Intersectional Advantage and Disadvantage Among Skilled Immigrants in Two-Step Immigration Categories: Evidence from Canada, 1982-2019

“Two-step” entry categories for skilled immigrants – ones that award permanent residence after an initial, temporary period of employment in the receiving country – are considered particularly advantageous for immigrants and receiving states alike. In this article, we argue that quantitative assessments of economic outcomes under these categories have not gone far enough in acknowledging the extent to which they are systematically affected by immigrants’ social positions, especially gender and race. Focusing on the Canadian case, we use growth curve models and a 50% sample (N = 1.5 million) of the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB), which links administrative data with tax files over a thirty-year period, to answer the following question: Which skilled workers benefit from two-step entry categories? Our analyses reveal substantial intersectional variation in mean monthly income among individuals within and across such categories, depending on immigrants’ social positions. While perhaps unsurprising to scholars of intersectionality, these systemic empirical patterns are still relatively absent from policy-oriented discussions of migration management. These often treat less favourable outcomes for women and immigrants from the Global South as issues that are fixable through immigration and immigrant policies, and that do not negate the overall benefits of two-step pathways. We conclude by considering the ethical implications of this dominant framing in light of evidence to the contrary.