Stranger movements

In the context of refugee politics in Canada, particularly considering the role of anti-Semitism in the development of refugee protection legislation, there is a strong argument to be made that the 'whiteness' of refugees who are not of colour is complicated. [...] In light of this concern, if it is understood through Judith Butler (1993a), that the body is continually produced and reproduced discursively through its ‘race’ and gender, and if this constitution of the body is the effect of an incomplete and continual process of reformulation and contestation, then it is possible to open up new ways to think about the violence of the body’s materialization. [...] The relationships between space and body, and between ‘race’ and place, that form the basis for Razack’s analysis, are deeply complicated and important, and the 6 author makes the intriguing suggestion that there exists a relationship between the ‘keeping in place’ of some and the ‘identity’ or domination of others. [...] The bourgeois body of Foucault’s analysis is likened to the Cartesian subject in the work of Kathleen Kirby through the idea that the Enlightenment subject developed in a parallel with the rise of cartographic technology and exploration (Razack, 2002a: 12). [...] What remains unclear from Razack’s discussion is her understanding of the constitution of the subject and of the materiality of the body.