Municipal immigration policing and resistance to internal bordering in Canada

Abstract

Borders are not simply material lines in the sand demarcating the limits of state territories. They are made and unmade by many dispersed practices and technologies deployed in different spaces, at different times, and by a number of actors. In Canada, it is the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) that has jurisdiction over the presence of noncitizens, and yet, other policing bodies such as municipal police forces actively collaborate in exclusionary bordering efforts through urban immigration policing. The chapter draws from records obtained through Access to Information (ATI) and Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and maps out collaboration between the CBSA and municipal police forces in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. It also shows how, as law enforcement agencies engage in jurisdictional games to perform borderwork in urban settings, migrant justice activists respond by developing strategies to promote a culture of noncollaboration with immigration enforcement and oppose urban immigration policing.