Migration and Racialization in Times of "Crisis": The Making of Crises and their Effects

by Leila Benhadjoudja Associate Professor (Editor), Christina Clark-Kazak Full Professor (Editor), Stéphanie Garneau Full Professor (Editor), Brad Blitz (Contribution by), Magalie Civil (Contribution by)

Overview

The health crisis, the migration crisis, the humanitarian crisis, and the climate crisis. The repeating reference to the idea of crisis to label numerous social upheavals suggests that we now live in a world defined by crisis.

Yet the urgency inherent in a crisis often leads to the normalization of rights violations and increased surveillance, profiling and arbitrary arrests, making visible the state’s control over bodies, and certain bodies, in particular.

Migration and Racialization in Times of “Crisis” explores the colonial, racist and sexist underpinnings of various declarations of crisis, as well as their effects. Taken together, these contributions show that the state of crisis manifests as a condition for the maintenance of racial and patriarchal capitalism.

The English and French version of this title, though distinct, complement each other to offer a more comprehensive and critical look at this approach of “governing through crisis”.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780776641737
Publisher:	Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa Press
Publication date:	05/07/2025
Series:	Studies in International Development and Globalization
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	178
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	15 Years

About the Author

Leila Benhadjoudja is Associate Professor in the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies and at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research focuses on Political sociology, Feminist and Gender Theory, Race and Ethnicity as well as Postcolonialism and Cultural Studies.

Christina Clark-Kazak is Full Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, President of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration and outgoing Editor-in-Chief of Refuge: Canadian Journal on Refugees. She has previously worked for York University, Saint Paul University, the Canadian government and the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. She has also served as President of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Director of York University's Refugee Studies Centre and Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies) of York University's bilingual Glendon Campus. Her research interests include age discrimination in migration and development; the political participation of young refugees; and interdisciplinary methodology.

Stéphanie Garneau is Full professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Ottawa and was director of the Research Collective on Migration and Racism (COMIR). Her areas of research are migration, border studies, racism and anti-racism, social classes, ethics and solidarity, and research methodologies. In addition to articles in sociology, social work, and education journals, she has published the book Migration et classement social. Enquête auprès de migrants marocains au Québec (PUM, 2022) and co-edited several thematic issues and books, including Erving Goffman et le travail social (PUO, 2017).

Read an Excerpt

The pandemic, which represents “an organic crisis of capitalism” (McKay, 2023), underscored the need to question the notion of crisis, and more specifically its effects on marginalized, migrant and racialized populations. Indeed, while the world was living through the rhythm of this crisis, other “crises” of different magnitudes were increasing or recurring in the four corners of the globe: political, social and economic crisis in Venezuela; “security” crisis (Grinand, 2021) in Haiti; “mental health” crisis (Colly, 2021) in Lebanon; never-ending migration crises (Carastathis et al 2018; Crawley 2016; Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins 2016), whether in Greece, on the Polish border, in the Mediterranean, in Calais and the English Channel, in Venezuela, or on the roads of Central and South America; an anti-gas pipeline blockade crisis in Canada; economic and humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Yemen; climate crises; “academic freedom crisis” in the United States, Canada and France.

Table of Contents

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Leila Benhadjoudja, Christina Clark-Kazak and Stéphanie Garneau
1. How to define a crisis? Looking back at a concept
2. Thinking about "crises" through the lens of racial capitalism
3. Ways of thinking about crises and migrant, Black, indigenous and racialized populations
4. Overview of the English volume
5. Overview of the French volume

THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL POTENTIAL OF ‘ACOMPAÑAMIENTO’ FOR RESEARCH WITH PEOPLE MARGINALISED THROUGH IMMIGRATION CONTROLS
Valentina Glockner, Walter Flores, Elaine Chase, Jennifer Allsopp, Ian Warwick, Deborah Zion, Brad Blitz, Ricardo Muniz-Trejo, Penelope Van Tuyl and Theresa Cheng
1. Purpose of the paper
2. Migration, deportations and marginalisation in Central America
2.1.Understanding acompañamiento
2.2.Bringing acompañamiento to research
3. Positionality and motivation
3.1.Relationship of acompañamiento to particular research approaches
4. The ethics of acompañamiento
4.1.Implications for co-creating knowledge
4.2.Concluding thoughts

VIVE LA FRANCE! EXALTING FRENCH NATIONALISM THROUGH NEWS MEDIA NARRATIVES OF CALAIS MIGRANTS
Maritza Felices-Luna
1. The politics of (in)visibility: foregrounding and erasing migrants in Calais
2. News media narratives of migrant ‘crises’
3. Walking away from crisis as intelligibility towards crisis as constitutive through narrative analysis
4. Unpacking the figured worlds
4.1.French solidarity
4.2.France under attack
4.3.The points where both figured worlds meet
5. The French national as custodian of French values and guardian of French sovereignty

THE VENEZUELAN “MIGRATORY CRISIS” IN THE ECUADORIAN CONTEXT: PROBLEMATIZING IMMIGRANTS AS VICTIMS AND THREATS
Martha Alexandra Vargas Aguirre
1. Methodology
2. Context
3. Managing Venezuelan immigration as a crisis
4. Conclusion

TOP MANTA: BARCELONA’S UNIONIZED MANTEROS IN THEIR STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION AND REDISTRIBUTION
Tatiana Llaguno and Marina Gomá
1. Context
2. My dream was not to become a mantero: I am a fisherman
3. El cayuco: Resisting necropolitical deathscapes
4. Weaving networks of solidarity: Re-shaping the city and reframing political belonging
5. Conclusion
6. Acknowledgements

COVID-19 IN MONTREAL: SYSTEMIC IMPACT ON PRECARIOUS IM/MIGRANT WORKERS AND THEIR ORGANIZING RESPONSES
Manuel Salamanca Cardona
1. Setting the framework for the crisis in Montreal
2. Experiencing the crisis in terms of work, barriers to social protection, and migratory status
3. Highlighting systemic effects of the pandemic, auto-organizing and questioning the State exclusion
4. Self-organizing, critics and co-existence with the State and its institutions in times of pandemic
5. Conclusion

‘DESIGNER MIGRANT’ OR ‘BACKDOOR MIGRANT’: CHALLENGES OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENT IDENTITY IN CANADA
Tahseen Chowdhury and Chiedza Pasipanodya
1. Methodology
2. Context
3. Discussion
3.1.Colonial Grammar and the Myths of Western Supremacy
3.2.The Manufactured Crisis of Scarcity, Competition, and Fraud
3.3.The Business and Branding of International Education
3.4.The Grammar of Internationalization
3.5.Student, Migrant, or Worker? Crisis by Design

4. Conclusion