Workshop 2023

About the workshop

Date and Time: March 20th, 2023 8:30AM – 3:30PM EDT and March 21st, 2023 8:30AM – 3:15PM EDT

Location: CERC Migration Office, Eaton Centre, 220 Yonge Street Suite 204, and Online

Border control policies are implemented to facilitate and restrict mobility in the name of governmental mandates for orderly and secure migration channels. Over the past decades, States have adopted “smarter” approaches to border control to limit access to and stay in their territory of unwanted migrants and border crossers. Bordering processes encompass a plurality of ways in which borders are actively expanded and constricted to regulate mobility beyond and within geographical and colonial boundaries of nation-states. From border walls to algorithms, detention centres to classrooms, bordering poses significant challenges for the human rights of people on the move. Border control and cooperation within and among States can prevent people from accessing refugee protection, restrict movement across Indigenous lands, perpetuate insecure immigration status, and subject people to technological and physical modes of border policing and violence. They increase safety risk, as people desperate for alternatives tend to embark on dangerous journeys often subject to smuggling enterprises. People are treated differently at border sites based on grounds of race, gender, and other identities, showing the deeply embedded discriminatory and oppressive nature of bordering. 

This workshop aims to advance transformative border studies, human rights scholarship, and policy from diverse critical and interdisciplinary perspectives in Canada and internationally. The first day of the workshop presents three panels which address migration control policies and practices with a focus on their securitizing nature and their implications for migrants’ rights. The second day of the workshop consists of two panels and a roundtable discussion which elaborate on border regimes in the North American context and probe issues surrounding the Canada-US border crossings, the emerging border technologies, and access to protection. The collective aim of these discussions is to explore the implications of bordering processes for the fundamental rights and freedoms of migrants, and the ways in which borders have been rescaled and reconfigured to regulate mobility. The workshop also seeks to surface innovative theoretical and methodological approaches in migration and border studies.

March 20, 2023

8:30AM – 9:00AM EDT	Welcome Reception
9:00AM – 9:30AM EDT	Welcome: Donna Young, Dean of Law, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University Introductory Remarks: Idil Atak, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University and Claire Ellis, Toronto Metropolitan University
9:30AM – 11:00AM EDT	Panel I: ‘Irregular’ Migrants, (Im)Mobilities and Human Rights Chair: Claire Linley, York University Countering Human Rights from Within? Reverse Strategic Litigation by States to Legitimize Migration Control Policies | Janna Wessels, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Stories from the Hidden World of Immigration Detention in Canada | Julie Kim, Toronto Metropolitan University Messy Governance of Return Migration: Formal Policies, Informal Practices and Migrants’ Navigation | Anna Triandafyllidou, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University and Zeynep Sahin-Mencütek, Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies / CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University
11:00AM – 11:30AM EDT	Health Break
11:30AM – 1:00PM EDT	Panel II: Border Controls, Securitization and the Way Forward Chair: Idil Atak, Toronto Metropolitan University Controlling the Borders or Granting Protection. Institutional Change and Strategic Decision-Making | Hakan Gurcan Sicakkan, University of Bergen and Pierre-Georges VanWolleghem, University of Bergen Irregular or Illegal in Europe? The Struggle over the Securitization of Migrants | Elspeth Guild, Queen Mary University of London Securing Borders and Facilitating Mobility are not Incompatible | François Crépeau, McGill University
1:00PM – 2:00PM EDT	Lunch Break
2:00PM – 3:30PM EDT	Panel III: Historical, Legal, and Social Dimensions and Realities of the Border Regimes in North America Chair: Sara Asalya, Newcomer Women’s Services Ceci n’est pas une frontière: Loopholes, Irregularity, and the Governance of the Canada-US Border | Julie Young, University of Lethbridge Bordering Through Orders-in-Council During Covid-19 | Efrat Arbel, University of British Columbia Fixed or Fluid? Shifting Federal Policy Controls and Indigenous Responses at the Canada-US Border | Paul McKenzie-Jones, University of Lethbridge Historicizing North America’s Border Regimes | Sheila McManus, University of Lethbridge

March 21, 2023

8:30AM – 9:00AM EDT	Welcome Reception
9:00AM – 10:30AM EDT	Panel IV: Border Technologies and Institutional Dynamics Chair: Henry Parada, Toronto Metropolitan University Hardening the Border: Generations, Gender and Technologies in Canadian Bordering Practices | Karine Côté-Boucher, Université de Montréal Technological Violence Through High-Risk Experiments at The Border | Petra Molnar, Refugee Law Lab, York University The Digitization of Border Controls and Their Corporate Actors| Didier Bigo, Sciences-Po Paris and King’s College London The shifting vocation of maritime Search and Rescue in Europe: from protecting human life to protecting the border | Luna Vives, Université de Montréal
10:30AM – 11:00AM EDT	Health break
11:00AM – 12:30PM EDT	Roundtable Discussion: Crossing the Canada-US Border and Access to Protection Chair: John Shields, Toronto Metropolitan University Matt Tice, Jericho Road Community Health Centre, Buffalo Loly Rico, FCJ Refugee Centre, Toronto Alastair Clarke, Clarke Immigration Law, Winnipeg Jenny Jeanes, Action Réfugiés Montréal
12:30PM – 1:30PM EDT	Lunch Break
1:30PM – 3:00PM EDT	Panel V: Advancing the Protection of Migrants: Progress and Challenges  Chair: Graham Hudson, Toronto Metropolitan University Conditional Welcome: The Role of Security and Stability in Refugee Management in South(ern) Africa | Nick Maple, University of London Bordering Regularization: Assessment of Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria in Early Canadian Regularization Programs | David Moffette, University of Ottawa Undocumented 101: Bordering and Countering in the Immigrant Classroom | Paloma E. Villegas, California State University and Tanya Aberman, York University  Civil Society Organisations as Challengers to the State-Based Order in Managing Borders | Simon Usherwood, Open University
3:00PM – 3:15PM EDT	Concluding remarks

This workshop is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.