This thesis reviews the underlying theoretical and normative paradigm in Canadian
migration and asylum law and its effect on the refugee determination process with
respect to the approximately 100 unaccompanied children who were among 599
migrants from Fujian Province, People's Republic of China who arrived in four boats off
the coast of British Columbia, Canada in the Summer of 1999. Upon deconstructing
Canadian migration legislation and jurisprudence, especially with respect to asylum, it is
apparent that the dominant paradigm is one of liberal communitarianism/realism, rather
than one based on individual, universal human rights. This communitarian/realist
paradigm is reflected in and reinforced by normative distinctions between immigrants
and illegal migrants, and between politically motivated, forced migrants (refugees) and
economically motivated, voluntary migrants (illegal migrants). Illegal migrants, such as
the Fujianese children, are de-legitimized and criminalized under Canadian migration
law. Moreover, this paradigm had the effect of subsuming the children's human rights
claims into an assessment of their motivations for, and the voluntariness of, their
emigration, that is, into a refugee determination process based on an understanding of
the children's migration that was both inherently incoherent and inconsistent with a
nuanced comprehension of migration as a structural phenomenon. The author
concludes with a proposal for the development of a more strongly human-rights based
paradigm in Canadian migration and asylum law. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/16691 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Sokhansanj, Banafsheh |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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