Selecting “Deserving” Canadians: Rights, Sovereignty and Citizenship in the New Canada

• In-person event
• A220, Loeb Building, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

• Contact
• Natalia Fierro, natalia.fierromarquez@carleton.ca

The Department of Geography and Environmental Studies Presents
Amrita Hari, Assistant Professor, Pauline Jewett Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies Carleton University
on
Selecting “Deserving” Canadians: Rights, Sovereignty and Citizenship in the New Canada

Abstract:
Canada, in this latest chapter of exclusionary migration history, has drastically changed immigration and refugee determination policies to systematically exclude a growing number of non-citizens who live and work on the territory, from a wide range of rights. There is a profusion of scholarship on temporariness and the lived experiences of these migrant non-citizens; however, the literature separates the multitude of forms of temporariness both theoretically and experientially. I illustrate that there are striking similarities in the state’s approach to two seemingly distinct groups (based on their rationale for admission): low-skilled temporary foreign workers and refugee claimants. I conclude with the potential for post-national conceptions of citizenship as well as transnational and trans-institutional advocacy to reject the analytical and political silos in which temporariness in Canada is understood.

Biography: ­­­­­
Dr. Amrita Hari is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies. She completed her BA Hons and MA from the University of Toronto and her DPhil from the University of Oxford. She is interested in broader questions around global labour migrations, transnationalism and citizenship and has published some of her ongoing research in Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees and the Journal of South Asian Diaspora.