Reinventing Citizenship: Canadian Migrant Justice Activism in the Post-Pandemic Border Regime

Post-pandemic capitalism in North America has given rise to a new border regime that intensifies immigrants’ precarities and disrupts their welfare and social citizenship. In Canada, this post-pandemic border regime has led to an increase in deportations and heightened the deportability of undocumented migrant families while also amplifying the exclusion, surveillance, discipline and exploitation of other precarious status immigrants, including asylum seekers, international students, and temporary migrant workers.

In response to this trend, a network of migrant justice activisms and movements across Canada has emerged from below. They have been actively contesting the post-pandemic border regime through a variety of survival non-capitalist strategies, mutual aid practices and contentious politics that have helped precarious-status Immigrants to partially alleviate economic and legal precarity while reinventing alternative forms citizenship.

Base on qualitative research conducted with migrant justice activists in 4 major Canadian urban centers (Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary) as well as in 8 rural towns before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, this presentation will discuss how migrant justice activism in Canada is paving the way for a broader, more universal, and radically inclusive understanding and practice of citizenship.