Photo of Megan Gaucher

Megan Gaucher

Associate Professor

Degrees:B.Soc.Sci. (University of Ottawa), M.A. (University of Alberta), Ph.D. (Queen’s University)
Email:Megan.Gaucher@carleton.ca
Office:D496 LA (Loeb Building)

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 2020 Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award. Her current research projects include a SSHRC-funded analysis of these intersections as they relate to migrant workers and family reunification appeals in Canadian jurisprudence, an examination of state treatment of single male migrants, and an investigation into legislative “crackdowns” on maternity tourism.

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

Selected Publications:

Books:

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

Book Chapters:

  • Forthcoming. “The Thin Blue Line between Protection and Persecution: Policing LGBTQ2S Refugees in Canada,” in Chloe Taylor and Kelly Struthers-Monfort (eds.) Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice. (Routledge) (Co-authored with Alexa DeGagné)
  • 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. (University of Toronto Press)

Journal Articles:

  • 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.
  • 2018 “The Future of Canadian Political Science: Boundary Transgressions, Gender and Anti-Oppression Frameworks.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 51(3): 619-42. (Co-authored with Nisha Nath and Ethel Tungohan)
  • 2016 “Monogamous Canadian Citizenship, Constructing Foreignness, and the Limits of Harm Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Political Science. 49(3): 519-538.
  • 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. (Co-authored with Alexa DeGagné)
  • 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.
  • 2014 “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?: Relationship Recognition and the Making of Conjugal Citizens in Canadian Law.” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice, 36(2): 61-72.