Refugee interdiction before heaven's gate

Government and Opposition

Volumn 43, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 230-248

  Kernerman, Gerald ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 42149133123     PISSN: 0017257X     EISSN: 14777053     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2008.00254.x     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. For helpful comments on earlier versions, I would like to thank: Barbara Falk, James Hampshire, Jef Huysmans, Jennifer Hyndman, Alison Mountz, Peter Nyers, Judith Okely, Dagmar Soennecken, Paul St Clair and the anonymous reviewers. I am especially grateful for the comments and support of Matthew Gibney, Eva-Lotta Hedman and Leah Vosko. The research was generously supported by York University through an Atkinson Research Fellowship, Junior Faculty Fund Award and a SSHRC Small Grant.
2. Public statement by Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Migration Lucienne Robillard, 22 August 1997.
3. Matthew J. Gibney, ' "A Thousand Little Guantanamos": Western States and Measures to Prevent the Arrival of Refugees', in Kate E. Tunstall (ed.), Displacement, Asylum, Migration: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2004, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 152.
4. European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 'Statement to the Round Table on Illegal Immigration', Brussels, 30 November 2001.
5. Matthew J. Gibney, The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 2.
6. While the term 'interdiction' is sometimes used narrowly, to describe the interception of refugees at sea, I employ it more broadly, much like 'non-entrée' or 'non-arrival' practices, which James Hathaway defines as 'the array of legalized policies adopted by states to stymie access by refugees to their territories', The Rights of Refugees Under International Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 291.
7. Robert A. Davidson Spaces of Immigration "Prevention": Interdiction and the Non-Place Diacritics, 33 : 3-4 (2003 pp. 205 7.
8. William Walters Mapping Schengenland: Denaturalizing the Border Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20 (2002 pp. 561 80.
9. Mark B. Salter The Global Visa Regime and the Political Technologies of the International Self: Borders, Bodies, Biopolitics Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 31 : 2 (2006 pp. 167 89
10. Neumayer Unequal Access to Foreign Spaces: How States Use Visa Restrictions to Regulate Mobility in a Globalized World Transactions of the Institute for British Geography, 31 (2006 pp. 72 84
11. Wang Regulating Transnational Flows of People: An Institutional Analysis of Passports and Visas as a Regime of Mobility Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 11 (2004 pp. 351 76.
12. Gerald Kernerman, Multicultural Nationalism: Civilizing Difference, Constituting Community, Vancouver, UBC Press, 2005.
13. Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951; Liisa Malkki, 'National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees,' in Geof Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds), Becoming National: A Reader, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 435-55; Nevzat Soguk, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999; Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998.
14. Indeed, as Gibney and others have pointed out, Guantánamo was first used by the Americans to house interdicted Haitian refugees, ' "A Thousand Little Guantanamos" ', p. 324.
15. Didier Bigo, 'Frontier Controls in the European Union: Who is in Control?', in Didier Bigo and Elspeth Guild (eds), Controlling Frontiers: Free Movement into and Within Europe, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2005, pp. 49-99; Jef Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU, London, Routledge, 2006; Walters, 'Mapping Schengenland'.
16. Didier Bigo Globalized-in-Security: The Field and the Ban-opticon Traces: A Multilingual Series of Cultural Theory, 4 (2005 p. 36.
17. Agamben, Homo Sacer, part II, ch. 6.
18. Bigo, 'Frontier Controls', p. 86.
19. Atilla Ataner Refugee Interdiction and the Outer Limits of Sovereignty Journal of Law and Equity, 3 : 1 (2004 pp. 7 29.
20. Emily A. Copeland Reshaping the International Refugee Regime: Industrialized States' Responses to Post-Cold War Refugee Flows International Politics, 35 (1998) pp. 425 45
21. Hassan Deterrence Measures and the Preservation of Asylum in the United Kingdom and United States Journal of Refugee Studies, 13 : 2 (2000 pp. 184 201.
22. Carl Levy The European Union after 9/11: The Demise of a Liberal Democratic Asylum Regime? Government and Opposition, 40 : 1 (2005 pp. 26 59
23. Sharma Travel Agency: A Critique of Anti-Trafficking Campaigns Refuge, 21 : 3 (2004 pp. 53 65.
24. James Hathaway, 'Can International Refugee Law be Made relevant Again?', US Committee for Refugees, World Refugee Survey 1996, Washington, DC, USCR, 1997.
25. Anthony Richmond Global Apartheid: A Postscript Refuge, 19 : 3 (2001 pp. 8 13.
26. Neumayer, 'Unequal Access to Foreign Spaces'.
27. Matthew J. Gibney and Randall Hansen, Asylum Policy in the West: Past Trends, Future Possibilities, World Institute for Development Economics Research Discussion Paper 2003/68, Helsinki, United Nations University, 2003; see also John C. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 163.
28. Gibney, The Ethics and Politics of Asylum.
29. Here, I follow Bigo's suggestion that '. researchers tend to underestimate the role of the professionals of politics in the construction of migration as a problem. They address logical flaws of the argument put forward as if they had discovered something the politicians did not know where, in fact, politicians know perfectly well but nevertheless choose a different agenda', Bigo, 'Frontier Controls', p. 60.
30. Roger Zetter Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratic Identity Journal of Refugee Studies, 4. 1 (1991 pp. 39 62
31. Zetter More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization Journal of Refugee Studies, 20 : 2 (2007 pp. 172 92.
32. Audrey Macklin, 'Borderline Security', in R. Daniels, P. Macklem and K. Roach (eds), The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada's Anti-Terrorist Bill, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001, pp. 384-401.
33. In making this move, I have been especially influenced by Huysmans and Bigo in their approach to the relationship between the symbolic level of discourse and governmentality. Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity; Bigo, 'Frontier Controls'.
34. In Britain, the government response to the arrival of Czech Roma resembled the Canadian response in a number of respects - and there were also similarities in the media depiction. But while Canada accepted approximately 90 per cent of the refugee claims made by the Czech Roma arriving in 1997, not a single Czech Roma asylum seeker arriving in the UK was granted refugee status in this same period.
35. ' "No Soft Touch": Romani Migration to the U.K. at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century Nationalities Papers, 31 : 1 (2003 pp. 64 5.
36. Canada, Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, 'Czech Republic: Minister Robillard Announces Reimposition of Visitor Visa Requirement', press release, Ottawa, 7 October 1997, italics added.
37. 'Attack of the Migration Integrity Specialists! Interdiction and the Threat to Asylum', Refugee Update, May 2003.
38. Allan Thompson, 'Asylum Not Assured, Czech Gypsies Warned: Many Reported Booking Flights to Canada', Toronto Star, 14 August 1997, A10.
39. Globe and Mail, 20 August 1997, A6.
40. Laurie Monsebraaten, 'Gypsies Here to Escape Persecution, Family Says', Toronto Star, 22 August 1997, A28.
41. Allan Thompson, 'Immigration Stalls Gypsy Refugee Bids: Canada Checks for Criminal Records', Toronto Star, 22 August 1997, A1, A28.
42. One front-page article began with the statement, 'Homeless shelters in Metro Toronto are days away from having to refuse families who turn up at their doors after Gypsies from the Czech Republic flooding in the city have grabbed the hostel system's few remaining empty beds', Margaret Philip, 'Gypsy Influx Floods Shelters', Globe and Mail, 21 August 1997, A1.
43. Canada, Immigration and Refugee Board, Digest, 9 March 1998.
44. ' Post-Communism Romani Migration to Canada Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 13 : 2 (Spring/Summer 2000 pp. 51 70.
45. Since 2004, the EU has been demanding that Canada (as well as the USA and Australia) remove its visa requirements on all the EU accession countries or face a reciprocal visa requirement for Europe as a whole.
46. P.C. 2007-1652 29 October 2007.
47. Canada, Immigration Act, Regulations Amending the Immigration Regulations, 1978, P.C. 2001-2217 29 November 2001 SOR/2001-525 29.
48. Division 5, Section 190:1. Currently, 145 countries are omitted from the list, meaning that their citizens require a visa to enter Canada.
49. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Minutes of Proceedings. 36th Parl., 1st sess., 5 February 1998: 1615.
50. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Minutes of Proceedings. 36th Parl., 2nd sess., 2 December 1998: 1620.
51. Ibid., 1725.
52. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Minutes of Proceedings, 37th Parl., 1st sess., 27 November 2001: 1020.
53. Alison Kesby The Shifting and Multiple Border and International Law Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 14 (2006 pp. 101 19
54. Personal correspondence with Paul St. Clair, executive director, Toronto Roma Community Centre.
55. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Minutes of Proceedings. 37th Parl., 1st sess., 27 November 2001: 29.
56. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Minutes of Proceedings. 36th Parl., 1st sess., 11 February 1999: 1025-30.
57. Ronald Lee Canada Holds Unusual Hearing on Romani Refugees from Hungary Roma Rights, 1 (1999)
58. Geza v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2006 FCA 124: 65.