Relations internationales

C19(a) - Global Governance 5: Canada & Global Migration

Date: Jun 5 | Heure: 01:45pm to 03:15pm | Salle:

Chair/Président/Présidente : John Shola (Osun State University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Brian Bow (Dalhousie University)

Social Consequences of War, Persecution, and Forced Migration: Relocated Refugees’ Protective Praxes and their Implications for Relationships with Canadians Jess Howsam, University of Wisconsin-Madison Visualizing the Border: Security and Refusal at the Border Under the Expanded Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement. James FitzGerald, York University Belonging through Exclusion: Canada’s Role in the Rise of Global Border Security Admira Buzimkic, Queen's University

Visualizing the Border: Security and Refusal at the Border Under the Expanded Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement.: James FitzGerald (Government)
Abstract: In March 2023, Canada and the United States renegotiated the Safe Third Country Agreement, which allows for the refoulement (return) of migrants crossing the Canada-US land border. This has allowed the politics of forced return to apply to the entire land border. Critical Security Studies (Bigo 2002; Walters 2008; Bell 2011) and Citizen and Migration Studies (Hyndman 2019; Young 2021) outline the emergence of new security and surveillance practices (Bell 2011; Muller and Gutherie 2020). Building upon the critical Migration Studies literature (Molnar 2021) my work queries the new security and legal practices unfolding around the border. Drawing on the current discussions in Critical Citizenship Studies (Squire 2011; Walters 2011), I examine how digital politics of security and AI are transforming the border and simultaneously contested by new claims over the political rights of migrants. I consider how migrant-led campaigns (Nyers 2019; Young 2021) challenge state restrictions on status. At stake within this work are three considerations. First, I seek to unpack how irregular crossings are used as a political tool for restricting asylum (Abu-Laban et al. 2023). Second, I attempt to unpack how these digital politics seek to expand the border (Edkins 2015; Molnar 2021). Finally, my work proposes to expand current debates about how citizenship is being multiplied through transnational status and citizenship campaigns from below (Walia 2013, 2021; King 2016; Vosko 2019; Young 2021). The paper concludes with a discussion of how digital surveillance (Molnar 2024) and the end of asylum (Mountz 2020) are fundamental reshaping residency.

Belonging through Exclusion: Canada’s Role in the Rise of Global Border Security: Admira Buzimkic (Queen's University)
Abstract: In recent decades, Canada, the United States (US), and the European Union (EU) have intensified their border control strategies to address cross-border threats. The establishment of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) in 2003, and Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, in 2004 reflects a shift toward centralized, specialized border agencies. While existing scholarship has explored specialized border agencies in relation to broader themes of migration and law enforcement, few studies focus specifically on Frontex, CBP, and CBSA or examine their roles within a global border security framework. This paper addresses this gap by critically analyzing the shifting nature of border security, where national agencies increasingly operate as part of a transnational policy-making community focused on security and market stability. It particularly highlights Canada’s unique role in aligning with international norms, balancing economic openness and security imperatives. By investigating how CBSA, CBP, and Frontex contribute to a global security network that transcends national policies, this paper explores: (1) How do these agencies contribute to developing a global border security framework and migration management and what legitimizes their actions on a global stage? (2) How do they balance operational coordination with other local/community discourses of inclusion and exclusion? Using a global perspective provides analytical tools to examine the multi-layered factors shaping border agency decision-making, demonstrating how national approaches to border security increasingly converge within a globalized governance framework.

Social consequences of war, persecution, and forced migration: Relocated refugees’ protective praxes and their implications for relationships with Canadians: Jess Howsam (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Erica Simmons (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Abstract: Research on the social legacies of violence has proliferated over the past decade, demonstrating war’s enduring consequences for trust, altruism, generosity, and more. Political Scientists have increasingly borrowed from Psychology to explain these results, relying on mechanisms like post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth. Yet studies presuppose a set of assumptions about how violence is experienced and relived, while the everyday realities of contending with violence remain black boxed. Within the context of Canadian refugee programs, I ask; How do refugees contend with their unique experiences of wartime violence, persecution, and forced migration? How does the labour of contending with these experiences inform and shape their relationships with Canadians after arrival, a key component of social integration? I draw on a year-long placement in a private sponsorship organization, as well as individual and small group interviews with over 95 participants—including refugees and asylum seekers, settlement and mental health professionals, and private sponsors (with overlap). I find, refugees engage in a protective praxis: a range of patterned, contextualized, and skillful practices that respond to actual and re-experienced threat after relocation. This protective praxis defies dominant binary, pathologizing, and depoliticized trauma constructs, and it emerges in contexts as diverse as engaging institutions like churches and banks, inhabiting space, and guarding relationally. I also find that the extent of Canadian (mis)recognition and compassionate response to protective praxes shape experiences of refugee belonging and bridging bonds, conversely producing dynamics of stability, trust, strain and/or rupture. By tracing processes of (mis)recognition, this research provides new insight into determinants of refugee-host relations. It also contributes to the legacies of violence literature by extending its focus from trauma-induced attitudinal changes to political and embodied behavioural mechanisms. This study thus seeks to enhance understanding of how grappling with experiences of violence figures in the lives of people who survive it to produce lasting social transformations.