Unlocking Borderline Canadianness

Helleiner_BorderlineCanadiannessIn her new book Borderline Canadianness: Crossings and Everyday Nationalism in Niagara Jane Helleiner offers a unique ethnographic approach to Canadian border life. In this post, Helleiner discusses how she became interested in the field of border studies, how this project began, and how the terrible events of 9/11 altered its course.

The idea of pursuing research on border life began when I moved from Toronto to Canadian Niagara in the early 1990s. At that time I was immediately struck by the salience of the Canada/U.S. border as new neighbours and colleagues offered information about going “over the river” to the U.S. for shopping and leisure activities. These encounters reminded me of stories told by my own mother about growing up in the border city of Sarnia, Ontario. While I was too busy with existing research projects to pursue a new project right away, I wanted to learn more about how border life might be linked to nationalized and other identities in the era of NAFTA.

Thoughts of conducting research into border life percolated for several years until I read a national press report about an infant fatality that had occurred in the context of an attempted unauthorized border crossing at the Rainbow Bridge. Reading about this tragedy brought home to me the way in which some categories of border crossers experience eased and even sped up processes (e.g. through fast tracking mechanisms such as NEXUS), while others encounter various forms of constraint that may slow and even completely thwart their crossing attempts, sometimes with fatal consequences.

My interest in border identities and im/mobilities at Niagara led me to the interdisciplinary scholarship of “border studies” where I was drawn to ethnographic work that focused on the everyday lives and identities of those living at territorial borders. Because borders and border-related policies reflect the interests of the powerful, I saw the value of more grounded studies that asked the critical question “borders for whom”?

I had launched the project and conducted a few initial interviews when the events of 9/11 intervened to alter the trajectory of the research. As I continued to talk with border residents in the months that followed, it was clear that many were juxtaposing their experiences with border life in the pre-9/11 period with the changes that they were experiencing in its aftermath.

The result is a study that offers insights into nationalism and filtered bordering processes in a major Canadian border region at a dramatic time. The analysis of childhood, teenage and adult border experiences reveal both continuity and change across the pre- and post-9/11 divide. Key findings include the fact that despite extensive border crossing histories, border residents remained deeply invested in (varied) constructions of Canadianness with very limited embrace of bi-national hybridity even by those with dual Canadian/U.S. citizenship. Another important finding is that border residents had a lot to say about how crossings were filtered in classed, gendered and ethnoracialized ways. They also were aware of the ongoing phenomenon of dangerous and sometimes fatal unauthorized crossing attempts. The accounts offered by local residents challenge the idea of a friendly or benign Canada/U.S. border and I argue, reveal how inequalities continue to be reproduced and intensified through unequal cross-border mobilities in a globalized world.

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