UBC Press A Family Matter: Citizenship, Conjugal Relationships, and Canadian Immigration Policy

Product Description What is family? Citing national security and societal welfare, the Harper government adopted a strict definition of family to limit access to citizenship for certain immigrants. Megan Gaucher analyzes the government’s assessment of sexual-minority refugee claimants’ relationship history, common-law and married spousal sponsorship applications, and marriage fraud, concluding that this narrative of citizenship reinforces racialized, gendered, and sexualized assumptions about the “Canadian family.” As many Western governments ponder more restrictive immigration policies, A Family Matter offers a timely examination of the Canadian approach and proposes a course for re-evaluating how family is defined and for implementing fairer assessments of immigrants and refugees. Review Gaucher weaves together a number of previously distinct threads of conversation from the fields of law, public policy, migration, and citizenship, as well as gender and sexuality studies, exposing a system of differential treatment that raises important questions about the nature of citizenship, privilege, and belonging that is at the heart of the Canadian identity. Author: Dagmar Soennecken, associate professor at the School of Public Policy & Administration and the Department of Social Science (Law & Society Program) at York University From the Author Megan Gaucher is an assistant professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. She has published a variety of articles in the Canadian Journal of Political Science; the International Journal of Canadian Studies; Social Politics: International Studies in Gender; State and Society; and Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice. About the Author Megan Gaucher is an assistant professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. She has published a variety of articles in the Canadian Journal of Political Science; the International Journal of Canadian Studies; Social Politics: International Studies in Gender; State and Society; and Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice.