Love & Anger in Criminal Deportation

• In Event: The Moral Worlds of Immigration Bureaucrats III

Abstract

This paper presents a sociolegal study of how representations of “love” and “anger” drive decisions on “humanitarian and compassionate” relief from criminal deportation in Canada. Canada’s immigration regime has allowed appeals from deportation for serious criminality on “humanitarian and compassionate” (H&C) grounds since 1967. H&C appeal decisions employ a highly moralistic and emotive mode of justification to probe the most intimate details of appellants’ lives. Drawing on theoretical accounts of emotions as having cognitive content, emotions as practices, and extended-mind theory, the paper develops an account of the institutionalization of humanity (as a domain of morality) and compassion (as a moral emotion) in H&C appeal decisions. It then argues that the decisions’ treatment of love and anger when coming to moral conclusions form part of a moral-regulatory project that rests in part on constructed binaries of “civilized” and “uncivilized” emotional displays. “Anger” is a recurrent theme in discussions of appellants’ criminal offences: adjudicators focus on the restraint (“civilized”) or lack of restraint (“uncivilized”) in criminalized acts. “Love” is thematized through discussions of appellants’ relationships with children, partners, other family, and friends: these too are portrayed as following either “civilized” or “uncivilized” patterns. Through the exploration of these “civilized”/“uncivilized” emotional binaries, the paper explores how criminal deportation is rationalized. The paper contributes to a number of interdisciplinary literatures: on law and the emotions; on the intersection of criminal and immigration law; and on moral regulation.

Author

• Colin Grey, Queen’s University Faculty of Law