This thesis seeks to examine what cultural work is done on behalf of the state by the Safe Third Country Agreement and Bill C-31’s designated country of origin policy? I will be drawing on the work of Critical Race feminists and Critical Security Studies theorists to examine the concept of safety, systems of domination, and the parameters of national belonging. I will be performing a discourses analysis of the government’s and the Canadian Council for Refugee’s year one report of the Safe Third Country Agreement. I will also be performing a discourse analysis of the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website’s discussion of designated countries of origin. I will argue that state exaltation constructs the state, refugees, and safety in a way that reifies systems of domination.

This thesis seeks to examine what cultural work is done on behalf of the state by the Safe Third Country Agreement and Bill C-31’s designated country of origin policy? I will be drawing on the work of Critical Race feminists and Critical Security Studies theorists to examine the concept of safety, systems of domination, and the parameters of national belonging. I will be performing a discourses analysis of the government’s and the Canadian Council for Refugee’s year one report of the Safe Third Country Agreement. I will also be performing a discourse analysis of the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website’s discussion of designated countries of origin. I will argue that state exaltation constructs the state, refugees, and safety in a way that reifies systems of domination.

This thesis deals with the safe country concept; within which we can further distingiush two concepts - the one of a safe country of origin and that of a safe third country. When applying the safe country concept, states are limited by their obligations which stem from international law, in particular by the principle of non-refoulement. Furthermore, the concept of safe countries cannot be analyzed nor applied without taking the non-refoulement principle into consideration. The non-refoulement principle is therfore one of the main topics of this thesis. It is viewed primarily trough the lens of the definition given by the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 and the New York Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1967. The goal of this thesis is to determine, whether the concept of safe countries is indeed in accordance with the non-refoulement principle. We will subsequently try to answer the question of how influential the principle is (and should be) in terms of states that follow the concept of safe countries. The main concern of this thesis is the application of the safe country concept in Europe, or more precisely in the European Union. The european safe country legislation belongs to the so-called Common European Asyulm System. The centrepiece of this legal...