Canada is often recognised as one of the most progressive nations in the world when it comes to the acceptance of refugees and multiculturalism as national policy. However, the longer history of border management on the grounds of race cannot be ignored. Focusing on the contemporary Canadian border regime, we ask: How is the Canadian border financed and maintained, and how do the practices of the border materially impact the lives of racialised people who are allowed to enter Canada? We answer these questions as follows: First, we examine the public funding infrastructure of the border, by which we mean the national budgeting for border protection and the policing of those deemed illegal or irregular. Second, we interrogate how the Canadian state permits and facilitates the exploitation of the racialised migrant labourers who are allowed into the nation, to the benefit of businesses and credit issuers. Through this two-pronged analysis, we argue that the Canadian border and immigration regime is illustrative of a racial capitalist state which functions to (1) exclude unwanted people from the nation, (2) facilitate low-wage labour exploitation, and (3) incorporate racialised migrants into wider systems of credit and debt.
Bhagat et al. (Thu,) studied this question.