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ABSTRACT
Security governance practices are contingent on the imagination of future threats. The “war on terror” has produced a very narrow imagination of threats, almost singularly focused on suspect communities that are Arab, Muslim, or perceived to be Middle Eastern. Discussing how immigration practices in Canada have been influenced by counter-terrorism trends, we argue that “terror identities” are mutable and highly racialised imaginaries that cast indelible marks of suspicion on subjects who are deemed as security threats. Examining the case of a journalist deemed inadmissible to Canada because of her “membership” in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), we argue that terror identities impose authoritative control over the status and lived experiences of individuals who are cast through these racialised labelling practices. Focussing on the shifting characterisation of the PLO by Canadian officials as both political interlocutor and terrorist organisation, our purpose is to highlight how racialised imaginations of terror identities enact punitive and discriminatory practices.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The pseudonym Muna is used to offer a degree of privacy to the individual in the case cited here. While it is possible to access the name of the individual, we believe that it is unnecessary to recirculate it for the purposes of this article since we are discussing the case to highlight how terror identities function in the Canadian context.
2. Security certificates allow Canadian authorities to indefinitely detain suspected terrorists using secret intelligence (Diab Citation2007). Critical analysis of the security certificate regime details how they function “as legal mechanisms of normalized exceptionality” (Larsen and Justin Citation2009, 204; see also Wadhawan Citation2018).
3. Out of 60 entities named in Canada’s list of terrorist organisations, 46 are Arab and/or Muslim, 11 of which are Palestinian or linked to funding Palestinian organisations (see currently listed entities under Public Safety Canada website at https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/ntnl-scrt/cntr-trrrsm/lstd-ntts/crrnt-lstd-ntts-en.aspx. Last accessed 9 January 2020).
5. IRPA section section 19(1)(f)(iii)(b) reads: “19. (1) No person shall be granted admission who is a member of any of the following classes: … (f) persons who there are reasonable grounds to believe … (iii) are or were members of an organisation that there are reasonable grounds to believe is or was engaged in … (b) terrorism.”
6. Filastine al-Thawra is no longer in circulation. It began operation in 1964 but lost a substantial amount of its readership following the establishment of the Palestinian Authority’s al-Hayat al-Jadida (Jamal Citation2000, 48).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jeffrey Monaghan
Jeffrey Monaghan is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. His research examines the policing of social movements as well as broader policing and surveillance practices influenced by the ‘war on terror’. His most recent book, written with Andrew Crosby, is Policing Indigenous Movements (2018).
Madalena Santos
Madalena Santos teaches in the Institute of Criminology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is interested in the criminalization of mobility, migration, and resistance in settler colonial contexts. Her most recent work examines how the settler colonial state of Israel uses digital media as a mechanism of surveillance and policing of social justice and everyday resistance in Palestine.