Sociology and Legal Studies

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Sociology and Legal Studies.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

“Are you the real police?” “No. We’re the campus police.” An examination of the way Ontario Special Constables govern risk on post-secondary campuses
(University of Waterloo, 2021-06-17) Cook, Katie; Ilcan, Suzan
This dissertation examines the role of special constables on Ontario post-secondary campuses and where they are positioned in relation to the broad range of state and non-state law enforcement entities in Canada. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with department heads, alongside a detailed survey and focus groups with Ontario campus special constables, my research examines the everyday work and perspectives of a highly understudied group. Under neoliberal governance, there has been a growing reliance on non-state law enforcement entities to adopt roles that have traditionally been filled by police. Alongside this, we have witnessed an increasing demand for risk management due to growing private property ownership. As a result, studies that investigate the work of these groups offer important insight into their experiences and what is needed to ensure they can effectively manage risk in place of the police. Despite this, research examining the perspectives of non-state law enforcement is limited. Furthermore, there are even fewer studies on campus law enforcement and essentially no scholarly attention has been paid to those who work in this role on Canadian post-secondary campuses. This study addresses this gap by offering insight into the background, daily work, and experiences of Ontario campus special constables through a mixed methods design which allows for the production of information on a number of relevant topics from a broad range of participants. Based on my findings, I argue that much like other private policing entities, neoliberal processes have contributed to the role of special constables increasingly overlapping with that of the public police and, as a result, they play an important part in keeping campuses safe. At the same time, my study shows that this development has occurred to an even greater extent with special constables as a result of the general shift toward the professionalization of campus law enforcement, as well as the growing need to manage various risks on campus, particularly in light of increased media portrayal of serious crimes at universities and colleges. Moreover, despite the police-like work special constables are expected to perform on campus, my research indicates that, in line with the experiences of other non-state law enforcement, legitimacy challenges remain an issue. Although these issues appear to occur less often with special constables, students, staff, faculty, and other members of law enforcement are often unaware of the authority granted to special constables and in some cases, this situation has resulted in negative and escalated interactions between parties. Thus, this study contributes to this field of research by offering an explanation and potential solutions to address legitimacy challenges among private law enforcement. Consequently, I argue that institutions should increase awareness surrounding the role and authorities of special constables and that policymakers should take steps to enhance their standardization and training to improve the perception of this group as legitimate members of law enforcement. Additionally, given their ability to fully engage in the community policing model and offer institution-specific support at a lower cost (compared with municipal police), the work of special constables could be used by all post-secondary institutions across Canada to protect the campus community and ensure that all students, regardless of location, background, or school, are afforded the same level of security. This dissertation highlights the way special constables have the ability to manage both actual and perceived risk through the use of community-based policing on campus and therefore are valuable assets to the institutions that employ them. These findings have implications beyond post-secondary campuses in Ontario. They reinforce the importance of effective private law enforcement entities in a time of reduced state involvement under neoliberal governance and high demand for risk management among members of the public as well as the need for further research to ensure optimal performance and public acceptance of them.
Asylum and the Politics of Irregularization: Refugee Claimants and Toronto’s Everyday Places
(University of Waterloo, 2018-06-25) Connoy, Laura; Ilcan, Suzan
While Canada is touted as having a universal healthcare system, not all of its residents have access to it, particularly precarious status noncitizens such as refugee claimants. As a signatory of international refugee accords, Canada is obligated to ensure that refugee claimants within its borders receive access to healthcare. However, from June 2012 to April 2016, refugee claimants received restricted access to healthcare coverage offered through the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP). While the underlying goal of this move was to regulate refugee claimants within and outside of the country, it had a major unintended consequence; within everyday healthcare places like hospitals, walk-in clinics, and doctor’s offices, many refugee claimants were denied access to healthcare services regardless of actual levels of coverage. This was due to the relations and encounters between various elements and actors, which produced inconsistent, unpredictable, and contradictory experiences. In this dissertation, I analyze this program and resulting everyday experiences through the lens of irregularization, a regulatory assemblage that problematizes the presence of persons/groups within space and attributes an identity of irregularity, referred to here as an irregular status, that reflects one’s constructed abnormal or problematic presence within space. I build this argument in relation to existing critical migration scholarship, particularly scholarship that engages with borders, (non)citizenship, and humanitarianism. Through these important critical lenses, we are made aware of how identities and subject positions are created and how migrant and refugee populations are regulated locally, nationally, and transnationally. To ground this argument empirically, I provide a policy and discourse analysis of relevant media, position papers, and policy documents to shed light on the tense socio-political context during this time and the everyday workings and implications of irregularization. In addition to this analysis, I also conducted semi-structured interviews in order to highlight the voices of key actors on the ground within the city of Toronto: doctors, lawyers, executive directors, program managers, Ministry officials, City officials, and refugee claimants. This methodology helps to demonstrate how the assemblage of irregularization is constituted and operates, and how borders, (non)citizenship, and humanitarianism can be conceived of as irregularizing assemblages that problematize presence within space, produce insecurity and anxiety, and affects the well-being of refugee claimants in Canada. In addition to a focus on regulation, I also analyze the friction that constitutes the assemblage of irregularization. During this time from 2012 to 2016, the city of Toronto witnessed demonstrations, campaigns, and occupations to draw public attention to the IFHP cuts and the experiences of refugee claimants, in addition to less visible acts that established ‘common’ spaces which prioritize the health of refugee claimants and others present within the city. Drawing on critical citizenship scholarship, I analyze these challenges through the concept of acts of liberating irregularity, being the visible and less visible deeds or conducts that are enacted through solidarity and performativity to assert the presence of refugee claimants and the right to healthcare. While these acts were not necessarily transformative, they were important in addressing the healthcare needs of refugee claimants, and offering a subtle resistance to the irregularizing assemblages of borders, citizenship, and humanitarianism. In this critical analysis of the politics of irregularization, this dissertation contributes to the sociology of migration as it relates to regulation and resistance, and offers a timely and unique analysis of Canada’s refugee healthcare system as defined by the IFHP.
Enforced Government of the Self: Forced Dependence and Experiences of Sponsored Older Chinese Immigrants in Canada
(University of Waterloo, 2024-10-15) Li, Ivy Zhiyuan; Ilcan, Suzan
Globalization and global competition have rendered Canada’s immigration regime and governance increasingly susceptible to market forces. Additionally, the pressure of an aging society in Canada has contributed to a significant reduction in the admission of family-class immigrants, especially older people, and in 2014, the federal government tightened and dramatically revised its parent/grandparent (PGP) immigration program by raising income requirements for sponsors, extending the period of sponsorship by offspring, and imposing an annual quota of applications. Scant literature has explored how the PGP program and its policy alteration affects the later life and well-being of sponsored older immigrants in Canada. Mainly through in-depth semi-structured interviews with sponsored Chinese parents, their offspring and social workers and qualitative analysis of documents, my PhD research explores the experience of sponsored PGPs in Canada; examines the state’s positioning of sponsored older immigrants, especially those from the global South, through a lens of governmentality; and analyses the workings and effects of neoliberal governance through immigration policy in Canada and its implications. Drawing on and contributing to the literature on governmentality and racism in migration, especially by engaging with notions of “government of the self,” neoliberalism, biopolitical citizenship, and racism and racialization, I construct my conceptual framework by examining the embedded tensions and contradictions in contemporary governance, which I term “neoliberal frictions.” I discuss three forms or levels of neoliberal friction and their manifestations and ramifications in the experience of sponsored Chinese PGPs. Additionally, taking on the insights of Anna Tsing (2004), I conceive of friction as not only consisting of contradictions, tensions, inequality, and injustice, but also as engendering a location and process of struggle that generates actions, changes, new knowledge, new social and political orders, and new forms of justice. Thus, I explore and discuss not only the challenges and difficulties of later-life immigration, but also how sponsored Chinese PGPs develop various strategies to handle challenges, adapt to new environments, resist dependence imposed by the PGP program, and pursue an independent and meaningful existence with dignity. Hence my approach, built on the concept of neoliberal friction, is consistent with the notion of assemblage (Wiertz, 2020), which accounts not only for situations where life is subordinated to systemic power but also for instances that fracture and challenge this power (p. 5). I prioritize the agency and experience of sponsored PGPs, highlight their struggles, perspectives, and concerns, and underscore moments of dissonance, agency, and resistance. My findings debunk the misconception and stigmatized portrayal of older immigrants as welfare seekers and reveal that their contributions are ignored and exploited by neoliberal governance in Canada. My study shows that Canada’s immigration regime, though becoming more implicit and subtler, remains structurally raced, classed, and gendered and interplays with dynamics such as ableism, ageism, ethnocentrism, otherness, and worthiness within the state’s power relations. My study reveals a new governance apparatus – dependent biopolitics – that targets sponsored older immigrants, enables the state to download its collective responsibility onto immigrant families, and justifies its othering and discriminatory practices in the name of facilitating family reunification. My study reveals that intergenerational relations and housing arrangements are the two key factors that affect sponsored PGPs’ satisfaction with life and well-being. It shows that sponsored Chinese PGPs need a mindset or desire for and the ability to realize independence, rather than relying on their offspring, if they are to age well and develop a satisfying life in Canada. My findings reveal that forced dependence by the undertaking/dependence clause of the PGP program, deepens the gap between their desired independence and actual independence. This research demonstrates that the PGP program, as a tool of government, cannot grant sponsored Chinese PGPs entrepreneurial spirit and facilitate their self-reliance, but instead tends to add hardship to their lives and engender social problems such as isolation, senior mistreatment and neglect, physical and mental problems, poverty, and precarious living conditions, which may use up more social resources and public funds. Accordingly, this thesis recommends a more sustainable PGP program and more supportive settlement policies and services for sponsored older immigrants. My study contributes conceptually and empirically to governmentality perspectives on the study of immigration policy and the governance of older immigrant populations. It does this by developing an assemblage approach: on the one hand, it shows that neoliberal frictions are embedded in the state’s governance systems and its practices, which cannot foster life for sponsored older Chinese immigrants and can even undermine their quality of life and well-being; on the other hand, it demonstrates how sponsored PGPs can, by performing agency, forming small, informal groups, and engaging with and helping to build community, conduct self-government and resist dependence imposed on them by the PGP program.
Settler Colonialism + Native Ghosts: An Autoethnographic Account of the Imaginarium of Late Capitalist/Colonialist Storytelling
(University of Waterloo, 2020-02-13) Robinson, Rowland; Ilcan, Suzan; Habib, Jasmin
This dissertation is an Indigenous, decolonial, and autoethnographic account of the genealogical formation and function of Nativeness within biopolitical formations and racializing assemblages, as well as the visual, ontological, narrative, and affective imaginings of the northern bloc of settler colonialism (the United States and Canada). As an autoethnographic work it centres my own lived and embodied experiences to chart the corridors of settler-colonial power and knowledge production, in particular my experiences as a diasporic, urban and liminally enrolled Native person, and the very real, and at times overwhelming, affective burdens that come with such a positionality. In doing so this work situates my journey within the structures of settler colonialism, and in particular against what the late Patrick Wolfe referred to as the “logic of elimination,” as well as what many scholars have identified and referred to as the Coloniality of Power and the Colonial Order of Things. Further, it works to centre Indigenous resurgence, insurgence, decolonization, self-determination, and a politics of refusal. In thinking through in particular the centering of practices of refusal, this work proposes and engages in a kind of methodological-pedagogical-praxiological movement of autoethnographic refusal, where the dissertation begins its first of two narrative movements by charting Indigenous damage narratives within frames of political ontology, biopolitics and racializing assemblages, visuality, and community loss and disruption, before moving towards actively no longer telling those stories. The second narrative movement of this dissertation moves then from telling of my own stories of damage under settler-colonial regimes of power/knowledge, towards theorizing about Native damage narratives, most especially why they are so readily consumed within digital, filmic, and academic settings and the economies of late capitalism/colonialism. This is referred to within as the imaginarium of late capitalist/colonialist storytelling. In doing so, it continues to ask fundamentally onto-existential questions about Natives through frames of Savageness and Wildness, temporality, and what the late cultural theorist Mark Fisher referred to as the Weird.
The Aesthetics of Resistance in Australian-run Immigration Detention Centres on Manus Island: The Case Study of Behrouz Boochani
(University of Waterloo, 2025-03-24) Mostolizadeh, Sayedali; Ilcan, Suzan
The offshore detention regime for asylum seekers represents a contested model of border control, punishing those seeking refuge and violating their fundamental rights. This research, however, reveals a powerful counterpoint: the use of art and creativity as tools of resistance by detainees. Through the story of Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian-Kurdish journalist and former Manus Island detainee, this study illuminates the power of art and creativity in challenging this system. Despite his lengthy confinement, Boochani produced a remarkable body of creative work that exposed the harsh realities of detention, creating a counter-narrative that gained international acclaim. This research introduces creativity as a tool for political activism, challenging the invisibility inherent in offshore detention. The concept of ‘creative subjectivation’; is presented as an analytical framework to understand how creative practices facilitate the transformation of marginalized refugees into active political subjects. To explore this, the study investigates the structural, operational, and experiential dimensions of offshore detention, from macro-level border policies to micro-level dynamics within detention centers. Drawing on qualitative in- depth interviews with Boochani, his creative collaborators, journalists, human rights advocates, and former detainees, this study provides a multifaceted perspective on creative resistance within highly restrictive spaces of border enforcement. The dissertation comprises seven chapters that explore themes of border politics, the evolution of Australia’s offshore detention policies, the lived experiences within detention centers, and the transformative potential of creative resistance and includes the production of a documentary film that offers an immersive and sensorial exploration of creative resistance and migrant activism within the offshore detention regime. This project contributes to critical migration and border studies by illuminating the transformative potential of creative resistance in contexts of extreme marginalization. It offers new insights into refugee agency, migrant politics, border politics, and the role of art in contesting anti-asylum policies and practices.

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Browsing Sociology and Legal Studies by Author "Ilcan, Suzan"