Fishing for Precarious Status Migrants: Surveillant Assemblages of Migrant Illegalization in Toronto, Canada
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00706.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2015 |
| Author | Paloma E. Villegas |
| Date | 01 June 2015 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 42, NUMBER 2, JUNE 2015
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 230±52
Fishing for Precarious Status Migrants: Surveillant
Assemblages of Migrant Illegalization in Toronto, Canada
Paloma E. Villegas*
Migrants with precarious immigration status in Canada encounter
surveillant assemblages of illegalization that threaten their safety and
ability to access social goods. Drawing on qualitative interviews,
media stories, and government documents, this article analyses how
surveillance is produced through various ways of knowing, by various
actors, and in different institutions in Canada. My case study demon-
strates that the sites of operation for surveillant assemblages of
illegalization extend beyond immigration authorities and into more
diffuse sources including the police, the health-care sector, banks,
employment agencies, and acquaintances. I also suggest that there is a
level of overlap and integration among such sites, including the use of
shared databases and the possibility that any interaction with pre-
carious status migrants can be reported to immigration authorities.
INTRODUCTION
While surveillance plays a big role for everyone in contemporary society, for
precarious status migrants ± those without full, permanent, stable status ±
practices of surveillance carry the possibility of detection. In fact, sur-
veillance practices can be used to reinforce the internal borders of the nation
and can lead to expulsion. Scholarship on immigration and deportation often
foregrounds the role of immigration authorities in surveying precarious
status migrants. However, while the pursuit of migrants with removal orders
1
230
*University of Toronto, Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, ON
M1C 1A4, Canada
paloma.villegas@utoronto.ca
I would like to thank Patricia Landolt, Kari Dehli, Roland Sintos Coloma, Francisco
Villegas, and the three anonymous reviewers for the generous feedback they provided to
different drafts of this article.
1 In Canada, removal orders are issued when someone is not granted permission to
remain the country. Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is responsible for this
ß2015 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2015 Cardiff University Law School
through known addresses, workplaces, and other networks is a common
practice of immigration authorities, other institutions or individuals also
participate in the tracking, policing, and possible deportation of precarious
status migrants. If we imagine their surveillance as not only emerging from a
top-down hierarchical process
2
involving immigration authorities, we can
begin to analyse its other sites of operation. One possible avenue for this is
an examination of how surveillance practices can be used as a tool to
reinforce the boundaries of citizenship and legal status as well as how this
process occurs through both concrete and diffuse practices.
This article analyses surveillance through the lens of assemblages. I draw
from Haggerty and Ericson to define `surveillant assemblages' as ensembles
of surveillance technologies and practices (national security, consumer
spending, and so on) that have the power to expand the realm of what can be
surveyed as well as to integrate already existing surveillance processes.
3
For
precarious status migrants, the result is a greater potential for identifying
their presence and actions as `illegal'. I begin by elaborating on surveillant
assemblages of illegalization. I then discuss examples of a surveillant
assemblage of illegalization in Canada focusing on the role of immigration
and policing authorities, social service providers, work-related institutions,
including banks and cheque-cashing businesses, as well as differently
situated actors.
`SURVEILLANT ASSEMBLAGES' OF ILLEGALIZATION
Scholars have used the concept of assemblage to analyse phenomena in a
variety of contexts including global processes,
4
national contexts,
5
migra-
tion,
6
queer identities, and homonationalism.
7
Following Deleuze and
231
process. It is a de facto deportation although the CBSA has three types of removal
orders: departure, exclusion, and deportation, each with different conditions and
effects. See CBSA, `Imm igration Violations ', at a-asfc.gc.ca/
security-securite/violation-infraction-eng.html>.
2 S.P. Hier, `Probing the Surveillant Assemblage: On the Dialectics of Surveillance
Practices as Processes of Social Control' (2003) 1 Surveillance & Society 399.
3 K.D. Haggerty and R.V. Ericson, `The Surveillant Assemblage' (2000) 51 Brit. J. of
Sociology 605.
4 A. Ong and S.J. Collier, `Global Assemblages, Anthropological Problems' in Global
Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, eds. A.
Ong and S.J. Collier (2005); S. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval
to Global Assemblages (2006).
5 S.B. Wiley, `Nation as transnational assemblage: Three moments in Chilean media
history' in Animations (of Deleuze and Guattari), ed. J.D. Slack (2003).
6 P.E. Villegas, `Assembling and (Re)Marking Migrant Illegalizat ion: Mexican
Migrants with Precarious Status in Toronto', PhD thesis, OISE/UT (2012).
7 J.K. Puar, `Queer Times, Queer Assemblages' (2005) 23 Social Text 121.
ß2015 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2015 Cardiff University Law School
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