Megan Gaucher

Associate Professor

• B.Soc.Sci. (University of Ottawa), M.A. (University of Alberta), Ph.D. (Queen’s University)
• Email Megan Gaucher

Megan Gaucher is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies. A political scientist by training, her interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersections between citizenship, family, and belonging in Canadian immigration and refugee law, policy, and politics. She is the author of A Family Matter: Citizenship, Conjugal Relationships, and Canadian Immigration Policy (UBC Press, 2018), which was shortlisted for the Canadian Political Science Association’s 2019 Donald Smiley Prize and received Honorable Mention for the American Political Science Association’s 2022 Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award. She is the recipient of the Faculty of Public Affairs Teaching Excellence Award (2020) and the Carleton Research Achievement Award (2025).

Her current research projects include a SSHRC-funded project on the state of “birth tourism” in Canada, an examination of spousal sponsorship during the COVID-19 border closure, and continued investigation into the implications current legislative frameworks have on migrant families seeking permanent reunification.

She supervises graduate students in the areas of immigration and refugee law, critical citizenship studies, family law and politics, identity politics, and Canadian public policy.

Selected Publications:

Books:

• Gaucher, Megan. 2018. A Family Matter: Citizenship, Conjugal Relationships, and Canadian Immigration Policy (UBC Press)

Book Chapters:

• DeGagné, Alexa and Megan Gaucher. 2021. “The Thin Blue Line between Protection and Prosecution: Policing LGBTQ2S Refugees in Canada,” in Chloe Taylor and Kelly Struthers-Monfort (eds.) Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice. London: Routledge.
• Gaucher, Megan. 2018. “When is a Citizen no Longer a Citizen? Analyzing Constructions of Citizenship in Canada’s Judicial and Legislative Forums,” in Emmett Macfarlane (ed.) Policy Change, Courts, and the Canadian Constitution. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Journal Articles:

• Yalamarty, Harshita, Megan Gaucher, Ethel Tungohan, and Asma Atique. 2025. “’We all know the benefits of having our parents and grandparents here with us’: super visas, temporary grand/parent migration and Canadian nation building.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2561206
• Cheong, Amanda R., Megan Gaucher, Jing Li, Stephanie Nedoshytko, Jamie Chai Yun Liew, Angela M. Contreras-Chavez, Hilal Kina, Nikita McDavid, and David Brush. 2025. “Unpacking ‘Birth Tourism’: Incidental Citizenship and the Diverse Migration and Reproduction Trajectories of Nonresident Mothers in Canada.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 51(7): 4299-4319.
• Atique, Asma, Ethel Tungohan, Megan Gaucher, and Harshita Yalamarty. 2025. “’Flying Grannies’ and Human-Capital Citizenship: Migrant Grandparents and Care in Humanitarian and Compassionate Cases in Canada.” Social & Legal Studies: https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639251360214
• Gaucher, Megan. 2020. “Keeping Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer: Affective Constructions of “Good” and “Bad” Immigrants in Canadian Conservative Discourse.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 52(2): 79-98.
• Nath, Nisha, Ethel Tungohan, and Megan Gaucher. 2018. “The Future of Canadian Political Science: Boundary Transgressions, Gender and Anti-Oppression Frameworks.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 51(3): 619-42.
• Gaucher, Megan. 2016. “Monogamous Canadian Citizenship, Constructing Foreignness, and the Limits of Harm Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Political Science. 49(3): 519-538.
• Gaucher, Megan and Alexa DeGagné. 2014. “Guilty until Proven Prosecuted: The Canadian State’s Assessment of Sexual Minority Refugee Claimants and the Invisibility of the non-Western Sexual non-Citizen.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 23(3): 459-81.
• Gaucher, Megan. 2014. “Attack of the Marriage Fraudsters!: An Examination of the Harper Government’s Anti-Marriage Fraud Campaign.” International Journal of Canadian Studies, 50: 187-206.