AP/SOSC 4658 6.00
Law, Crime and Borders
Crosslisted: AP/CRIM 4658
From forced sterilization and settler violence to drug laws and mass internment to refugee policies, border policing, detention and deportation, the domains of border governance and criminal justice in Canada intersect in a variety of important, historically specific ways. These intersections can be found at the levels of discourse (‘the criminal foreigner’), material technologies (carceral confinement, bodily violence and expulsion, surveillance technologies) and the specifics of immigration and criminal law and policy. In recent years, the intersections between the domains of immigration enforcement and criminal justice have become particularly pronounced. This course extends the traditional boundaries of criminology to closely examine these intersections of law, crime and borders from the early days of Canadian nation-building through to the present. The course is broadly organized around the three major preoccupations that have guided these processes: ‘national purity’, ‘national security’ and ‘criminality.’ Throughout, students engage in an in-depth, critical examination of scholarship further guided by a number of prominent conceptual themes including bordering, power, liberalism, discretion, risk, the role of law. Topics to be explored include nation-building; settler violence, national security; the war on terror; border control, detention and deportation, refuge and rejection and global mobilities.