Borders

This project examines the journeys between states. The researchers are tackling this understudied issue by investigating islands as particular sites where struggles over migration, asylum, and sovereignty transpire and where federal mandates of national security and refugee protection intersect. This project will offer new ways of understanding what happens to global migrants on their journeys between states, including the role of interception at sea, detention on islands, and human rights issues.

• Time period: Ongoing
• People and partners: Alison Mountz

Funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight grant, this project explores Canada's role as safe haven for war resisters crossing the border from the U.S. During the Vietnam War, Canadian government and society eventually welcomed 50,000 U.S. war resisters, providing safe haven from militarism and a mandatory draft. A more recent cohort of some 300 U.S. resisters began entering Canada in 2004 to make refugee claims after service and tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. While some were able to stay, most refugee claims for protection rejected, and some were deported and served time in military prison. Both groups found and forged spaces of safe haven in Canada, albeit in very different ways. For some, these were paths to citizenship and a new home; for others, shelter was temporary. These are two important historical moments in the relationship between the two countries. The project enhances existing archives by documenting these histories.

This project seeks to understand meanings of safe haven and to situate these not only in geopolitical histories between Canada and the U.S., but also in migration histories of war resisters. Objectives include the following:

• To advance knowledge and extend historical records through documentation of war resister histories, timely because of the age of the first wave and the recent memory of resisters.
• To increase understanding of the meanings of asylum through analysis of the diversity of resisters' routes and experiences of integration and return.
• To probe understandings of US-Canada relations through asylum claims from soldiers.
• To better understand how war resisters utilize and challenge existing policies and practices in Canada.

Methods involve archival research and oral histories with those who resisted conscription into the Vietnam War and those who came in the last decade. Participants include people who stayed in Canada and those who returned to the U.S. from each cohort.

The research examines the past in order to understand its implications for contemporary immigration and refugee policies, border governance and foreign relations. Methods are designed to bring cross-border communities with shared histories into dialogue. The project holds potential to challenge entrenched understandings of asylum, asylum seekers and war resisters.

Research findings will be shared through a range of methods and media designed to bring histories to public audiences. The collaboration with the War Resister Support Campaign involves curating the movement's archives, which will soon be housed at the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. Alison Mountz and U.S. based filmmaker Lisa Molomot are collaborating on a feature-length documentary film that has emerged from this research and will assist with the mobilization of findings to broader audiences. The film will be completed in 2020, and is funded by a SSHRC Connection Grant.