Migration Conversations

Meet my father, James Liew. His status as a previously stateless person and his migration story to Canada is the inspiration for my current research on statelessness and law. Listen to us talk about his past and his journey to Canada. Consider how he characterized the country he was born in and his idea of what citizenship is about.

Meet Harsha Walia, Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, co-founder of No One is Illegal and author of Undoing Border Imperialism. We talk about what it means to be a good community member, why we can't talk about borders and migration without talking about race, and interrogate the critiques placed against the call to undo borders.

Meet Yodit Girmay, a former settlement worker and an Equity and Inclusion Consultant who provides diversity, anti-oppression and cultural competency training. Yodit talks about the myriad of invisible ways settlement workers aid newcomers, but also how they can be helpful in a legal process. We also talk about the delicate balance in setting boundaries with your ethnic community, with professionals, including lawyers, and with your personal life. Yodit also talks about the systemic ways in which all settlement workers do anti-oppression, anti-racism work.

Meet Petra Molnar, a lawyer-researcher, Associate Director of the Refugee Law Lab, York University, working at the intersection of human rights, migration and technology. We talk about the ecosystem by which migration tech is being used to survey and make administrative decisions related to immigration, refugee and citizenship law. Drones, facial recognition, AI lie detectors, and other tools are being deployed at the borders without any oversight. Petra also gives us a sense of what is now going on in the European Union, Greece and in particular the new refugee camp in Lesvos, and why we should be gazing at these spaces more.

Meet Karen Cocq, Projects & Campaign Coordinator for Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, Canada’s largest coalition of self-organized groups of migrant workers. In this episode we talk about the #StatusForAll campaign and the call for material changes in the immigration system to confer permanent status upon arrival so that all persons can access health care, labour rights, and to enable the elimination of exploitative, abusive and punitive working conditions that persist due to the temporary and precarious status of migrants. Check out migrantrights.ca for more on the anti-racist call for change, the #StatusForAll campaign and for information on how to support it.

Meet Frédérique Chabot, the Director of Health Promotion and Interim Executive Director of Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights, an organization that promotes health, wellbeing and rights related to sexuality and reproduction. We talk about the barriers the COVID-19 pandemic has erected in accessing abortion health care and how these barriers are more severe for migrant women given that access is reliant on the immigration status one has. As you listen to this episode, consider how there is a need to consider access to health care with a gendered and racialized lens and how pandemic responses so far have ignored migrant women.

Meet Skyler, a former refugee claimant who made a claim for protection in Canada because she feared for her life as a lesbian in the United States Army. In this conversation, we talk about what it feels like to go through the refugee determination system at the Immigration and Refugee Board, and the Federal Court of Canada. For more information about her case, you can read Smith v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2009 FC 1194.

Meet Michael Bossin, one of the co-counsel for the Applicants in the Canadian Council for Refugees v Canada decision, where the Federal Court of Appeal found the Safe Third Country Agreement unconstitutional. In this episode, we talk how the decision found the STCA violates the Charter rights (section 7) of refugee claimants, the legal analysis behind the reasoning, and the immense work behind the scenes undertaken to build the case.

Meet Rema Jamous Imseis, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Representative to Canada. In this episode, Rema provides an introduction to the work of the UNHCR and what UNHCR does in Canada. We also talk about the current and emerging challenges to refugee protection globally and in Canada.