Abstract
In March 2016, two men died in Canadian immigration detention facilities “in the care of Canada Border Services Agency in less than a week” (Black 2016). Francisco Javier Romero Astorga (a Chilean national, unreported reasons for detention) died in Maplehurst Correctional Centre in the province of Ontario on Sunday, March 13 (Kassam 2016). Also in Ontario, Melkioro Gahungu (a Burundian national who was convicted of killing his wife in 2009) died in the Toronto East Detention Centre on Monday, March 7 (Cain 2016). These events triggered an atypical public reaction to the existence, purpose, and conditions of immigration holding centres and questioned the human rights protections for people being detained. This chapter explores these recent events by situating them in two key historical parallel discourses that underscore the broader colonial project, those pertaining to immigration and eugenics, to consider how we understand and talk about the practice and implications of immigration detention. Contemporary concerns about immigration detention practices in Canada reflect a historical confluence of shifting, colliding, submerging, and (re)emerging ideas about threat, dangerousness, foreignness, and criminality (Chadha 2008; Menzies 1998). These ideas have been forged over time, globally, through projects of nation building, population regulation, surveillance, and control (Dowbiggin 1997; McLaren 1990).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
These archival pieces were included in an earlier analysis with respect to deportations in Joseph (2015).
- 2.
Labour and commodity concerns led to a change of name to the Department of Mines and Resources in 1936. When independent Canadian citizenship was available after 1947 the name was changed again after 1950 to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, in 1966 the name changed to the Department of Manpower and Immigration, then to the Department of Employment and Immigration in 1977, the Department of Multiculturalism and Citizenship in 1991, and Citizenship and Immigration Canada from 1994 to 2015.
- 3.
A history term for immigrants who might now be referred to as refugees.
- 4.
Gaol being an earlier word to describe a cage, prison cell, or jail cell.
- 5.
Charity or charitable.
- 6.
In February 2018, a jury found Raymond Cormier not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Tina Fontaine (Maclean 2018). Many leaders and family members from Indigenous communities reacted with sadness and disbelief and argued that the verdict reflects Canada’s historically established systemic failure to do justice for Indigenous people (Maclean 2018). As Federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said ‘We need to examine all the factors that lead to these violent acts, including policing, child welfare, healthcare, and the social and economic conditions’ (Dangerfield 2018).
- 7.
There are 10 maximum security immigration ‘reception and processing centers’ in Australia. There have been violent protests and hunger strikes from inmates at the Christmas Island facility that drew attention to the maltreatment and poor conditions for people in immigration detention. In 2014, mothers who were being detained met with immigration officials to protest the detention and conditions for their children and babies also in detention. The mothers, after being told they were never going to be permitted into Australia, experienced great distress that resulted in multiple incidents of self-harm. The incident produced a national inquiry into the situation and resulted in a report that focused on ‘children in immigration detention’. See, Australia Human Rights Commission, and President Triggs. 2014. The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention.
References
An Act Respecting Immigration, 1910 (Canada).
Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, S.C. 2015, c. 20 (Canada).
Archives of Ontario. 1919. Series RG 4-32. W.W. Dunlap, Inspector of Prisons, Toronto: Query Re: authority of Department of Immigration to Use Gaols for Detention of Undesirable Immigrants. Also Concerns the Specific Case of Elsie Saborowiski, Who Associated with Known Revolutionaries.
———. 1927. Series RG 4–32. H.M. Robbins, Dept. Prov. Sec.: Request for Opinion Re power of Immigration Dept. to Designate Ontario Hospitals for the Insane as Immigrant Stations.
Barghout, C. 2018. Tina Fontaine Met Social Workers, Police and Health-Care Workers—But No One Kept Her Safe. CBC News, February 23. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/tina-fontaine-system-failed-1.4548314.
Black, D. 2016. Second Immigration Detainee Dies in Prison in Less Than a Week. The Star, March 14.
Brown, R.C., and R. Cook. 1974. Canada 1896–1921: A Nation Transformed. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
Cain, P. 2016. Immigration Detainee’s Mysterious Death is the Second in Seven Days. Global News, March 15.
Cairney, R. 1996. ‘Democracy was Never Intended for Degenerates’: Alberta’s Flirtation with Eugenics Comes Back to Haunt It. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal 155 (6): 789–792.
Canadian Council for Refugees. 2000. A Hundred Years of Immigration to Canada 1900–1999, A Chronology Focusing on Refugees and Discrimination-Part 1: 1900–1949. http://ccrweb.ca/en/hundred-years-immigration-canada-1900-1999.
Carlson, K.B., and J. Mahoney. 2014. Harper Rejects Calls for Aboriginal Women Inquiry. The Globe and Mail, August 21. Accessed May 29, 2018. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-rejectscalls-for-aboriginal-women-inquiry/article20166785/.
CBC News. 2016. Canada’s Immigration Detention Program to Get $138M Makeover. CBC News, August 15.
Chadha, E. 2008. Mentally Defectives Not Welcome: Mental Disability in Canadian Immigration Law, 1859–1927. Disability Studies Quarterly 28 (1): 1–30.
Creighton, D.G. 1975. The Story of Canada. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada.
Dangerfield, K. 2018. How the Tragic Death of Tina Fontaine Helped Spark the MMIWG Inquiry. CBC News, February 23. Accessed April 3, 2018. https://globalnews.ca/news/4043492/tina-fontaine-march-mmiwg-inquiry/.
Dowbiggin, I.R. 1997. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880–1940. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Fanon, F. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.
Farley, A. 1997. The Black Body as Fetish Object. Oregon Law Review 76: 457–535.
Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, S.C. 2013, c. 16 (Canada).
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27, Retrieved d December 22, 2013 from http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/stat/sc-2001-c-27/latest/sc-2001-c-27.html
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. 2015. ENF 20. http://www.cic.gc.ca/ENGLISH/resources/manuals/enf/enf20-eng.pdf.
Joseph, A.J. 2015. Deportation and the Confluence of Violence Within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kary, M. 2013. When Was the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Established? http://www.immigrationdirect.ca/blog/canadian-immigration/department-of-immigration-est/.
Kassam, A. 2016. Immigrant Deaths Expose ‘Legal Black Hole’ of Canada’s Detention System. The Guardian, May 17.
Keung, N. 2016. Police Cleared in Immigration Detainee’s Death. The Star, July 15.
Kilty, J.M. 2012. ‘It’s Like They Don’t Want You to Get Better’: Practising ‘Psy’ in the Carceral Context. Feminism & Psychology 22 (2): 162–182.
Latimer, C. 2015. How We Created a Canadian Prison Crisis. The Star, October 4.
Leiter, A.B. 2010. In the Shadow of the Black Beast: African American Masculinity in the Harlem and Southern Renaissances. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Maclean, C. 2018. Jury Finds Raymond Cormier Not Guilty in Death of Tina Fontaine. CBC News, February 22. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/raymond-cormier-trial-verdict-tina-fontaine-1.4542319.
McClintock, A. 2013. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge.
McLaren, A. 1990. Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885–1945. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Menzies, R. 1998. Governing Mentalities: The Deportation of ‘Insane’and ‘Feebleminded’ Immigrants Out of British Columbia from Confederation to World War II. Canadian Journal of Law and Society 13 (2): 135–173.
Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act, S.C. 2014, c. 6 (Canada).
Parsons, P. 2016. Detainee, 24, Dies in Edmonton Remand Centre. Edmonton Sun, May 16.
Prince, M.J. 2015. Prime Minister as Moral Crusader: Stephen Harper’s Punitive Turn in Social Policy-Making. Canadian Review of Social Policy 71 (1): 53–69.
Safe Streets and Communities Act, S.C. 2012, c. 1 (Canada).
Scull, A.T. 2005. Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Seuffert, N. 2015. Sexual Minorities and the Proliferation of Regulation in Australia’s Asylum Seeker Detention Camps. Law Text Culture 19 (2015): 39–83.
Silverman, S.J., and P. Molnar. 2016. Everyday Injustices: Barriers to Access to Justice for Immigration Detainees in Canada. Refugee Survey Quarterly 35 (1): 109–127.
Solomon, E. 2017. The Mental Health Crisis in Canadian Prisons. MacLean’s, March 3.
Washington, H.A. 2006. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Doubleday Books.
Wright, R. 1993. Native Son. 1940. New York: Harper Perennial.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Joseph, A.J. (2018). Traditions of Colonial and Eugenic Violence: Immigration Detention in Canada. In: Kilty, J., Dej, E. (eds) Containing Madness. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89749-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89749-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89748-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89749-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)