Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

PhD researcher draws on refugee experience to study plight of asylum-seekers in Canada

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:08:31 +0000

PhD researcher draws on refugee experience to study plight of asylum-seekers in Canada

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/14/2024 - 12:08

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Jona Zyfi, a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, is using a human rights lens to explore the links between technology and migration (supplied image)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Our Community

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Graduate Students

Subheadline

"We’re using criminal justice mechanisms to deal with what should be an administrative process"

Jona Zyfi’s life has so far been an “adventurous story” full of fear, hope, resilience and relief.

At age seven, Zyfi was smuggled into Australia under a false name as a child refugee claimant. At 16, after a forced return to her native Albania, she emigrated to Canada carrying only a suitcase and teddy bear.

Now a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, Zyfi is examining how public policy shapes the plight of asylum seekers and migrants in Canada. Her work is shedding valuable light on some of the little-known – and sometimes shocking – injustices faced by refugee claimants in a country widely thought to be among the most welcoming and multicultural in the world.

“The work that I do is very much informed by my lived experiences,” she says. “It’s where I find the strength to do it.”

Why is Zyfi examining the refugee experience through the lens of criminology and not political science?

“Lots of people have asked me that,” she says. “Even I had moments when I’d wonder, ‘Am I in the right department?’ But the deeper I go into my research, the more confirmation I get that I am doing the right thing.”

This is due to the phenomenon of “crimmigration,” a term that’s used to describe how refugee claimants are often subjected to processes normally associated with the criminal justice system.

“Immigration is an administrative field, while the criminal justice system is a lot more heavy-handed,” Zyfi explains. “And yet, we’re using criminal justice mechanisms to deal with what should be an administrative process. That doesn’t make sense.”

In some ways, she says, Canada’s approach to refugees is a good news story.

In the last decade, for example, the country has welcomed more than 40,000 Syrian refugees, and has been in the vanguard of acceptance for those fleeing persecution on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

But there is darker side, too. Many Canadians are unaware that children can be held in detention with or without their parents and that adult asylum seekers who can’t be accommodated in holding centres have been detained in provincial jails alongside those serving criminal sentences.

Canada is also one of the few countries in the Global North where there is no legal limit on detention, meaning that claimants can spend years in jails or holding centres before their cases are heard.

“They rarely get access to legal aid and many of them can’t speak the language,” Zyfi says. “So they don’t even understand what’s happening. They’re unaware of their rights and terrified of being deported.”

Zyfi says she is particularly interested in the role technology plays in immigration and asylum processes and application assessment procedures. In an effort to reduce dependence on migrant detention, some asylum seekers are now granted temporary freedom but monitored in ways that are highly controversial.

These methods include the use of electronic ankle monitors as well as voice reporting via cellphone – both of which can fail if batteries or cell reception run out. Facial recognition software is also gaining in popularity.

But even a small technical mistake, Zyfi argues, can place a claimant’s life in danger. “There’s this idea that technology is going to solve all our problems,” says Zyfi. “It’s going to make faster decisions, better decisions. The decisions are faster, but that doesn’t always mean that they are better.”

Zyfi’s concern about the rights of asylum seekers is born from her own experiences.

Born shortly after the fall of communism in Albania, her early life was spent amid the anarchy and civil insurrection that followed the collapse of the country’s economy. “We had to hide under the tables, because bullets could fly through at any minute,” she recalls. “One flew through our balcony window. The arms depots were open; anybody could get bullets, a grocery bag full of grenades, whatever they could find. It was a free-for-all.”

Using a false name, Zyfi made her way to Australia with her mother and sister via a human smuggling network. But the family was expelled from Australia in 2005 when Albania was deemed to be a safe country of origin. “I remember my mother packing up our entire life in a shipping container,” she says.

Four years later, Zyfi came to Canada and two years ago, after a lengthy series of applications and various immigration statuses, she was finally granted citizenship.

Now, she is firmly committed to making life better for other migrants and refugees, including by giving them a bigger say in decisions that affect them. In policymaking, “our stories are not being incorporated in a meaningful way,” she says. “To me, that is the saddest part.”

The groundswell of private support for Syrian refugees – Zyfi herself was an enthusiastic sponsor – shows that caring for survivors of global crisis is a Canadian value. But she says that civil society alone cannot provide the support needed, and the government can do more – not only for immigrants deemed to be economically desirable, but for those whose lives are in jeopardy.

“Historically, immigration has been key to the Canadian economy. It has also been a fundamental tenet of nation-building and multiculturalism,” Zyfi says. “But we are doing the bare minimum. We have the capacity to do so much more.”

Using smartphones, U of T PhD candidate works with Nigerian women to protect communities

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:11:01 +0000

Using smartphones, U of T PhD candidate works with Nigerian women to protect communities

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/02/2023 - 10:11

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Wumi Asubiaro Dada's PhD project involves working with local organizations and women in Nigeria to protect their home communities through the use of geospatial imagery and a mobile app (photo courtesy of Wumi Asubiaro Dada)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Global Lens

Anthropology

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Graduate Students

Growing up in Nigeria, Omowumi (Wumi) Asubiaro Dada was outspoken, argumentative and animated by injustice.

It was obvious to her family what path her life would take: “They always said, we know you’re going to be a lawyer,” she says of her career in human rights law and feminist advocacy that has spanned two decades.

Now as a PhD candidate at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science, Dada is working with local organizations and women in Nigeria to help them achieve justice by protecting their home communities through the use of modern technology – work that is being supported by a Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship.

In particular, she’s helping women in Kaduna – one of Nigeria’s 36 states – become a major force in conflict prevention and resolution. Dada worked with her PhD supervisor Kamari Maxine Clarke, a distinguished professor in the department of anthropology, and a local organization known as the CLEEN Foundation to create a project called the Early Warning Early Response (EWER). The system trains villagers, including women, to use publicly available geospatial imagery to identify planned attacks before they happen. A mobile app then sends push alerts to warn others to be prepared.

So far, 120 women have been trained on EWER since it was launched in 2021.

“They’ve been able to get information across, which, in some cases, has led to a de-escalation of violence,” says Dada. “And when there is a trigger, meetings are called. One of the conditions of these meetings is that women must form part of the quorum, which has increased their participation in decision-making in conflict prevention. Another effect is that women have brought other women into the fold.”

Dada believes that women can play a prominent role in defusing violence, which is a massive problem in Nigeria’s northern region. That includes kidnapping, sexual assault, village burnings and murder.

The sources of violence are complex and varied, Dada explains. “Kaduna in particular is very unsafe,” she says. “The violence there started as religious and ethno-communal clashes, with many reprisals and counterattacks and has now changed in dynamics to kidnapping, village burning with various violations such as murder and sexual assault.”

Climate change has also played a role.

“A lot of land has been affected by desertification,” Dada says. In the Lake Chad Basin across the border, “people who make their living by herding cows have lost their livelihood and become desperate, which has also led to crime.”

In all these cases, she notes, the voices of women are regularly ignored. “This is because they’re not considered part of the problem. And because they bear the brunt of much violence, they’re simply considered victims. I’m pushing the argument that we need to recognize the agency of women – it’s important that they be part of the solution.”

Dada adds that communities in Nigeria often left to fend for themselves with no assistance. Established in the days of colonial rule, the male-dominated police force is, like other units of the justice system, located far away and lacks the resources to properly assist rural communities, she says. This has resulted in widespread vigilantism – which can mean defensive violence, but also the prevention of crime before it happens.

This is where women come in.

“There’s a lot happening in the domestic sphere that is actually political,” she says. “Women often hear things being planned before anyone else hears about it. And women can influence the actions of others.” Dada points out that in pre-colonial society, women’s roles as keepers of knowledge, leaders of ritual and even warriors were far more respected than they are today. In her own Yoruba tradition, for example, many deities were female – which had a general effect on how human women were perceived.

Dada began her post-secondary studies immediately after high school and was practising law by age 21.

“At first, I worked in public interest litigation and human rights education, mostly representing incarcerated prisoners awaiting trial,” she says, noting this, too, is a critical problem in Nigeria, where the system is badly underfunded and some prisoners are held in congested facilities without bail for decades.

It was just one of the many problems Dada confronted in Nigeria’s legal system over the years – experiences that prompted her to identify the plight of women and make significant contributions to the women’s movement. That includes designing and managing a wide range of projects for non-governmental organizations, government and international development agencies.

As part of her current work, Dada seeks to advance Nigerian women’s participation at all levels of community justice administration. In addition to crime prevention, she is exploring restorative justice: examining the root causes of crime, and how best to reintegrate those who have offended back into society.

One of her Connaught Fellowship aims will be to present her findings at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women next year. There, she hopes to show how women’s work in domestic life should not be dismissed – but appreciated for its value in political and public life.

She says her PhD studies are helping her realize her community justice goals.

“If you have your sights set on changing structural inequality, this qualification can help you do that,” she says. “I’m engaging with ways to amplify the voices of people who would not ordinarily have the opportunity to make an impact on the structures that control their lives.”

U of T expert examines crime, punishment and late-Victorian justice

geoff.vendeville — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 15:31:07 +0000

U of T expert examines crime, punishment and late-Victorian justice

geoff.vendeville Thu, 07/21/2022 - 11:31

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Catherine L. Evans started work on Unsound Empire as she began her PhD dissertation at Princeton University in 2010 (photo courtesy of Evans)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Breaking Research

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Humanities

Law

In 1885, during the conflict known as the North-West Resistance, three Cree men in Manitoba were sentenced to death for the murder of an elderly woman from their community.

Although colonial justice was often severe – killing was punishable by death, and that year leader Louis Riel and eight other resistance fighters were executed – the three men were imprisoned but never hanged.

The fate of Charles Ducharme, Wawasehowein and Wahsahgamass epitomizes much about British justice in the late 19^thcentury, according to Catherine Evans, an assistant professor at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Arts & Science. The story is one of many tales of imperial crime and punishment described in her new book, Unsound Empire: Civilization & Madness in Late-Victorian Law (Yale University Press).

In her study of justice in the late Victorian era, Evans takes a broad view of what made criminal responsibility. “For me, it's also about personhood and subjecthood more generally," she says, “and thinking about who belongs in the empire: who is a full subject, and who can claim to be free and a free-choosing person.”

Questions of race and gender often factored into whether an accused person was deemed criminally responsible. “There were all these different ways where if you were a white Victorian man, you represented the pinnacle of freedom and rationality. Yet it was believed that the vast majority of human beings didn’t meet that threshold. And if that is sort of an axiomatic part of what it means to be an imperialist, how does that translate into responsibility and the law?” Evans says.

In the 1885 case involving the three Cree men, the accused believed the woman they killed was a “wendigo,” or cannibal spirit. “That case is really interesting because it shows a few things quite well,” Evans says. “One is the existence and vitality of Cree law. The evidence is pretty convincing in my view that the Cree community knew what was going to happen, and these men who were appointed to execute her did it as part of their judicial system. She was agreed to be unwell – and even she thought she was unwell.”

Colonial authorities appeared to concur with the Cree community, and as a result the three defendants had their death sentences commuted. But this action, says Evans, was not taken out of respect for Cree law. Rather, it spoke to the colonial system’s condescending view of the accused.

“One of the generative tensions is the clash between what it means to be a responsible person and an irresponsible person,” Evans says. “So if you are not responsible, then that seems to line up with a lot of the broader civilizational, racial, pseudoscientific theories that were floating around at this time.

“The idea that if you are not white, not English and not male, then you are more primitive and you don’t understand as well as other people do. That’s an idea that really activates and justifies empire. But in the criminal court, that can often act as a shield to maximum punishment and maximum liability – because if you don’t understand in principle, then the law should treat you more gently.”

That rationale also seemed to apply in cases involving women who killed their children. Their lives were often spared because they were thought to be too fragile and emotionally unstable to bear full responsibility for their actions.

In the same era, British justice was also becoming increasingly influenced by a changing understanding of human psychology and the principles of liberalism.

“Ideas about interiority became important,” Evans says. “This is the age where we see the birth of the novel and the growth of liberalism. The autonomous liberal subject starts to become more politically and culturally important.”

In the mid-19th century, the M'Naghten rule was established, determining if and when an accused could be held criminally responsible, or if they were entitled to a defence on the grounds of insanity. The rule says a person can be declared legally insane if it's proven that a mental illness prevented them from understanding “the nature and quality of the act,” or that what they were doing was wrong.

Evans started work on Unsound Empire as she began her PhD dissertation at Princeton University in 2010. Her ongoing interest in the subject of justice in the British Empire emanates both from her extensive legal training – she has a law degree from Oxford University – and from her family background; her neuroscientist father was originally from Wales, and she spent many childhood summers with family in the U.K.

This fall, she will be teaching a course called “Crime and Mind,” which explores legal issues such as criminal intent, self-defence and transcultural psychiatry.

She is also working on another book dealing with the historical intersection of fire, crime and the law. The book will continue to examine the contradictory and often complex nature of colonial justice –which, to present-day readers, may appear influenced by both modern and shockingly outdated ideas.

That contradiction also surfaces in another case that Evans discusses in Unsound Mind: the story of Charles Kirk Clarke, a psychiatrist (or “alienist”) at the Kingston asylum. Clarke worked with patients who were deemed mentally incapable of understanding their crimes. “Clarke was very big into the idea that his asylum was a hospital, not a prison; that his patients should be allowed to perform in musicals, and go skating and decorate for Christmas,” Evans says.

However, later in his career, Clarke turned toward eugenics. “He became a really important proponent of the mental hygiene movement, which was trying to bar 'mental defectives' from entering Canada. So I think it’s important to hold both those things in your mind at the same time: the way that people can be so humane in one way – and so brutal in another.”

Kelly Hannah-Moffat takes on expanded role as U of T’s vice-president, people strategy, equity and culture

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 17:04:46 +0000

Kelly Hannah-Moffat takes on expanded role as U of T’s vice-president, people strategy, equity and culture

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 06/25/2021 - 13:04

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(Photo by Lisa Sakulensky)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Kelly Hannah-Moffat

Diversity and Inclusion

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Equity

Faculty of Arts & Science

Human Rights

Sociology

U of T Mississauga

Kelly Hannah-Moffat, the University of Toronto’s vice-president, human resources and equity and a professor in criminology and sociolegal studies and sociology, has been appointed to the newly created position of vice-president, people strategy, equity and culture.

The appointment for a five-year term – from July 1, 2021 to Dec. 31, 2026, including a six-month administrative leave – was approved by Governing Council Thursday.

Hannah-Moffat said she is looking forward to her expanded role, which includes an increased focus on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), community safety and emergency preparedness, human resources innovation and workplace wellness and culture.

“The prospect of continuing this work in an increased capacity is exciting and humbling,” Hannah-Moffat said. “I am looking forward to collaborating across campuses and divisions as well as with the broader community. I’m also looking forward to strengthening our relationships with affinity groups, and our employee union and UTFA partners, who do incredible work on behalf of their members.

“I am excited to have the opportunity to think more about the future of work and explore questions like: How will work be re-engineered and transformed as the workplace evolves over the next five years? How can U of T lead in this area?”

Hannah-Moffat, who has been in her current role since 2016, added that U of T must continue to earn its place as a top employer of choice just as it works to uphold its status as a world-class institution for teaching and research.

U of T President Meric Gertler said the decision to transform the human resources and equity role followed a review by an advisory committee – which he chaired – and consultations with stakeholders.

“Professor Hannah-Moffat’s collaborative and principled leadership, as well as the work of her team, has created an excellent foundation on which to build for the future,” President Gertler said.

“Her revised and expanded mandate will make it possible for Professor Hannah-Moffat to continue advancing the key strategic priorities – from promoting equity, diversity and inclusion to addressing more effectively the needs of staff in areas such as learning, leadership and wellness.”

Hannah-Moffat said there has been significant progress in the support of leadership and learning initiatives in recent years, including the development of the Centre for Learning, Leadership and Culture, which is dedicated to furthering leadership capacity, staff learning and development, and establishing a workplace culture grounded in leadership excellence.

She said the university’s steady adoption of new digital tools and technologies in its human resources, crisis and emergency preparedness and equity practices meant it was well positioned to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Over the course of a few days, we had to shift a community of 115,000 individuals to a work-from-home and study-from-home situation,” she said. “Because we already had a strong foundation in areas like digital transformation, we were able to adapt and quickly start using new technologies to support faculty, librarians, and staff.

“The flexibility and creativity that people exercised under really stressful circumstances was impressive. I am incredibly proud of how all our human resources, high-risk, crisis management, labour relations and equity staff responded to a set of difficult issues that evolved daily – all while balancing their existing responsibilities, addressing new barriers to access and doing so amid global calls for action for social and racial justice.”

She also highlighted efforts to strengthen the university’s equity teams, including the appointment of Karima Hashmani to the recently created role of executive director of equity, diversity and inclusion.

“Recognizing our responsibilities in responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Anti-Black Racism Task Force, the Anti-Islamophobia Working Group and the Anti-Semitism Working Group, we will continue to invest in and strengthen the equity portfolio so they can develop robust institutional supports for our community,” Hannah-Moffat said. “Our ability to recognize and acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do – and to watch our community embrace the opportunity to do that work across all of the divisions and central portfolios – is something I’m very proud of.

“We have a strong foundation for continuing equity and diversity work, and I look forward to re-imagining our systems and practices to empower our community to thrive.”

Going forward, Hannah-Moffat said her reimagined role will enable more support for employees engaging in complaints processes, create new pathways to leadership for Black, Indigenous and racialized employees, and focus on generating better equity data.

“We need good data to better understand the makeup of our community and look at issues around talent management, recruiting, mentoring, retention and hiring through an equity lens,” she said. “Digital analytics and transformation will help us understand our community and provide information to the divisions so they can use it to inform their decision-making.

“I value evidence-based decision making. I think that when you combine a principle-based approach with evidence, you have a really strong foundation for building teams and cultures and moving the university forward in a way that exemplifies our excellence and creates a more inclusive environment.”

Prior to being named vice-president, human resources and equity, Hannah-Moffat served as vice-dean, undergraduate and interim dean and acting vice-principal at U of T Mississauga. During that time, she also served as an adviser to the vice-president and provost and the vice-president, human resources and equity on sexual violence and crisis services.

A professor in the department of sociology at U of T Mississauga, Hannah-Moffat is cross-appointed to the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science, where she previously served as director. She earned both her master’s degree and PhD from U of T.

Alongside her work as vice-president, people strategy, equity and culture, Professor Hannah-Moffat will continue her interdisciplinary research focusing on human rights, criminal records disclosures, solitary confinement, AI and risk algorithms, punishment, risk-based discrimination and institutional risk management practices.

Four U of T scholars awarded Guggenheim Fellowships

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 19:26:03 +0000

Four U of T scholars awarded Guggenheim Fellowships

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 04/12/2021 - 15:26

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From left to right: Kamari Clarke, Eugenia Kumacheva, Kevin Lewis O'Neill and Amira Mittermaier.

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Global Lens

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies

Anthropology

Awards

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Chemistry

Faculty of Arts & Science

Religion

Four University of Toronto scholars are among the recipients of this year’s prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships.

The four researchers from the Faculty of Arts & Science – Kamari Clarke, Eugenia Kumacheva, Amira Mittermaier and Kevin Lewis O'Neill – have published groundbreaking research in fields ranging from religion, law and chemistry to anthropology and transnational studies.

They are among 184 artists, writers, scholars and scientists selected through a rigorous peer-review process from almost 3,000 applicants this year.

“Congratulations to Professors Clarke, Kumacheva, Mittermaier and O’Neill on this prestigious honour,” said Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. “We are thrilled that four members of our faculty are receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship. This is an incredible career achievement for a scholar, and it will allow them each to continue their important work in their respective areas of focus.”

Offered annually since 1925, the Guggenheim grants support mid-career individuals who have shown exceptional capacity as scholars or artists, and who continue to produce transformative work.

Clarke, a distinguished professor at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies and the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies, is both a legal scholar and anthropologist. Her careers spans more than two decades and she is an expert in such areas as international justice, religious nationalism and the politics of globalization and race. Her award-winning research has shown how different legal frameworks, shaped by forces such as neocolonialism, both influence and are influenced by contemporary social movements.

An author and editor, Clarke is currently completing a book that describes how social movements in the developing world are using modern technologies – such as mobile phones and GPS – to challenge the way justice has been historically accessed and delivered.

“It’s a recognition of lifetime achievement; it’s a grant to continue to write and to think about the core issues that I’m committed to – and, in many ways, will map maybe the next 10 years of the contribution that I’ll make to the field,” Clarke said of the award.

Kumacheva is a University Professor and distinguished professor in the department of chemistry who is cross-appointed to the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Her research explores the field of “soft matter” – that is to say, polymers, colloids, liquid crystals, hydrogels and living matter. She has designed and developed soft materials for use in a broad range of areas, including telecommunications, security, data storage, drug delivery and tissue engineering.

An Officer of the Order of Canada and the first Canadian winner of the L’Oreal-UNESCO Prize for Women in Science, Kumacheva is now collaborating with noted U of T researcher Alán Aspuru-Guzik in a bid to use artificial intelligence to fuel the development of innovative anti-cancer therapies.

“The Guggenheim Fellowship is a mark of recognition and one of the great career achievements for a scientist,” said Kumacheva. “It will support the collaborative research with Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik, with an ambitious goal to accelerate anti-cancer drug discovery.”

A professor in both the departments of religion and anthropology, Mittermaier’s work weaves textual analysis with ethnographic fieldwork. Her research focuses on modern Islam in Egypt.

“The question of how theologies shape lives has stayed with me throughout my career,” she says. “Working with Egyptian interlocutors with whom I have established long-term relationships, I study and write about Islam as it unfolds in the midst of their everyday lives.”

Her first book, Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination, explores Muslim practices of dream interpretation as they are inflected by Islamic reformism, Western psychology and mass mediation. Her more recent work, Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times, describes a religious ethic of giving in which believers engage with God by way of giving to the poor.

She describes her upcoming book as her most ambitious to date: an ethnographic study of God. In this work, she will both apply her expertise in Islam and work with other scholars in the Abrahamic faiths.

“I’m thrilled and honored to have received a Guggenheim Fellowship,” Mittermaier says. “I look forward to getting started on my book about God and humans in Egypt today. My recent half-sabbatical was taken over by COVID-19, so I’m doubly grateful for this extra time coming my way.”

Kevin Lewis O'Neill is a professor in the department for the study of religion, as well as director of the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies. He is a pioneering scholar on the subject of clerical sexual abuse, particularly as it transcends borders. O’Neill is currently writing two books. The first considers clerical sexual abuse in Latin America, with a focus on U.S. priests who moved – or were moved – to Central America to evade suspicion. The second is an ethnography of traffic in Guatemala City that realigns conversations about security, mobility and infrastructure in Latin America.

O’Neill’s examination of the moral dimensions of contemporary political practice in Latin America informs the trilogy he has written on the politics of Pentecostalism in Guatemala. Each book explores the “waning viability of disciplinary institutions and how new strains of Christian piety have become recognizable modes of governance in Central America.”

“The Guggenheim Fellowship comes at exactly the right time for me: at a moment when I need some time to consider the conceptual and political intricacies of transnational clerical sexual abuse,” O'Neill says. “I’m very grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation.”

Ten universities across North America saw four or more of their community members receive Guggenheim Fellowships this year. They include University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University, Columbia University, Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, Harvard University, Northwestern University, U of T and Yale University.

Being smart about smart cities: U of T's Mariana Valverde explores the possibilities and pitfalls

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 16:47:57 +0000

Being smart about smart cities: U of T's Mariana Valverde explores the possibilities and pitfalls

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 01/28/2021 - 11:47

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(photo by Abstract Aerial Art via Getty Images)

Chris Sasaki

Topic

Our Community

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Cities

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Law

Geography and Planning

Smart Cities

In Iqaluit, Edmonton, Guelph, Montreal, Toronto and other cities and towns across Canada, residents, governments and corporations are navigating the promising and perilous landscape of “smart cities.”

Smart cities integrate hardware, software, cameras and sensing technologies into infrastructure to enable the collection of vast amounts of data that can be used to optimize energy use, garbage collection and other services. The data can also be used to enable urban planning and municipal decision-making.

Smart Cities: Digital Dreams, Corporate Designs examines these digital communities and the issues they raise around urban planning, corporate involvement and privacy.

The book’s co-editor is Mariana Valverde, a professor emerita at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science, with cross appointments to the department of geography and planning and the Faculty of Law.

Valverde and her co-editor Alexandra Flynn, an assistant professor of law from the University of British Columbia, as well as other experts, will be taking part in a live, online discussion about smart cities organized by the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Centre for Ethics on Jan. 29.

Writer Chris Sasaki recently spoke with Valverde about the book and the issues it tackles.

What is a typical beneficial innovation found in smart cities?

It’s very common for cities nowadays to purchase technology that will help to moderate traffic flow. So, you can have a camera on a traffic light and the camera can send information back to some data centre. And the system lets you alter the timing of the traffic lights depending on the time of day so that traffic flows more efficiently.

It’s easy to see why city officials would be interested in an innovation like that. It can be very helpful to residents. However, the challenge is that there are many different things – not just traffic flow – that make a city more efficient, sustainable and livable.

How should a city decide what those innovations will be? Who decides what’s most important?

These are key questions. What kind of needs assessment takes place? Who starts the process? And who controls the process? When cities don't prioritize what they want or what their needs are, there’s the danger of a company coming in and selling technology to them which can then result in the city being dependent on a private company and the city’s needs not being met.

Are there initiatives in Canada that can serve as an example of how to do it right?

When Montreal initiated their smart city challenge, it started with a democratic discussion about priorities. They asked people: What are the most important needs that must be met? And one of the things they heard was that food security wasn’t equal everywhere in the city. In some neighbourhoods, there’s a great selection of food that’s readily available. But there are also many neighbourhoods that are “food deserts” that lack access to fresh food. And so, having understood that food was a priority, Montreal came up with a system that helped identify food deserts. And with a fleet of smart vehicles – though not driverless ones – they could better distribute fresh food from nearby farms to specific neighbourhoods. So the innovation solved a problem that citizens themselves identified. And it was done in a way that there are no surveillance or privacy issues.

What are the issues around surveillance and privacy?

We have a couple of chapters in our book that deal with that. There can be all sorts of data and surveillance problems. But it’s worth pointing out that they're not significantly different from the data mining and surveillance problems that come with simply owning a smart phone.

Yes, there are dangers – especially when cities don't own the data and don't control it. And in the vast majority of cases, data isn't even stored in Canada. But that, too, isn’t a problem specific to smart cities.

What else should we be thinking about when we think about smart cities?

In the introduction to the book, we point out that, as a northern country, Canada should be leading the way in providing broadband access everywhere before putting resources into technology for small areas of highly urbanized and privileged parts of the country. In fact, my co-editor Alexandra Flynn – who is a lawyer who grew up in Nunavut and is an expert on Indigenous rights – says in her chapter that broadband access could be considered as a federal duty under the agreement that created Nunavut.

Paying attention to northern and Indigenous communities should be a priority. And we think that's a contribution that Canada can make to the global discussion on smart cities – a more democratic conversation about prioritizing infrastructure needs and infrastructure projects.

Right now, Canada is making a point of providing the COVID-19 vaccine to Indigenous and northern communities. If we can do that for the vaccine, maybe we can do that for basic internet access, which is a vital, much longer-term need.

Brazil's humane refugee policies: Good ideas can travel north, U of T expert says

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 16:42:23 +0000

Brazil's humane refugee policies: Good ideas can travel north, U of T expert says

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/12/2020 - 11:42

Cutline

In this March 2018 photo, Venezuelan children wait for a meal at a migrant shelter set up in Boa Vista, Roraima state, Brazil (photo by Eraldo Peres/AP Phot)

Audrey Macklin

Topic

Global Lens

Brazil

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Faculty of Law

Migrants

The Conversation

The global north tends to view the global south as a source of refugees, and it often implements policies aimed at preventing those refugees from reaching the global north.

Brazil recently set a bold precedent that should make those northern states adjust the lens. Its policy toward Venezuelan refugees, in contrast to its wealthier peers, is pragmatic, humane and sensible.

Venezuela’s political, economic and social collapse has generated a population hemorrhage: More than 4.5 million, or one in seven Venezuelans, have left, and most remain in the region. Colombia hosts around 1.5 million. About 260,000 have entered Brazil through its northern border with Venezuela at a rate of about 500 per day. Three elements of the Brazilian response stand out.

First, Brazil has provided basic shelters and services – not detention – to meet the urgent and immediate needs of people streaming across the Venezuelan border into Roraima province. Brazil partners with United Nations agencies, as well as international, regional and domestic aid agencies that contribute financial and logistical assistance. The Brazilian government has also initiated a policy to redistribute arrivals to the interior of Brazil to reduce the burden on Roraima.

In this February 2019 photo, Venezuelans stand behind a sign reading ‘Venezuela-Brazil Limit’ near a border checkpoint in Pacaraima, Roraima state, Brazil, on Venezuela’s southern border (photo by Ivan Valencia/AP Photo)

Next, Brazil has expanded the scope of entitlement to refugee status. The 1984 Cartagena Declaration adopted a regional approach to refugee protection, mindful of the history of Latin American states as both producers and recipients of refugee flows.

The international refugee definition contained in the UN 1951 Refugee Convention is individualistic and requires proof that applicants fear personal persecution. But the Cartagena definition supplements that narrow approach by including people who have fled their countries because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order.

In June 2019, Brazil’s National Committee for Refugees issued a detailed report concluding that the crisis in Venezuela falls under the purview of the Cartagena Declaration. People labelled as migrants elsewhere because they fall outside the narrow terms of the UN Refugee Convention definition are included as refugees under Cartagena.

Bolder step

In December 2019, Brazil took an even bolder step: It dispensed with the requirement of individualized refugee status determination for each Venezuelan asylum applicant.

Applicants in Brazil, with documentary proof of identity and without a criminal record, will receive refugee status without an interview. Refugee status, in turn, entitles them to permanent resident status, access employment, public health care, education and other social services available to Brazilians.

After four years, they may apply for naturalization. Within the first month of the policy, about 21,000 Venezuelans were processed under this new system.

Put this in comparative perspective: Unlike the United States and Australia, Brazil has not set up detention centres, separated families and caged children in order to punish Venezuelans for fleeing intolerable circumstances.

That means that Brazil has not wasted scarce resources on vicious and futile deterrence strategies. Brazil also applies a refugee definition that responds to contemporary patterns of forced migration. And unlike other states with sophisticated refugee status determination regimes, Brazil’s group-based recognition of Venezuelans avoids the creation of a mammoth backlog of Venezuelan asylum applications.

Resources that would have been wasted processing individual Venezuelan asylum claims will be directed at managing settlement and integration, and on determining asylum claims from other places.

Some are just passing through

Not all Venezuelans who arrive in Brazil seek asylum.

Many transit through Brazil in order to rejoin family or friends in nearby states, such as Argentina or Chile. Others go back and forth between Brazil and Venezuela to deliver food, medicine and other necessities to family and communities who remain there. And some do not wish to see themselves as refugees and so do not claim that legal status.

Brazil also allows Venezuelans to obtain two-year renewable temporary resident permits that also give them access to employment and to public services like health care and education.

There is good reason to believe that whether they are admitted on temporary permits, or permanently as refugees, most Venezuelans will go home voluntarily if and when the circumstances that caused them to flee have improved. That’s another advantage of regional integration programs that enable people to live, work and continue their lives in proximity to their country of origin.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro plays with a Venezuelan boy at an event for beneficiaries of a program to receive Venezuelan migrants in January 2020 (photo by Eraldo Peres/AP Photo)

Regional solidarity plays a paradoxical role in Brazil’s initiative. The Cartagena Declaration, as well as a regional free movement initiative under the Mercosur trade bloc, show the emergence of South American co-operation in migration.

On the other hand, President Jair Bolsonaro has not distinguished himself in the past as a champion of refugees and displaced people. One wonders whether his antipathy toward Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro might have more to do with the Brazilian hospitality shown to Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s regime than solidarity. One is reminded here of refugee politics during the Cold War. But whatever the motive, the current policy has much to commend it.

Not perfect

The system is certainly imperfect. Brazil is a middle-income country, and so the quality and availability of public services is uneven.

Bureaucratic inefficiency and lack of co-ordination among different branches of the state cause delay and confusion. Venezuela is not the only source of asylum-seekers; Brazil also receives asylum seekers from Haiti, Africa and the Middle East.

Local aid organizations struggle to fill service gaps, but their resources are also strained by the surge in Venezuelan arrivals.

The absence of habitable and affordable accommodation is also a massive and critical problem in Brazil. Refugees may have no alternative but to live in extremely dangerous and violent places. Language training is weak, though Portuguese is relatively easy for Spanish-speakers to learn. Even though refugees can lawfully seek employment, some employers still take advantage of newcomers by overworking and underpaying them.

These are problems. But they are better problems to have than thousands of severely traumatized children, thousands of drowning deaths in the Mediterranean and the abuse, torture, rape and killing of people seeking refuge in the detention centres of Libya or Manus Island.

We have something to learn from the Brazilians. If Brazil can find an efficient, pragmatic way to welcome, protect and integrate hundreds of thousands of forced migrants arriving at its border, so can more affluent states. Good ideas –like good people – can migrate north, and we should welcome them.

Audrey Macklin is a professor and chair in human rights law and the director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Rescuing crops, reframing history and researching MMIW: 2019 Connaught New Researcher Award winners announced

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 14:05:45 +0000

Rescuing crops, reframing history and researching MMIW: 2019 Connaught New Researcher Award winners announced

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 09/09/2019 - 10:05

Cutline

Three of this year's 52 winners of the Connaught New Researcher Award: Eliana Gonzales-Vigil, Shauna Sweeney and Jerry Flores

Jenny Rodrigues

Topic

Our Community

Mathematical and Computational Sciences

Anthropolgy

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Awards

Biochemistry

Biology

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Chemistry

Computer Science

Connaught Fund

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Earth Sciences

Economics

English

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Information

Institute for Management & Innovation

Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Management

Mathematics

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Molecular Genetics

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Philosophy

Political Science

Psychology

Research & Innovation

Women and Gender Studies

Insects destroy up to one quarter of global crops each year, resulting in estimated losses of up to $470 billion. Even in greenhouse conditions, pests can still cause damage by making their way inside through vents.

It’s a problem the University of Toronto’s Eliana Gonzales-Vigil aims to tackle by better understanding the complex relationship between plants and bugs.

The biological sciences researcher at U of T Scarborough is specifically looking at how to protect crops from the cabbage looper, a common pest of tomatoes and other vegetables such as peppers, cucumbers and – of course – cabbage.

“My long-term goal is to understand how plants defend themselves from insect herbivores,” Gonzales-Vigil said.

“But to achieve this, we need to understand all the players involved.”

Gonzales-Vigil is one of 52 winners of this year’s Connaught New Researcher Award, designed to help recipients establish a strong research program and increase their competitiveness for external funding. The award is part of U of T’s commitment to fostering excellence in research and innovation by supporting faculty members who are launching their academic careers.

Read the full list of Connaught New Researcher Award winners here

Up to $1 million will be distributed among this year’s winners.

“I would like to congratulate all the winners of the Connaught New Researcher Award,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“These researchers are doing exciting, innovative work across many different disciplines. It’s the University of Toronto’s hope that this funding will help set the stage for world-leading scholarship and important new discoveries.”

(photo courtesy of Eliana Gonzalez-Vigil)

Gonzales-Vigil is embarking on a study to explore how impacting the gut microbiome of the cabbage looper may help tomato plants be more resistant against the insect’s attack.

“We want to test the idea of whether the microbiome of the cabbage looper is being affected by the plant’s chemistry. If yes, then can we manipulate the plant’s chemistry by adding something like a probiotic that would impede insect growth?”

She added the Connaught award will help kick-start a new line of research after having most recently focused on how poplar trees defend themselves through a waxy compound secretion.

“Having the Connaught has given me the freedom to start something that’s new,” she said, adding that she hopes her research will eventually lead to insect control methods that can be used around the world.

Shauna Sweeney

(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

During her undergraduate studies, U of T’s Shauna Sweeney was drawn to Caribbean history courses – in particular the history and the economy of the markets in Caribbean nations. It was an area of research Sweeney, who is herself of Jamaican background, wanted to explore further.

An assistant professor in the department of history and at the Women & Gender Studies Institute, Sweeney is currently working on a manuscript that examines the prominent role of enslaved women in developing an informal economy in the Caribbean.

She said that by selling or trading goods to each other, enslaved women asserted their own economic rights and ultimately laid the groundwork for a free community following abolition.

“In conventional studies of capitalism that consider the deeply violent and exploitative context of slavery, enslaved peoples' own economic lives and politics tend to fall out,” Sweeney said. “So, it’s important to me to restore the social and economic importance of trading to enslaved people and their descendants.”

“In addition to being commodities on paper, enslaved people actually were agents in their own economies and had economic interests of their own.”

Sweeney plans to conduct further transnational research with the Connaught award, travelling to Europe to visit the Archivo de Indias (Archives of the Indies) and the Archives Nationales d’Outre-mer (National Overseas Archives).

The research trips will also help lay a foundation for her second project, which will focus on white female slave owners.

Jerry Flores

(photo courtesy of Jerry Flores)

As a Mexican who was born and raised in Los Angeles, U of T Mississauga’s Jerry Flores brings an outsider’s perspective to a high-profile research project in Canada: an ethnography of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) and men in Toronto.

Flores, an assistant professor in the department of sociology, previously published a book about young, incarcerated Latina women.

As he heard more stories about MMIW, he began to notice similarities.

“The experiences of a lot of these women go like this: They’re abused at home by a partner or a family member and run away to get away from it,” Flores said.

“They end up on the street and participate in high risk behaviour or may end up getting involved in drugs or sex work. They meet a new partner – for young women, it’s usually an older man – that brings them home, but quickly spirals into drugs, alcohol and abuse.”

Specifically, Flores wants to study the circumstances in which Indigenous people make their way to Toronto. He’s asking: What challenges did they face to come here? Have they lost people on their journey to Toronto? What stories have they heard?

Flores is working closely with local organizations, including the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Aboriginal Law Society in Toronto, to gather stories. Funding from the Connaught New Researcher Award will help compensate participants for their time and provide support for the community organizations that are assisting Flores in his research.

“By definition, ethnography is a study of culture. I’m trying to understand the culture of the Indigenous community in Toronto – how they negotiate life, the challenges and the high points. What is it that they need, what do they want to accomplish, and how can we as a collective – U of T Mississauga and U of T in general – support them?”

Flores hopes that the study will be able to provide concrete recommendations for policy, community action and scholarship on MMIW.

Here is the full list of winners of the 2019 Connaught New Researcher Award:

Humanities:

Tania Aguila-Way, assistant professor, department of English

Barend Beekhuizen, assistant professor, department of language studies, U of T Mississauga

Brendan de Kenessey, assistant professor, department of philosophy

Catherine Evans, assistant professor, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Cindy Ewing, assistant professor, department of history

Sarah Gutsche-Miller, assistant professor, Faculty of Music

Adam Hammond, assistant professor, department of English

Rosalind Hampton, assistant professor, department of social justice education, Ontario Institute For Studies in Education

Mary Elizabeth Luka, assistant professor, department of arts, culture and media, U of T Scarborough

Luther Obrock, assistant professor, department of historical studies, U of T Mississauga

Shauna Sweeney, assistant professor, department of history and Women & Gender Studies Institute

Katherine Williams, assistant professor, department of English

Life Sciences/Social Cultural

Jennifer Brooks, assistant professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Aaron Conway, assistant professor, Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Marzyeh Ghassemi, assistant professor, departments of medicine and computer science

Quinn Grundy, assistant professor, Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Péter Molnár, assistant professor, department of biological sciences, U of T Scarborough

Olli Saarela, associate professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Molecular

Michael Garton, assistant professor, Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Eliana Gonzales-Vigil, assistant professor, department of biological sciences, U of T Scarborough

Thomas Hurd, assistant professor, department of molecular genetics

Hyun Kate Lee, assistant professor, department of biochemistry

Baohua Liu, assistant professor, department of biology, U of T Mississauga

Physical Science

Melissa Anderson, assistant professor, department of Earth sciences

Amy Bilton, assistant professor, department of mechanical and industrial engineering

Maryam Mehri Dehnavi, assistant professor, department of computer science

Maria Drout, assistant professor, department of astronomy and astrophysics

Murat A. Erdogdu, assistant professor, departments of computer science and statistical sciences

Tovi Grossman, assistant professor, department of computer science

Fan Long, assistant professor, department of computer science

Semechah Lui, assistant professor, department of chemical and physical sciences, U of T Mississauga

Fabio Pusateri, assistant professor, department of mathematics

Arul Shankar, assistant professor, department of mathematical and computational sciences, U of T Mississauga

Diana Valencia, assistant professor, department of physical and environmental sciences, U of T Scarborough

Stanislav Volgushev, assistant professor, department of mathematical and computational sciences, U of T Mississauga

Joseph Williams, assistant professor, department of computer science

Mark Wilson, assistant professor, department of chemistry

Social Sciences

Monica Alexander, assistant professor, departments of statistical sciences and sociology

Noel Anderson, assistant professor, political science, U of T Mississauga

Jennifer Brant, assistant professor, department of curriculum, teaching and learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Michelle Cameron, assistant professor, department of anthropology

Laura Cirelli, assistant professor, department of psychology, U of T Scarborough

Fedor Dokshin, assistant professor, department of sociology

Emine Fidan Elcioglu, assistant professor, department of sociology, U of T Scarborough

Jerry Flores, assistant professor, department of sociology, U of T Mississauga

Ethan Fosse, assistant professor, department of sociology, U of T Scarborough

Charles Martineau, assistant professor, department of management, U of T Scarborough

David Price, assistant professor, department of economics, U of T Mississauga

Tahseen Shams, assistant professor, department of sociology

Jennifer Stellar, assistant professor, department of psychology, U of T Mississauga

Jia Xue, assistant professor, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and Faculty of Information

Marius Zoican, assistant professor, department of management and Institute for Management and Innovation, U of T Mississauga

'Jihadi Jack' and the folly of revoking citizenship: U of T expert

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 14:42:43 +0000

'Jihadi Jack' and the folly of revoking citizenship: U of T expert

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/21/2019 - 10:42

Cutline

Jack Letts has been in a jail in Syria since 2017. The British government just stripped him of his citizenship, but he has Canadian citizenship due to his father’s birth here (photo via Sky News)

Audrey Macklin

Topic

Global Lens

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Faculty of Law

Global

The Conversation

The British government has just stripped Islamic State recruit Jack Letts of his United Kingdom citizenship.

In one sense, the move was unsurprising. The U.K. has been the undisputed leader in reviving banishment as punishment for “crimes against citizenship,” deploying it primarily against those deemed threats to national security.

The country’s Home Secretary favours stripping citizenship of nationals already abroad, which has the convenient effect of circumventing legal accountability and human rights impediments to deportation.

The mildly surprising feature of the U.K.’s decision is that it has opted to make Letts Canada’s problem. Letts is currently being held in a jail in northern Syria after being captured by Kurdish forces in 2017.

Letts’ father is a Canadian citizen and, therefore, his son is a Canadian citizen by descent. As a result, the U.K. can deprive him of citizenship without rendering Letts stateless because he will remain a citizen of Canada.

With limited exceptions, international law prohibits rendering people stateless, though the U.K. plays fast and loose on that front. It strips citizenship from not only those who are dual citizens as well as those who are not, but whom the Home Secretary speculates could, in the future, possibly obtain citizenship from some other country.

It doesn’t much matter to the U.K., really. Once discarded, the former citizen might be executed by drone strike, transferred elsewhere for prosecution or persecution or detained indefinitely by non-state armed forces. Wherever they go, it won’t be back to Britain, and whatever happens to them, they are someone else’s problem. That’s what makes citizenship deprivation, in the language of the British law, “conducive to the public good.”

No espionage or treason

Why another country should bear sole responsibility for a citizen that the U.K. disavows is an interesting question. These are not classic instances of espionage or treason, where the historic narrative underwriting stripping citizenship was that the individual betrayed one state in the service of the other state.

Shamima Begum, a British citizen who joined the Islamic State as a 19-year-old in 2015, was not working for Bangladesh in Syria. Jack Letts was not a Canadian spy.

I speculate that the British government has, until Letts, traded on a tacit understanding that British Muslims with brown skin inherently “belong” less to the U.K. than to some other country where the majority of people are Muslims with brown skin – even if they were born in Great Britain and have never even visited the other country of nationality.

On this view, stripping citizenship merely sends the targets back to where they “really” come from. Citizenship deprivation thus delivers an exclusionary message to all non-white, non-Christian British citizens that their claim to U.K. membership is permanently precarious, however small the literal risk of citizenship deprivation.

Indeed, British legal scholar John Finnis explicitly flirted with a similar idea a few years ago by proposing the “humane” expulsion of all Muslim non-citizens from Britain.

The Letts conundrum

But Letts is white, his parents are middle class and Christian in upbringing (though secular in practice). His other country of citizenship, Canada, is also predominantly white and Christian in origin.

John Letts, father of Jack Letts, is seen at a news conference in Ottawa in October 2018 (photo by Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Canada is a staunch British ally, an important diplomatic and trading partner and a G7 member. Queen Elizabeth remains the formal head of state in Canada.

The illogical underpinning of citizenship deprivation now emerges clearly, shorn of implicit appeals to racism, Islamophobia and colonial arrogance. Letts is no more or less a risk to national security in Canada than the U.K. In no sense does Letts “belong” more to Canada than to the U.K., the country where he was born, raised, and that formed him.

The world is not made safer from terrorism when the U.K. disposes of their unwanted citizens in Canada, Bangladesh or anywhere else. The very phenomenon of foreign fighters testifies to that.

Claims that “citizenship is a privilege, not a right” or that the undeserving citizen forfeits citizenship by his actions is flimsy rhetoric intended to distract from the grubby opportunism that motivates citizenship revocation.

The U.K. does this not because it enhances the value of citizenship or makes the world safer from terrorism. It does it because it can.

If the British government thinks stripping citizenship is a good way for a state to respond to the challenges of national security, it must think it’s a good idea for all states. So imagine that Canada also had a citizenship revocation law. In fact, Canada’s Conservative government did enact such a law in 2014 (inspired by the U.K.), though it was repealed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in 2017.

Here is the scenario: Letts, ISIS foreign fighter, is a citizen of the U.K. and of Canada. Neither country wants to claim him. Each has the possibility of revoking his citizenship as long as Letts is not rendered stateless.

The result?

An arbitrary race to see which country could strip his citizenship first. To the loser goes the citizen – maybe Canada, maybe the U.K.

This every-state-for-itself race to the bottom is the antithesis of co-operation in a global struggle against radicalizaton and terrorism; one need not be schooled in game theory to recognize it as counterproductive parochialism. Once states contemplate the possibility of being on the receiving end of citizenship stripping, the tactic doesn’t look quite so clever.

Until now, the U.K. has targeted individuals whose other state of nationality lacked the resources or diplomatic heft to challenge the British practice under international law. Maybe it’s time for Canada to step up, and to work with other countries, to pressure the U.K. and other states to abandon citizenship revocation as a means of disavowing “bad citizens.”

The Letts case reminds us that citizenship revocation policies can bite back. Any country that seeks to dispose of their citizens in this way may some day be a disposal site for other countries. If human rights aren’t enough of a reason to abolish citizenship revocation, and undermining global co-operation isn’t enough either, perhaps self-interest can tip the balance.

Audrey Macklin is a professor in the Faculty of Law and director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

U of T undergraduate students travel to Mexico to research organized crime and corruption

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 29 May 2019 16:31:22 +0000

U of T undergraduate students travel to Mexico to research organized crime and corruption

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/29/2019 - 12:31

Cutline

Students from a fourth-year U of T undergraduate course on organized crime and corruption traveled to Mexico City to meet with Mexican scholars, students, government officials and civil society activists (photo by Solomiya-Mariya Zakharchuk)

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Global Lens

Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies

Criminology

Faculty of Arts & Science

St. Michael's College

Undergraduate Students

Victoria College

Mexico may be a popular tourist destination known for its beautiful landscapes and rich history, but a group of undergraduate students from the University of Toronto recently visited for a very different reason: to learn about organized crime, corruption, drug cartels and the massive “narco-insurgency” that large-scale criminal organizations are waging against the Mexican state.

As part of the Faculty of Arts & Science’s International/Indigenous Course Modules (ICM) program, students from the fourth-year undergraduate course on organized crime and corruption traveled to Mexico City to meet with Mexican scholars, students, government officials and civil society activists to learn how organized crime groups develop and how states are combatting the violence and corruption these groups provoke.

Associate Professor Matthew Light of the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies developed this innovative course, the first of its kind at U of T. He believes contemporary Mexico is an excellent practical illustration of the theoretical and historical concepts he presents to his students, so an experiential learning opportunity seemed like the perfect fit for his course material.

“The ICM gave me a great experience of what field research would be like,” says fourth-year St. Michael’s College student David Delle Fave, who is completing a double major in criminology and sociolegal studies along with the ethics, society and law program.

“I took extensive field notes during the trip, and am writing my final project for the class based on my journal.”

The scholarly portions of the students’ trip included meetings with Professor Mónica Serrano of El Colegio de México (Colmex) and the World Economic Forum, as well as her Canadian colleague, Professor Jean François Prud’homme, who is originally from Quebec and now leads the Centro de Estudios Internacionales at Colmex. Students also had the chance to form small co-operative working groups with their Mexican peers, leading to a more holistic and nuanced understanding of the factors that influence crime and corruption.

“We learned, for example, about the impacts of NAFTA on trade and the domestic economy,” says Solomiya-Mariya Zakharchuk, a fourth-year St. Michael’s College student who is completing a double major in political science and criminology. “And we discussed stronger border regulation and higher wages for public officials to dissuade them from corrupt practices.

“It was only through speaking with people from different sectors that I came to understand that the organized crime problem in Mexico must be analyzed through many lenses: economic, political, sociological and agricultural.”

The students also met with government officials like David Perez, a staff member in Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration and Mexican Congresswoman María Rosete.

“It was fascinating to hear Perez speak about the effects of Mexico’s arms trafficking on homicide rates,” says fourth-year Woodsworth College student Sabrina Chee, who is completing a double major in political science, as well as criminology and sociolegal studies.

“He focused on the ways gun policies in the U.S. directly affect gun violence in Mexico, which provided us with a more well-rounded understanding of patterns in policing strategies and pro-active policies adopted across North America.”

Outside of their research, students also had the opportunity to experience the sights and sounds of Mexico City, a vast metropolitan area that is home to 21.2 million people – making it the fifth most populous urban area in the world. They visited the city’s famed anthropological museum and the Teotihuacan pyramids, an important pre-Columbian historical site.

A number of students remarked on the transformative experience of visiting the open-air Tepito market. A poor, working-class neighbourhood, Tepito houses a large underground economy and has at times been known as a hotbed of crime. But the ICM students say they felt safe under the supervision of their local guides.

“It was clear that our safety was a primary concern for those coordinating our tour,” says Delle Fave.

Ultimately, the students came away with an eye-opening impression of how stereotypes conflict with reality.

The Tepito market visit was “the most unexpected experience I had on my trip,” says Delle Fave. “Our visit broke down some of the stereotypes that many students had about the market. We got a first-hand, in-depth understanding of the history of the area, as well as the people who live there.”

The trip helped students distinguish between stereotypes about Mexico – that it’s overrun by crime – and the diverse reality of the country and its people.

“Learning about and listening to many of the lived experiences of people who have been directly involved in, or affected by, the lucrative arms and drug trade helped us to bridge the gap between appearance and reality,” says Chee.

Chee says her experience inspired her to think more deeply about the ways she can help improve the lives of people affected by violence, particularly women and girls. “My experience in Mexico City solidified my choice to pursue a career in the foreign services and advocate for human rights,” she says.

More than just advancing their education and careers, students remarked that the ICM trip solidified and strengthened their friendships with each other and their Mexican peers.

“My biggest takeaway from this trip, beyond the knowledge I acquired, is definitely the friendships I've formed with my classmates and with the students in Mexico,” says Jennifer Chan, a fourth-year Victoria College student completing a double major in psychology and criminology.

“The time we spent together learning about issues and policies in Mexico, exploring the city and discussing the causes each of us care about allowed us to develop friendships that cannot be replaced. Without the ICM, I would not have met people who constantly inspire me with their passion for making a positive impact.”