Women as Migrants in National and Global Communities (original) (raw)

1999, Canadian Woman Studies

L'auteure explore l'impact de la loi internationale sur la pratique lkgale au Canaah, avec une atcention spkciale sur La politique et La loi sur li'mmigration, et la facon dont elles affectent k vie desfemmes qui ueulent entrer au Canada. The right to restrict the entry of non-citizens to one's territory is considered the sine qua non of sovereignty.' When it comes to immigration, international law accepts more or less uncritically the characterization of states as private clubs and migrants as membership applicants. The major exception to that principle is the UN Convention Relating to the Status ofRefirgees, but it should not escape notice that virtually all major countries ofasylum, including Canada, expend considerable energy on "non-entrCen-. mechanisms to prevent asylum seekers from getting to the clubhouse door.2 Women migrants often embody-literally-the absence, the breakdown, or the inequities of the international Legal regime. War, global economic restructuring, human rights abuses, the persistence ofgender oppression all over the world each play a role-alone, in combination, or alongside other factor-in propelling many women to depart their countries of nationality and seek new lives in Canada. International law directly impacts Canadian immigration law and policy; and in this sense, women. . migrants (and migrants generally) are the impact of international law on Canada. Canadian immigration law is what the state does to either deflect, minimize, or harness that impact in the service of do-Beinq a mesticinterests. It does this through traditional female creating categoriesinto which it classifies those for whom the acci-!d by dent of birth did not confer Canafewer Ca nad ia n dian citizenship: legal or illegal; immigrant or refugee; citizen, perwomen these manent resident, or visitor; indedays, SO women pendent or family class. Canada with fewer does not directly control the conditions of women's lives leading up 0 pf i 0 n S i n the i r to their departure, but the catego, l ives a re i m p0 rted into which it sorts a woman will to do the become another force affecting that woman's life and her experience of worn en's work. migration. Her migration status may have a liberating effect, it may compound existingconstraints, it may do someofeach. In this sense, Canada may be held directly accountable for the impact domestic immigration law has on the migrant..3 'For a recent assertion of this principle, see Chiarelli v. Canada (MEI), [l 9921 2 SCR 71 1. 'For a discussion ofwomen as refugees, see Macklin (1 995). 31t is arguable, of course, that Canada is also indirectly CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME