JurisTalks: Fearing the Immigrant: Racialization and Urban Policy in Toronto

Thursday, January 26, 2023 from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm

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

The City of Toronto is often held up as a leader in diversity and inclusion. In Fearing the Immigrant, Parastou Saberi underlines the neocoloniality of the governance of racialized marginality in the city. Focusing on the figure of the immigrant and so-called immigrant neighbourhoods as targets of urban policy, Saberi offers an innovative, multidisciplinary approach to the politics of racialization and the governing of alterity through space in contemporary cities in her book. Join us for a book talk by Dr. Parastou Saberi, followed by a discussion with Dr. Nahla Abdo on the book.

This will be a hybrid event: in person at A602 Loeb (space is limited) and via Zoom (link to be sent to attendees upon registration).

Author

Dr. Parastou Saberi, Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

Discussant

Dr. Nahla Abdo, Chancellor’s Professor and Professor of Sociology, Carleton University

About the Book

The city of Toronto is often held up as a leader in diversity and inclusion. In Fearing the Immigrant, Parastou Saberi underlines the neocoloniality of the governance of racialized marginality in the city. Focusing on the figure of the immigrant and so-called immigrant neighbourhoods as targets of urban policy, Saberi offers an innovative, multidisciplinary approach to the politics of racialization and the governing of alterity through space in contemporary cities.

A comprehensive study of urban policymaking from the 1990s to the late 2010s in Canada’s largest and most diverse city, Fearing the Immigrant uses Toronto as a jumping-off point to understand the relational formation of urban policy, racialization and international relations. Engaging with the genealogies and contemporary developments of major policy techniques involving mapping and policy concepts such as poverty, security, development, empowerment, social determinants of health, equity and prevention, she scrutinizes the parallels ways these techniques and concepts operate in urban policy, international development and public health, counterinsurgency and humanitarian interventions.

Fearing the Immigrant ultimately asserts that the geopolitical fear of the immigrant is central to the formation of urban policy in Toronto. Rather than addressing the root causes of poverty, marginality and racism, urban policy, as it has been practiced, aims to pacify the spectre of urban unrest and to secure the production of a neocolonial urban order. The book is an urgent call to reimagine urban policy in the name of social justice and equality.

Saberi’s Bio

A former architect, Parastou Saberi holds a Ph.D. in urban geography from York University. She received the Barbara Godard Prize for the Best York University Dissertation in Canadian Studies in 2017, and was awarded several prestigious fellowships in the UK, including the British Academy Newton International Fellowship. She has held postdoctoral positions at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and University of Warwick. Parastou’s interdisciplinary research is guided by her commitment to social justice and explores the relations among state intervention, securitization, and racialization at the urban and international levels. Her work spans from the convergence of French colonial urbanism and pacification in North Africa, to the relational formation of urban policy, international relations and racialization. She is the author of Fearing the Immigrant: Racialization and Urban Policy in Toronto (University of Minnesota Press) and the co-editor of Destroy, Build, Secure: Readings on Pacification (Red Quill Ottawa). Her work is also published in Political Geography and Race & Class, among others.

Abdo’s Bio

Dr. Nahla Abdo is a Palestinian Canadian political activist, Chancellor’s Professor and Professor of Sociology at Carleton University. She has extensive publications on anti-colonial, anti-imperialist feminism, racism, nationalism and the Settler Colonial State. Among her publications: An Oral History of the Palestinians during the Nakba. (2018- with Nur Masalha); Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle (2014) –this book received the Times Higher Education Book of 2014; Women in Israel: Race, Gender, and Citizenship (2011); Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges, (2004 – with Shahrzad Mojab) and, Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation, (with Ronit Lentin 2002). In addition, Professor Abdo has published numerous articles in international refereed journals. She has also given numerous talks and media interviews on Palestine and events in the Middle East.

دكتورة نهلة عبدو ناشطة سياسية ونسوية وأستاذة علم الاجتماع بجامعة كارلتون. لها منشورات مكثفة حول النسوية المناهضة للاستعمار وللإمبريالية والعنصرية ويتضمن مجال بحثها السكان الأصليين والدولة الاستعمارية الاستيطانية. من منشوراتها: تاريخ شفوي للفلسطينيين خلال النكبة)؛ الثورة الأسيرة: نضال المرأة الفلسطينية ضد الاستعمار؛ النساء في إسرائيل: العرق والجنس والمواطنة (2011) ؛ العنف باسم الشرف: تحديات نظرية وسياسية وكذلك كتاب حول النساء وسياسة المواجهة العسكرية. ولها مقالات عديدة في هذه المواضيع.