‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’: examining the illegalization of undocumented students in Toronto, Canada

Abstract

In 2007, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) passed the ‘Students Without Legal Immigration Status Policy’, commonly known as the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. While the policy assured undocumented students’ admission to schools on paper, it remains to be fully implemented. In addition, given the discursive connection between immigration status, race, and criminalization, the TDSB has instituted procedures that further illegalize undocumented students including a more onerous and dangerous enrolment procedure. This paper examines the role of schools as border zones for undocumented immigrants in Toronto. It argues that bureaucratic processes and criminalizing rhetoric based on race actively exclude undocumented migrants from the school site.

Keywords:

• Undocumented migration
• schooling
• race
• illegalization

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Paloma Villegas, Patricia Landolt, Shanna Salinas, Aman Luthra, Justin Berry, Beau Bothwell, and Natalia Carvalho-Pinto for their support in writing this manuscript. The author is also very grateful for the kind and productive feedback provided by the two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. The unanimous passing of the policy was a result of community-based pressures and change in discourse mobilized by organizers (see name deleted to maintain integrity of review process).

2. The name has no connection to the USA version of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and is closely informed by sanctuary policies.

3. Policies or procedures that ‘protected’ the institution from the perceived potential abuse of undocumented migrants.

4. ‘Solidarity city’ is used by organizers instead of the more common ‘sanctuary city’ to dispel humanitarian ideas and to construct migrants as active agents.

5. This project, entitled ‘Negotiating Access to Public Goods: Education and Health Care for Toronto Immigrants with Precarious Status,’ was headed by Patricia Landolt and funded by CERIS-The Ontario Metropolis Center, 2009–2010.

6. This project is headed by Patricia Landolt and Luin Goldring.

7. Although the TDSB is a large bureaucracy, within higher levels of administration, job titles and responsibilities become narrowly defined and a single individual occupies that role.

8. See Sime, Fassetta, and McClung (2017) regarding Roma migrants and schooling across Europe, Sharma (2005) for insight into the ways women and children migrating to Canada can be criminalized while rendered as lacking agency, and Johnston, Vasey, and Markovic (2009) for Australian policies concerned about Iraqi refugees.

9. Participants noted that this process was in use prior to the passing of the DADT policy but also used currently as a result of limited implementation

10. Including migrants undergoing a refugee process whose passport was taken away by immigration authorities

11. The wording was changed from ‘must’ to ‘“may” be referred to the head office’.