Family reunification as international history: Rethinking Sino-Canadian relations after 1970
| Author | Laura Madokoro |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702013511192 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
International Journal
68(4) 591–608
!The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702013511192
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Scholarly Essay
Family reunification
as international
history: Rethinking
Sino-Canadian
relations after 1970
Laura Madokoro
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, Columbia University,
NY, USA
Abstract
Building on the emerging scholarship that treats the history of global migration as a
crucial aspect of international history, this article examines the little known 1973 family
reunification agreement between Canada and the People’s Republic of China. The art-
icle contends that, despite its limitations, the agreement was an important milestone in
the history of Sino-Canadian relations. Through a detailed micro-history, the article
reveals the shifting political currents that led to the agreement’s successful negotiation,
highlighting how, by the early 1970s, Canada and other Western nations were embra-
cing the notion of family reunification as an important human rights issue in the ongoing
contests of the global Cold War.
Keywords
Migration, People’s Republic of China, family reunification, human rights, Sino-Canadian
relations
Introduction
In 1954, the Vancouver Herald ran an editorial titled ‘‘Leave Him to the
Communists.’’ The editors described the unsuccessful efforts of Vancouver chef
Ba Chai to sponsor his son from China. His case went all the way to the
Supreme Court because the federal government insisted that the children of con-
cubines were not eligible for sponsorship. The court ruled that a child could be
sponsored only if he or she was considered legitimate under Canadian law.
Corresponding author:
Laura Madokoro, Department of History, Columbia University, 413 Fayerweather Hall, MC 2527, 1180
Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan, NY 10027, USA.
Email: lm2971@columbia.edu
The editors criticized the attempt of immigration officials to prevent sponsorship by
redefining notions of legitimacy. ‘‘Any effort,’’ they declared, ‘‘to sell Canada as a
land of liberty and freedom will occasion sneers of derision from those who suffer
immigration indignities. And the Chinese child will now grow up to absorb the
philosophy of Communism.’’
1
This reference to communism is significant. Over the course of the Cold War,
immigration issues became a testing ground for ideological claims made by both
communist and Western nations, particularly in the context of human rights dis-
cussions.
2
Ba Chai’s case was also a test of family reunification, which Canadian
officials cited regularly as evidence of the country’s just and compassionate immi-
gration program. In the face of decolonization movements and Cold War contests,
family reunification also became a way for the Canadian government to demon-
strate a particular brand of liberal humanitarianism. The immigration agreements
the Canadian government negotiated with India, Pakistan, and Ceylon in 1951
provided for annual quotas (from 100 to 150 people at first) and an undefined
number of non-quota spouses and children under 21. Government officials con-
sidered this approach, which remained highly restrictive, to nevertheless be evi-
dence of ‘‘goodwill.’’
3
Family reunification was therefore more than a domestic immigration policy; in
the context of the Cold War it was infused with political implications.
4
By 1973,
Western nations were pushing family reunification as a freedom of movement
issue at meetings of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
(CSCE). The agreement that resulted from these negotiations, the Helsinki
Accords of 1975, treated the protection of human rights as a key element in the
evolving relations between Western nations and the Soviet bloc. Yet the rhetoric
around human rights and family reunification of the early 1970s disguised the more
complicated and contested nature of this issue for Western nations, including
Canada, whose immigration histories were defined by exclusion rather than
1. ‘‘Leave Him to the Communists,’’ Vancouver Herald, 18 October 1954, 1954 Scrapbook, box 2,
Foon Sien Wong Collection, UBC Archives and Special Collections, Vancouver.
2. This was particularly true in the United States, which used its immigration and refugee policies to
demonstrate its superior way of life over the Soviet Union. Susan Carruthers, Cold War Captives:
Imprisonment, Escape and Brainwashing (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
2009); Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Kim Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War: Toward a New
International Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era (Lund: Lund University Press, 1991);
Aristide Zolberg et al., Escape from Violence:Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing
World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). On humanitarianism and human rights, see
Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2011) and Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). On family reunification and the Cold War, see
Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011); Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after
World War II (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).
3. ‘‘Resume of East Indian immigration to Canada showing concessions granted since 1945,’’ RG26,
vol. 127, file 3–33–15, part 2, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (LAC).
4. See Aloysius Balawdyer, On the Road to Freedom: Canadian-East European Relations, 1963–1990
(Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2005), 45, 52, 57–60.
592 International Journal 68(4)
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