Migration Conversations

Meet Deepan Budlakoti. Born and raised in Canada, Deepan had a Canadian birth certificate and Canadian passport. Then one day he was told he was not a citizen and overnight he became a foreigner and stateless. We talk about how he became stateless, what his life in limbo is like, and what you can do to support his fight to reclaim his citizenship.

Meet Dr. Shauna Labman, the expert on refugee resettlement in Canada. She is an award winning author of two books: Crossing Law's Border: Canada's Refugee Resettlement Program and Strangers to Neighbours: Refugee Sponsorship in Context. We talk about what is resettlement, the complementary features of the program, and critiques and concerns as the program evolves. We also talk about the current re...

Meet Carrianne Leung, Jenny Heijun Wills and Lindsay Wong, all award winning authors in Canada. We talk about the craft of writing, the fluidity and complication of identity as writers, and how migration and diasporic experiences inform their work.

Meet author Francesca Ekwuyasi, author of Butter Honey Pig Bread. Her debut novel was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize, finalist for CBC's 2021 Canada Reads competition, the 2021 Lambda Literary Ward, 2021 Governor General's Award, the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award and the 2021 ReLit Award. We talk about migration but also about folklore, food, relationships and writing.

Meet Kashif Ali, a criminalized migrant who was detained in Canada for seven years. Kashif talks about his addition, how his addiction led to his criminalization and repeated imprisonment, and how his statelessness kept him in prison indefinitely without any hope for deportation. Kashif hopes his experience will convince people that immigration detention should not be used to manage our borders.

Meet Jared Will, an immigration and refugee lawyer, who is well known, among other things, for representing persons in immigration detention. We talk about the shortcomings of the immigration detention system, but why detention should not be used at all, and the limits of legal remedies in such a system.

Meet Alvin Brown, a Black man deported from Canada. Alvin Brown was adopted as a child and grew up in Canada. Unbeknownst to him, Alvin was not a Canadian citizen and had never acquired citizenship. As a young man, he came into conflict with the criminal law which rendered him inadmissible to Canada. Alvin tells us his heartbreaking story about the years spent in Canadian immigration detention awa...

Meet Justice Mavin Wong. She was appointed to the Ontario Court of Justice in 2000 and currently presides at College Park Court, which is one of two criminal courthouses in downtown Toronto. Prior to her appointment, Justice Wong practised as a criminal defence lawyer specializing in youth justice cases. In our conversation we talk about her personal links with the infamous Supreme Court of Canada...

Statelessness & COVID-19 This is an encore presentation of a webinar featuring 5 grassroots organizations and researchers sharing their observations and insights of the experiences of stateless persons in the pandemic in Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Kuwait and Malaysia. Sponsored by the University of Ottawa Public Law Centre and the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, the presentations flow...

Meet the Honourable Ahmed Hussen. He is a graduate of the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, co-founded Regent Park Community Council, was national president of the Canadian Somali Congress, and practised criminal, immigration and human rights law. Elected in 2015, Minister Hussen served as Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and now is Minister of Families, Children and Social De...

Meet Elene Lam, the founder and executive director of Butterfly, an Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network. The tragic deaths of six Asian women in Atlanta have highlighted the intersectional reasons why they were targeted and killed. Perceived as foreigner persons, migrants engaging in immoral and illegal work, fetishized women, and those contributing to the spread of the coronavirus, Butt...

Meet Justice Douglas Campbell, the longest serving judge in Canada. He was appointed to the British Columbia Provincial Court in 1974 at the age of 29 and then in 1995 to the Federal Court of Canada, retiring in 2020. With a docket largely focused on immigration and refugee law, we talk about Justice Campbell's time on the bench, what compassionate and ethical judging looks like, how being a lawye...

Meet Laura Madokoro, historian and Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University. She is the author of Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War published by Harvard in 2016. We talk about why studying the past is important, what historical exclusions say about our immigration system, how the grand narratives of humanitarianism may be disguising violence and displa...

Meet Bob Rae, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York. Mr. Rae was Premier of Ontario (1990-1995), Interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (2011-2013), Canada's Special Envoy to Myanmar (2017-2018) and Canada's Special Envoy on Humanitarian and Refugee Issues (2020). We talk about the statelessness, genocide and forced displacement of Rohingya in M...

Meet Souheil Benslimane, a self-identified "illegalized" and criminalized migrant currently being processed for deportation from Canada. We talk about his experience being incarcerated, how he feels he is being punished twice through the immigration system, and his journey to becoming an abolitionist. We also talk about the important work he does with the Jail Accountability and Information Line H...

Meet my father, James Liew. His status as a previously stateless person and his migration story to Canada is the inspiration for my current research on statelessness and law. Listen to us talk about his past and his journey to Canada. Consider how he characterized the country he was born in and his idea of what citizenship is about.

Meet Harsha Walia, Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, co-founder of No One is Illegal and author of Undoing Border Imperialism. We talk about what it means to be a good community member, why we can't talk about borders and migration without talking about race, and interrogate the critiques placed against the call to undo borders.

Meet Yodit Girmay, a former settlement worker and an Equity and Inclusion Consultant who provides diversity, anti-oppression and cultural competency training. Yodit talks about the myriad of invisible ways settlement workers aid newcomers, but also how they can be helpful in a legal process. We also talk about the delicate balance in setting boundaries with your ethnic community, with professional...

Meet Petra Molnar, a lawyer-researcher, Associate Director of the Refugee Law Lab, York University, working at the intersection of human rights, migration and technology. We talk about the ecosystem by which migration tech is being used to survey and make administrative decisions related to immigration, refugee and citizenship law. Drones, facial recognition, AI lie detectors, and other tools are...

Meet Karen Cocq, Projects & Campaign Coordinator for Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, Canada’s largest coalition of self-organized groups of migrant workers. In this episode we talk about the #StatusForAll campaign and the call for material changes in the immigration system to confer permanent status upon arrival so that all persons can access health care, labour rights, and to enable the elim...

Meet Frédérique Chabot, the Director of Health Promotion and Interim Executive Director of Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights, an organization that promotes health, wellbeing and rights related to sexuality and reproduction. We talk about the barriers the COVID-19 pandemic has erected in accessing abortion health care and how these barriers are more severe for migrant women given that access...

Meet Skyler, a former refugee claimant who made a claim for protection in Canada because she feared for her life as a lesbian in the United States Army. In this conversation, we talk about what it feels like to go through the refugee determination system at the Immigration and Refugee Board, and the Federal Court of Canada. For more information about her case, you can read Smith v Canada (Citizens...

Meet Michael Bossin, one of the co-counsel for the Applicants in the Canadian Council for Refugees v Canada decision, where the Federal Court of Appeal found the Safe Third Country Agreement unconstitutional. In this episode, we talk how the decision found the STCA violates the Charter rights (section 7) of refugee claimants, the legal analysis behind the reasoning, and the immense work behind the...

Meet Rema Jamous Imseis, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Representative to Canada. In this episode, Rema provides an introduction to the work of the UNHCR and what UNHCR does in Canada. We also talk about the current and emerging challenges to refugee protection globally and in Canada.