Patchworks of Access and Conditionality of Rights: Public Education and the Non-Citizen Family in Canada

• In Event: Transnational Migration and Comparative Perspectives on Non-Citizenship in the Americas

Abstract

With the passage of the “Access without Fear” policy in 2013 by the City of Toronto, Toronto became the first “Sanctuary City” in Canada promising access to public goods and services to all residents regardless of legal status. This policy is a direct response to shifts in global migration and changes in Canadian immigration policy. While the Access without Fear policy and the Toronto school boards’ Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policies that predated it promise the availability of services, individuals with precarious legal status seek out these services while aware of their vulnerability and the contradictions between the municipal promises, provincial mandates and federal law and between the policy and its implementation and practice. The paper draws on in depth interviews with ‘citizen’ educators - school administrators, teachers and school trustees, etc. – and ‘non-citizen’ families and youth enrolled in the school system to examine the everyday practice of state regulations, policies and procedures that arbitrate the membership and rights of non-citizens. The analysis captures how the boundaries between citizenship and non-citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, and the entitlement of rights are being imagined, negotiated, and reconfigured in Canada in 2015.

Authors

• Patricia A Landolt, University of Toronto/Scarborough

• Luin Goldring, York University