Regulating Spousal Migration through Canada's Multiple Border Strategy: The Gendered and Racialized Effects of Structurally Embedded Borders

• Author: Karin Baqi,Anna C. Korteweg,Rupaleem Bhuyan
• Date: 01 October 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12111
• Published date: 01 October 2018

Regulating Spousal Migration through Canada’s

Multiple Border Strategy: The Gendered and

Racialized Effects of Structurally Embedded Borders

RUPALEEM BHUYAN, ANNA C. KORTEWEG, and KARIN BAQI

As part of emerging scholarship on border governance, this article examines how discourses of

“fraud” in Canada merge with public management techniques to produce structurally embed-

ded borders. We focus on regulatory changes introduced between 2010 and 2014 that aimed to

deter and punish people who participate in “marriage fraud.” We then present the gendered

and racialized impact of antifraud regulations through a case analysis of the implementation of

Conditional Permanent Resident status (PR) from 2012 to 2017, which required some newly

sponsored spouses and partners to remain in a conjugal relationship with their sponsor for two

years after immigration. Our analysis of parliamentary proceedings illustrates how public man-

agement logics and the use of new digital technologies are mobilized to expand border enforce-

ment practices internally and outside the territorial boundaries of the nation. We argue that

despite the repeal of conditional PR in 2017, the deterrence of marriage fraud through structur-

ally embedded borders continues to regulate racialized immigrants in exclusionary ways that

disproportionately impact women.

“Canadians are generous and welcoming, but they have no tolerance for fraudsters who lie

and cheat to jump the queue,” said Minister Kenney. “This measure will help strengthen the

integrity of our immigration system and prevent the victimization of innocent Canadians.”

—Minister Jason Kenney, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (2012b, emphasis added)

In October 2012, the Canadian government introduced Conditional Permanent Resident

status (conditional PR or CPR) as a means to “crack down” on marriage fraud. Echoing

policy developments in the United States, the United Kingdom, and countries in western

Europe (D’Aoust 2013; Wray 2006; Medina 1996), conditional PR required newly spon-

sored spouses and partners (henceforth referred to as spouses/partners for brevity) to

cohabitate with their sponsor for two years in order to demonstrate the authenticity of

their relationship.

1

As illustrated in Minister Jason Kenney’s speech above, the Conser-

vative government promoted Conditional PR as one of several policy instruments tar-

geting immigration fraud. Minister Kenney grouped “marriage fraudsters,” “bogus

This research was conducted through the Migrant Mothers Project, a collaborative research project at the Uni-

versity of Toronto in partnership with a network of service providers, legal advocates, community health

workers, and grassroots immigrants. We gratefully acknowledge funding support through an Insight Grant

from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We would also like to thank Bronwyn

Bragg, Raluca Bejan, Rene

´Bogovi

c, Ellen Tang, and Adriana Vargas for their research assistance. Earlier ver-

sions of this article were presented at Law and Society Association meetings and at the Third CINETS Crim-

migration Conference at the University of Maryland.

Address correspondence to: Rupaleem Bhuyan, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of

Toronto, 246 Bloor Street We st, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1V 4, Canada. Telephone: 416- 946-5085; E-mail:

r.bhuyan@utoronto.ca.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 40, No. 4, October 2018

©2018 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2018 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12111

ISSN 0265-8240

refugees,” and “fake visa students” with unauthorized immigration consultants and con-

victed criminals, ushering in stiffer criminal and immigration penalties to protect both

“innocent” Canadians and the “integrity” of Canada’s immigration system. Conditions

that required spousal migrants to maintain a conjugal relationship for two years, however,

met with vocal opposition across Canada from numerous groups working to prevent vio-

lence against women. Under pressure from constituents across Canada, the final regula-

tions for conditional PR included an “Exception” to the condition in cases of abuse and/or

neglect. In April 2017, opposition to this condition successfully pressured the Liberal gov-

ernment to honor its earlier campaign promise and repeal conditional PR (Keung 2016).

2

We consider the implementation of conditional PR as part of a larger project to

expand Canada’s bordering practices, both geographically (beyond the physical bound-

aries of the nation) and temporally (extending the period of time during which immi-

grants are subject to scrutiny by immigration officials). Emerging scholarship in critical

border studies theorizes the proliferation of border control measures as a product of

global neoliberalism and the criminalization of immigrants (Andrijasevic and Walters

2010). We join Pickering and Weber (2013) in considering how these expanded border

and bordering practices are “dispersed” through “multiple sites of enforcement.”

Through Canada’s Multiple Borders Strategy, border controls have been “pushed out”

beyond Canada’s territory in order to detect and intercept unwanted migrants before

they enter Canada (Arbel and Brenner 2013). Criminalization of immigrants represents

another mechanism designed to expand the frontiers of immigration control, both inside

and outside of Canada, by enabling the exclusion and removal of immigrants who are

deemed a threat to the nation. As with Weber’s (2015) conceptualization of “structurally

embedded borders,” we focus on how discourses of “fraud”

3

are mobilized to extend

Canada’s bordering practices by deeming potential immigrants as inadmissible—and at

times criminal—in order to deny their entry or justify their removal from Canada.

This article contributes to previous migration scholarship by conceptualizing the

expansion of structurally embedded borders through public management techniques and

the use of digital technologies. Over the past decade, an array of anti-immigration fraud

tools has mobilized digital technologies to facilitate information sharing, electronic

review of applications, and faster processing times. While the federal government retains

authority over immigration control (with the exception of Quebec

4

), local law enforce-

ment (Decker et al. 2008), welfare workers (Mosher 2009), and commercial airlines

(Wilson and Weber 2008; Adey 2003) take part in the surveillance of immigrants by

identifying and sorting desirable immigrants from those to be excluded.

A second aim of this article is to consider the gendered and racialized effects of antifraud

practices on marriage migrants through a case study of conditional PR. Crimmigration

scholarship in North America has documented how racialized men (e.g., Black, Latino,

Indigenous, and Arab men) represent the vast majority of immigrant detainees and depor-

tees from the United States and Canada (Davis-Ramlochan 2013; Golash-Boza 2013).

Immigrant women have been less visible in crimmigration scholarship (Hartry 2012), in

part due to the difficulty of accessing data on gender inequities (Arbel 2014). Feminist legal

scholars in the United States, however, have documented how intersecting oppressions dif-

ferentially impact immigrant women who receive conditional status under the Immigration

and Marriage Fraud Amendment of 1986 and related “battered immigrant” provisions

under the Violence Against Women Act (i.e., the VAWA self-petition and the U-visa)

(Sokoloff 2008; Orloff and Kaguyutan 2001; Crenshaw 1991). Throughout its history,

Canada has similarly produced normative constructions of the desirable immigrant that

have excluded racialized women (Mosher 2009; Thobani 2000). The potentially devastating

consequences of border enforcement come to light in media accounts of female deportees

©2018 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2018 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

Bhuyan et al. MARRIAGE FRAUD AT MULTIPLE BORDERS 347