The Canadian News Media's Representation Of
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Irregular Migrants or Illegal Migrants?: The Canadian News Media’s Representation of Haitian Asylum Seekers in the Imagined Nation Robynn S. Joseph Thesis submitted to the University of Ottawa in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts. Department of Criminology Faculty of Social Sciences University of Ottawa © Robynn S. Joseph, Ottawa, Canada, 2020 #BlackLivesMatter ii Acknowledgements I wish to thank the people who have assisted me throughout this journey. I would first like to thank my supervisor Dr. Baljit Nagra. Her support, guidance and encouragement were invaluable for the completion of my thesis. I would also like to thank my examiners, Dr. David Moffette and Dr. Christine Gervais, for their insightful feedback. Dr. Maritza Felices-Luna, your research seminar and feedback was a great help for starting to write my thesis. Dr. Erin McCuaig-Lambrinakos, thank you for your support and I had great experience being your TA. To my cohort, I will miss having our chats on the 13th floor. To my friends and family, thank you for pushing and motivating me throughout this process. This accomplishment would not have been possible without you all. iii Abstract In Spring/Summer 2017 there was an increase in Haitian nationals from the United States, entering Canada, reaching numbers as high of 7,787 (Government of Canada, 2019). This increase in irregular migration was covered by various news outlets and Canadian government officials addressed this as a ‘problem’. Given this important media and political reality, this thesis sought to explore the media representation of Haitian irregular migration. More specifically, I examine the media’s depiction of Haitian asylum seekers as well as the nation. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to contextualize this media representation within a wider socio-political context. Through a Critical Race Theory perspective, I conduct a qualitative content analysis of news media articles published in the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. The analysis reveals that the nation is imagined as innocent while the asylum seekers are constructed as threats. This thesis goes on to demonstrate how the media has relied on a discourse of inclusion/exclusion and of victimization in order to positively imagine the nation. Meanwhile, by framing asylum seekers’ motivations for entering Canada as frivolous and by utilizing techniques of vilification, the media is able to delegitimize the asylum seekers’ claims. Finally, this thesis concludes that the media has a tendency to omit the socio-political context of its portrayal of the asylum seekers and of the nation. Therefore, it is important for the media to accurately represent irregular migration in order to expose global inequalities. iv Table of Content DEDICATION.............................................................................................................................. II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... III ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. IV TABLE OF CONTENT ............................................................................................................... V INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW.................................................................................... 5 1.1. BORDER & THE NATION ....................................................................................................... 6 1.1.1. Border, Globalization and Imperialism ........................................................................ 6 1.1.2. Border, Security and The Criminalization of Migration ............................................ 12 1.2. RACIALIZED BODIES & CANADIAN MIGRATION .................................................................. 25 1.2.1. Canadian Nation Formation ....................................................................................... 25 1.2.2. Canadian Treatment of Black Bodies ......................................................................... 28 1.3. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ..................................................................... 37 2.1. IMAGINED COMMUNITIES AND THE STRANGER ................................................................... 38 2.2. EXALTED SUBJECT .............................................................................................................. 41 2.3. MANAGERS OF SPACE ......................................................................................................... 44 2.3.1. Media and Governmental Belonging .......................................................................... 45 2.4. COHERENCE OF CONCEPTS .................................................................................................. 49 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY............................................................................................. 50 3.1. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ........................................................................................... 50 3.2. DATA SAMPLING AND COLLECTION .................................................................................... 53 3.3. DATA ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................. 55 3.4. LIMITATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 58 CHAPTER 4: THE NATION .................................................................................................... 61 4.1. TECHNIQUES OF INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION ..................................................................... 61 4.1.1. Technique One: Land of Laws .................................................................................... 62 4.1.2. Technique Two: Increasing Border Security .............................................................. 70 4.2. DISCOURSE OF VICTIMIZATION ........................................................................................... 77 4.2.1. Unprotected Nation ..................................................................................................... 78 4.2.2. Immigration System Flaws .......................................................................................... 80 4.2.3. Excessive Exalted Values ............................................................................................ 85 CHAPTER 5: THE REPRESENTATION OF ASYLUM SEEKERS ................................... 91 5.1. ‘THEIR’ MOTIVATIONS ........................................................................................................ 91 5.2. TECHNIQUES TO VILIFY ASYLUM SEEKERS ......................................................................... 98 5.2.1. Technique One: Worthy of Acceptance and ‘Bogus’ Refugees .................................. 98 5.2.2. Technique Two: Criminalization .............................................................................. 107 5.2.3. Technique Three: Burden and Draining the Nation ................................................. 109 v CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 115 OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS .......................................................................................................... 115 CONTRIBUTIONS ...................................................................................................................... 118 FUTURE RESEARCH .................................................................................................................. 120 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................... 121 APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................................ 142 APPENDIX B ............................................................................................................................ 149 vi Introduction In 2002, Canada and the United States signed The Safe Third Country Agreement1. According to this Agreement, refugee claimants must request refugee protection in the first safe country that they arrive in (either Canada or the United States) (The Safe Third Country Agreement, 2002). This Agreement permits individuals to make a refugee claim in Canada if they arrived by air, sea and in-between land ports of entry. As a result, if an individual attempts to enter Canada through the United States at a land border port of entry2 in order to make a refugee claim, the individual will be sent back to the United States in order for the person to make his or her refugee claim there. However, there are four types of exceptions to this according to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulation (IRPR) s. 159.5. First, an individual will not be sent back to the United States if the person has a family member that is: a Canadian citizen, permanent resident, a protected person or has a refugee claim referred to the Immigration Refugee Board. Second, unaccompanied minors and third those holding documents (i.e. a valid work permit, a study