ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the effects of bordering classifications upon migrants but also pays particular attention to how these classifications help maintain an image of Canada as an ‘open and generous society’. The task of differentiating bad from good migrants, law-abiding from dangerous, productive from indolent, citizen material from temporary labor source, represents an important legitimating function for Canadian border policing and immigration authorities. Canada’s bordering regime and its discursive legitimation call for an analysis of the social climate that it creates for migrants. Migrant detention and the criminalization of migration more generally carry a deep ontological effect not only upon national identities, but upon migrants’ mental health as well as their sense of agency, humanity and security. The chapter suggests that new bordering temporalities make up hierarchies of belonging in migration-receiving societies. Bordering discourses not only legitimate detention, deportation and refugee interdiction; they also promote a particular narrative about Canada that of a generous society opens to immigration.
