The battle of numbers: Refugee protection, race, and Neoliberal politics of bureaucratic efficiency

Azar Masoumi

doi:10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1047

Authors

Azar Masoumi York University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1047

Keywords:

Law and bureaucracies, race and racialization, Neoliberal governance

Abstract

This paper examines the early years of systematic refugee claim processing in Canada to explore the ways neoliberal bureaucratic practices rely on and (re)produce racialization in their day to day operations. I argue that due to the rise of neoliberalism, systematic refugee protection in Canada has come to exclude claimants who have borne the label of economic migrant. Furthermore, I argue that the exclusion of economic migrants from refugee protection has been a racialized and racializing project. The institutional procedures that worked to exclude these migrants inherited, drew upon, and reproduced racialized knowledges about certain national groupings. Racialization of economic migrants provided the claim processing bureaucracy with quick and efficient means of screening large numbers of claimants out of their workload. Thus, I argue that neoliberal governance of refugee claims in Canada has been a racialized and racializing bureaucratic practice.

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