Inner Border Making in Canada: Tracing gendered and raced processes of immigration policy changes between 2006 and 2015
Keywords:
Inner border, Canadian immigration policy, discourse analysis, race and genderAbstract
The Canadian immigration system went through significant changes under the previous Conservative government (2006–2015). This paper examines official narratives in the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) documents related to two policy changes: 1) Conditional permanent residency for the spousal sponsorship program, and 2) Bill C-43: Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act. Drawing on critical race readings of Canadian nation building and critical border literature that re-conceptualizes borders as processes and multidimensional, this paper examines the discursive narratives that enabled bordering practices to shift inward during the previous Conservative government era. My focus on the discursive processes sheds light on linkages between bordering practices and the historical construction of Canada as a white settler nation. I demonstrate the ways in which exclusionary policy developments constructed ‘inner borders’. I argue that the bordering practice at play in these policy changes were only possible through two discursive conditions and functions: 1) the naturalization of the gendered and racialized exclusions built into Canadian national membership, and 2) the erasure of historical and systemic injustice embedded in the Canadian immigration system and Canadian nation-building project as a whole. Through the naturalization and erasure of historical and systemic injustice, “inner borders” became “invisible borders, situated everywhere and nowhere” (Balibar, 2002, p. 78), pushing immigrant women and the racialized community into further precariousness.
Résumé
Le système d’immigration du Canada a connu des modifications importantes sous l’ancien gouvernement conservateur (2006-2015). Cet article analyse les rapports officiels de Citoyenneté et Immigration Canada (CIC) en lien avec deux changements politiques, soit le permis de résidence temporaire pour le programme de parrainage, et le projet de loi C-43 : le renvoi accéléré des criminels étrangers. Cet article examine les rapports discursifs qui ont permis aux pratiques frontalières de se déplacer vers l’intérieur du pays pendant l’ère conservatrice en s’inspirant de la littérature qui redéfinit les frontières comme procédés et comme étant multidimensionnelle en abordant les majeures interprétations raciales de la création d’une nation canadienne ainsi que les frontières cruciales. Mon intérêt pour ces procédés discursifs permet de mieux comprendre les liens entre les pratiques frontalières et la construction historique du Canada en tant que nation de colonialistes blancs. J’explique les moyens par lesquels le développement d’une politique d’exclusion a poussé à la création de « frontières intérieures ». Je défends que les pratiques frontalières ayant contribués à ces changements politiques n’aient été possibles qu’à travers deux conditions et fonctions discursives : 1. la naturalisation des exclus genrés et racialisés encastrée dans l’appartenance nationale canadienne, et 2. la fin des injustices historiques et systémiques ancrées dans le système d’immigration du Canada et le projet de création d’une nation canadienne dans son ensemble. À travers la naturalisation et l’effacement historique et systémique, les « frontières intérieures » sont devenues des « frontières invisibles, établies çà et là » (Balibar, 2002, p. 78), poussant vers la précarité les femmes immigrantes et la communauté racialisée.
Mots clés: Frontières intérieures ; politique canadienne d’immigration ; analyse du discours ; race et genre
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