Disability, Displacement, and the Biopolitics of Belonging

This dissertation is concerned with the multiple ways in which formal and substantive citizenship are regulated among migrants with disabilities and non-migrants with intellectual disabilities. The focus of this analysis is twofold and is centred on medicalized assessment practices supported by government agencies at the federal and provincial level. These are Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and Ontarios Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS). A multi-layered and historically informed analysis that reads first-person interviews alongside legislative and policy developments situates lived experiences with assessment regimes within a broader theoretical discussion of displacement. First, access to developmental services among adults with intellectual disabilities in Ontario is addressed, with a special focus on the MCSS Passport Program and Ontarios implementation of the Supports Intensity Scale. Immigration medical testing and particularly the IRCCs medical inadmissibility criteria are then considered in detail. While careful attention is given to the unique ways in which immigration medical testing and developmental services assessments are experienced, these examples are treated through an integrated analysis that draws upon the inter-related concepts of (in)capacity and (under)development. The framework forwarded in this study suggests that hierarchical understandings of (in)capacity and (under)development organize opportunities for belonging in translocal and transnational contexts, impacting migrants with disabilities and non-migrants with intellectual disabilities. A governmentality of (in)capacity that emphasizes the intersectional potential of intellectual disability is proposed as a means of exploring decision-making within and across these contexts. To account for the similarities as well as the differences between various modes of exclusion, this study also builds upon previous work in critical migration and critical disability studies, contributing to the development of a displacement framework that encompasses spatial and subjective dimensions of translocal and transnational disability experiences. Through this framework, lived experiences with Canadian immigration practices and Ontario developmental services are analyzed to reveal how diverse and deeply marginalized but by no means mutually exclusive communities can be placed at risk of displacement.