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Unauthorized Crossings, Danger and Death at the Canada/US Border


Jane Helleiner
Department of Sociology
Brock University


Recent elite highlighting of  the "problem"  of unauthorized crossings  at the Canada/US border invites more critical research on this issue,  including work that  focuses specifically on grounded realities of border experience. This presentation draws together reports of  unauthorized border crossings gathered from Canadian residents and the local press in the Niagara border region to reveal a history of local knowledge of such crossings and acknowledgement of the dangers and fatalities experienced by would-be crossers.  I use this material to explore and analyze Canadian border
resident perceptions of such crossings, but also to more generally   highlight realities of migrant danger and death that unsettle still widespread
constructions of  a "benign" Canada/US border.  Documentation of  local knowledge, I argue, can be usefully combined with analytical insights
offered by the extensive comparative scholarly/activist work regarding the structural violence of border regimes,  to inform and produce more critical work on the phenomenon of unauthorized crossings at the Canada/US
border.