Audrey Macklin

Multiculturalism Meets Privatisation: The Case of Faith-Based Arbitration

The debate surrounding judicial recognition of faith-based arbitration is typically framed as a multicultural contest between the liberal, gender-equal neutrality of public law and the patriarchal particularity of religious law. Within this framework, the state is understood as advancing the goal of protecting the ‘encultured subject’ from the disempowering effects of her religion. The author departs from this trend by reading the Canadian controversy over Islamic family law arbitration against a legal landscape that already authorises and encourages parties to settle matters of property division and support through private ordering. The author argues that faith-based arbitration and its normative driver, multiculturalism, were already nested within the domain of privatisation and neoliberal ideals of choice, liberty and autonomy. Facilitation of private ordering in family law paved the way for faith-based arbitration. Through a close reading of Supreme Court of Canada family law jurisprudence about the enforcement of marital contracts, the author argues that concerns more properly directed at privatisation per se have been aimed at the putative content of religious norms. The author offers a policy proposal that addresses these concerns as they arise in the context of faith-based arbitration.

Freeing Migration from the State: Michael Trebilcock on Migration Policy

The author explores Michael Trebilcock’s “The Law and Economics of Immigration Policy” as an opportunity to reflect on the capacity of broadly conceived, transnational policy prescriptions to contend with the complexity of migration as a global phenomenon, the specificity of national contexts, and the limits on state actors’ ability to socially engineer the character of present and future generations through immigrant selection. Trebilcock’s The Law and Economics of Immigration Policy sets out a broad prescriptive model for migration policy. It is informed by a classically liberal endorsement of free movement of labour, a commitment to efficiency, and a preference for market over state regulation. Trebilcock claims that his policy proposal will significantly liberalize immigration in prosperous liberal democratic states and be politically palatable. The key lies in pre-empting the objection that increased levels of immigration will impose or exacerbate the negative fiscal impact of immigrants on receiving states. Trebilcock would privatize selection by delegating it entirely to the market (employers) or the family (relatives), and institute a mandatory private insurance scheme payable by sponsors to insure against the risk that an immigrant will impose fiscal burdens on the state in the period leading up to eligibility for citizenship. While applauding the objective animating this proposal, the author relies partly on Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock’s own historical/institutional immigration scholarship to challenge its viability. First, the author suggests that Trebilcock’s claim that his model is politically pragmatic is predicated on a contestable understanding of the nature of political opposition to immigration. Second, it is not obvious that Trebilcock’s model, taken on its own terms, would actually liberalize immigration across the range of states where he would seek to implement it. Finally, where the vast majority of immigrants are admitted on the basis of ascriptive kinship criteria, the author argues that family matters – and will continue to matter – in the future direction of immigration.

Legal Aspects of Conflict-Induced Migration by Women

This paper surveys the international legal frameworks, including the many guidelines, handbooks, resolutions, toolkits, conclusions and manuals produced by various United Nations bodies, that confirm an awareness of the protection issues specific to women and girls displaced by conflict. It explores the extent to which these documents address the gendered impacts of conflict-induced migration, and the role of United Nations bodies as international governmental organisations in implementing these norms. The main focus is upon internally displaced women and women refugees. In addition to problems of enforcing compliance with existing guidelines, the paper concludes that two areas – developing strategies to accommodate the realities of long-term, even permanent displacement and enhancing women’s literal and legal literacy – require much greater attention on the part of governmental and non-governmental international organisations. Résumé Cet article passe en revue les cadres juridiques internationaux, notamment les nombreux guides, manuels, instruments, directives, résolutions et conclusions préparés par plusieurs institutions des Nations Unies, qui confirment la prise de conscience des problèmes de protection propres aux femmes et aux filles déplacées par les conflits. Il se demande dans quelle mesure ces documents abordent les conséquences pour les femmes de la migration induite par les conflits ainsi que le rôle des Nations Unies comme organisations gouvernementales internationales dans l’application de ces normes. L’accent est mis sur les femmes déplacées à l’intérieur de leur pays et les femmes réfugiées. Outre les difficultés à faire respecter les directives existantes, l’article conclut que deux domaines d’intervention exigent beaucoup plus d’attention des organisations internationales gouvernementales et non gouvernementales : définir des stratégies tenant compte des réalités du déplacement à long terme, voire permanent, et favoriser l’alphabétisation des femmes et les familiariser avec les normes juridiques. Resumen En este artículo se examinan los marcos jurídicos internacionales, incluidas las numerosas directrices, guías, resoluciones, herramientas, conclusiones y manuales producidos por diversos organismos de las Naciones Unidas, que confirman conocimiento de los aspectos de protección específicos a las mujeres y niñas desplazadas por conflicto. Se explora hasta qué punto estos documentos tratan el impacto en género de la migración inducida por conflicto y la función de los organismos de la ONU como organizaciones gubernamentales internacionales en la aplicación de estas normas. Se centra en las mujeres desplazadas internamente y en mujeres refugiadas. Además de los problemas en hacer cumplir las directrices establecidas, el artículo concluye que dos áreas – elaborar estrategias que tomen en cuenta las realidades del desplazamiento a largo plazo, incluso permanente, y mejorar el alfabetismo literal y jurídico de las mujeres – requieren mucha más atención por parte de las organizaciones internacionales gubernamentales y no gubernamentales.

Separation or Permeability? Bordered States, Transnational Relations, Transcultural Lives

The authors argue that states were historically less bordered and self-contained than public opinion and the scholarship oriented around the nation-state have assumed. First, the authors address the permeability of borders in the period of mass migration at the turn to the 20th century, taking as examples migrants to Canada from Europe, China, and elsewhere. Second, they discuss the period of the 1880s to 1940s, during which the emergence of the working classes in the Atlantic world and “pauperism” prompted the emergence of transatlantic social thought. By mid-twentieth century, social citizenship arose as a corollary to political citizenship. Third, they discern a new stage of political interaction from the founding of the United Nations to the turn of the 21st century, in which democracies have become highly sensitive to developments beyond their borders and have become linked into a comprehensive multilateral system of organizations and legal rules. While noting that Canada’s record in protecting the rights of non-citizens within its borders earns it deserved praise, the authors argue that Canada simultaneously expends great effort on policing and preventing initial border crossings by those claiming human rights protection. While Canada has a relatively strong culture of rights protection and a famously weak conception of national identity, it also has an underestimated system of border control. The authors finally describe three liminal figures whose experiences illustrate the paradoxical interactions between rights and borders in Canada: the citizen abroad, the foreigner within, and the would-be asylum seeker.

On Producing the Alien Within: A Reply

In this rejoinder I respond to the various contributors and defends my position regarding the normative, legal, and practical deficiencies of citizenship revocation on national security grounds.

From Settler Society to Warrior Nation and Back Again

This paper focuses on the evolution of Canadian citizenship under the Conservative government (2006–2015), and makes three claims. First the Conservatives systematically resiled from the citizenship policies that typify a settler society, and this was congruent with contemporaneous changes to Canadian immigration policy. Second, citizenship law furnished an ideal platform for staging the re-branding of Canada as Warrior Nation, a pet Conservative project. Third, the role played during the Fall 2015 federal election by one particular citizenship policy (the ban on niqabs while swearing the citizenship oath) reveals a lingering, and perhaps chronic, ambiguity about the character of Canadian citizenship in an era where forces of globalization and nationalist retrenchment impose competing pressures on state citizenship regimes.