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ABSTRACT
This article engages with internal records produced by Canadian government agencies surrounding the conflict in Sri Lanka in 2009 to examine techniques and discourses of surveillance and criminalisation directed at Tamil refugees and their supporters in the diaspora. These records demonstrate that the Tamil diaspora was framed as terrorist-sympathisers, human smugglers, and unlawful protesters, and that Tamil asylum seekers were framed as terrorist-travellers, a “danger to the public”, and a “significant threat to the health and safety” of Canadians in order to justify detention and deportation. Offering insight into border security practices through a reading of the settler colonial archive, this article presents a rich empirical account of the intricate workings of racialised technologies of rule operationalised in regimes of border security governance. Embracing a colonial analytic through readings of citizenship, diaspora, and asylum, the archive is interpreted through a critical reading of the coloniality of migration and empire’s politics of security, providing insight into the governance of mobility and precarity, techniques of racialised surveillance, and how border security functions as an iteration of colonialism and as a reverberation of empire.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Access to Information and Freedom of Information Requests Cited
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) 2011-2069
CBSA 2011-2303
CBSA 2011-2324
CBSA 2011-2325
CBSA 2013-3410
CBSA 2014-10,950
Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) 2010-12,770
CIC 2011-3523
CIC 2011-4900
CIC 2012-13,467
Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) 2012-210
CSIS 2012-222
CSIS 2017-202
CSIS 2018-592
CSIS 2018-760
CSIS 2018-762
Global Affairs Canada (GAC) 2013-1354
GAC 2017-2852
Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services 2017-3446
Ottawa Police Service (OPS) 18-748
OPS 19-124
OPS 19-125
Privy Council Office (PCO) 2017-339
Public Safety Canada 2017-191
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) 2009-5990
RCMP 2017-7966
RCMP 2017-7969
RCMP 2017-7973
Notes
1. ITAC was soon after renamed the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre.
2. Freedom of information requests filed with the Ottawa Police Service show that Operation Intersect was operationalised to respond to Tamil protests three times, on 15, 20, and 21 April, 2009 (OPS 18–748; OPS 19–124; OPS 19–125).
3. The following files – CBSA 2011–2303, CBSA 2013–3410, CBSA 2014–10,950, CIC 2012–13,467, CIC 2010-12,770 – exist in addition to those already cited.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrew Crosby
Andrew Crosby is currently completing his PhD in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.