Counter-Archive as Methodology

Activating Oral Histories of the Contested Canada-US Border

Authors

  • Johanna Reynolds Centre for Refugee Studies, York University
  • Grace Wu Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University
  • Julie Young Department of Geography and Environment, University of Lethbridge

Keywords:

Canada-US border, oral histories, counter-archive, refuge

Abstract

Remembering Refuge: Between Sanctuary and Solidarity is a counter-archive based on oral history interviews with people who crossed the Canada-US border to seek refuge and advocacy groups working at this border in two moments of crisis: the 1980s Central American crisis and the 2017-19 crisis at Roxham Road. This paper foregrounds counter-archiving as a methodology, building from the oral histories to illustrate how borders and bordering practices are navigated and contested and how these lived experiences push back at state-directed logics and narratives of migration. By drawing connections across past and present struggles over mobilities and borders, we offer a critical genealogy of refuge around the Canada-US border. The oral histories collectively and individually contest state-led narratives of migration as a ‘crisis,’ the need for borders to be further securitized, and specifically of the Canadian state’s generous humanitarianism towards a select few. We introduce the methodological choices, contexts, and limitations of the project’s research design, and present two themes that emerged from the oral histories: the contested element of ‘choice’ in migration movements and the important roles played by resistance and refusal in the working out of borders. Finally, we emphasize that relationships between borders are crucial to understanding the histories of asylum around this border, and the political shift activated by the counter-archive of centering borders as lived, experienced, contested or refused.

Author Biographies

Johanna Reynolds, Centre for Refugee Studies, York University

Johanna Reynolds is a researcher and project manager at York University’s Centre for Refugee

Studies in Toronto and an affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University.

Grace Wu, Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University

Grace Wu is an interdisciplinary researcher and writer who works at the intersections of storytelling, technology, and public engagement. She has over a decade of experience in refugee advocacy, human rights, and technology, including at Amnesty International and the Canadian Council for Refugees. She has contributed to columns in the Canadian and Caribbean press about migration policies in the Americas and is co-author of a chapter in, The Future of US Empire in The Americas: The Trump Administration and Beyond (Routledge, 2020). Grace holds a Master of Arts in Immigration and Settlement Studies from Ryerson University.

Julie Young, Department of Geography and Environment, University of Lethbridge

Dr. Julie E.E. Young is Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Border Studies in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Lethbridge. Much of her research to date has focused on how migrants and advocates in Canada-US and Mexico-Guatemala border communities interact with and challenge those borders. She is co-editor, with Dr. Susan McGrath, of the open-access book, Mobilizing Global Knowledge: Refugee Research in an Age of Displacement (University of Calgary Press, 2019).

References

Blanchfield, Mike, “‘Daddy, Let’s Go to Canada’: The Fearful March From Trump to Canada,” Macleans, August 27, 2017, macleans.ca/news/canada/daddy-lets-go-to-canada-the-fearful-march-from-trump-to-canada/

Canadian Press. “Canada Won’t Deport Salvadorans,” Windsor Star, January 30, 1987, A1.

Carastathis, Anna, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Gada Mahrouse, and Leila Whitley. 2018. “Introduction: Intersectional Feminist Interventions in the “Refugee Crisis,” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 34(1), 3-15.

Chesoi, Madalina, and Robert Mason. 2021. Overview of the Canada–United States Safe Third Country Agreement. Background Paper. Publication No. 2020-70-E. https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/202070E#ftn56.

Chew, May, Susan Lord and Janine Marchessault. 2018. “Introduction: Archive / Counter-Archives.” Public 57: 5-10. http://www.publicjournal.ca/public-57-archivecounter-archives/.

Côté-Boucher, Karine, Luna Vives and Jannard, Louis-Philippe. 2023. Chronicle of a “Crisis” Foretold: Asylum seekers and the case of Roxham Road on the Canada-US border. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 41(2): 408-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544221127614

Crittenden, Ann. 1988. Sanctuary: A Story of American Conscience and the Law in Collision. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

De León, Jason. 2015. The Land of Open Graves. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 2000. “Hostipitality,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 5(3): 3-18.

Edmonds, Kevin. 2017. “Haiti: Pushed Out and Pulled Away: The End of Temporary Protected Status,” NACLA Report on the Americas (49) 4: 398-401.

Espiritu, Yen Le. 2014. Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

García, Maria C. 2006. Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Harris, Kathleen. 2019. “Liberals move to stem surge in asylum seekers — but new measure will stop just fraction of claimants,” CBC News, 10 April. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/refugee-asylum-seekers-border-changes-1.5092192.

Hyndman, Jennifer, and Alison Mountz. 2008. “Another Brick in the Wall? Neo-refoulement and the Externalization of Asylum by Australia and Europe,” Government and Opposition 43(2): 249-269.

Hyndman, Jennifer, and Alison Mountz. 2007. “Refuge or Refusal: The Geography of Exclusion.” In Violent Geographies, edited by Derek Gregory and Allan Pred, 77-92. New York: Routledge.

IRB. 2019. “Refugee Protection Claims Made by Irregular Border Crossers.” Available at: https://irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/statistics/Pages/irregular-border-crossers-countries.aspx.

Johnson, Corey, Reece Jones, Anssi Paasi, Louise Amoore, Alison Mountz, Mark Salter, and Chris Rumford. 2011. “Interventions on Rethinking 'the Border' in Border Studies,” Political Geography (30)2: 61-69. https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/C_Johnson_Interventions_2011.pdf

Jones, Reece. 2016. Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move. New York: Verso.

Kelley, Ninette and Michael Trebilcock. 1998. The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Keshavarz, Mahmoud. 2018 “Undesigning Borders: Urban Spaces of Borders and Counter-Practices of Looking.” In Undesign: Critical Practices at the Intersection of Art and Design, edited by Gretchen Coombs, Andrew McNamara and Gavin Sade, 161-174. New York: Routledge.

Keshavarz, Mahmoud and Christina Zetterlund. 2013. “A Method for Materialising Borders.” Tensta Museum: Reports from a New Sweden, 27-30. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1406353/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Labman, Shauna, and Jamie Liew. 2019. “Law and Moral Licensing: The Making of Illegality and Illegitimacy Along the Border,” International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 5(3): 188-211.

Lacroix, Marie. 2004. “Canadian Refugee Policy and the Social Construction of the Refugee Claimant Subjectivity: Understanding Refugeeness,” Journal of Refugee Studies 17(2): 147–166.

Llewellyn, Kristina R. and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (eds). 2017. Oral History and Education: Theories, Dilemmas and Practices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Loza, M. 2016. “From Ephemeral to Enduring: The Politics of Recording and Exhibiting Bracero Memory,” The Public Historian 38(2): 23-41.

Macklin, Audrey. 2005. “Disappearing Refugees: Reflections on the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 36: 365-426.

Mainwaring, Cetta. 2016. “Migrant Agency: Negotiating Borders and Migration Controls,” Migration Studies 4(3): 289-308.

Malkki, Liisa H. 1996. “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization,” Cultural Anthropology 11(3): 377–404.

Miller, Todd. 2019. Empire of Borders: The Expansion of U.S. Borders Around the World. London: Verso.

Nasser, Wael. 2023. “A Mixed-Method Study on Understanding Irregular Migration to Canada Through Technology-Mediated Communication: YouTube as a Case Study.” MA thesis. University of Lethbridge.

Nguyen, Vinh, and Thy Phu (Eds.). 2021. Refugee States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Nolin, Catherine. 2006. Transnational Ruptures: Gender and Forced Migration. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Nyers, Peter. 2006. Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency. New York: Routledge.

Ormiston, Susan. “How Thousands of Asylum Seekers Have Turned Roxham Road into a De Facto Border Crossing,” CBC News, September 29 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/the-national-roxham-road-immigration-border-1.5169249

Paik, Naomi. 2016. Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps Since World War II. University of North Carolina Press.

Reynolds, Johanna and Jennifer Hyndman. 2021. Shifting Grounds of Asylum in Canadian Public Discourse and Policy. In Refugee States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada, edited by Vinh Nguyen and Thy Phu, 23-45. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Rosenberg, Mica, Delphine Schrank, Kristina Cooke, Julia Love, Loren Elliott, & Encarni Pindado. 2019. “A Common Road to Different Fates,” Reuters, October 10. https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-IMMIGRATION-PROFILE/0100B2FK1NP/index.html.

Rosinbum, John. 2015. “‘We Are in the Middle of Two Great Powers’: Refugees, Activists, and Government during the Plattsburgh Border Crisis of 1987,” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 31(2). https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40319

Siegenthaler Fiona, and Cathrine Bublatzky. 2021. “(Un)Sighted Archives of Migration—Spaces of Encounter and Resistance: An Introduction,” Visual Anthropology 34(4): 283-295. DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2021.1944766

Tasker, John Paul. “Far-Right, Anti-Fascist Protesters Temporarily Shut Quebec Border Crossing.” CBC News, September 30, 2017, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/far-right-antifa-clash-across-canada-1.4315053

Walia, Harsha. 2013. Undoing Border Imperialism. Chico, CA: AK Press.

Walters, William. 2006. “Rethinking Borders Beyond the State.” Comparative European Politics 4(2/3): 141-159.

Woodhouse, Leighton Akio. 2018. “Trump’s “Shithole Countries” Remark is at the Center of a Lawsuit to Reinstate Protections for Immigrants,” The Intercept, June 28., https://theintercept.com/2018/06/28/trump-tps-shithole-countries-lawsuit/.

Young, Julie E.E. 2021. “The Border as Archive: Reframing the Crisis Mode of Governance at the Canada-US Border,” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography (29)4: 568-588. DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2021.1882951.

Young, Julie E.E. 2019. “Seeing Like a Border City: Refugee Politics at the Borders of City and Nation-State,” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(3): 407-423. DOI: 10.1177/2399654418790765.

Young, Julie E.E, Luann Good Gingrich, Adrienne Wiebe, & Miriam T. Harder. 2017. “Tactical Borderwork: Central American Migrant Women Negotiating the Southern Border of Mexico.” In Transnational Social Policy: Social Support in a World on the Move, edited by Luann Good Gingrich and Stefan Köngeter, 200-221. New York: Routledge.

Young, Julie E.E., Johanna Reynolds, and Peter Nyers. 2019. “Introduction: Dis/placing the borders of North America,” International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 5(1-2): 1-11.

Downloads

Published

2023-08-31

How to Cite

Reynolds, J., Wu, G., & Young, J. (2023). Counter-Archive as Methodology: Activating Oral Histories of the Contested Canada-US Border. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 22(4), 1197–1214. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/2211

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 4 (2023): Themed Section: Departures, Arrivals, and Encounters: Feminist Understandings of Borders and Human Im/mobilities

Section

Themed Section: Departures, Arrivals, and Encounters: Feminist Understandings of

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Johanna Reynolds, Grace Wu, Julie Young

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Authors agree to publish their articles in ACME under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To read and review the agreement, click here. In line with fair attribution and proper permissions, note any copyrights of materials cited in your paper. Do not use materials that are not fair use without express written consent.