UNI320Y: Canadian Questions: Issues and Debates

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UNI320Y Canadian Questions Issues and Debates

• Week 8 Citizenship and Border Control
• Professor Emily Gilbert
• http//individual.utoronto.ca/emilygilbert/

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Citizenship and Border Control

1. Multiculturalism and Essentialized Identities
2. Non-Citizens Deportations and Detentions
3. Border Control and Security Technologies

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I Multiculturalism and Essentialized Identities

• Multiculturalism (1971 1988)
• Scholars Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka
• Recent emphasis on business links and global
  competitiveness
• Yasmeen Abu-Laban
• Multiculturalism
• as inclusionary discourse around citizenship
• as processes whereby minority collectivities
  might gain recognition, protection and rights

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• Debates over
• Difference blindness vs. special recognition
  and valuing of difference
• Cultural identity vs. individual rights
• Problems arise with essentialism
• Eg clash of civilizations of Samuel Huntington
• Variation of cold war polarization
• Cultural essentialism poses challenge to ethics
  of liberalism and liberal democracy

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• Towards anti-essentialism
• Wouldnt assume that entire culture or community
  as one thing
• Would take seriously economics, politics,
  history, different interpretations of history,
  and genuine grievances

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• Postmulticultural (Burman)
• denotes history of awkward, top-down diversity
  management (Burman)
• Assumption that culture ancestral origin
• Advocates cultural hybridity

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• Hérouxville
• Jan 2007 passes rules for immigrants

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• Feb 2007 Premier Charest establishes Commission
  for Consultation on Accommodation Practices
  regarding Cultural Differences
• Co-chaired by Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor
• Mandate
• to draw up an accurate portrayal of how exactly
  accommodations are being made
• to conduct a wide-scale inquiry in all regions of
  the province to find out what Quebecers are
  really thinking beyond polls and spontaneous
  reactions
• to come up with recommendations on how
  accommodations can be made that are respectful
  of the common values of Quebecers.

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II Non-Citizens Deportations and Detentions

• Post 9/11, security, and the immigrant menace
• Bill C-36 Anti-Terrorism Act
• Passed in House of Commons 190 47
• Received Royal Assent Dec 18, 2001
• creates measures to identify, prosecute, convict
  and punish terrorist groups provides new
  investigative tools to law enforcement and
  national security agencies and ensures that
  Canadian values of respect and fairness are
  preserved and the root causes of hatred are
  addressed through stronger laws against hate
  crimes and propaganda http//www.justice.gc.ca/en
  /news/nr/2001/doc_27787.html

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• Bill C-36 defines a terrorist act as one
  committed "for a political, religious or
  ideological purpose, objective or cause."
• Towards ethnic and racial profiling?
• Oct 24, 2006 Superior Court judge strikes down
  motive clause Mohammed Momin Khawaja case
• Concerns over investigative powers, eg 'secret'
  trials, preemptive detention, electronic
  surveillance
• Creating an alien from within? (Macklin)

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• But 5-year sunset clause on provisions that
• Allows police to arrest suspects without warrant
  and detain them for 3 days without charges if
  police believe a terrorist act may be committed.
• Allows a judge to compel a witness to testify in
  secret about past associations or perhaps pending
  acts under penalty of going to jail if the
  witness doesn't comply.
• Feb 27, 2007 House of Commons vote 159 - 124
  against renewing the provisions

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• Deportations
• Mohamed Cherfi deported to US in 2004
• Detentions
• Secret Trial Five Mohammad Mahjoub (2000-2007),
  Mahmoud Jaballah (2001-2007), Hassan Almrei
  (2001-), Adil Charkaoui (2003-2005), Mohamed
  Harkat (2002-2006)

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• Security certificates
• Signed by Solicitor General, Minister of CIC, and
  endorsed by Federal Court Judge
• All immigration proceedings suspended
• Foreign nationals are detained, as may be
  permanent residents
• Federal Court decides whether security
  certificates are unreasonable
• Since 1978 28 security certificates issued

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• Dec 2004 Federal Court of Appeal rules that
  security certificates are constitutional
• non-citizens and permanent residents can be
  subjected to a different standard of legal
  treatment
• Feb 2007 Supreme Court strikes down security
  certificate system as is because violates
  Charter 9 0 ruling
• One year delay to allow Parliament time to write
  new law

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No One Is Illegal The No One is Illegal campaign
is in full confrontation with Canadian colonial
border policies, denouncing and taking action to
combat racial profiling of immigrants and
refugees, detention and deportation policies, and
wage-slave conditions of migrant workers and
non-status people.We struggle for the right for
our communities to maintain their livelihoods and
resist war, occupation and displacement, while
building alliances and supporting indigenous
sisters and brothers also fighting theft of land
and displacement.

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• Place and belonging nation and city
• Diasporic city
• extra-territorial connections
• sedimented relations
• multiplicity
• absence and presence
• rhythms of mobile and immobilized
• Henri Lefebvre differential space

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III Border Control and Security Technologies

• Securitizing Citizenship post 9/11
• Increased border security and need for
  documentation
• Move towards national ID cards?

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• Permanent Resident Card
• introduced with revised IRP Act, Feb 2001,
  enacted June 2002
• replaces IMM 1000 Record of Landing
• Applies to about 1.5 million permanent residents
• First ICAO card

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• Laser engraved photo
• Personal data
• Optical memory stripe with 1.1 mgb of data
• Embedded hologram
• Has capacity to hold biometric data
• Valid for 5 years

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• States producing their populations
• Fixing identities, creating legible population
• UN Write me Down, Make Me Real
• Initiative to register all children at birth
• Launched by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
• Aim to register the 48 million children whose
  births go unrecorded each year
• Registration affirmed in Article 7 of UN
  Convention on Rights of Child

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• Biometrics
• Biosurveillance
• Biopolitics
• Creating useful state subjects, responsible
  immigrants

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• Bordering outsiders and outsiders-within(Sunera
  Thobani)
• The other stock exchange of security trading on
  defined enemies (Didier Bigo)
• Managing the population eg mobility rights
• Internalization of borders not just at a fixed
  territorial line but internalized
• Technologies of control (detention) and
  strategies of exclusion (deportation) (Peter
  Nyers)