Managing 'Mass Marine Migrant Arrivals': The Sun Sea, Anti-Smuggling Policy and the Transformation of the Refugee Label

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorVosko, Leah F
dc.contributor.authorRanford-Robinson, Corey Jay
dc.date.accessioned2021-03-08T17:26:04Z
dc.date.available2021-03-08T17:26:04Z
dc.date.copyright2020-12
dc.date.issued2021-03-08
dc.date.updated2021-03-08T17:26:04Z
dc.degree.disciplinePolitical Science
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractManaging mass marine migrant arrivals: The Sun Sea, anti-smuggling policy and the transformation of the refugee label, examines the Canadian governments response to the arrival of the Sun Sea, a ship with 492 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers onboard. After the ship's arrival and to prevent future asylum vessels from coming to Canada, the federal government implemented a new anti-smuggling policy, the Migrant Smuggling Prevention Strategy. In examining this new policy, this dissertation pursues two questions: first, how, under what conditions, and with what effects are people that enlist smugglers labelled irregular arrivals, i.e. bogus rather than genuine refugees? Second, how is the identity of smuggled asylum-seekers constructed, transformed and politicized in the context of anti-smuggling policy? Using a reformulated conceptual framework of labelling, Managing mass marine migrant arrivals responds to these questions by drawing on interviews and access to information requests with the federal governments agencies of migration management. I argue that the legal ambiguity, classificatory struggles, and interpretive controversies surrounding the refugee label and its sub-categories allow the Canadian government to manage and, indeed, pre-emptively label, delegitimize and deny, the refugee claims of asylum-seekers that enlist the services of smugglers. The analysis reveals the instrumentality of anti-smuggling policy and its role in what Roger Zetter (2007) calls the fractioning of the refugee category into various pejorative sub-categories that restrict access to asylum and the rights of refugee status. The transformation of the refugee label in and through anti-smuggling policy thus serves as a means of restricting asylum-seekers from accessing the rights and procedural protections of refugee status.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/38210
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectPolitical Science
dc.subject.keywordsmigrant smuggling
dc.subject.keywordsirregular migration
dc.subject.keywordsforced migration
dc.subject.keywordsrefugees
dc.subject.keywordsasylum
dc.subject.keywordsborder security
dc.subject.keywordsmigration management
dc.subject.keywordsglobal governance
dc.subject.keywordsinternational organisations
dc.subject.keywordsUnited Nations
dc.subject.keywordsorganized crime
dc.subject.keywordsforced migration and refugee studies
dc.subject.keywordscritical migration studies
dc.subject.keywordsinternational relations theory
dc.subject.keywordssocial theory
dc.titleManaging 'Mass Marine Migrant Arrivals': The Sun Sea, Anti-Smuggling Policy and the Transformation of the Refugee Label
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Ranford-Robinson__Corey_J_2020_PhD.pdf
Size:
1.97 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.87 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
YorkU_ETDlicense.txt
Size:
3.39 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download

Collections

Political Science

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.