Benevolent State, Law-Breaking Smugglers, and Deportable and Expendable Women: An Analysis of the Canadian State’s Strategy to Address Trafficking in Women

Refuge

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 24-33

  Thobani, Sunera ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

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EID: 84959203777     PISSN: 02295113     EISSN: 19207336     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.25071/1920-7336.21211     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. The proposed new act, Bill c-31, was tabled in June 2000. How-ever, a federal election was called before it could be passed. The bill nevertheless outlines the Liberal government’s approach to immigration, and for dealing with trafficking. With the Liberal Party having won the federal election of November 2000, we can anticipate a resurrection of the bill during the current man-date of the government.
2. This paper is based, in part, on research I undertook as a research partner in a project for the Global Alliance against Trafficking in Women (gaatw), during the summer of 2000.
3. Francisco Rico-Martinez, “Bolting Back Door Raises Issues,” Windsor Star, May 23, 2000.
4. Marjan Wijers defines trafficking as follows: “Traffic in women” is a broad category covering various forms of exploitation and violence within a range of (informal) labor sectors that migrant women work in, including prostitution, entertainment industries and domestic work. Trafficking is not limited to prostitution, although this is the popular belief, and not all prostitution involves trafficking. We can define trafficking in the narrow sense as the process in which migrant women are brought into prostitution through the use of coercion, de-ceit, abuse or violence and in which they are denied fundamental human rights and freedoms such as the right to decide to work as a prostitute or not, the right to decide on the condi-tions of work, the right to enter and leave the sex industry, the right to refuse certain customers, the right to freedom of move- ment, the right not to be exploited, and so forth. If trafficking is defined in a broader sense it can apply not only to prostitution, but also to other forms of labor such as those mentioned above (M. Wijers, “Women, Labor, and Migration: The Position of Trafficked Women and Strategies for Support,” in Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition, eds. K. Kempadoo and J. Doezema (New York: Routledge, 1998), 69–78.
5. For a fuller discussion, see Sietske Altink, Stolen Lives: Trading Women into Sex and Slavery (London: Scarlet Press, 1995).
6. See the case studies by Jo Bindman, Amalia Lucia Cabezas, John K. Anarfi, and Coco Fusco, among others, in Global Sex Work-ers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition, eds. K. Kempadoo and J. Doezema (New York: Routledge, 1998). Also see Yasmin Jiwani, Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Girls and Young Women: A Review of Select Literature and Current Initiatives (Vancou-ver: freda, June 1999).
7. Altink Sietske has pointed to the “tension between the desire of the Third and Second World peoples to migrate to the First World and the restrictions western countries place on immi-gration” (Sietske, Stolen Lives, 4). It is in this “tension” that traf-fickers organize their activities, she has argued. In a similar vein, Audrey Macklin states, “Women migrants often embody—lit-erally—the absence, breakdown, or the inequities of the international law regime.” See A. Macklin, “Women as Migrants in National and Global Communities,” Canadian Woman Studies 19, no. 3 (1999), 24.
8. gaatw Project Proposal, Trafficking in Women: The Canadian Dimension (Victoria: gaatw, 1999), 1.
9. The pwc and gaatw use the term immigrant brides, as the term mail-order bride does not adequately capture the circumstances of some of the Filipina women they interviewed. Whereas a mail-order bride is bought for a fee, these Filipina women had often met and married men travelling to Asia looking for wives, or had been introduced by a friend. See appendix 1, in The Philippine Women’s Centre and gaatw, Echoes: Cries for Freedom, Justice and Equality (Vancouver: gaatw & pwc, 1999).
10. Jyoti Sanghera, “Report from the North American Region,” in Whores, Maids & Wives (Victoria: gaatw, 1998), 24–8.
11. gaatw Project proposal submitted to Status of Women Canada, Trafficking in Women: The Canadian Dimension (Victoria: gaatw, 1999).
12. See Sanghera, “Report,” 26.
13. The Philippine Women’s Centre (pwc) and gaatw. Echoes: Cries for Freedom, Justice and Equality (Vancouver: gaatw & pwc, 1999).
14. The term illegal migrants is used most frequently in the public discourse about this particular group of migrants. The distinc-tion between legal and illegal migrants speaks more to the state’s strategy of seeking to gain, and maintain, control over immigrants and migrants than it does to the root causes of migration or to the lived experiences of the migrants themselves. I there-fore use the term extra-legal in order to draw attention to the social construction of legality and illegality through which the state seeks to exercise its control over international migrations.
15. In Canada, the high-profile arrival of several groups of Chinese migrants into British Columbia by boat in the summer of 1999 drew a great deal of public attention to this group. The arrival of these migrants was thoroughly exploited by the Canadian government to build political support for introducing increasingly restrictive measures for future immigration, as I have discussed elsewhere. See “Forum on Migrants,” Kinesis, April 2000.
16. Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Fact Sheet # 7: Sponsor-ship, online: .
17. Sanghera, “Report,” 24–8.
18. Section 11 (2) states specifically, “The designated officer may not issue a visa or document to a foreign national whose spon-sor does not meet the sponsorship requirements of this Act.” Further, 13 (3) states, “An undertaking relating to sponsorship is binding on the person who gives it.”
19. Section 35 states, “A foreign national, other than a permanent resident, is inadmissible for financial reasons if the foreign national is or will be unable or unwilling to support himself or herself or any other person who is dependent on them, and has not satisfied a designated officer that adequate arrangements for care and support, other than those that involve social assist-ance have been made.”
20. Section 34 (c), Bill c-31.
21. For a fuller discussion of this point, see Sunera Thobani, “Spon-soring Immigrant Women’s Inequalities,” Canadian Woman Studies 19, no. 3 (fall 1999): 11–16.
22. pwc and gaatw, Echoes, 8.
23. gaatw, Trafficking in Women.
24. See pwc and gaatw, Echoes, as well as Daiva Stasiulis, “Keynote Address,” Whores, Maids and Wives: Making Links (Victoria: gaatw, 1998), 29–37.
25. Legal worker, Metro Toronto Chinese and South East Asian Legal Clinic, telephone interview, June 2000.
26. gaatw, Trafficking in Women.
27. By January 2000, only 4 per cent of the completed claims for asylum made by the 493 Chinese migrants were actually granted refugee status. The overall acceptance rates for refugee claimants are about 55 per cent overall, and the acceptance rate for claimants from China in 1998–9 was 44 per cent. See Chad Skelton, “Refugee Claim Accepted for Fourth Chinese Migrant,” Vancouver Sun, January 17, 2000.
28. See Sections 50 (b) and 51 (2) (a)(i) of Bill c-31.
29. See Section 110 (2) (a) and (b) of Bill c-31.
30. See Section 110 (3)
31. Section 22 (1), Bill c-31.
32. Section 22 (2), Bill c-31.
33. Section 111 (1) and (2), Bill c-31.
34. Section 113 and 114, Bill c-31.
35. See Section 114 (1) (d), Bill c-31.
36. Section 124, Bill c-31.