ?gure, 13,143 settled
in Ontario, and one ?fth of those who settled there were
born in India (TIEDI, fact sheet 09-03). It is estimated that
within Ontario’s Greater Toronto Area alone, some ?ve hun-
dred of these settlers are members of the Institute of Char-
tered Accountants of India (ICAI)
44
which up until
February 7th 2011 was deemed by the ICAO a non-equivalent
body.
45
Using the insights from in-depth interviews with 17
Chartered Accountants of India (CAIs) we illustrate the nat-
ure and extent of the skills devaluation which they experi-
enced and will reveal that the frustration, alienation, and
regret captured in Prasad Nair’s 2006 testimony above is
43
Seehttp://immigrant-view-of-canada.blogspot.com/2007/01/fair-
access-to-regulated-professions.html accessed November 2009).
44
See statement by Amarjit Chopra, President of the Indian Institute of
Chartered Accountants quoted in The Voice Monday 29 November 2010
available athttp://www.weeklyvoice.com/community-news/mutual-rec-
ognition-agreement-on-chartered-accountants-likely/.
45
In order to become Chartered Accountants of Ontario, Chartered
Accountants of India were required to (a) sit and pass a university
equivalent course on Canadian business law; (b) enter into the CA
Professional training program involving the (i) the Core Knowledge Exam,
(ii) the School of Accountancy, iii) the Uniform Professional Exam, and (c)
obtain a training contract with CA training organizations to ful?ll the CA
experience requirement.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 15
very much common place within this group. First however
we discuss the contemporary Canadian immigration trends
in which the experience of immigrant CAIs can be located.
‘‘New immigration’’ and con?icting orders of worth
As previously mentioned, Canada’s 1960s shift to skills-
based criteria for determining immigration eligibility has
led to a gradual dismantling of the ‘‘old immigration’’ pat-
tern characterized by a population matrix that was ‘‘highly
homogeneous—geographically European, racially White,
and religiously Christian’’ (Türegün, 2007). There has been
a dramatic shift over a 20 year period which in 1981 saw
the UK ranked as the number one source country of immi-
grants to Canada, to failing to rank in the top 10 source
countries by 2001 (Statistics Canada, 2006). Accompanying
this has been a trend over the period 1999–2008 in which
‘‘non-traditional,’’ ‘‘visible minority’’ source regions
(namely, Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Paci?c, and
South and Central America) accounted for 80% of annual
immigration to Canada. Thus one aspect of the human side
of contemporary globalization is the ‘‘high degree of heter-
ogeneity’’ (Türegün, 2007) in the composition of immi-
grant ?ows, a trend particularly evident in Canada’s
recent experience.
Contemporarily immigrants enter Canada in three main
classi?cations: family class, economic class and refugee
class re?ecting the immigration program’s major objec-
tives of reuniting families, contributing to economic devel-
opment, and protecting refugees (Citizenship &
Immigration Canada, 2008). In 2007 over 55% of people
who migrated to Canada were of the economic class cate-
gory and more than 75% of that category applied through
the skilled worker program (Citizenship & Immigration
Canada, 2008: 8) that is, they were ‘‘able to demonstrate
their ability to enter the labour market and successfully
establish in Canada by meeting selection criteria that as-
sess factors such as education, English or French language
abilities and work experience’’ (Citizenship & Immigration
Canada, 2008: 1). In 2007 of the 188,479 adults who en-
tered Canada as immigrants, more than 80,000 (43%) had
at least a Bachelor’s degree, a ?gure far outpacing that of
the overall Canadian population of 23% (Statistics Canada,
2006). Despite their higher level educational achievement
and the state’s intention that the targets of their skilled
immigration program outperform the Canadian-born pop-
ulation in the labour market, research has consistently
shown that the much planned for contribution of skilled
immigrants to the economic well-being and competitive
advantage of the nation has not materialized (Alboim, Fin-
nie, & Meng, 2005; Li, 2001; Reitz, 2001). And whilst it
could be argued that irrespective of skill level, there is a
necessary period of adjustment for new citizens to fully
integrate into the labour market of her/his new home
country (i.e. a transition penalty), research has revealed
that whatever the earnings gap at entry, and in the years
following entry, the earnings gaps of successive cohorts
of immigrants when compared to Canadian born has con-
sistently increased. In short extant research has suggested
that despite rising levels of quali?cations among new citi-
zens, the foreign credential-job gap has been widening.
It is nowcommon practice to frame the underutilization
of immigrant credentials in economic terms. For instance
Reitz (2001) estimated a yearly loss of $15 billion of which
$12.6 billion was due to pay inequity and $2.4 billion due
to skill underutilization. The Institute of Chartered Accoun-
tants of Ontario as well seems to have accepted credential
devaluation of Canada’s skilled immigrants as a reality
likewise discussing it in market terms. Thus on the fre-
quently asked questions section of its website is the hypo-
thetical dialogue:
How much of a difference could immigrants working in
their ?eld of choice make for Canada’s economy?
The Conference Board of Canada estimated that if all
immigrants were employed to their proper level of qual-
i?cations, $4.97 billion would be added to the economy
each year, with the largest share in the Toronto region
(http://www.casforchange.ca/IT/index.aspx#faq1,
accessed 03/11/09).
Nonetheless in response to the access problems faced
by immigrant accountants, Brian Hunt, president and
CEO of the ICAO arguing from a moral order of industrial
logic (training and standards) and linking such worth
explicitly to ‘place’ rebukes the moral order of the market
as follows:
Why not just let internationally trained professionals go
straight into practice when they arrive in this country?
The assumption, often based on an idealized ‘‘free mar-
ket,’’ is that competition and the marketplace will
quickly sort out who is and is not ready to meet Cana-
dian standards for professionals. However, the fact is that
the training and standards for the professions—whether
doctors, lawyers, engineers or ?nance and accounting spe-
cialists—vary widely between countries. Doctors encoun-
ter different training, treatments and technologies.
Lawyers must deal with different laws and legal sys-
tems. Finance and accounting professionals face unique
business laws and tax systems in each jurisdiction
(Hunt, 2008, President and CEO, ICAO The Globe and
Mail June 18 2008, italics our own).
The state’s expectation that Canada’s new immigrants’
would outperform Canadian-born in the labour market
ignores the profoundly domestic logic pervading the envi-
ronment of corporate Canada. Such an environment privi-
leges the local over foreign, and experience over
credentials. Thus a number of studies reveal systematic
biases in favour of the Canadian born in the labour market
(Conference Board of Canada, 2004; Couton, 2002; Reitz,
2005), and in surveys carried out by Citizenship and Immi-
gration Canada lack of Canadian Experience is the reason
most cited by skilled immigrants for failing to secure jobs
in their ?elds of expertise (Statistics Canada, 2003: 33–
34). Further a number of studies (CLBC, 2002; PCPI, 2007;
Public Policy Forum, 2004) focusing on employer attitudes
have revealed that this aversion to non-Canadian experi-
ence and immigrant labour appears to be a deep rooted
feature of the Canadian labour market. Thus Interviewee
AS, an immigrant CAI who arrived in Canada in 2000 after
working for 19 years in India’s petroleum sector recalls:
16 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
When I landed in Canada [. . .] I did not get any
job. . .precisely because I had no Canadian experi-
ence. . ..I was trying through the agencies [. . .] but I
was not getting any job [. . .] I did a factory job, night
shift factory job which in my whole life I never do. I
had a variety of experiences after coming here, working
door-to-door sales job....For the last 2 years I am only
working in contract services. . .so even after putting in
8 years. . .I still do not have a permanent job (AS, Inter-
viewee #1, February 2008).
46
VM who arrived in Canada with extensive audit and
international ?nancial reporting experience after working
at two Big Four ?rms both in India and Qatar notes:
Everywhere I went, they said, no Canadian experience,
sorry. Your experience is, you know, great. It looks great
on paper in a way that you are a CA from India. You
have done your CISA.
47
You’ve worked with two of the
big four ?rms, ?rm xxx (Big 4 ?rm #1) and ?rm xxx
(Big 4 ?rm # 2). You’ve got the spectrum. And the
breadth of experience that you have is tremendous rang-
ing from manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, ?nancial, oil
and gas, everything. But you don’t have Canadian experi-
ence (VM, Interviewee #2, April 2008).
And KG a 56 year old who migrated to Canada in 2005
with 25 years experience working with a well-known
international company in India noted:
Everybody used to ask me what’s your Canadian experi-
ence. Especially the recruiters. They won’t even go to
that [the non-Canadian experience]. [. . .] Unless you
have gained a lot of experience of working here. . .you
have to enter at an entry level (KG, Interviewee #9, Feb-
ruary 2010).
JM who had 7 years experience working with two dif-
ferent big 4 ?rms in the Middle East and Singapore suffered
a similar fate:
When I ?rst came here,. . .nobody would touch me with
a long pole [. . .] Nobody will touch you. Nobody will
even call you for an interview (JM, Interviewee #3, Feb-
ruary 2010).
When asked ‘‘Even though you have such extensive
experience and you were working for xxx (Big4 ?rm #3)
and xxx (Big 4 ?rm #4), the interviewee’s response was
‘‘Who cared’’. Indeed the domestic logic that pervades the
Canadian labour market was so strong that an interviewee
summed it up as follows:
I was hearing from recruiters. Do you have any Cana-
dian experience? And that just was so bizarre because
they did not care what kind of Canadian experience I
had [. . .] They just wanted me to have worked in Can-
ada. I could have worked in a gas station, at Highland
Farms [supermarket]. That was far more valuable to
them than my designation or any work experience I
had in India (NP, Interviewee #17, April 2011).
As expressed by interviewee #5, immigrant CAIs there-
fore faced an impossible dilemma in the Canadian market
for accounting labour:
I had over ten years experience as a chartered accoun-
tant [. . .] and the only thing I can put on the resume
is my past history, historical information about my jobs
and they were all outside of Canada. And the quali?ca-
tion I could put in was my Indian CA. And that has 2 dis-
advantages. One, the job bank postings were for entry
level positions. And then if they look at my CA as a qual-
i?cation, they obviously think that I am over quali?ed.
And. . .[if] you apply for career positions, they look at
it as an Indian quali?cation and not as a Canadian qual-
i?cation with no Canadian experience (VR, Interviewee
#5, Feb 2010).
Ironically, whereas for immigrant CAIs their accounting
experience acted as a points booster in Canada immigra-
tion’s skilled worker program rendering them high quality
immigration and by extension, citizenship candidates, a
number of them considered that their accountancy experi-
ence acted as a liability when confronted with the realities
of the accounting labour market in Canada. AJ who charac-
terized himself as ‘‘having the pro?le of a company vice
president’’ thus poignantly noted:
The best advice that someone gave me was that my
resume should be watered down to take away all the
senior level roles that I had done because I was trying
for a junior and entry level role (AJ, Interviewee #10,
February 2010).
AR adopted a somewhat similar strategy:
In the ?rst page of my resume I highlight my local expe-
rience ?rst. The second page my earlier experiences,
that also I limited my experiences. [. . .] my [pre 1999]
experience I never show in my resume. [. . .] Now, even
after cutting down so much, whoever interviews me
whether it is a recruiter or whether it is a company,
nobody bothers about my second page of my resume.
They con?ne their observation to my ?rst page which
is Canadian experience. [. . .] Now once I eliminated all
those things I have been getting the interview calls
(AR, Interviewee #4, February 2010).
The barrier of Canadian experience seemed also to oper-
ate within the Big 4 practicing ?rms which paradoxically in
their international marketing present a ‘‘one ?rm’’ image.
Thus VM, a 33 year old who had trained and worked in
two Big 4 ?rms recalls:
So I land here in August. Of course I had my contacts. I’d
worked with xxx (Big 4 ?rm #1) and xxx (Big 4 ?rm #2)
in you know India and the Middle East. I did apply to
the ?rms here saying that I had reference letters from
the ?rms both from India and Qatar the Middle East. I
went ahead and I interviewed with xxx (Big 4 ?rm
46
Interviewee AS, is well known within Toronto ICAI circles as a nation-
wide ranker in the intermediate exams. The ICAI awards ranks to the top 50
scorers of those who sit for and pass a particular level in one sitting.
Obtaining a rank at any level of the ICAI examinations therefore is
considered a prestigious feat given the large number of students taking
these exams and the low pass rate.
47
CISA refers to the Certi?ed Information Systems Auditor credential
which has become increasingly common amongst information systems
audit, control, and security professionals.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 17
#1). I interviewed with xxx (Big 4 ?rm #2). [. . .] I didn’t
interview with xxx (Big 4 ?rm #3) but I did forward my
paperwork to xxx (Big 4 ?rm #3). I got a listing of all
the, you know, the prominent CA ?rms here. [. . .] I
applied to all of them. I gave telephone interviews. I
went there and I met them, gave interviews in person.
They said it’s great. You don’t have Canadian experience
(VM, Interviewee #2, April 2008).
This apparent disregard for VM’s foreign experience
stands in stark contrast with discourse highlighting the va-
lue of foreign experience to practice ?rms, for example:
When Chartered Accountants work in jobs around the
globe it not only provides exciting, career-building
opportunities for employees, but also means value for
their employers’ clients. Beyond the intrinsic value of
foreign work experience, CAs who work abroad build
global perspective and professional networks—all assets
in today’s ever-changing world economy (ICAO, 2008).
. . .with Canada’s transition to International Financial
Reporting Standards on the horizon, there is consider-
able demand for foreign-trained accountants who have
experience with IFRSs. (Bill Thomas, deputy CEO, KPMG
quoted in The Globe and Mail Wednesday, June 18,
2008).
Whilst the above quotes do suggest that foreign experi-
ence is highly valorized by practicing ?rms, they mask the
possibility that the variety of foreign experience is unlikely
to be equally ranked. Recent evidence indicating that more
than 80% of the 5795 Canadian CAs working abroad on 31st
December 2010, were located in only 5 countries (Colapin-
to, 2011),
48
supports the notion that rather than being ?at-
tened, under neoliberal globalization, the global landscape is
becoming more uneven as high status economic activity is
increasingly being driven by only a few key cities/regions
(Sassen, 2006), suggesting that in assigning worth to
accountancy experience, distinctions based on place might
be even more salient rendering some locations as sites of
highly valued experience and stigmatizing if not attaching
little value to others.
Encountering and negotiating the contradictions
For a number of CAIs who came to Canada, it was the
compelling nature of advertisements sponsored by the
Canadian state though it’s Embassy in India which encour-
aged them to consider migrating (Interviewee #6, #8, #7,
#2, #15, #16). Interviewee #7 recalls:
It accidentally came to our attention that Canada was
welcoming accountants, architects, etc. all the profes-
sionals, to immigrate. [. . .] I mean my wife was just ?ip-
ping through a news magazine called India Today, which
is equivalent of Time, Indian equivalent of Time. [. . .]
And she saw one full page advertisement by Immigra-
tion lawyer ?rm consultant informing about this and
inviting people to, you know, apply for immigration.
And then I just took it as a joke and then later on I
saw a full page advertisement by the Canadian govern-
ment, by the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi,
in that magazine called The Chartered Accountant, which
is, you know, technical magazine of the CA institute in
India (TT, Interviewee #7, Feb 2010).
Indeed, as interviewee #16 points out, similar adver-
tisements were being placed in The Chartered Accountant
as early as the late 1980s:
I came to Canada in 1989. [. . .] I was kind of encouraged
because just around that time, the Canadian govern-
ment had sort of placed a full page ad into our CA mag-
azine that they’re looking for quali?ed accountants to
come to Canada (HS, Interviewee # 16, April 2011).
Advertisements such as ‘‘Is Your Future In Canada’’ spon-
sored by the Canadian High Commission in India (Fig. 1)
and ‘‘Canada is Waiting For you’’ (Fig. 2) speci?cally target-
ing CAIs suggested a seamless entry into the Canadian la-
bour market.
That the Canadian state authorities in India could run
these ads or sanction them provided suf?cient proof of
high demand for CAIs in Canada. For many therefore, no
other con?rmation was sought:
The Canadian High Commission made an advertisement
in our journal. [. . .] Chartered Accountant, and they men-
tioned that there was professional demand for char-
tered accountants in Canada. That was the point. [. . .]
for me to leave my very good practice in Delhi [. . .] that
was more than suf?cient [. . .] The Canadian Embassy is
making an advertisement in the Indian Institute of
Chartered Accountants journal [. . .] So that’s I think
more than the proof that the demand for the chartered
accountant from India in Canada would be great (RS,
Interviewee #8, February 2010).
And the sheer speed by which immigration applications
of CAIs were processed con?rmed as one advertisement
declared, that immigration to Canada was a ‘‘Golden Oppor-
tunity for Chartered Accountants’’ (Fig. 3). Our interviewees
recall:
The Canadian embassy in Delhi [. . .] they sent me the
package and I basically ?lled it in. I took my own time
to ?ll it in. And I was so lucky [. . .] in 5 months I got
my visa papers (MR, Interviewee #6, February 2010).
Sometime in 2000, I received a call and a letter from the
Canadian High Commission in New Delhi to, you know,
meet them for a personal interview in Delhi a month or
two after that. I attended the interview in Delhi with
my wife and after certain procedure a few months after
that I got the letter for immigration to Canada and a few
months after that, you know, after winding up my prac-
tice I landed in Toronto in December 2000 (TT, Intervie-
wee #7, February 2010).
For many the speed of the process in fact presented a
problem. Interviewee #2 recalls:
I applied in August of 1999, August 26 or something
[. . .] and fortunately or unfortunately for me, I got my
papers in three months, rather than the one year
waiting period [. . .] It was great news for me. But
48
The countries were: USA (2234); Bermuda (927); Hong Kong (588); UK
(456); Cayman (231) and Australia (229).
18 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
unfortunately it didn’t give me that enough time that I
could keep my tenure with xxx (Big 4 ?rm #2). [. . .]
And they sent me the medical papers and [. . .] I gave
my medical on the very last permissible date, and that
was March 5. I was trying to delay that as much as pos-
sible. . .but then I got my landing papers one month
after that, saying that I have to be in Canada within
the six month period, which meant that I had to be in
Canada by August or September (VM, Interviewee #2,
2008).
Finally, there was the points system which set up an
expectation of guaranteed success. Interviewee #17 ex-
presses this well:
When I got interviewed there at the Consulate it
seemed that if you had a CA, things are great in Can-
ada [. . .] You would get a job. That was the impres-
sion I got—that you should have no trouble.
Especially if you have some French. This is easy for
you. . .because that’s how you get your points. That’s
the impression I got. That I was like, over prepared.
Like I would be welcomed with open arms over here.
I would get the job in the ?rst week (NP, Interviewee
#17, April 2011).
A substantial percentage (38%) of CAIs who had immi-
grated to Canada had done so via an intermediate country,
usually Middle East (Annisette & Trivedi, 2010). For those
who had already left India and had gathered international
experience, Canada seemed to be a choice destination given
the ease of its immigration process relative to its rivals:
Well the U.S. wasn’t really an option because of their
green card rules (AJ, Interviewee #10, Feb 2010).
There was the age limitation there in Australia. At that
time, even now, their age, upper age limit is 45 or some-
thing like that for immigration. So I was over above 45
so I could not apply for Australia [. . .] And New Zealand
there was some more restrictions [. . .]. The need to have
some work offer and other things (AR, Interviewee #4,
February 2010).
Fig. 1. Canadian Immigration Ad. The Chartered Accountant Journal of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India 9th Feb 1996.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 19
England was very dif?cult to get into at that time. . .New
Zealand was open but it was more time consuming (PR,
Interviewee #11, February 2010).
.. And I think, you know, in US of course I think I didn’t
get a reply or probably I got a rejection at that time. I
don’t remember. But I got through with Canada. [. . .]
So then I said, there is not much difference between
US and Canada anyway. (JG, Interviewee #14, April
2011).
There was a choice. You know, you had U.S. or Canada.
But in terms of the pro?les that you could possibly gain
by moving to U.S., which was you come here on a work
permit; you continue to work on a work permit. There
were these, you know, different kind of visas that you
would be entitled to, which did not give you the same
perks, or the same bene?ts you enjoy as becoming a cit-
izen [. . .] if you moved to Canada within 3 years, more
or less you’re guaranteed a citizenship. And they cannot
kick you out, unless of course you decide to move on
yourself (VM, Interviewee #2, April 2008).
We were looking at going abroad for some time actu-
ally. But nothing else had worked out. We did try in
the Middle East in between, but it just didn’t work
(AL, Interviewee #15, April 2011).
I wanted to go to the States really. [. . .] But that didn’t
work out.. So then I thought, you know what, Canada
Fig. 2. Immigration Consultants Ad. India Today June15 1996, p. 67.
20 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
seemed like an easier place to go to and to me it seemed
like an easy way to ?nally get to the States (NP, Intervie-
wee #17 April 2011).
As the above quotes illustrate, the CAIs who migrated to
Canada bore the mentalities of the idealized neoliberal
subjects who in their quest for mobility were unbothered
by the arti?cial constructs of national boundaries. Indeed
as JM, Interviewee # 3 points out:
So we see these guys coming all the time. And a lot of
them are coming from the Middle East, you know.
They’re not coming straight from India if that is a bag-
gage. These guys [. . .] have seen a little bit of the world
(JM, Interviewee # 3, February 2010).
Such mentalities were equally matched by a neoliberal
Canadian State which in rendering an evaluation of their
suitability for Canadian immigration stripped the process
Fig. 3. Immigration Consultants Ad. The Chartered Accountant Journal of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India January 1997.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 21
of any measure that linked worthiness to issues related to
‘place’. This was an immigration process that was undeni-
ably informed by the morality of the market.
The relative speed and ease of immigration under the
Canada Immigration skilled worker program combined
with the straightforwardness of achieving full citizenship
once having received immigrant status, allowed Canada
to outperform its international rivals in its bid to attract
‘‘the best and the brightest’’. Combined with the points
system these factors provided strong signals to migrating
CAIs of a high demand for their skills and created high
expectations amongst them not only of immediate
employment in Canada but employment ?tting of their
skills and expertise. As a result, an estimated 61% of
migrating CAIs arrived in Canada without ?rst trying to
secure employment (Annisette & Trivedi, 2010). Unfortu-
nately for them, their expectations were in sharp contrast
to realities on the ground. Interviewee #7 landed in
December 2000 and secured his ?rst job 11 months later.
Even then, in his view, it was hardly a job be?tting his
experience and quali?cations:
[ I was] a sort of accounting assistant [. . .] not a full
?edged accounting assistant because I was taken in as
a junior to a lady who was doing her undergraduate
from some university in Toronto. So they took me to
do some bank reconciliations, not even full bank recon-
ciliations. Just compiling certain data [. . .] I mean I was
junior to an undergraduate, you know, those people
who, while doing their undergraduate join some com-
panies to get some experience (TT Interviewee #7, Feb-
ruary 2010).
This experience was typical for many of the intervie-
wees. For example:
After I landed here I was trying very hard to get an
accounting role. But after that temp job I got this other
permanent role and I needed it for bene?ts and the sal-
ary, and no other accounting role came my way for
about a year and a half till this particular role came
along. [. . .] That was investment accounting an entry
level job (AJ Interviewee #10, February 2010).
Coming from India, [the] hourly rate was generally for
labour class. And so it immediately turned me off that
they were trying to treat me like an hourly labourer.
[. . .] Still I accepted it. I worked for 3 days and I found
that even though the title was controller, I am doing
bookkeeping. So after 3 days I told them this job is
way below my expectations and I have to look for
another job. So I left that job. And for the next 6 months,
I did not get even one other call (VR Interviewee #5,
February 2010).
After 3 months I got my ?rst job and this was basically
just a bookkeeping [. . .] I prepared myself and said,
okay, I’ll look again 2 years to settle down anyway. I
was mentally prepared [. . .] now I have to do bookkeep-
ing (MR, Interviewee #6, February 2010).
I remember very well my ?rst job which I could not do
for more than a week was in a call centre selling lottery
tickets. And I was very depressed. I said I can’t be doing
this. (NP, Interviewee# 17 April 2011).
These responses both in content and tone indicate that
immigrant CAIs did not identify with the new occupational
identities which they encountered in the Canadian
accounting labour market, for, as members of the Institute
of Chartered Accountants of India they were members of
India’s accounting elite. Thus one interviewee pointed out:
I am a CA from a country so I want to be a CA. I mean
there are other designations in India which are not at
the level of CA, something like you know cost accoun-
tant or company secretary you know those kinds of
things in India, but CA is you know a designation I
wanted here, an equivalent designation or USA CPA
(TT, Interviewee #7, February 2010).
They often critiqued the entry level valuation placed on
their skills from the standpoint of industrial worth, whilst
simultaneously reframing their professional identities by
erecting symbolic boundaries between themselves and
the Canadian CA. In this regard they were similar to Fili-
pino immigrants in the US (Espiritu, 2001) recasting them-
selves as superior:
I would say in terms of our training, we probably have a
lot more depth of understanding than the people out
here (HS, Interviewee #16 April 2011).
We do better work, okay, from the point of view of
detail in the way we detail our stuff (MR Interviewee
# 6 February 2010).
I think the training part of it, you know. The Indian CAs
[. . .] get better training [. . .] than [the CAs] here (YP
Interviewee #12 April 2011).
the Canadian UFE [. . .]. It is. It is much more easier (VM,
Interviewee # 2, April 2008).
A more astute respondent, recognizing that a domestic
logic also underpins reciprocity agreements of the
accounting elite, pointed to the Canadian and Indian CAs’
common heritage with the British CA. Thus the Canadian
CA’s failure to recognize its kinship with the Indian could
be critiqued from the moral frame of domesticity:
I think the Canadian CA and the Indian CA is way more
compatible than the CPA and the Canadian CA [..] the
Indian CA is like an extension of the UK CA we didn’t
change much you know what I’m saying? Like the
whole core curriculum, it’s still the British [. . .] And
what I’m trying to say is, if you think you can go hand
in hand with the UK Institute because you’re so compat-
ible, the Indian one is just an extension (NP, Interviewee
#17, April 2011).
Importantly therefore, our interview subjects were not
critiquing the hierarchical structure of the professional
accountancy landscape in Ontario. Their critique was one
focused on the position of the Indian CA credential within
the Ontario professional hierarchy and as the above shows
they often relied on industrial and domestic logic to justify
their claim for status parity with the Canadian CA. In char-
acterizing the moral orders underpinning Indian Chartered
Accountants’ critiques, it is important to point out that
even though Boltanski and Thévenot’s justi?catory frame-
work was drawn out of a western cultural experience,
our interviewees were now located in such a context, and
22 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
as Lamont points out, individuals do not necessarily draw
boundaries out of their own experience, instead ‘‘they bor-
row from the general cultural repertories supplied to them
by the society in which they live, relying on general de?ni-
tions of valued traits which take on a rule-like status’’
(1992: 7). This understanding of the valued traits in Cana-
dian society therefore not only informed our interviewees’
critiques, but also informed the strategies they pursued to
reclaim their professional identities. Given therefore that
the Indian CA seemed stigmatized in the Canadian
accounting labour market, conversion to the Canadian CA
was the obvious place to start
49
. This route was nonetheless
fraught with dif?culty. For one was the non-equivalent status
of the ICAI (see Appendix 1). This meant that CAIs were
viewed by the ICAO as only having completed university le-
vel education and no value was placed on their post univer-
sity professional education or their post quali?cation
accounting/audit experience. Interviewee #3 recalls:
I worked for this accounting ?rm for the last 10 years.
I’ve got all the audit experience. Then I started to do
my CA here. [. . .] I wrote to them, they asked me to go
take all the credits, even with all this background (JM,
Interviewee #3, February 2010).
Even for those who were willing to ‘start from scratch’,
opportunities were closed off, for the path to becoming a
member of the Ontario accounting elite typi?es the com-
promise arrangement between industrial and domestic
worth. Thus not only is an aspirant required to pass the
ICAO professional exams but eligibility to register as a stu-
dent is contingent upon obtaining an employment contract
with a CA training of?ce – a feat accomplished only by the
possession of a range of attributes and attitudes deemed
professional (Anderson-Gough et al., 2001; Grey, 1998).
Therefore of the interviewees who wished to pursue this
route, only one succeeded in gaining such employment.
Interviewee #7 and #6 were not so successful:
So I took the core knowledge exam of the CA. I passed
that in, I think, 2004, January. But getting the experi-
ence. [. . .] it wasn’t easy to ?nd a place in any account-
ing ?rm. I tried a lot. Nobody was ready to take me (TT,
Interviewee #7, February 2010).
I had big hopes like everybody else and I had, at that
time, got myself evaluated here [by the] Canadian CA
institute and, with the Ontario CA at that point of time,
and they told me to go do full training of 30 months.
[. . .] I had a list of all the CAs. . ..I, with the resume, I sent
it to almost everybody in Toronto [. . .] almost 275 or
300 resumes. [. . .] I wanted to pursue my CA designa-
tion here. So that’s what I did. But hardly 15 or 20
responded saying that right now we don’t have any
need, but we’ll put you on record. The rest, they didn’t
even respond. And, so it was basically very dif?cult to
get into a CA ?rm. I wanted to do my articles [. . .] but
it never happened [. . .] So I never got a chance to do
my CA here (MR, Interviewee #6, February 2010).
In response to these barriers many of our interviewees
took advantage of what might be called credential arbi-
trage opportunities in the global arena. That is, aware that
some US CPA state boards fully recognize holders of the
CAI designation as candidates for the CPA exam, they
sought to earn the CPA designation from a US state board
and then apply to the ICAO for reciprocity on the basis of
the CPA quali?cation (interviewees #6, #3, #7, #2, and
#13). Interviewee #7 who obtained his CPA with the Colo-
rado state CPA certifying board explains:
Colorado recognizes the CA designation of India before
taking the CPA exam without you know, going through
the process of evaluation of university education and
everything else. I mean straight away send photocopies
of your CA membership and membership certi?cate and
that’s it. I mean you are a CPA candidate. [. . .] I took the
classes and in May. [. . .] I took the CPA exam in Detroit
and I passed the exam. [. . .] Actually I was Colorado
state candidate but took the exam from Detroit (TT,
interviewee #7, February 2010).
Interviewee #6 followed the path of many others and
certi?ed with the state of Delaware:
I didn’t have to study any more to get any credits. It was
the State of Delaware. So all CAs. [. . .] they all used to
register them with Delaware, send their mark sheets
evaluated and get the credits. So I did the same thing.
And I got my transcripts from FACS, yes I think that
was at that point of time. I got my evaluation and then
they gave me full credits, 30 hours credit and then I was
ready to go for my [. . .] CPA course (MR, Interviewee #6,
February 2010).
Except for PK (interviewee #13) who obtained his CPA
designation prior to landing in Canada, our interviewees
though having received the CPA credential nonetheless
failed to convert it to the CA because of the residency
trap. The ICAO recognizing the potential for credential
arbitrage would only grant CA conversion to CPA desig-
nations received prior to landing in Canada.
50
In 2009
the ICAO thwarted further opportunities for credential
arbitrage with the US CPA by adopting regulation II which
only allows reciprocity for CPAs who have written ‘‘all
parts of the uniform CPA examination while not a resi-
dent, and not having been a resident, of Canada for a per-
iod of three continuous years immediately prior to writing
the examinations’’.
51
At the time of our survey, the US CPA
credential was nonetheless still the most popular addi-
tional professional accounting credential held by immi-
grant CAIs.
52
49
Unless otherwise stated we use the following acronym to signify
designations. CPA: is the US based CPA, CIMA is the UK based CIMA, CMA is
the Canadian Based CMA and CGA is the Canadian based CGA, ACCA is the
UK based ACCA.
50
This rule was so strictly applied that VM who completed his ?nal CPA
exam whilst working in Qatar was also denied reciprocity. In VM’s case
although he completed his CPA exams before landing in Canada, his CPA
certi?cate was issued after his Canadian landing date.
51
Regulation II was adopted by the ICAO Council on February 22, 2008
and amended June 18, 2009.
52
The US CPA was held by 37% of those surveyed (Annisette & Trivedi,
2010).
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 23
Discussion: Globalization and its paradoxes
This paper has sought to understand how neoliberal
globalization is linked to issues of identity, inequality and
‘place’ by examining its impact on the formal boundary
rules involved in the making of the identities Canadian
‘‘citizen–immigrant’’ and the ‘‘Chartered Accountant’’ of
Ontario. Since the creation of these social categories is cru-
cial to the production of inequality in society then the pro-
cess of identi?cation is infused with moral undertones. As
such, our interest has been to reveal the impact of neolib-
eral globalization on the moral anchors which have socially
legitimized these forms of inequality. In focusing on the
identity projects of the state and the profession in the con-
text of neoliberal globalization, we acknowledge that these
institutions have been mutually involved in each other’s
own making and are deeply embedded in each other’s sys-
tems of exclusion and privilege (Johnson, 1982). As a con-
sequence, a study of globalization’s differential impacts on
them in general and on their identi?cation processes in
particular, is likely to produce rich insights into the ten-
sions, paradoxes and contradictions associated with neo-
liberal globalization, which we reveal through the
experiences of Toronto-based migrant Chartered Accoun-
tants of India (CAIs). As we summarize our paper below,
we describe these as the paradox of the state, the paradox
of the professional market, and the paradox of place.
The paradox of the state
We have shown that the Canadian state’s move from a
policy which privileged race and place to one which privi-
leges skills in its ‘‘citizen–immigrant’’ identity project has
been accompanied by a shift in justi?catory discourse from
one underpinned by the moral order of domestic worth to
one anchored in the morality of the market. As the paper
has shown, under neoliberalism Canada’s new immigrants
are consistently framed as a solution to Canada’s skills cri-
sis and as the key to the country’s competitive advantage
in the global market.
This reorientation of Canada’s immigration policy from
a race/place basis to a skills basis can be seen as part of a
more general move by neoliberal states to harness their
populations for economic ends (Bishop & Boden, 2008:
7). It therefore re?ects a qualitative change in the nature
of the identity ‘‘the citizen’’ and her/his relationship with
the state. What has been now referred to variously as
‘‘market citizenship’’ (Fudge, 2005), ‘‘neo-liberal citizen-
ship’’ (Stasiulis & Bakan, 2005), or ‘‘economic citizenship’’
(Lister, 1998) is a version of citizenship now enacted by
neoliberal states which stresses individualism and compe-
tition, and limits government’s social welfare responsibil-
ity to one of helping citizens help themselves (Fudge,
2005).
53
As Bishop and Boden (2008) point out, this concept
of citizenship is formulated solely on individuals’ responsi-
bility to support themselves and their families though paid
work. In a citizenship regime in which value and worthiness
is predicated on labour market participation, one would ex-
pect far more intervention of the Canadian state in fostering
optimal labour market participation for its targeted skilled
migrants, whose labour power – as the case of immigrant
CAIs shows – remains untapped. Yet such state intervention
stands at odds with neoliberal’s central tenet of the market
as prime arbiter of value. Indeed referring to pragmatic soci-
ology’s commonwealth of worth framework, state interven-
tion in the manner described, is at odds with the
relationships between beings within the idealized moral or-
der of the market world. In such a world the primary role of
the state is to eliminate impediments to the free exchange of
goods and services between buyer and seller. Thus in the
case of the Canadian neoliberal state its role has been cir-
cumscribed to merely eliminating the race/place barriers
that previously restricted the supply of skilled labour to
the national labour market, and once accomplished, it is left
to the market to evaluate and allocate skilled migrant labour
to its most optimal use. But no market operates along the
lines of the idealized moral order of the market and, as a
consequence the expected economic bene?ts of a skilled
immigration policy remain signi?cantly curtailed. Paradoxi-
cally therefore, the very moral order that underpins the
Canadian neoliberal state’s contemporary immigration pol-
icy, has set constraints on its ability to act with regards to
the implementation of policy, thus as the case has shown,
the migrant Chartered Accountants of India whom we inter-
viewed, like many of Canada’s highly skilled migrants have
consistently failed to ‘‘outperform the Canadian-born’’ in
the manner envisaged by the Canadian state.
The paradox of the professional labour market
We suggest that the failure of Canada’s highly skilled
immigrants to outperform the Canadian-born can be lar-
gely attributed to a domestic logic pervading the Canadian
labour market. Although we did not target our research to
potential employers of professionally trained accountants,
the prevalence of a domestic moral order in the market
was nonetheless well illustrated by the experiences of
our interviewees, all of whom expressed frustration at
their repeated encounter with the ‘‘Canadian Experience’’
phenomenon
54
. Paradoxically therefore whilst neoliberal
globalization has prompted the Canadian state to adopt an
economic logic in evaluating the worthiness of individuals
for the Canadian identity, the Canadian labour market ap-
pears to rely overwhelmingly on domestic logics in evaluat-
ing their worth as market actors. Streeck and Schmitter
(1985) have long noted that issues of trust, reputation, and
good faith (objects of the domestic world of worth) are cru-
cial to the proper functioning of markets. And as Aspers’s
(2009) work has suggested, that observation, is even truer
for status markets where it is impossible to evaluate what
is exchanged independently of seller attributes. It can be ar-
gued that the market for professional accounting labour is a
53
According to Fudge (2005) was fully embraced by the Canadian state in
the 1980s when the federal government signed the US–Canada Free trade
deal and adopted privatization as an alternative to public participation.
54
This labour market privileging of local experience was not a phenom-
enon unique to our interviewees. Indeed this has been so pervasive a
barrier for Canada’s new immigrants, that in September 2008 Citizenship
and Immigration Canada introduced a new immigration category called the
Canadian Experience Class for individuals seeking permanent residence
status in Canada.
24 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
status market and therefore relies heavily on the evaluative
criteria of the domestic order of worth in resolving the prob-
lems of uncertainty in its overall functioning.
55
Thus as we
observed in this paper, accountancy education and experi-
ence from India – a place deemed unfamiliar in the Canadian
context – fails the test in the labour market and is stigma-
tized not on grounds of low competence, but on grounds
of foreignness. In short, whilst the neoliberal state’s solution
to the Canada’s global competitiveness has been to formally
decenter ‘place’ in its immigration policies so as to increase
the supply of skilled labour to the national labour market,
the evaluative criteria pervading the market is one heavily
informed by ‘place’.
Paradox of place
This research has shown that immigrant CAIs suffer
education and experience de-valorization in the Canadian
labour market. This phenomenon is unlikely to be the case
with all Canadian immigrants holding foreign credentials
and experience. For instance extant research has shown
that ‘‘British, American and some European skilled immi-
grants experience substantial advantages in the Canadian
labour market’’ (Boyd & Thomas, 2002: 90). And this paper
does point to the existence of justi?catory discourse from
Ontario’s accounting elite which highly valorizes foreign
experience.
We suggest that the strong spatial distinctions preva-
lent in Canada’s market for professional accounting labour,
is linked to the deep embeddedness of domestic worth and
spatial distinctions which have historically de?ned the
identity projects of both the Canadian state and Ontario’s
accounting elite. On the one hand in forging the identity
Canadian ‘‘citizen–immigrant’’ the Canadian neoliberal
state is still required to balance the profound tension be-
tween the drive to secure a skilled mobile labour force
and the drive to de?ne the Canadian nation–state in terms
of territorial boundaries (Nagel, 2002). And given that up
until relatively recently the construction of the Canadian
‘‘citizen–immigrant’’ identity has been overwhelmingly
anchored in domestic worth giving priority to race and
place, it is dif?cult to imagine that the state’s justi?catory
discourse of its skilled immigration program alone could
dislodge society’s cognitive categories based on hierarchies
of place. Indeed this inability to disavow distinctions based
on place is evident even in other aspects of the state immi-
gration apparatus. For example England and Stiell (1997)
reveal that in its foreign domestic workers program, the
Canadian state explicitly and implicitly assigns immigrant
domestic workers to forms of work based on hierarchies of
place. Thus domestics from Europe are considered more
suited to be nannies and caregivers to children, whereas
those from the Philippines and the Caribbean are seen as
more suitable for housekeeping.
56
Distinctions based on
place therefore remain profoundly inscribed in all of the na-
tion’s institutions, even within the neoliberal Canadian state.
Turning to identity project of Ontario’s accounting elite,
neoliberal globalization has presented a number of chal-
lenges to Canada’s professions in general and its elite
bodies in particular. With reference to our speci?c interest
in the role of ‘place’ in the identity project of the Ontario
accounting elite two are particularly germane. Firstly, is
globalization’s ultimate project of liberating markets,
which in Canada has encouraged intense calls to reform
state sanctioned monopolies so as to ensure that they sup-
port rather than impede the operation of the free market.
57
In Ontario accountancy, this ultimately led to the recent
breaking of the near 50 year public practice monopoly en-
joyed by the ICAO. Secondly, as we have pointed to earlier,
the special status of accountancy in the state’s skilled immi-
gration policy gave rise to a marked increase in foreign
trained accountants in Ontario producing a professional
landscape which Rod Barr, President and CEO of the ICAO
describes as an ‘‘alphabet soup of designations’’ (ICAO,
2010). In such a context the classic dilemma between exclu-
sivity and market control which elite professional bodies
tend to face in their formative years, not only resurfaces
but is rendered even more acute. It resurfaces because the
loss of state sanctioned monopoly signi?es the loss of the
most powerful and hard won symbol of differentiation,
and it is more acute because the ?eld is now populated with
a wider range than ever before of certi?ed ‘accounting
others’.
For us it is the combination of these observed tensions
which lead to the paradox of place. That is, whilst on the
one hand, the most important plank of the Canadian state’s
neoliberal immigration policy is to decenter ‘place’ in the
selection of the would-be immigrant, in so doing it has re-
moved the ?ltering devise that has been so central to the
making of the Canadian identity. But as already suggested,
distinctions based on place are deeply inscribed in Can-
ada’s major institutions, and as a consequence as is evident
by its professional labour market and elite professional
associations, their response has been a vigorous enactment
of exclusionary measures based precisely on distinctions of
place.
Conclusion
This paper was inspired by our attempt to understand
and explain a number of contradictions related to the
55
Aspers (2009) makes a distinction between standard markets and
status markets. In the former market actors are positioned in relation to
each other as a result of how well they perform according to the established
scale of valuation. In this market it matters little who the actors are. ‘‘What
matters is what they do’’ (p. 115). This contrast with a status market where
the reverse holds true: there is no scale of value for evaluating what is
traded in the market independently of its buyers and sellers. Instead what
is stable and entrenched is the social positioning of the market actors and
that in turn confers value on what is traded.
56
The research also illustrated that such constructions became internal-
ized by the domestic workers themselves as it was reinforced by their
labour market experiences and wider social practices in Canada.
57
For example an OECD report noted that ‘‘the professions are one of the
most regulated sectors of the Canadian economy, and the regulation in
place in the professions is more restrictive in Canada than in many other
member nations of the OECD’’ (OECD, 2007:45). On the basis of this
observation Canada’s Competition Bureau undertook a detailed study of the
way regulation affects competition in self-regulated professions in Canada
and in its December 2007 report it heavily criticized the accounting
profession, suggesting that in many respects it was over-regulated,
particularly with respect to the restrictions placed on who can offer certain
professional services.
M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29 25
experiences of professional accountants migrating to Can-
ada under the state’s skilled immigration program. In par-
ticular was the high valuation placed on their professional
education and experience by the Canadian state for immi-
gration purposes, but an enormous devaluing of such by
the elite professional accountancy body for access pur-
poses as well as in the accountancy labour market for
employment purposes; chronic shortages of accounting
skills in the labour market, existing alongside chronic
unemployment or under-employment of skilled account-
ing labour,
58
and perhaps the greatest contradiction of all,
a state imbued with the power to intervene in the institu-
tional arena to address such contradictions but seemingly
reluctant to do. In attempting to understand and explain
these contradictions we have contributed to research three
important ways.
Firstly through our study of the experiences of
immigrant accountants in Ontario we have contributed
as Lawson (2000) has suggested, to an understanding of
the tensions contradictions and paradoxes of neoliberal
globalization. As we have shown in the discussion above,
whilst the market morality of neoliberal globalization in-
forms an important part of the neoliberal state’s immigra-
tion policy, it also sets constrains on the forms of
interventions that the state can make in ensuring that
those policy objectives are fully attained. At the same time,
because those policies are underpinned by a moral order
which is at a variance with that underpinning the nation-
state identity and historic sense of self, they create ten-
sions within the state, as well as between the state and
society’s major institutions such as the professions.
Secondly we have also attempted to make sense of the
varying fates of skilled labour in the context of neoliberal
globalization. In many of its celebratory accounts, global-
ization has come to be de?ned by the imagery of ‘‘a border-
less world’’ (Ohmae, 1995) and a host of others which
suggest the collapse of spatial distinctions in our contem-
porary world. In this global world in which social and eco-
nomic processes are emancipated from the shackles of
local habits and practices, professional credentials and
experience are rendered able to dis-embed from local con-
text, travel and then re-embed in a new locality without
any loss of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1984). We suggest
that whilst this is certainly the case for professional cre-
dentials and experience linked to key global cities (Sassen,
2006), it hardly is true for those produced and honed in the
Global South. We however see the situation as more com-
plex than one of a binary distinction in which skilled immi-
grants from key cities of the Global North constitute the
‘transnational elite’ and those of the Global South consis-
tently experience the ‘devaluation phenomenon’. Instead
we propose a far more variegated pattern of experience
for skilled immigrants of the Global South, for as our re-
search has indicated, many of our immigrant Chartered
Accountants of India had immigrated to Canada via a third
country (usually the Middle East) and none had experi-
enced the devaluation phenomenon there as they have in
Canada. Indeed their labour market experiences in those
overseas sites mirrored that of their compatriot Informa-
tion Technology specialists in California’s Silicon Valley
(Saxenian, 2001). Whilst we contend that further research
on the matter is needed, we suggest that that the fate of
skilled immigrant labour from the Global South is linked
to the nature of the host society in which it re-embeds, –
in particular the role of distinction (such as race and place)
in the functioning of that society’s institutions, the extent
to which skilled migrants carry with them social markers
that resonate with those distinctions and on the social
organization of sites to which their particular skills are
destined.
Thirdly by focusing our attention to understanding the
moral orders underpinning identity inequality and ‘place’
in the context of neoliberal globalization, the paper has
pointed to the utility of French pragmatic sociology in con-
ducting accounting research. Admittedly we have used the
body of work in the very limited way of identifying and
characterizing justi?catory discourse. Yet in the conduct
of this research we have identi?ed a number of ways in
which it can provide insightful constructs for understand-
ing historical processes, as well as contemporary phenom-
ena in accountancy. For example the lens of moral orders
can permit a reframing of the professionalization process
so as to provide additional insights into the routes to clo-
sure and the manner in which aspiring occupational
groups balance the dilemma between exclusivity and mar-
ket control. The processes involved in making the profes-
sional can also interpreted though a similar lens, and the
concept of compromise object can be usefully deployed
to examine the spate Memoranda of Understating enacted
between national accountancy bodies in the context of
globalization. Finally, the increasing use of accounting cal-
culus to probe issues within the domain of the social can
be studied from the standpoint of worlds of worth. Indeed
our observation of the contemporary trend in Canadian
immigration in which numbers – such as the economic va-
lue of immigration – are routinely produced and the bot-
tom line of immigration is closely watched (Reitz, 1998:
14–15) suggests to us that there remains fruitful opportu-
nities for further accounting research exploring the rela-
tionship between immigration and accounting with the
analytical tools of pragmatic sociology.
Postscript
On 7th February 2011 the CICA and the ICAI signed a
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) recognizing ‘‘the
similarity of accounting education for CAs in both coun-
tries’’ (ICAO Press Release,http://www.icao.on.ca/Admis-
sions/InternationallyTrainedAccountants/MOUwithIndia/
1010page12529.aspx assessed Feb 2011)
59
and in so doing
the CICA immediately created a new category in its list of
58
In this paper the chronic shortage is a taken for granted which we do
not problematize and therefore accept that an alternative explanation for
the irony is that the chronic shortage is a construction, that serves the
interest of the profession (higher fees) or the state to justify an unpopular
immigration policy.
59
The signing of the MOU has however meant little substantive change in
the requirements for CAIs to access the CA credential as it merely permits
CAIs with recognized university degrees to bypass writing the Core
Knowledge exam and School of Accountancy phases of the CA training
process.
26 M. Annisette, V.U. Trivedi / Accounting, Organizations and Society 38 (2013) 1–29
bodies Accounting Bodies with Reciprocal Membership Agree-
ments.
60
This was followed by the signing of a similar
MOU with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan
on 7th May 2012 which joined the ICAI as the second body
in the category.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the research assis-
tance of Akhila Chawla and Asif Mohammed. The helpful
comments of the faculty of Richard Ivey Business School,
Queens University Business School, David Cooper, Yves
Gendron, Steve Salterio, Jeff Everett, the participants of
the Alternative Accounts Conference and Workshop, Tor-
onto 2010, the Congress of the European Accounting Asso-
ciation, Rome, 2011 and Critical Perspectives on
Accounting Conference, Clearwater 2011 are gratefully
acknowledged. We also acknowledge funding from the
Certi?ed Management Accountants of Canada.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data associated with this article can be
found, in the online version, athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.aos.2012.08.004.
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