The politics of the visible/invisible border: Canada's responses and (in)actions towards refugee claimants' protection
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis explores Canadian responses towards unexpected arrivals of asylum seekers at their borders. Grounded in critical and feminist geopolitics, it aims to unveil hidden and concealed policies that are implemented behind a narrative of humanitarianism. In particular, it takes the land border crossings from the US to Canada that occurred after the implementation of restrictive asylum policies in the US in 2017 and following years. Although migratory movements can be attributed to several factors, this displacement was triggered by Trump’s anti-immigrant narratives and policies aimed to decrease refugee and immigrant arrivals to their territory.\nThe dissertation’s central argument is that Canada’s bordering practices rely on an invisible/visible dichotomy to restrict asylum seekers arrivals at territorial limits. This thesis explores how Canada’s border restrictions and policy often act through means that invisibilize the border, through tactics of (un)provision, neglect, and selectivity. I argue that these factors restrict in important ways refugee claimants’ experiences and identities, and human mobility in general. I also explore how these dynamics temporarily shift in times of crisis when the Canadian government visibilizes the border as a way to maintain the state narrative of protecting its integrity. I argue that these particular responses are directed to a specific audience: the electorate and the Parliament.\nThroughout this project, I jump scales to demonstrate how the invisible border is particularly found in localized spaces, like refugee centers. In particular, I offer insights into how local organizations adapted the ways in which they offered services to refugee claimants, after Canada’s government provided an insufficient response towards refugee protection and settlement needs. I also explore how invisible Canadian bordering practices play out in more personal and intimate spaces: refugee claimants’ identities. I discuss this by analyzing Canadian categorization practices based on colonial perceptions of refugees. This research produced empirical and comprehensive examination on how different scales intertwine in asylum policy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.058 | 0.020 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".