Governing on the Margins: Exploring the Contributions of Governmentality Studies to Critical Criminology in Canada

Abstract

Despite the promise of the 1970s, critical criminology's influence in Canada has diminished in recent years. This paper examines this decline and charts one possible avenue for renewal. It argues that critical criminology has been limited by its emphasis on the state, and state-centred constructions of criminality, and by its failure to come to terms with how social injustices are reproduced through private institutions and modes of expertise constituted on the margins of the state and in the shadow of the law. Based on this critique, it is proposed that a dialogue with governmentality studies may help to overcome these limits, a dialogue that is examined in two substantive contexts: the governance of immigration and the policing of financial disorder. Revealed are not only forms of governance and oppression enacted on law's margins, but also possibilities for the realization of the progressive politics that lies at the heart of the critical criminological enterprise.