From violence to compliance, and back again: time and care as technologies of administrative violence in the COVID-19’s ‘Guardian Angels program’ in Canada

This article examines Canada’s “Guardian Angels” program, an exceptional COVID-19 pandemic immigration pathway for healthcare-sector asylum seekers in Quebec. We argue that rather than a straightforward humanitarian gesture, the program operated as a mechanism of administrative violence that re-embedded precarious migrants within security governance.Initially, the “Guardian Angels” emerged as a boundary category through teh convergence of three social universes of practice : media highlighting heroic frontline workers, migrant-rights NGOs demanding regularisation, and political actors at the provincial and federal levels translating public pressure into restrictive policy. This briefly displaced security narratives by recasting asylum seekers as essential caregivers rather than threats.Yet, once formalised administratively, the category’s initially porous boundaries were narrowed through strict eligibility criteria. Drawing on press coverage, parliamentary debates, government documents, community testimonies, and access-to-information requests, we show how time and care functioned as governance technologies. Temporal thresholds, documentation requirements, and narrow definitions of “direct patient care” transformed exposure, touch, and sacrifice into tests of deservingness. Ultimately, the program neutralised broader contestation over migrant labour, legal status, and working conditions by redirecting focus from structural violence to individual administrative compliance.