Citizenship and monogamy in Canada: the case of the Shafia family murders

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Canadian state continues to colonize kinship through political and media discourses of polygamy. Drawing on discussions of the Shafia family murders during House of Commons debates about the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, I analyze how the Shafia family became a talking point about how polygamy is an inherently violent form of kinship that is tethered to ‘barbaric’ immigrant (Muslim) families. The Shafia family was used to buttress imaginings of hetero/homonormative Canadian families as nonviolent and non-patriarchal, while polygamous families (often connected to Eastern family formations) are linked to gender-based violence. These discussions of polygamy serve anti-immigration agendas under the guise of gender equality. Such discourses are grounded in settler-colonial histories, where fragmenting non-normative families was key to destroying Indigenous kinship and accessing land and resources. Settler-colonial histories of colonizing kinship carve out the hetero/homonormative family as a necessary element of proper Canadian citizenship for immigrants.