Enforcing Exclusion

Enforcing Exclusion should be on every immigration lawyer’s bookshelf.

Celine Hocquet:
Although this book takes an anthropological approach and focuses on precarious migrants in Canada, its interdisciplinarity makes it relevant to a broader audience. Through testimonies and life stories, it provides a much-needed account of how immigration laws and policies foster the exclusion of migrants in their daily lives. It will be enriching for anyone researching immigration law and policy from a legal or political perspective, as well as for anyone studying the anthropology and sociology of migration.

François Crépeau, professor and Hans and Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University:
The constant threat of deportation is central to the lives of people with precarious migration status. This excellent book reveals and analyzes the complex web of human rights and labour violations experienced by temporary migrant workers. The only way to achieve their effective social inclusion is to push back against the administrative hurdles migrants face in immigration law, provide them with effective access to justice and remedies, and empower them to fight for their rights and to have their voices heard in policy making and enforcement.

Patricia Landolt, associate professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto Scarborough:
Marsden artfully demonstrates how different arenas of law and policy come together with different government jurisdictions to produce an enforcement regime that negatively impacts the lives and working conditions of migrants in Canada.

Natalie Drolet, executive director, Migrant Workers Centre:
As the movement toward sanctuary cities gains momentum in Canada, Enforcing Exclusion contributes significantly to our understanding of the interplay between law and policy and migration status. It highlights the contradiction between a Canada that positions itself as welcoming, inclusive, and a champion of human rights, and one that denies these rights to people in our communities who have precarious migration status.

Eric Tucker, professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University:
Sarah Marsden’s new book, Enforcing Exclusion, opens a window onto the reality of living with precarious migration status in Canada, and the picture is not a pretty one. Marsden provides fresh insights into the many ways precarious migrants’ vulnerability is constructed in law and experienced daily. It is a must read for those already aware of this injustice, and even more so for those who are not.