Migrant justice as reproductive justice: birthright citizenship and the politics of immigration detention for pregnant women in Canada

This research develops an analytical framework for theorizing the lived experiences of pregnant women in immigration detention, and then applies this framework in considering possibilities for transforming citizenship and the allocation of rights. We focus on the Canadian case, examining the 2.5-year detention of a refugee claimant who was detained while 3 months pregnant. In line with feminist intersectional and critical migration scholars, we argue that immigration detention is a form of structural violence against non-citizens that is gendered, raced, and classed. However, our analytical framework extends existing scholarship by centring reproductive justice as a key axis along which the structural violence of non-citizenship is enacted. Our findings are thus critical of reforms to detention that frame pregnant women as biologically vulnerable: we instead argue for a structural understanding of vulnerability that centres reproductive justice as a fundamental component of migrant justice in envisioning a decarceral future.