The Racial Violence and Symbiotic Harms Immigration Detention and Deportation as Experienced by Families in Canada
Author: Brianna Garneau, garneaubrianna@gmail.com
Department: Sociology
University: York University, Canada
Supervisor: Carmela Murdocca
Year of completion: In progress
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
carceral
, migration governance
, race
, immigration
Areas of Research:
Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations
, Migration
, Family Research
Abstract
The state's concerns for managing, intercepting and expelling “dangerous”, “risky”, and “inadmissible” populations is intertwined with a racial story; one which links contemporary migration governance to the histories of slavery, (settler) colonialism, and the imperatives of the global order of racial capitalism (Danewid, 2021; Walia, 2021). A close examination of the complex and mutually interdependent regimes of detention and deportation unearth clear punitive mechanisms that are at work in the governance of migration and mobility. This phenomenon draws academics to critically analyse the ways techniques of carceral power reproduce themselves within non-criminal justice settings, extend beyond those officially counted in the administrative system, shapes social life, and reproduces racial violence (Beckett & Murakawa, 2012; Story, 2019).
My doctoral research explores the symbiotic harms and racial violence of immigration detention and deportation as experienced by families in Canada. In centering the experiences of families of migrants, my dissertation simultaneously explores the expansion of carcerality into the context of migration governance and the expansion of carceral power to the loved ones of those it is meant to directly control. Using data from 20 interviews with previously detained and deported people and the family members of detainees and deportees, I examine how the carcerality of migration governance manifests in and affects the lives of family members and loved ones. Through the rich interviews, I explore the symbiotic harms and racial violence these systems inflict, the modes of adaptation that are mobilized to manage them, and the affects they hold on the sense of safety and belonging within the nation and within oneself.
