Epistemologies of bordering: Domestic violence advocacy with marriage migrants in the shadow of deportation

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on interviews with service providers and legal advocates in Canada, this article explores how bordering practices shape front-line service delivery with immigrant women seeking safety from domestic violence. Our research examines the implementation of ‘conditional permanent residence’ (conditional PR) between 2012 and 2017. Conditional PR applied to some newly sponsored spouses and partners who were required to cohabit with their sponsoring spouse/partner for two years following their arrival in Canada in order to retain their permanent resident status. We illustrate how conditional PR exacerbated the vulnerabilities already facing spousal immigrants by linking deportation to the failure to cohabit with their spouse. In particular, we examine the implementation of an ‘exception for abuse and neglect’, whereby victims of domestic violence could apply to remove the condition on their permanent resident status. We argue that when service providers mobilized their ‘ways of knowing’ about domestic violence to verify a sponsored spouse’s claims of abuse, they inadvertently took part in regulating ‘deserving’ versus deportable immigrants. This research develops a gendered analysis of deportability towards theorizing how bordering practices operate through the shadow state to regulate racialized immigrant women.