Ameil Joseph | McMaster University (original) (raw)

Papers by Ameil Joseph

Critical Social Work, 2024 Vol. 25, SPECIAL ISSUE, 2024

In this paper, I draw on the contributions of Amy Rossiter to engage the deeply tragic project an... more In this paper, I draw on the contributions of Amy Rossiter to engage the deeply tragic project and consequences of the proposed implementation of entry to social work practice examinations in the province of Ontario, Canada and beyond. Rossiterian attentions to complicities with historical forms of erasure, erosion and violence, projects of innocence making, and methodologies that obliterate attentions to colonialities offer ongoing insights for how just analyses in social work can and must be defended. Specifically, by means of unwavering opposition to racist, ableist, neoliberal/colonial examination technologies in social work. From a respect for Rossiter’s attentions to the ethics of the encounter, the Gadamerian concept of horizons of interpretation, unsettling social work, the practice of questioning the violence of totalizing methods, and the possibilities that arise from struggle, resistance and solidarity are explored for their infinite potentials for transformation. These analyses contribute from the place of proposed oblivion, to tap into the that which allows for escape and freedom, and a sense of justice beyond the logics of erosive, violent knowledge technologies operating in and through the proposed social work entry-to-practice examinations.

Critical and Radical Social Work

Health Reform Observer - Observatoire des Réformes de Santé, 2023

This paper reviews the advocacy efforts, community organizing, establishment, operation, and less... more This paper reviews the advocacy efforts, community organizing, establishment, operation,
and lessons learned from a project in Hamilton, Ontario to build the first-ever COVID-19
clinic for Black and other racialized people, people with disabilities, and those experiencing
barriers to access COVID-19 vaccinations. Community advocates, academics, and health
leaders who are from and serve Black and other racialized and marginalized groups in
Hamilton responded to the overwhelming impacts of COVID-19 on marginalized Black and
other racialized groups in Hamilton through relational solidarities that allowed for community members to lead the advocacy, design, and operation of a clinic to serve those most
in need with the knowledge and expertise most capable of such an intervention. Amidst
resistance of municipal and provincial officials to act for healthy equity, racist backlash,
and problematic organizational and institutional responses to the needs of Black and other
racialized community leaders, Restoration House clinic advocates and community leaders
responded to the demand by maintaining focus on community through collective solidarities. The Restoration House example offers several contributions to how we think about
community and public health advocacy, organizing, and operational interventions through
crises and beyond.
Cet article passe en revue la campagne de revendication, les efforts d’organisation communautaire, la mise en place, le fonctionnement et les leçons tirées d’un projet mené à
Hamilton, en Ontario, et visant à établir la toute première clinique COVID-19 pour les personnes Noires et racialisées, les personnes handicapées et celles qui rencontrent des obstacles
à l’accès aux vaccinations COVID-19. Les défenseurs de la communauté, les universitaires
et les dirigeants du secteur de la santé issus et au service des personnes Noires, racialisées
ou marginalisées de Hamilton voulaient trouver une réponse adéquate aux effets disproportionnés de la COVID-19 sur les personnes Noires, racialisées ou marginalisées de Hamilton
en utilisant les solidarités relationnelles qui ont permis aux membres de la communauté
de diriger la revendication, la conception et les activités d’une clinique pour servir les personnes qui en ont le plus besoin avec les connaissances et l’expertise les plus à même de
mener une telle intervention. Dans un contexte d’hésitation des autorités municipales et
provinciales à agir résolument pour l’équité en santé, de réactions racistes et de réponses
organisationnelles et institutionnelles défaillantes aux besoins des leaders de la communauté
Noire et d’autres communautés racialisées, les défenseurs de la clinique Restoration House
et les dirigeants communautaires ont répondu à la demande en maintenant l’accent sur la
communauté par le biais de solidarités collectives. L’exemple de la Restoration House apporte plusieurs contributions à notre réflexion sur la défense des intérêts de la communauté
et de la santé publique, l’organisation et les interventions opérationnelles en cas de crise et
au-delà.

Routledge eBooks, Oct 4, 2022

Civil Society Engagement, 2017

Intersectional approaches are often called upon in social work education and practice to conceptu... more Intersectional approaches are often called upon in social work education and practice to conceptualize identities (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc.) and forms of oppression and privilege (racism, sexism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, mentalism, etc.) as separate yet mutually constitutive categories. An ongoing problematic within such approaches is the propensity to rely on predetermined analytical systems of oppression interlocking or aspects of identity intersecting. I suggest that it is possible to consider the material effects of oppression that are targeting delineated groups without requiring the technologies of difference (including analytical categories named upon difference, i.e., racism, patriarchy, ableism, sexism, etc.) to advance positions of social justice. These technologies of difference were forged through violent means for colonial and imperial projects. As formulated through a study of the practice of deportation for those identified with men...

The Legacies of Institutionalisation, 2020

Recent nationalist/nativist attentions exemplified through discussions about Brexit in the United... more Recent nationalist/nativist attentions exemplified through discussions about Brexit in the United Kingdom (UK) and Donald Trump in the United States (US) have highlighted the need to re-examine reactions of consternation to immigration. Anti-immigration discourses are not new and have always been slippery or evasive. They can be historically presented and perceived as seldom, sparse, extreme or held in abeyance, while depictions of and reactions to immigration are simultaneously articulated with adulation in public performance and abnegation in policy practice. The latest varieties of advances in anti-immigration discourses have been powerfully, publicly productive for policy and influence on a global scale. Theses discourses wield both the insidious ideas that are carried from the past and the direct and brazen contemporary forms of racism and colonial hatred that work together to rationalise institutionalised, state-authorised dehumanisation and violence. These ideas produce and reproduce historically entrenched positions of institutionalised advantage and disadvantage,...

British Journal of Social Work, 2021

The use of simulated service users or ‘clients’ in social work education has lacked critical anal... more The use of simulated service users or ‘clients’ in social work education has lacked critical analysis in research and teaching. What is often overlooked are attentions to how constituting essentialised clients and simulating them advances historically entrenched forms of injustice in social work education and practice. This gap in research and literature in social work education should signal to the field an issue with the pervasiveness of the hegemonies of biomedical disciplinary knowledge in social work. This gap should also highlight the need to ask how, why and to what end is critical analysis an ongoing omission from a pedagogical practice that is proclaimed as very central and essential to social work practice skills education. This article explores some of these gaps in the literature within the social, historical, and political contexts that shape how neoliberalism/colonialism influence the perpetuation of these omissions in social work education. Specifically, this article ...

Containing Madness, 2018

In March 2016, two men died in Canadian immigration detention facilities “in the care of Canada B... more In March 2016, two men died in Canadian immigration detention facilities “in the care of Canada Border Services Agency in less than a week” (Black 2016). Francisco Javier Romero Astorga (a Chilean national, unreported reasons for detention) died in Maplehurst Correctional Centre in the province of Ontario on Sunday, March 13 (Kassam 2016). Also in Ontario, Melkioro Gahungu (a Burundian national who was convicted of killing his wife in 2009) died in the Toronto East Detention Centre on Monday, March 7 (Cain 2016). These events triggered an atypical public reaction to the existence, purpose, and conditions of immigration holding centres and questioned the human rights protections for people being detained. This chapter explores these recent events by situating them in two key historical parallel discourses that underscore the broader colonial project, those pertaining to immigration and eugenics, to consider how we understand and talk about the practice and implications of immigration detention. Contemporary concerns about immigration detention practices in Canada reflect a historical confluence of shifting, colliding, submerging, and (re)emerging ideas about threat, dangerousness, foreignness, and criminality (Chadha 2008; Menzies 1998). These ideas have been forged over time, globally, through projects of nation building, population regulation, surveillance, and control (Dowbiggin 1997; McLaren 1990).

Social Identities, 2019

In this paper four critical scholars/ activists reflect on the complex institutional and public r... more In this paper four critical scholars/ activists reflect on the complex institutional and public responses to recent white supremacist events on Canadian campuses and the equity discussions they have affected. Specifically, we interrogate practices, which reify and reinsure positions of dominance and human/social hierarchy in four ways. To begin, (1) we interrogate freedom of speech and freedom of expression positions, as well as the reliance on critique of neoliberalism to supplant analyses of racism and colonial logics, to identify their role in preserving white fragility. Next, (2) we provide a local media analysis of academe's responses to white supremacy on campus to trace the discursive moves that obscure institutional racism. Following these contextual scaffoldings, (3) we explore the ways equity projects within institutions remain projects protecting and preserving whiteness while exploiting the politics of identity. Finally, (4) we carefully reflect on the various modes of inclusion in the academy, which produce racialized scholars(hip) to be complicit in the reproduction of racial thinking, alongside and occluded by institutional narratives of equity and progress. Critical questions are raised regarding the possibilities, complicities and complexities of achieving equity and transformation in the academy, as well as the role of racialized scholars(hip) in this work.

British Journal of Social Work, 2016

Researchers and practitioners in social work value qualitative research for the opportunity to en... more Researchers and practitioners in social work value qualitative research for the opportunity to engage with issues of social justice including relations of power, and attention to the political, historical and social relations of difference. Interview narratives are all too often accepted at face value as authentic, true voice, representing experience without analysis of what is being represented politically. An analysis of the relations and operations of power provides additional contextual insight to face-value analyses with further opportunities for understanding and social change. When left uninterrogated, face-value analyses are permeable to the reproduction of knowledge without critical analyses of race, ability, sexual orientation or gender and can perpetuate modernist ideas that knowledge is observable and transparent and (re)institutes Western/Eurocentric knowledge as dominant/superior. This paper explores critical reflections on our research and provides a discussion of some of the opportunities identified from our research experiences. Through a discussion of the representation of voice as a production in progress; an attention to analyses for historical, social and political positioning; and a critique of face-value analyses, a conceptual framework is offered that may assist researchers to resist reliance on or accepting of analyses as transparent that eludes an analysis of racism and other forms of discrimination.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

The complexities of the mental health field are representative of the predicament of our present ... more The complexities of the mental health field are representative of the predicament of our present human condition. This complexity demands an acknowledgment of the historical, social, political, physical, and psychological aspects of people that have been created, inherited, and reproduced. The field also demands a consideration of the effects of these understandings of people as they become embedded in policies, practices, disciplines, and the law. An appreciation for this confluence of aspects of the human condition is crucial for an understanding of both the foundations of our wellbeing and the sources of our suffering.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

In this chapter we detail an overview of the cases and case data from the Appeals Division of the... more In this chapter we detail an overview of the cases and case data from the Appeals Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board as well as cases that go on to the Federal Court of Canada analyzed in this study. These documents are the only known public records on deportation and were retrieved from the Canadian Legal Information Institute database and the Federal Court decision database. These cases provide both a representation of the technologies, practices, and laws at work at the confluence of mental health, immigration, and criminal justice systems specific to deportation in Canada, while also depicting a unique and powerful act of resistance to systems of dehumanization, identification, incarceration, and removal in Canada. The analysis of the descriptive data for the 75 cases matching the criteria (those appeal cases for deportation for those identified with mental health issues) from 2001 to 2011, (the most complete and recent years for analysis at the commencement of this study) reveals the overwhelming prioritization of racialized countries for deportation. The idea of fair procedures or due process are also held suspect when we see that an overwhelming majority of cases result in decisions for either deportation or the imposition of heavy restrictions, confinement, forced treatment, and reporting requirements.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

In this chapter, I describe the approaches used in this study and argue for the necessity of a po... more In this chapter, I describe the approaches used in this study and argue for the necessity of a postcolonial analysis of confluence. I also outline this study’s focus on historical continuities by attending to the temporal (that which is dynamic and changing and that which is continuous yet carried through time). I outline what is drawn on (partially) from Foucauldian genealogical analysis and how this method departs from this. I also illustrate how the method used in this study attends to material continuities (how projects of nation building relied/rely on eugenic and racial knowledge formations and disciplinary processes and laws) through an attention to processes that discursively frame people to construct, legitimize, and authorize violence. By acknowledging that all our interpretive and discursive structures are subject to historical influence, it is also pertinent that we disclose the horizon of these interpretations. As Hans-Georg Gadamer made very clear in his magnum opus Truth and Method, every person has a historically effected consciousness, making claims to objective knowledge impossible. Through our concurrence with this position, we can appreciate that all vantage points are partial, contingent, and subject to representation and interpretation. The horizon of interpretation in this study is committedly focused with an attention to the levels of analyses and contribution provided by postcolonial theory.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

In this chapter, specific attention is directed to colonial practices and technologies of violenc... more In this chapter, specific attention is directed to colonial practices and technologies of violence and difference at work at the confluence of mental health, criminal justice, and immigration systems. Here the intricate processes required for Orientalism are recognized as dividing practices and gendered discourses at our confluence. Also, the colonial practices and violence of erasure (the elimination of voice or aspects relevant to any consideration of a person including his/her history and circumstances), of appropriation (of acts of resistance as “evidence” used for the constructing of identities worthy of violence, and for the rationalization of positions that legitimize violence) and the processes of dehumanization are explored for their use value in colonial and imperial projects. The establishment and implementation of professional hierarchies and disciplinary hegemonies at the confluence of immigration, criminal justice, and mental health are interrogated for their imbrication with and reflection on the establishment, and reproduction of human hierarchies and hegemonies of knowledge and authority. These practices, policies, and technologies are also challenged for their complicity in the remaking of North-South division, their participation in the reinforcement of ideas of nationalism and the utilization of moral and ethical arguments for the justification of atrocities.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

The term “forensic mental health system” is often used to refer to the intersections of the menta... more The term “forensic mental health system” is often used to refer to the intersections of the mental health system and the criminal justice system (Betteridge & Barbaree, 2004). Here, I will provide a brief overview of aspects of the Ontario Mental Health Act, the Criminal Code of Canada, and the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act relevant to the topic of deportation for those identified with mental health issues. The Mental Health Act applies to every psychiatric facility with regards to rights or prohibitions for people identified as having a mental disorder. It includes provisions or restrictions regarding voluntary and involuntary examination, admission, treatment, consent, detention, psychosurgery, and community treatment orders. These policies and laws are continually being rearticulated to reinforce ideas of an unrehabilitatable criminal, an untreatable mentally ill person, and undeserving foreign alien. The Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act passed the House of Commons on June 19, 2013; the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act received royal assent on June 20, 2013 (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2013b; Department of Justice, 2013). These laws are dependent on the continuations of colonial technologies and practices that channel ideas of racial hierarchy, eugenics, and foreign exoticism. Individually, these changes and laws can be presented as progressive maneuvers working to improve safety, save tax dollars, or to be responsive to the public while adhering to old systems of refusal of entry, confinement, punishment, containment and ejection.

Disability & Society, 2015

ABSTRACT

Social Work in Mental Health, 2014

The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

Critical Criminology, 2013

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to crimina... more Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Critical Social Work, 2024 Vol. 25, SPECIAL ISSUE, 2024

In this paper, I draw on the contributions of Amy Rossiter to engage the deeply tragic project an... more In this paper, I draw on the contributions of Amy Rossiter to engage the deeply tragic project and consequences of the proposed implementation of entry to social work practice examinations in the province of Ontario, Canada and beyond. Rossiterian attentions to complicities with historical forms of erasure, erosion and violence, projects of innocence making, and methodologies that obliterate attentions to colonialities offer ongoing insights for how just analyses in social work can and must be defended. Specifically, by means of unwavering opposition to racist, ableist, neoliberal/colonial examination technologies in social work. From a respect for Rossiter’s attentions to the ethics of the encounter, the Gadamerian concept of horizons of interpretation, unsettling social work, the practice of questioning the violence of totalizing methods, and the possibilities that arise from struggle, resistance and solidarity are explored for their infinite potentials for transformation. These analyses contribute from the place of proposed oblivion, to tap into the that which allows for escape and freedom, and a sense of justice beyond the logics of erosive, violent knowledge technologies operating in and through the proposed social work entry-to-practice examinations.

Critical and Radical Social Work

Health Reform Observer - Observatoire des Réformes de Santé, 2023

This paper reviews the advocacy efforts, community organizing, establishment, operation, and less... more This paper reviews the advocacy efforts, community organizing, establishment, operation,
and lessons learned from a project in Hamilton, Ontario to build the first-ever COVID-19
clinic for Black and other racialized people, people with disabilities, and those experiencing
barriers to access COVID-19 vaccinations. Community advocates, academics, and health
leaders who are from and serve Black and other racialized and marginalized groups in
Hamilton responded to the overwhelming impacts of COVID-19 on marginalized Black and
other racialized groups in Hamilton through relational solidarities that allowed for community members to lead the advocacy, design, and operation of a clinic to serve those most
in need with the knowledge and expertise most capable of such an intervention. Amidst
resistance of municipal and provincial officials to act for healthy equity, racist backlash,
and problematic organizational and institutional responses to the needs of Black and other
racialized community leaders, Restoration House clinic advocates and community leaders
responded to the demand by maintaining focus on community through collective solidarities. The Restoration House example offers several contributions to how we think about
community and public health advocacy, organizing, and operational interventions through
crises and beyond.
Cet article passe en revue la campagne de revendication, les efforts d’organisation communautaire, la mise en place, le fonctionnement et les leçons tirées d’un projet mené à
Hamilton, en Ontario, et visant à établir la toute première clinique COVID-19 pour les personnes Noires et racialisées, les personnes handicapées et celles qui rencontrent des obstacles
à l’accès aux vaccinations COVID-19. Les défenseurs de la communauté, les universitaires
et les dirigeants du secteur de la santé issus et au service des personnes Noires, racialisées
ou marginalisées de Hamilton voulaient trouver une réponse adéquate aux effets disproportionnés de la COVID-19 sur les personnes Noires, racialisées ou marginalisées de Hamilton
en utilisant les solidarités relationnelles qui ont permis aux membres de la communauté
de diriger la revendication, la conception et les activités d’une clinique pour servir les personnes qui en ont le plus besoin avec les connaissances et l’expertise les plus à même de
mener une telle intervention. Dans un contexte d’hésitation des autorités municipales et
provinciales à agir résolument pour l’équité en santé, de réactions racistes et de réponses
organisationnelles et institutionnelles défaillantes aux besoins des leaders de la communauté
Noire et d’autres communautés racialisées, les défenseurs de la clinique Restoration House
et les dirigeants communautaires ont répondu à la demande en maintenant l’accent sur la
communauté par le biais de solidarités collectives. L’exemple de la Restoration House apporte plusieurs contributions à notre réflexion sur la défense des intérêts de la communauté
et de la santé publique, l’organisation et les interventions opérationnelles en cas de crise et
au-delà.

Routledge eBooks, Oct 4, 2022

Civil Society Engagement, 2017

Intersectional approaches are often called upon in social work education and practice to conceptu... more Intersectional approaches are often called upon in social work education and practice to conceptualize identities (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc.) and forms of oppression and privilege (racism, sexism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, mentalism, etc.) as separate yet mutually constitutive categories. An ongoing problematic within such approaches is the propensity to rely on predetermined analytical systems of oppression interlocking or aspects of identity intersecting. I suggest that it is possible to consider the material effects of oppression that are targeting delineated groups without requiring the technologies of difference (including analytical categories named upon difference, i.e., racism, patriarchy, ableism, sexism, etc.) to advance positions of social justice. These technologies of difference were forged through violent means for colonial and imperial projects. As formulated through a study of the practice of deportation for those identified with men...

The Legacies of Institutionalisation, 2020

Recent nationalist/nativist attentions exemplified through discussions about Brexit in the United... more Recent nationalist/nativist attentions exemplified through discussions about Brexit in the United Kingdom (UK) and Donald Trump in the United States (US) have highlighted the need to re-examine reactions of consternation to immigration. Anti-immigration discourses are not new and have always been slippery or evasive. They can be historically presented and perceived as seldom, sparse, extreme or held in abeyance, while depictions of and reactions to immigration are simultaneously articulated with adulation in public performance and abnegation in policy practice. The latest varieties of advances in anti-immigration discourses have been powerfully, publicly productive for policy and influence on a global scale. Theses discourses wield both the insidious ideas that are carried from the past and the direct and brazen contemporary forms of racism and colonial hatred that work together to rationalise institutionalised, state-authorised dehumanisation and violence. These ideas produce and reproduce historically entrenched positions of institutionalised advantage and disadvantage,...

British Journal of Social Work, 2021

The use of simulated service users or ‘clients’ in social work education has lacked critical anal... more The use of simulated service users or ‘clients’ in social work education has lacked critical analysis in research and teaching. What is often overlooked are attentions to how constituting essentialised clients and simulating them advances historically entrenched forms of injustice in social work education and practice. This gap in research and literature in social work education should signal to the field an issue with the pervasiveness of the hegemonies of biomedical disciplinary knowledge in social work. This gap should also highlight the need to ask how, why and to what end is critical analysis an ongoing omission from a pedagogical practice that is proclaimed as very central and essential to social work practice skills education. This article explores some of these gaps in the literature within the social, historical, and political contexts that shape how neoliberalism/colonialism influence the perpetuation of these omissions in social work education. Specifically, this article ...

Containing Madness, 2018

In March 2016, two men died in Canadian immigration detention facilities “in the care of Canada B... more In March 2016, two men died in Canadian immigration detention facilities “in the care of Canada Border Services Agency in less than a week” (Black 2016). Francisco Javier Romero Astorga (a Chilean national, unreported reasons for detention) died in Maplehurst Correctional Centre in the province of Ontario on Sunday, March 13 (Kassam 2016). Also in Ontario, Melkioro Gahungu (a Burundian national who was convicted of killing his wife in 2009) died in the Toronto East Detention Centre on Monday, March 7 (Cain 2016). These events triggered an atypical public reaction to the existence, purpose, and conditions of immigration holding centres and questioned the human rights protections for people being detained. This chapter explores these recent events by situating them in two key historical parallel discourses that underscore the broader colonial project, those pertaining to immigration and eugenics, to consider how we understand and talk about the practice and implications of immigration detention. Contemporary concerns about immigration detention practices in Canada reflect a historical confluence of shifting, colliding, submerging, and (re)emerging ideas about threat, dangerousness, foreignness, and criminality (Chadha 2008; Menzies 1998). These ideas have been forged over time, globally, through projects of nation building, population regulation, surveillance, and control (Dowbiggin 1997; McLaren 1990).

Social Identities, 2019

In this paper four critical scholars/ activists reflect on the complex institutional and public r... more In this paper four critical scholars/ activists reflect on the complex institutional and public responses to recent white supremacist events on Canadian campuses and the equity discussions they have affected. Specifically, we interrogate practices, which reify and reinsure positions of dominance and human/social hierarchy in four ways. To begin, (1) we interrogate freedom of speech and freedom of expression positions, as well as the reliance on critique of neoliberalism to supplant analyses of racism and colonial logics, to identify their role in preserving white fragility. Next, (2) we provide a local media analysis of academe's responses to white supremacy on campus to trace the discursive moves that obscure institutional racism. Following these contextual scaffoldings, (3) we explore the ways equity projects within institutions remain projects protecting and preserving whiteness while exploiting the politics of identity. Finally, (4) we carefully reflect on the various modes of inclusion in the academy, which produce racialized scholars(hip) to be complicit in the reproduction of racial thinking, alongside and occluded by institutional narratives of equity and progress. Critical questions are raised regarding the possibilities, complicities and complexities of achieving equity and transformation in the academy, as well as the role of racialized scholars(hip) in this work.

British Journal of Social Work, 2016

Researchers and practitioners in social work value qualitative research for the opportunity to en... more Researchers and practitioners in social work value qualitative research for the opportunity to engage with issues of social justice including relations of power, and attention to the political, historical and social relations of difference. Interview narratives are all too often accepted at face value as authentic, true voice, representing experience without analysis of what is being represented politically. An analysis of the relations and operations of power provides additional contextual insight to face-value analyses with further opportunities for understanding and social change. When left uninterrogated, face-value analyses are permeable to the reproduction of knowledge without critical analyses of race, ability, sexual orientation or gender and can perpetuate modernist ideas that knowledge is observable and transparent and (re)institutes Western/Eurocentric knowledge as dominant/superior. This paper explores critical reflections on our research and provides a discussion of some of the opportunities identified from our research experiences. Through a discussion of the representation of voice as a production in progress; an attention to analyses for historical, social and political positioning; and a critique of face-value analyses, a conceptual framework is offered that may assist researchers to resist reliance on or accepting of analyses as transparent that eludes an analysis of racism and other forms of discrimination.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

The complexities of the mental health field are representative of the predicament of our present ... more The complexities of the mental health field are representative of the predicament of our present human condition. This complexity demands an acknowledgment of the historical, social, political, physical, and psychological aspects of people that have been created, inherited, and reproduced. The field also demands a consideration of the effects of these understandings of people as they become embedded in policies, practices, disciplines, and the law. An appreciation for this confluence of aspects of the human condition is crucial for an understanding of both the foundations of our wellbeing and the sources of our suffering.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

In this chapter we detail an overview of the cases and case data from the Appeals Division of the... more In this chapter we detail an overview of the cases and case data from the Appeals Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board as well as cases that go on to the Federal Court of Canada analyzed in this study. These documents are the only known public records on deportation and were retrieved from the Canadian Legal Information Institute database and the Federal Court decision database. These cases provide both a representation of the technologies, practices, and laws at work at the confluence of mental health, immigration, and criminal justice systems specific to deportation in Canada, while also depicting a unique and powerful act of resistance to systems of dehumanization, identification, incarceration, and removal in Canada. The analysis of the descriptive data for the 75 cases matching the criteria (those appeal cases for deportation for those identified with mental health issues) from 2001 to 2011, (the most complete and recent years for analysis at the commencement of this study) reveals the overwhelming prioritization of racialized countries for deportation. The idea of fair procedures or due process are also held suspect when we see that an overwhelming majority of cases result in decisions for either deportation or the imposition of heavy restrictions, confinement, forced treatment, and reporting requirements.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

In this chapter, I describe the approaches used in this study and argue for the necessity of a po... more In this chapter, I describe the approaches used in this study and argue for the necessity of a postcolonial analysis of confluence. I also outline this study’s focus on historical continuities by attending to the temporal (that which is dynamic and changing and that which is continuous yet carried through time). I outline what is drawn on (partially) from Foucauldian genealogical analysis and how this method departs from this. I also illustrate how the method used in this study attends to material continuities (how projects of nation building relied/rely on eugenic and racial knowledge formations and disciplinary processes and laws) through an attention to processes that discursively frame people to construct, legitimize, and authorize violence. By acknowledging that all our interpretive and discursive structures are subject to historical influence, it is also pertinent that we disclose the horizon of these interpretations. As Hans-Georg Gadamer made very clear in his magnum opus Truth and Method, every person has a historically effected consciousness, making claims to objective knowledge impossible. Through our concurrence with this position, we can appreciate that all vantage points are partial, contingent, and subject to representation and interpretation. The horizon of interpretation in this study is committedly focused with an attention to the levels of analyses and contribution provided by postcolonial theory.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

In this chapter, specific attention is directed to colonial practices and technologies of violenc... more In this chapter, specific attention is directed to colonial practices and technologies of violence and difference at work at the confluence of mental health, criminal justice, and immigration systems. Here the intricate processes required for Orientalism are recognized as dividing practices and gendered discourses at our confluence. Also, the colonial practices and violence of erasure (the elimination of voice or aspects relevant to any consideration of a person including his/her history and circumstances), of appropriation (of acts of resistance as “evidence” used for the constructing of identities worthy of violence, and for the rationalization of positions that legitimize violence) and the processes of dehumanization are explored for their use value in colonial and imperial projects. The establishment and implementation of professional hierarchies and disciplinary hegemonies at the confluence of immigration, criminal justice, and mental health are interrogated for their imbrication with and reflection on the establishment, and reproduction of human hierarchies and hegemonies of knowledge and authority. These practices, policies, and technologies are also challenged for their complicity in the remaking of North-South division, their participation in the reinforcement of ideas of nationalism and the utilization of moral and ethical arguments for the justification of atrocities.

Deportation and the Confluence of Violence within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems, 2015

The term “forensic mental health system” is often used to refer to the intersections of the menta... more The term “forensic mental health system” is often used to refer to the intersections of the mental health system and the criminal justice system (Betteridge & Barbaree, 2004). Here, I will provide a brief overview of aspects of the Ontario Mental Health Act, the Criminal Code of Canada, and the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act relevant to the topic of deportation for those identified with mental health issues. The Mental Health Act applies to every psychiatric facility with regards to rights or prohibitions for people identified as having a mental disorder. It includes provisions or restrictions regarding voluntary and involuntary examination, admission, treatment, consent, detention, psychosurgery, and community treatment orders. These policies and laws are continually being rearticulated to reinforce ideas of an unrehabilitatable criminal, an untreatable mentally ill person, and undeserving foreign alien. The Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act passed the House of Commons on June 19, 2013; the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act received royal assent on June 20, 2013 (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2013b; Department of Justice, 2013). These laws are dependent on the continuations of colonial technologies and practices that channel ideas of racial hierarchy, eugenics, and foreign exoticism. Individually, these changes and laws can be presented as progressive maneuvers working to improve safety, save tax dollars, or to be responsive to the public while adhering to old systems of refusal of entry, confinement, punishment, containment and ejection.

Disability & Society, 2015

ABSTRACT

Social Work in Mental Health, 2014

The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

Critical Criminology, 2013

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to crimina... more Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The practice of deportation for those identified with 'mental illness' in Canada allows contempor... more The practice of deportation for those identified with 'mental illness' in Canada allows contemporary conceptions, interpretations, functions of discourse, and technologies of 'mental illness', 'criminality', and 'race' to be studied through the shared texts of the mental health, criminal justice, and immigration systems. These systems rely on seemingly separate operations in order to continue common violent projects of segregation, confinement, removal, the application of harm to the physical body and the identification of people as inherently dehumanized. The practices and technologies of evaluation and decision making used by professionals, police, lawyers and experts are questioned in this book for their participation in the perpetuation of historical forms of colonial violence through the enforcement of racial and eugenic policies and laws in Canada.

Ameil Joseph (School of Social Work) reflects on knowing that we've been raised in racism, how na... more Ameil Joseph (School of Social Work) reflects on knowing that we've been raised in racism, how native languages become "inferior", Canadian colonialism, changing perspectives and the rise of racist propaganda in OUR TIMES, Canada's Independent Labour Magazine.

The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies, 2021

In Spivakovsky, C., Steele, L. & Weller, P. (eds). The Legacies of Institutionalisation Disability, Law and Policy in the ‘Deinstitutionalised’ Community, 2020

Recent nationalist/nativist attentions exemplified through discussions about Brexit in the United... more Recent nationalist/nativist attentions exemplified through discussions about Brexit in the United Kingdom (UK) and Donald Trump in the United States (US) have highlighted the need to re-examine reactions of consternation to immigration. Anti-immigration discourses are not new and have always been slippery or evasive. They can be historically presented and perceived as seldom, sparse, extreme or held in abeyance, while depictions of and reactions to immigration are simultaneously articulated with adulation in public performance and abnegation in policy practice. The latest varieties of advances in anti-immigration discourses have been powerfully, publicly productive for policy and influence on a global scale. Theses discourses wield both the insidious ideas that are carried from the past and the direct and brazen contemporary forms of racism and colonial hatred that work together to rationalise institutionalised, state-authorised dehumanisation and violence. These ideas produce and reproduce historically entrenched positions of institutionalised advantage and disadvantage,...

Madness, Violence, and Power: A Critical Collection, 2016

This chapter is devoted to an understanding of how the confluence of violence within the differen... more This chapter is devoted to an understanding of how the confluence of violence within the different punishing regimes of Western biomedical psychiatrically dominated structures are sustained through policy and law to imprison difference, while simultaneously (re) creating ideas of whiteness, the pristine, the innocent, and the deserving. Specifically, through an examination of the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, the Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act, and the Antiterrorism Act in Canada and their corresponding amendments to existing legislation, this chapter interrogates the deployment of racial and eugenic ideas for their replication of dehumanizing colonial discursive and rhetorical violence in everyday use, the institutionalization of violence within contemporary law, and the currently violent direct human consequences of these historically violent practices that ensure imprisonment of particular minds and bodies.

In March 2016, two men died in Canadian immigration detention facilities “in the care of Canada B... more In March 2016, two men died in Canadian immigration detention facilities “in the care of Canada Border Services Agency in less than a week” (Black 2016). Francisco Javier Romero Astorga (a Chilean national, unreported reasons for detention) died in Maplehurst Correctional Centre in the province of Ontario on Sunday, March 13 (Kassam 2016). Also in Ontario, Melkioro Gahungu (a Burundian national who was convicted of killing his wife in 2009) died in the Toronto East Detention Centre on Monday, March 7 (Cain 2016). These events triggered an atypical public reaction to the existence, purpose, and conditions of immigration holding centres and questioned the human rights protections for people being detained. This chapter explores these recent events by situating them in two key historical parallel discourses that underscore the broader colonial project, those pertaining to immigration and eugenics, to consider how we understand and talk about the practice and implications of immigration detention. Contemporary concerns about immigration detention practices in Canada reflect a historical confluence of shifting, colliding, submerging, and (re)emerging ideas about threat, dangerousness, foreignness, and criminality (Chadha 2008; Menzies 1998). These ideas have been forged over time, globally, through projects of nation building, population regulation, surveillance, and control (Dowbiggin 1997; McLaren 1990).

Joseph, A.J. (2017). Making Civility: Historical Racial Exclusion Theories within Canadian Democr... more Joseph, A.J. (2017). Making Civility: Historical Racial Exclusion Theories within Canadian Democracy. In Daenzer, P. (eds.), Civil Society Engagement: Achieving Better in Canada. (pp. 17-30). New York: Routledge.

Joseph, A.J., (2017). Pathologizing distress: The Colonial Master’s Tools and Mental Health Servi... more Joseph, A.J., (2017). Pathologizing distress: The Colonial Master’s Tools and Mental Health Services for “Newcomers/Immigrants”. In, Baines, D. (eds.), Doing Anti-Oppressive Practice: Social Justice Social work, (3rd Edition, pp 233-244). Halifax, Canada: Fernwood.