Interrogating borders: a transnational approach to refugee research in Vancouver

ID:	HARP-373
Title:	Interrogating borders: a transnational approach to refugee research in Vancouver
Source:	Canadian Geographer , v.44(3) Fall’00 pg 244-258
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	2000
Pages:	0
Author(s):
Keywords:	Canada, economic, social, and cultural rights, human rights, movement and residency, residence status, civil and political rights, Geography, refugee, immigration, migrants, Demography
Abstract:	Immigration begins with the premise that a newcomer’s primary attachments to place – whether they be social, political, or economic – shift from one’s former country of emigration to one’s new country of immigration. In this paper, we challenge this binary assumption at a theoretical level, by demonstrating the state-centric tendencies of immigration discourse, and at an empirical level, by illustrating the multiple and messier relations of migrants to states based on the refugee experience of Burmese migrants who have settled in Canada. We contend that conventional immigration approaches, including those of demography, population geography, and economics, largely ignore conditions in and relations with the so-called source country, rendering them unable to capture the social and spatial spectrum of experience associated with displacement. A transnational approach to migration generates a more dynamic and comprehensive analysis, one which highlights a potentially transformative politics based on the movement of people, money, and information both within and beyond Canadian borders. Such an approach, we further argue, depends on close collaboration with the migrants whose livelihoods are being considered. Transnational migration research – especially that concerning refugees forced from their countries – requires a methodological approach that is not only community-based, but one in which the migrants participating shape the research objectives and render the research relevant to their own concerns, local and transnational.
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