<p>This dissertation examines the apparently conflicting dynamics of movement and control. It does so by taking a unique approach to exploring these dynamics of movement and control by de-centering the state as the assumed site of authority of such dynamics. While traditional IR approaches situate the state as the authority for controlling and facilitating movement across borders, this study – which focuses on the movement of refugees and asylum seekers – de-stabilizes that authority by considering the ways in which other actors and spaces influence and resist these dynamics. Specifically, I consider the ways in which cities and migrants themselves might shape the apparently ‘global’ or ‘state’ processes of determining who enters and belongs in a particular political community. By de-centering – but not dismissing – the authority of the state in these matters, it becomes evident that definitions of political community are not only highly ambiguous but also somewhat autonomous from the state. The city emerges as a fundamentally different sort of political space from the state. The city – though not <em>separate</em> from the state – exceeds the state and opens up different possibilities for belonging politically than those made possible by ‘seeing like a state’</p> <p>These theoretical issues are contextualized in this study through the case study of the MV Sun Sea, a ship which arrived off the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada in August 2010 carrying 490 Sri Lankan asylum seekers. This case is explored from three angles – ‘seeing like a state’, ‘seeing like a city’, and ‘seeing like a refugee’ – in order to consider the dynamics of movement and control and the ways in which the autonomies of cities and migrants themselves reshape political space and subjectivities.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis examines the production of Tamil youth in the state of Canada as threats, extremists, radicals, terrorists, and as subjects to be engaged in de-politicized humanitarian discourses of reconciliation and peace. By drawing attention to the exclusion of Tamils from rights in legal proceedings, the positioning of youth protesters as harbingers of a multicultural 'crisis,' and the role of education in securing Canada's response to the MV Sun Sea as a 'humanitarian' project, I argue that the targeting Tamils is not only integral to Sri Lanka's ongoing genocide, but is also crucial to the Canadian state's project of white settler colonialism. In examining the law, media and education as sites of racial management in the 'War on Terror' and its globalized counter-terrorism regime I identify the targeting of Tamil diaspora youth as a necessary racial logic for the legitimacy of the Canadian state in an era of official multiculturalism.

This thesis examines the production of Tamil youth in the state of Canada as threats, extremists, radicals, terrorists, and as subjects to be engaged in de-politicized humanitarian discourses of reconciliation and peace. By drawing attention to the exclusion of Tamils from rights in legal proceedings, the positioning of youth protesters as harbingers of a multicultural 'crisis,' and the role of education in securing Canada's response to the MV Sun Sea as a 'humanitarian' project, I argue that the targeting Tamils is not only integral to Sri Lanka's ongoing genocide, but is also crucial to the Canadian state's project of white settler colonialism. In examining the law, media and education as sites of racial management in the 'War on Terror' and its globalized counter-terrorism regime I identify the targeting of Tamil diaspora youth as a necessary racial logic for the legitimacy of the Canadian state in an era of official multiculturalism.

This thesis offers theoretical and practical explorations of how multimedia arts-based methods and embodied storytelling support critical and transformative understandings of law. Using theatre as both subject and method, the author demonstrates how laws live in bodies, with a focus on race, whiteness, migration and the Komagata Maru. Drawing on various theatre practices as well as critical race, feminist and performance scholarship, the author calls for a new way of interacting with law: jurisprudential theatre. Jurisprudential theatre is a method that employs autobiography, utopian visioning, legal research and audience involvement to create plays that examine existing law while filling affective spaces that existing law neglects. This method builds an alternate archive that supplements existing laws but can also be used to study them. The author explains the method through a performance art piece titled Re-embodying. She then uses jurisprudential theatre to examine the legal history of the Komagata Maru through case law and two play texts, all of which lay the groundwork for the method’s application in the first draft of a play titled Eustitia. “Rather than laying my life and research out in a chronological, linear fashion with smooth transitions, this thesis blends scholarly, autobiographical, episodic and creative writing – sometimes abrupt, sometimes guided. This framework takes you on a journey to the Komagata Maru through my experiences and understandings of race, whiteness, law and trauma. This thesis asks you to bear witness while offering you life stories, performance art, the draft of a play, images and academic prose. I invite you to join me in a creative and performative process that will move you beyond the confines of the page to online worlds and internal realms. Why? To study and experience (as best we can in a text-based relationship) the internal and embodied consequences of law alongside its external, material and relational impacts.” / Graduate / 0465 / 0398 / 0631 / dhaliwal.preeti@gmail.com

Ce mémoire de maîtrise porte sur les effets politiques des discours médiatiques sur la gouvernance et la régulation des demandeurs d’asile au Canada. À travers une analyse critique des discours de la presse écrite canadienne au sujet de l’arrivée en août 2010 de 492 requérants du statut de réfugié à bord du bateau MV Sun Sea en Colombie-Britannique, l’auteure identifie les principales interprétations de cet évènement ainsi que leurs relations avec la mise en place subséquente de mesures visant à restreindre les possibilités d’accès non autorisés au Canada, notamment par la création d’une nouvelle catégorisation discriminatoire des demandeurs d’asile. L’analyse révèle l’articulation de ces discours autour de deux thématiques distinctes, mais interreliées. Tandis que les discours sécuritaires associent l’arrivée non autorisée des demandeurs d’asile à une menace à la sécurité de la nation, les discours humanitaires interprètent cet évènement comme une demande d’aide de la part d’un groupe de personnes menacées par leur propre pays. Ce mémoire propose une analyse multidimensionnelle de ces deux cadrages et de leurs effets politiques qui considère leurs dimensions discursives, contextuelles et affectives. L’analyse démontre comment ces deux discours en apparence conflictuels partagent en fait un même sous-texte racial qui fait de ce type de spectacle médiatique un dispositif clé de « gouvernementalité racialisée de l’immigration » (Bilge, 2012, 2013). / This master’s thesis addresses the political effects of media discourses on the governance and regulation of asylum seekers in Canada. Through a critical analysis of the Canadian press discourses around the arrival on august 2010 of 492 asylum seekers on the ship MV Sun Sea in British Columbia, the author identify the main interpretations of this event, along with their relations with the subsequent establishment of restrictive measures designed to prevent the possibilities of unauthorised arrivals to Canada, especially through the creation of a new discriminatory categorisation for asylum seekers. Analysis reveals the articulation of these discourses around two distinctive but interconnected themes. While security discourses associate the unauthorised arrival of the asylum seekers as a threat to national security, humanitarian discourses interpret this event as a request for help from a group of persons threatened by their own country. This thesis proposes a multidimensional analysis of these framings and of their political effects that considers their discursive, contextual and affective dimensions. The analysis reveals that these two apparently opposed discourses actually share the same racial subtext making this kind of media spectacle a key device of the “racialised governementality of immigration” (Bilge, 2012, 2013).