B/ordering Canada: A Presentation for the European Centre of Excellence at Dalhousie University
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B/ordering Canada New legal tools to extend the post-9/11 border JOSHUA LABOVE
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I presented a paper at Dalhousie University on September 26, 2014 on the way the law extends or moves the Canada-US border. My presentation was sponsored by the European Centre of Excellence and part of a one day symposium, "Remote Control", bringing academics from North America and Europe together to discuss new bordering practices.
Transcript of B/ordering Canada: A Presentation for the European Centre of Excellence at Dalhousie University
B/ordering Canada New legal tools to extend the post-9/11 border
JOSHUA LABOVE
How does the law border? How does the Charter provide a legal bracket through which to consider the prospects
and possibilities of borderwork and what does the application of the Charter tell us about how borders work in the Canadian legal space?
What kind of legal space is a border?
How do judges and the courts make borders? What are the limits—within legal praxis and convention—that govern the way borders need
to be conceptualised and performed? What sorts of legal distinctions frame the way borderwork can be performed in Canada?
Canadian Legal Tools at the Border Courts and judges face an ongoing tension to place borders and borderings within Canadian jurisdiction, while imagining new extra-legal applications of borders that envision the border
as a liminal space.
Security Certificates National security-based deportation program for non-citizens
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Shiprider Program Bi-national patrol of the coastal areas in the US-Canada borderlands
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Expanded use of immigration detention Detention conditions that mirrors criminal practices
Stationing of consular/visa officers abroad Intercepting/preempting refugee claims before they reach Canada
Static and Shifting Approaches Is the border constantly at move? How do legal actors frame the way borders work?
The Westphalian world-view where the border is a fixed line that is entwined with the
limits of sovereign power.
The Static Border The Shifting Border
Or is the border divorced from the cartographic edge of the territory, a shifting and evolving space that can extend beyond—and go far within the physical boundary
line?
New Scales of Border Work The border can no longer be conceptualized as simply a line dividing two nations;
often, bordering is occurring at a range of scales.
ALL CONTRIBUTING TO A MODERN BORDER
Programs like Shiprider are binational between the US and Canada but devolve significant planning and implementation
direction to particular regions with their own interests and foci.
Binational w/ Regional Focus
Trusted traveller programs like NEXUS push the border out, at once
to a transnational and as well biometric scale. NEXUS makes use of ‘information sharing’ to envision a North American security perimeter.
Transnational
Regional
Municipal
National/Federal
The classic representation of the border, federally managed, is still
alive and active.
From environment & resource development to First Nations issues, regions like ‘Cascadia’ and ‘Niagara’ are working to take on border work.
Cities are attempting to do border work, both to promote their
economic viability in global trade and through amnesty/sanctuary city
policies.
Multiple Borderings Rather than speak of a wholesale extraction of the static border to further remote spaces, we can see the expansion of bordering through the emergence of three
characteristics of the law at the border
� NEW APPROACHES Is the border a static line that can be pointed to or is it a shifting, performative, series of practices and policies?
NEW SCALES In addition to border work at the level of the nation-
state, bordering can be conceptualized as a
project for cities, counties, regions, and transnational
partnerships.
COMPETING BRACKETED EFFECTS
Legal decision-making demands ‘bracketing off’ questions of
jurisprudence from the performance or enactment of real-world spaces and
transactions. What is bracketed, how, and to why are hardly consistent.
Bordering as a 'Topological Twist’ When multiple border policies and tools are at work at once, we may need another
axis to conceptualize the look and feel of the border
Can ‘expanding’ and ‘contracting’ describe
the spatial extent of bordering?
Border work is expanding in to new venues, coupled with new technologies of surveillance to further connect border-work and security making post-9/11.
Still, physical borders seem to matter, as states, Canada being no exception, guard and protect the edge of the territory.
Ad-hoc bordering creates a dangerous chaos for migrants in particular, who find their mobility is limited and their access to Constitutional protections challenged by evolving legal understandings of what and where bordering can occur.
Contact Me I’m all ears and keen to chat.
@jlabove
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ON THE WEB
www.sfu.ca/~jlabove
Thank You for your interest and feedback, and
to Ruben Zaiotti and the Dalhousie University European Centre for Excellence
