Abstract
Advocacy coalition groups such as closed border supporters and open border advocates play a role in Canada’s immigration detention policy subsystem. Using political mobilization, they exploit pathways of policy change to promote policy objectives which favour or limit policy changes relating to the detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants for immigration purposes in Canada. This paper investigates the role of actors from opposing advocacy coalition groups in promoting or challenging immigration detention in Canada. The paper adopts the theoretical underpinnings of “Advocacy Coalition Framework” as a lens of analysis to trace the role of advocacy coalition groups in recent history of Canada’s immigration detention policy subsystem. This paper assumes an actor-centric approach with an aim to contribute to current body of knowledge on Canada’s immigration detention policy subsystem. Keywords: immigration detention; open border advocates; closed border supporters; advocacy coalition groups; advocacy coalition framework; Canada; policy subsystem
Highlights
There are many pathways to irregular migration which is a border “movement that takes place outside the regulatory norms of the sending, transit and receiving countries” (International Organization for Migration, 2017, p.300)
The Global Trends Report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) observes there were 2,826,508 pending asylum cases from this type of border in 2016 (UNHCR, 2016). Scholars acknowledge this type of movement stems from “push” and “pull” factors arising from pressures such as globalization, persecution, inequality, demography, human rights violation, violence, torture, disaster, persecution, conflict, environmental change and neoliberalism (Manderson, 2013; Taylor, 2005; Juss, 2004). These factors promote an increase in irregular migration, global movement, forced displacement and asylum-seeking as people respond in search of protection from persecution, liberty, better conditions of life, well-being and economic stability in destination states (Manderson, 2013)
This paper adopts the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) which is a dominant theory of the policy process that spans across a policy subsystem (Cairney, 2011) to understand the role of actors and advocacy coalition groups in policy changes relating to detention for immigration purposes in Canada
Summary
Advocacy coalition groups such as closed border supporters and open border advocates play a role in Canada’s immigration detention policy subsystem. This paper investigates the role of actors from opposing advocacy coalition groups in promoting or challenging immigration detention in Canada. The paper adopts the theoretical underpinnings of “Advocacy Coalition Framework” as a lens of analysis to trace the role of advocacy coalition groups in recent history of Canada’s immigration detention policy subsystem. This paper assumes an actor-centric approach with an aim to contribute to current body of knowledge on Canada’s immigration detention policy subsystem.
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