Refugee states [electronic resource] : critical refugee studies in Canada / edited by Vinh Nguyen and Thy Phu.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Critical Refugee Status in Canada / Vinh Nguyen and Thy Phu -- Part One: Historicization -- tShifting Grounds of Asylum in Canadian Public Discourse and Policy / Johanna Reynolds and Jennifer Hyndman -- Untangling the Strands of Memory: Historicizing the 1914 Komagata Maru Incident and the Concept of Refugeeness / Alia Somani -- Erasing Exclusion: Adrienne Clarkson and the Promise of the Refugee Experience / Laura Madokoro -- Petitions and Protest: Refugees and the Haunting of Canadian Citizenship / Peter Nyers -- Part Two: Conjunctions -- Where Are We From? Decolonizing Indigenous and Refugee Relations / Jennifer Adese and Malissa Phung -- Queer and Trans Migrants, Colonial Logics, and the Politics of Refusal / Edward Ou Jin Lee -- Producing the Figure of the "Super-Refugee" through Discourses of Success, Exceptionalism, Ableism, and Inspiration / Gada Mahrouse -- Cross-Racial Refugee Fiction: Dionne Brand's What We All Long For / Donald Goellnicht -- Epilogue: The Exceptional and the Ordinary / Thy Phu and Vinh Nguyen.

"Exploring "refuge" and "refugee" as concepts that shape Canadian nation-building both within and beyond national borders, Refugee States takes an interdisciplinary and critical approach to describing how refugees articulate their relation to and defiance of official discourses. Through close examinations of refugee movements, contexts, and subjectivities, this collection reveals how Canada has relied upon the rejection and inclusion of refugees as a crucial means of statecraft. Bringing together renowned and emerging scholars from multiple disciplines, Nguyen and Phu illuminate the historical, political, and cultural conditions that produce refugees as well as the narrative of humanitarian benevolence that persists nationally and internationally. Highlighting landmark cases, the editors and contributors together develop critical refugee studies as a framework for understanding, nuancing, and critiquing the production of Canadian humanitarian exceptionalism--the international image and discourse of Canada as a liberal, tolerant, and welcoming haven for people fleeing oppression, persecution, and unfreedom. In doing so, Refugee States offers alternative modes of understanding past and present refugee passages to and within Canada, and brings to light the many ways in which refugee subjects navigate displacement, migration, and resettlement."-- Provided by publisher.

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