Abstract
This article analyses contemporary developments in top source countries of Canada’s temporary migrant worker programmes, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and International Mobility Program (IMP). An analysis of administrative data and policy suggests that most temporary migrant workers from key source countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are present in Canada under highly restrictive conditions of the TFWP, largely as agricultural workers. Simultaneously, most temporary migrant workers from key source countries in Europe and Asia migrate to Canada under the growing IMP, comprised of a diverse set of subprogrammes which, in some cases, have the potential to perpetuate conditions associated with exploitation identified historically with the TFWP. At the same time, unprecedented levels of temporary migrant workers from India and China are being granted open work permits in Canada, raising questions about how racialization and colonial pasts intertwine with this fast‐growing and under‐studied side of temporary labour migration.