Seeking asylum : the process and procedures for unaccompanied minors claiming refugee status in Canada

This project explores the factors that come into play in the assessment of a refugee claim put forth by unaccompanied/separated minors when arriving in Canada. Designed as an exploratory research, the study delves into the procedural and evidentiary issues which emerge when such children cross our borders. The substantial literature that has emerged over the last decades on the issue serves to inform and guide the process of determining what has been accomplished, as well as what needs to be improved upon. Informed by the American and European models, the goal of this research is to sketch a seemingly Canadian model which would outline step by step the protocol in place, and would define our government’s role and actions in terms of addressing the plight of these children as they cross our border.

Seeking asylum : the process and procedures for unaccompanied minors claiming refugee status in Canada

This project explores the factors that come into play in the assessment of a refugee claim put forth by unaccompanied/separated minors when arriving in Canada. Designed as an exploratory research, the study delves into the procedural and evidentiary issues which emerge when such children cross our borders. The substantial literature that has emerged over the last decades on the issue serves to inform and guide the process of determining what has been accomplished, as well as what needs to be improved upon. Informed by the American and European models, the goal of this research is to sketch a seemingly Canadian model which would outline step by step the protocol in place, and would define our government’s role and actions in terms of addressing the plight of these children as they cross our border.

Fast Refugee Protection: Temporality and Migration Control

This article explores the temporality of migration control through an analysis of refugee claim processing in Canada. I draw on organizational reports, commissioned studies, media reports, interviews and archival data to argue that time is a key technology of state-controlled migration regulation. I show that temporal technologies have long been used to both control the access of migrants and the labour of civil servants. Furthermore, I show that procedural temporalities have been consistently manipulated to reflect and facilitate growing restrictionism in Canadian migration regulation. In short, I suggest that migration regulation regimes devise and use temporal technologies to block, deter or delay access to rights to unwanted and unauthorized migrants, and to reduce the cost of doing so where possible.

Contagious Terror: Violence, Haunting and the Work of Refugee Protection

This article argues that contrary to its humanitarian semblance, state-controlled refugee protection is a project of substantial violence, and that the violence of refugee protection is continuously disseminated through and across a wide range of unlikely actors and institutions. Drawing on Avery Gordon (2008) and Franz Fanon (1965), I show that the violence of refugee protection makes itself known in its haunting effects on those who come in contact with it in various capacities: those who carry through the work of refugee protection, such as refugee claim decision makers, lawyers and support workers, are plagued by psychological ailments that manifest in periodical burnouts, anxiety, melancholy, alcohol abuse, and unrelenting moral and emotional dilemmas. These ailments reveal the violence of refugee protection not just in relation to refugees, who are often construed as the exclusive subjects of violence, but also towards non-refugees who come into contact with “protection” work.

Refugeehood and Rights: A Theoretical Debate

To which rights refugees are entitled? In this paper, I analyze the many challenges that two interrelated theoretical traditions of Refugee Studies have implicitly posed to one another. First, I examine the analytic philosophers’ assumption that we cannot understand the nature of a refugee claim until we know what entitles an individual to make it – i.e., what root cause for displacement could explain, and justify, such status. Second, after examining Critical Citizenship Studies, I mainly discuss a renewed Arendtian tradition whose cosmopolitan claim has advocated granting the right of citizenship to all forced displaced persons. By demonstrating why each response leaves room for strong rebuttals from the other side, I make clear the urgency of rethinking today’s international refugee regime as well as the place of political theory in it.

The battle of numbers: Refugee protection, race, and Neoliberal politics of bureaucratic efficiency

This paper examines the early years of systematic refugee claim processing in Canada to explore the ways neoliberal bureaucratic practices rely on and (re)produce racialization in their day to day operations. I argue that due to the rise of neoliberalism, systematic refugee protection in Canada has come to exclude claimants who have borne the label of economic migrant. Furthermore, I argue that the exclusion of economic migrants from refugee protection has been a racialized and racializing project. The institutional procedures that worked to exclude these migrants inherited, drew upon, and reproduced racialized knowledges about certain national groupings. Racialization of economic migrants provided the claim processing bureaucracy with quick and efficient means of screening large numbers of claimants out of their workload. Thus, I argue that neoliberal governance of refugee claims in Canada has been a racialized and racializing bureaucratic practice. El artículo examina los primeros años de proceso sistemático de solicitudes de asilo en Canadá para explorar la forma en que las prácticas burocráticas neoliberales se apoyan en, y (re)producen, la racialización en sus actividades cotidianas. Argumento que, debido al auge del neoliberalismo, la protección sistemática a los refugiados en Canadá ha terminado excluyendo a solicitantes que llevan la etiqueta de migrantes económicos, y que la exclusión de los migrantes económicos de la protección a los refugiados ha sido un proyecto racializado y racializante. Los procedimientos institucionales que han servido para excluir a dichos migrantes heredan conocimiento racializado sobre determinados grupos nacionales. La racialización de los migrantes económicos ha proporcionado a la burocracia de procesamiento de solicitudes unos medios rápidos y eficaces de excluir a numerosos solicitantes del sistema. Por tanto, argumento que la gobernanza neoliberal de solicitudes de asilo en Canadá ha sido una práctica burocrática racializada y racializante.

Knowing Persecution When We See It: Non-State Actors and the Measure of State Protection

Whether to grant asylum to claimants who are victimized by non-State actors is one of the thorniest questions in refugee law, particularly in Canada. Numerous questions have arisen around how to measure State protection in such circumstances. The result is a convoluted array of legal determinants – a situation that may be placing some claimants at risk. This article attempts to forge a more accessible framework of analysis for non-State actor claims. The suggested framework restores the absence of ‘State protection’ to its traditional role within the refugee definition of the 1951 Refugee Convention – as one prong of a test for persecution, not a stand-alone criterion for refugeehood. Accordingly, it is suggested that decision makers approach non-State actor claims as simply an assessment of whether the situation is one of ‘persecution’, a term that has been defined by leading scholars. By applying these definitions of persecution to typical refugee claim scenarios, it is demonstrated that a persecution-centred heuristic in non-State actor claims provides a clearer and more principled framework of analysis – one that gravitates towards stable and measurable criteria for assessing State protection.

Refugee Law and Its Corruptions

This paper asks whether refugee law is morally trustworthy. Trustworthiness here denotes that those who make refugee law—in particular those who decide refugee claims—are competent in this domain and are moved by the fact that refugee claimants and citizens of countries of refuge count on them to make morally sound decisions. Drawing on Adam Smith’s sentimentalist theory of law, the paper argues that refugee law is presumptively subject to various corruptions of the moral sentiments, namely national prejudice, contempt for the lowly, love of domination, and self-deceit. Combined, these corruptions may explain the apparent arbitrariness of refugee claim outcomes. They also suggest that we should be skeptical of any claims regarding the moral trustworthiness of refugee law. What they do not suggest, contrary to more cynical theories, is that refugee law is free of normative constraint.