Constructing Non-Citizens: Canada's War Against Terrorism

Abstract

Law serves as the site through which Canada expresses its commitment to the global war effort, showing its willingness to suspend the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike in the name of national and international security. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, for example, Canada legislated for the internment of individuals with Japanese ancestry, confiscated their property, stripped them of citizenship and deported them to Japan, even if they did not have concrete ties to that country. Canadian history has demonstrated that one cannot understand the demarcation between those who are imagined to belong to the community and those who are constructed as ‘foreigners’ simply on the basis of citizenship. Rather, the demarcation has also historically been constructed along racial lines. In times of war, the law speaks loudly and clearly against those who are regarded as undesirable, untrustworthy and foreign.

Since 11 September 2001, the trope of war has once again been invoked to justify the revocation of rights to certain segments of Canadian society. As a result of the ‘war against terrorism’, as it is popularly called, Arabs and Muslims in Canada have been disenfranchised and regarded as the foreigner within. The overtly racist instruments of the past have been put away. Arabs and Muslims are not being rounded up in internment camps nor are they being collectively stripped of their citizenship and required to leave Canada. Nonetheless, the war against terrorism has effectively constructed Arabs and Muslims in Canada as non-citizens because this war denies Arabs and Muslims rights that are otherwise guaranteed to other citizens.