Claims of belonging: Recent tales of trouble in Canadian citizenship

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2012 12: 293EthnicitiesLois Harder and Lyubov Zhyznomirska

Claims of belonging: Recent tales of trouble in Canadian citizenship

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Article

Claims of belonging:Recent tales of troublein Canadian citizenship

Lois Harder and Lyubov ZhyznomirskaUniversity of Alberta, Canada

Abstract

Canada’s Conservative government faced its first substantive controversy in its handling

of the evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon during the July 2006 conflict in that

country. Within a year, another controversy was spurred by the passport requirements

of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (in force since 2007). Upon applying for

their passports, some people discovered that their Canadian citizenship was in doubt.

Both cases raised similar questions in public debate and policy: what constitutes a

Canadian citizen, what role do factors surrounding one’s birth and kinship ties have

on one’s claim to citizenship and what obligations or attachments does a person have to

undertake in order to be a citizen? But the cases also exposed differing responses

towards the Canadians evacuated from Lebanon and the ‘Lost Canadians’ that reflect

a racialized and ethnicized hierarchy of Canadian citizenship.

Keywords

lost Canadians, Lebanese-Canadians, citizenship, kinship, national identity, race, Canada

Under the old rules, it was possible for Canadians to pass on their citizenship to

endless generations born outside Canada. To protect the value of Canadian citizen-

ship for the future, the new law limits – with a few exceptions – citizenship by descent

to one generation born outside Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (2009a)

In the summer of 2006, Canada’s recently elected Conservative governmentconfronted its first public relations crisis. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon prompted

Ethnicities

12(3) 293–316

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Corresponding author:

Lois Harder, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, 10–16 Henry Marshall Tory Building,

Edmonton, AB T6G 2H4, Canada

Email: [email protected]

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many countries, Canada among them, to evacuate their nationals. The evacuees,their families in Canada and the Canadian media deemed the government’s han-dling of the situation to be slow and inexpert. But as the story unfolded, the publicdebate developed a curious focus. Some politicians and journalists began question-ing the evacuees’ status and speculating as to whether the evacuees were ‘citizens ofconvenience’ who only made use of their Canadian passports to receive a free passout of a war zone but otherwise lived their lives in Lebanon (Gunter, 2007; Kaplan,2006; Patriquin, 2006; Simpson, 2006; Turner, 2006). Attention then turned toCanada’s obligations to dual citizens, the responsibilities of citizenship andto the acquisition of citizenship through birth without the necessity of residenceor attachment. Questions were also raised about the value of a Canadian passport,as well as the rights and duties of citizens living abroad and the obligations of theCanadian state.

Just over a year later, the Conservative government faced a second challenge onthe citizenship file. The implementation of the Western Hemisphere TravelInitiative meant that Canadians and Americans had to produce passports tocross their shared border. Media stories appeared describing situations in whichpeople applied for citizenship documents and discovered, to their great dismay,that they lacked Canadian citizenship (Mulgrew, 2007; O’Neill, 2007). Many ofthese people had lived in Canada most, if not all, of their lives, paid taxes andvoted. These ‘Lost Canadians’ were represented as hapless victims of mean-spiritedbureaucrats and ‘arcane’ citizenship laws. The Lost Canadians’ claim to Canadianmembership was virtually never disputed; indeed, their love of the country over-whelmingly animated media narratives and parliamentary testimony. But the ques-tions of debate and policy to which the Lost Canadians gave rise were remarkablysimilar to those of Canadians evacuated from Lebanon: what constitutes aCanadian citizen, what role do the factors surrounding one’s birth and kinshipties have on one’s claim to citizenship and what obligations does a person have toundertake in order to be a citizen?

In this paper, we argue that the differing responses towards the Canadiansevacuated from Lebanon and the Lost Canadians represent an expression of aracialized and ethnicized hierarchy of Canadian citizenship onto which notionsof ‘home’ and ‘away’, ‘family’ and ‘foreigner’ are mapped, and expectations ofentitlement and obligation are elaborated. Evidence for this position is establishedthrough our cases, but it is also well documented in several previous studies ofCanada’s pernicious racism (Backhouse, 2001; Bannerji, 2000; Razack, 2002;Stasiulus, 1997; Thobani, 2007). Where we distinguish our analysis from this earlierwork, then, is in adding kinship as a definitional criterion of national citizenship/membership. Kinship provides the means through which a legal claim to nationalattachment is forged, but whether or not formal citizenship also provides an‘authentic’ claim to belonging is bound to racialized conceptions of place. Thelegislation that was passed to resolve the issue of ‘citizens of convenience’ andthe determination of being a lost or found Canadian circulated around kinship

294 Ethnicities 12(3)



rules, and, specifically, the provision that a person who was born abroad on orafter 17 April 2009 and whose Canadian parent(s) was born abroad is not entitledto Canadian citizenship by birth (Government of Canada, 1985).1 How is it then,that a kinship rule is advanced to resolve concerns over national attachment andlegitimate political belonging?

We begin our analysis by setting out a theoretical framework drawing on the-ories of democracy and the foreigner; nation and race; and finally kinship. Usingmedia sources, parliamentary debates and committee hearings and reports, we thenexplore the distinctive narratives that were used to describe the Canadians evacu-ated from Lebanon and the Lost Canadians. Our aim is to reveal the complexitiesof the Canadian national identity and to expose how demonstrations of nationalattachment are subsumed to kinship rules, and more specifically to the circum-stances of one’s birth. The persistence of kinship rules as the basis of membershipin liberal polities, as in all political societies, thus belies the consensual basis ofcontemporary democracies (Stevens, 1999). The seeming inability or unwillingnessto recognize and disturb the key role of kinship in constituting political societiesposes considerable obstacles to the exploration of more inclusive and democraticmodes of constituting political membership.

Theorizing national belonging

The Canadian evacuees from Lebanon and the Lost Canadians present a para-dox. While the evacuees were either Canadian citizens replete with passports orpermanent residents of Canada, the citizenship status of the Lost Canadians wasambiguous.2 Yet it was the evacuees who encountered the questions regarding theintegrity of their claim to national belonging, while the Lost Canadians wereembraced and defended. This paradoxical response embodies what BonnieHonig (2001: 76) describes as the ‘play of xenophobia and xenophilia’ thatemerges from the undecidability of foreignness. Honig’s work is concerned withthe role of foreigners in the founding and maintenance of nations. This role isparticularly important for settler societies in which foreignness is precisely thefeature from which the nation derives its character (Honig, 2001: 76). Honig,describing the case of an immigrant America, notes that foreigners are agentsof national re-enchantment whose desire for membership regularly reinforces thechoice-worthiness of the regime. But the flipside of the foreigner is also at play.This is the xenophobic attitude that casts suspicion on immigrants for ‘their’desire to get ahead that might consequently jeopardize ‘our’ jobs, and ‘their’supportive and culturally rich communities that, it is feared, might also breedextremism and social fragmentation and thus threaten ‘our’ way of life (Honig,2001: 76). Honig’s xenophobic/xenophilic dichotomy of sentiments towards for-eigners/immigrants and its juxtaposition to citizens thus allows us to understandhow contradictory dispositions towards immigrants may co-exist in settlersocieties.

Harder and Zhyznomirska 295



It is worth noting that this citizen–foreigner dynamic only makes sense when themajority population of the settler society – the one that presumes its entitlement tothe nation state – forgets about its own diverse immigrant experiences and activelydisregards processes of colonization and the wars of position that occurred acrosssettler communities. In the Canadian case, the construction of the majority popu-lation also involves a forgetting of the long presence of racialized immigrant pop-ulations within Canada (Austin, 2010; Dua, 2007; Perry, 2001). That act offorgetting then enables racialized and ethnicized conceptions of belonging totake hold, such that some citizens consistently find themselves read as foreign,regardless of a long lineage in the settler society, while other, primarily whiteand English- or French-speaking immigrants (in the Canadian case) ‘belong’ vir-tually from their arrival. The promise of inclusion in the multicultural settler soci-ety is thus precarious and only contingently granted to those in whom ‘the other’can seemingly never be fully abolished.

Canada’s reputation as multicultural, inclusive and rights-respecting runs coun-ter to the line of theorizing that we have developed to this point. But while mul-ticulturalism has been an artefact of Canadian public policy since 1971, it is aconcept that, since its inception, has rested on the juxtaposition of ‘authentic’Canadians with both indigenous peoples and racialized ‘newcomers’. This discur-sive formulation puts people of French, but especially English ancestry, at thecentre of ‘authenticity’. As Nandita Sharma (2006: 27) explains, the racializationand regulation of diverse indigenous peoples into ‘Indians’ and the changing hier-archy of racialized populations over time (‘blacks’, ‘Asians’, ‘eastern-’ and ‘south-ern Europeans’) have been articulated in opposition to ‘Canadianness’.Multiculturalism thus works to reinforce the language of authenticity rather thanto undermine it.

Multiculturalism is, perforce, deeply political, but as a value that is constitu-tive of the Canadian national mythology, it has a peculiarly naturalized charac-ter. For example, Canada’s new guide to citizenship affirms ‘multiculturalism is afundamental characteristic of the Canadian heritage and identity’ (Citizenshipand Immigration Canada, 2009b: 8). This claim belies the concept’s relativelyrecent invention, and obscures the political contestation that attends it. RitaDhamoon and Yasmeen Abu-Laban (2009) offer a critical corrective to thismythologizing. Drawing on Japanese internment during World War II, theOctober crisis in Quebec in 1970 and the Oka/Kahansetake stand-off in thesummer of 1990, they observe how certain Canadians have been constructed as‘dangerous internal foreigners’, a category that ‘transcends the distinctionbetween legal and nonlegal national citizen’ since the ‘internal foreigner’ haslegal standing within the state but is simultaneously deemed an outsider(Dhamoon and Abu-Laban, 2009: 169). They also note that the concept ‘illumi-nates the ways in which foreignness has been intricately linked to threat’(Dhamoon and Abu-Laban, 2009: 169). In the context of the Canadians evacu-ated from Lebanon, the dangerous internal foreigner – in this case a presump-tively unassimilated, sometime immigrant – was dislocated to his assumed point




of origin and thus rendered a ‘foreign’ Canadian abroad, what we are terming adangerous external national.

Place and national identity interact in the formulations of dangerous inter-nal foreigner and dangerous external national to mark out a sense of homeand a set of related affiliations and behaviours that are ‘other’ to the hostnation state, and hence vulnerable to suspicion. For the Canadians evacuatedfrom Lebanon, this suspicion was two pronged. First, the evacuees, and otherCanadian nationals travelling or living in ‘hot spots’ around the world, wereseen by members of the government to pose a financial risk and ‘an extraburden or charge’ to Canada in the event of a demand for rescue (Parliamentof Canada, 2006b: 21). This articulation of risk received the most sustainedattention in the senate’s study of the evacuation, resulting in a call to reviewconsular services provided to nationals abroad and for the increased ‘self-reliance’ of travelling Canadians (Parliament of Canada, 2006b: 16–21;Parliament of Canada, 2007g). And secondly, the evacuees were defined againstthe backdrop of a post 9/11 security environment and a generalized warinessof people of Middle Eastern origin.3 Indeed, Canada’s minister of public safetyopenly speculated about the potential terrorist threat posed to Canada as aresult of the country’s ‘permissive’ residency and immigration criteria (Day,cited in Bell, 2006). Here again we can see how the majority populationclaims the national space, and along with it, the capacity to determinewhose claims to belonging are legitimate.

Lebanese immigrants and their descendants have, in fact, lived in Canada sincethe 1880s, and indeed, Joe Ghiz, a Canadian of Lebanese heritage, was elected pre-mier of the province of Prince Edward Island in 1986 (Jabbra, 1997). His sonRobert was elected premier of PEI in 2007. Yet in the summer of 2006, this historyand contribution were superseded by a widespread presumption, at least in somequarters, that to be a Canadian in Lebanon was to be not much of a Canadian atall (The Economist, 2006; Patriquin, 2006; Ward, 2006).

While the Canadians evacuated from Lebanon were framed as ‘not quiteCanadian enough’, the Lost Canadians gained public and political support fortheir cause on the basis of their ‘super citizen’ status. The Lost Canadians posi-tioned themselves as ‘exalted subjects’ (Thobani, 2007). They made their pitch forreinstatement on the grounds that their personal characteristics, including love ofcountry, sacrifice and hard work, were the very traits that embodied the Canadiannational identity, ‘thereby catapulting them into the sociocultural realm of thenational symbolic’ (Thobani, 2007: 9). Tellingly, they also invoked hallowed ances-tors. In making claims to lineage, the Lost Canadians invoked a myth of nationaldescent. As Sunera Thobani explains:

The myth of national descent. . . . presupposes and attributes to previous generations

the same ‘national’ motives and interests as subsequent generations, who are defined

as having a direct link with the early colonizers as their rightful (and righteous) heirs.

The direct relation established between ‘early explorers and settlers’ and today’s




upstanding and responsible citizens becomes comprehensible only within the context

of the continuity of their shared racial identity.

Thobani (2007: 87)

As many critical scholars of Canadian nationalism have pointed out, racializedwhiteness is endemic to Canadian nationalism, and in turn, Canadian nationalismconstructs a racialized sense of home (Razack, 2002; Sharma, 2006; Thobani,2007).

Invocations of ancestors, a myth of national descent and a racialized sense ofhome lead us, finally, to the role of kinship in the construction and maintenance ofnational membership. Political theorist Jacqueline Stevens (1999) locates kinship atthe centre of political membership. Rather than focusing on the rights, obligationsand entitlements that emerge from citizenship status and are denied to those wholack that status, Stevens asks the prior question of the conditions that give rise tomembership in the first place (1999: 56). As Stevens notes:

the idea among sophisticated scholars is that [modern] nations are not based on ‘blood

ties’ (whereas families are), and therefore it makes no sense to turn to the family for

ontological or historical (as opposed to psychoanalytical) understandings of the

nation.

Stevens (1999: 107)

Stevens contests this view, insisting that all political societies are marked byintergenerationality and thus are infused with conceptions of continuity, ancestryand belonging (1999: 87). As such, the kinship criteria that constitute recognizedfamilies within a nation state are both the product of state law and definitive of thestate itself. As Stevens points out, what makes a state is not human reproductionper se, but the detailed rules that govern that reproduction. In the absence ofkinship rules there would be humans, but not Canadians, Lebanese or any othernation-state identity (Stevens, 1999: 226–227). It should also be noted here that it isnot merely habitation that constitutes membership, otherwise there would be noneed for categories such as ‘aliens’ and ‘illegals’. Rather, it is birth in the territorythat may confer citizenship:

Territory as the criterion for membership only defers the site of birth invocations from

the politically constituted family to the politically constituted territory. The effect of the

citizenship criterion of birth in the territory is to sacralize the political borders, not to

defetishize birth as a membership criterion.

Stevens (1999: 61; our emphasis)

Hence, affiliations based on both jus sanguinis and jus soli have an underlyinglogic of ancestry and continuity, and define the terms of national membership.

Stevens points us to the formal rules of membership and, indeed, these rulesare important to our analysis, since they represent the site at which the




Canadian government chose to address what it perceived as the problem of citi-zenship without attachment to the Canadian nation state. But there is also theperplexing and differentiated effect of other nation states on people who wereCanadians, or at least thought they were. Negative reaction to the Canadiansevacuated from Lebanon suggests that the kinship/citizenship ties theseCanadians had to Lebanon were presumed to be stronger than those they had toCanada. In essence, one could take the Canadian out of Lebanon but not theLebanese out of the Canadian, nor could the mutuality of these national identitiesin a single subject be trusted. By contrast, some of the most high-profile LostCanadians had, in fact, spent most of their lives outside of the country, notablyin the UK, the USA and the Netherlands. These national attachments were unpro-blematic, however, since their hold on the psyches of the people claiming citizen-ship was evidently not as strong as the desire of the Lost Canadians to beCanadian.

Tales of trouble

In order to ground the theoretical frame we have constructed, we now turn to thecontext and events that describe the Canadians who were evacuated from Lebanonand the Lost Canadians. Throughout this empirical discussion, we attempt todemonstrate the interweaving of xenophobia/xenophilia; racialization and authen-ticity; and the workings of kinship in constituting national membership. Theattachment of the Lost Canadians to Canada reflects Honig’s observations regard-ing the role of people deemed outsiders in re-enchanting the nation; the Canadiansevacuated from Lebanon expose a suspicion towards Canadians found abroad andtheir representation, at least in some quarters, as dangerous external nationals. Theracial neutrality (or presumed whiteness) of the Lost Canadians bolsters theirclaims to Canadian authenticity, while the implied Arabness of the Canadians inLebanon leads to charges that their attachments to Canada are instrumental: thatthe Canadians abroad in Lebanon were citizens of convenience. Finally, the reso-lution to these situations is not a test of attachment or even residence, but ratherthe resort to new membership rules that rely on kinship.

Canadians evacuated from Lebanon

The violence in Lebanon erupted on 12 July 2006, when Hezbollah militants basedin Lebanon conducted a raid into Israel, capturing two soldiers and killing severalothers. Israel responded by shelling Beirut and southern Lebanon. As the securitysituation deteriorated, citizens of various countries who lived in or were visitingLebanon requested emergency evacuation from their respective governments. InCanada, supporters of an evacuation staged rallies on Ottawa’s Parliament Hilland in several other cities on 16 July to attract public attention to the crisis in theMiddle East and to demand that the government assist their relatives: Canadians




caught in the cross-fire in Lebanon. That same day, seven vacationing Canadians,all from one extended family, were killed in Israel’s bombardment of southernLebanon.

On 19 July, the Canadian government began evacuating Canadians fromBeirut.4 The operation continued until 15 August 2006. Canada evacuated14,370 people of 39,700, or about 36%, of those who registered with theCanadian embassy in Beirut at the peak of the crisis (Parliament of Canada,2007g: 1). Canadian citizens and residents may have also left Lebanon withoutCanada’s assistance, but the number of people who did so is not known. Thegovernment spent approximately $94 million on the evacuation (Parliament ofCanada, 2007g: 10).

Despite being proud of their multiculturalism, diversity and immigrant-embracing political culture, the public in Canada was ‘surprised’ to discover asignificant number of fellow citizens in the midst of the conflict in Lebanon. Asa Vancouver Sun editorial proclaimed, ‘the magnitude of [the evacuation] came as asurprise to most of us here in Canada, who had no idea that the number ofCanadians in Lebanon numbered not in the hundreds or thousands, but in thetens of thousands’ (2006: A14). Senator Frank Mahovlich was similarly con-founded, describing as ‘mind-boggling’ the contrast between his minimal exposureto people of Lebanese descent in his hometown of Timmins with the reporting ofthe number of Canadians in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 (Parliament ofCanada, 2006a: 19). When the government announced that it would not seek reim-bursement of expenses from evacuees, the surprise turned into a controversy aboutevacuees’ ‘Canadianness’ and their entitlement to a portion of taxpayers’ money.The discussion about Canada’s responsibility towards its citizens living abroad,especially those with dual citizenship residing in the country of their, or theirancestors’, origin ensued.

A common assumption in media reports and in politicians’ public statementswas that the majority of Canadians in Lebanon were recent immigrants to Canadawho had returned to their country of birth after attaining Canadian passports.They were deemed ‘citizens of convenience’ and suspected of acquiring Canadianpassports for the sake of rights and privileges rather than personal commitmentand dedication to Canada. In the Globe and Mail, for example, columnist JeffreySimpson opined:

We seem to believe that, because a person carries a Canadian passport, that person

thinks of himself as a Canadian and has an absolute right to assistance from the

Canadian government while outside Canada. Both beliefs are false, and potentially

dangerous.

It is worth at least asking whether we have made the acquisition of Canadian citizen-

ship so easy – divorcing it, once acquired, from residence in the country – that we have

spawned legions of citizens of convenience.

Simpson (2006: A15)




Simpson’s use of ‘we’ in this statement draws a line between authenticCanadians who ‘really do’ think of themselves as Canadian and dangerous preten-ders who play the Canadian citizenship card as the need arises.

In the evacuation, the fear of a threatening external national was expressedthrough a heightened concern with securing proper documentation and implement-ing a screening process of the evacuees aimed at detecting currently known andpotential ‘terrorists’ who could use Canada as a ‘safe haven’ and a hiding place.The concern was twofold: (1) that foreigners with malicious intent would fraudu-lently pass themselves off as Canadians and be imported into the ‘home’ territorywhere their presence could threaten domestic stability; and (2) justifying the costs ofthe evacuation to Canadians (Parliament of Canada, 2006a, 2006b). By implication,the risk – and the burden on Canadian taxpayers – is said to emerge from Canadiancitizens originating from, living in and travelling to dangerous, racialized places.

In a similar distinction between the authentic and the fraud, though one inwhich the element of danger is more oblique, Martin Collacott, a formerCanadian ambassador to Syria and Lebanon, asserted: ‘they can say, ‘‘nowwe’ve got all these benefits, let’s go back and live in the old country, and we’llcall on Canada when we need it.’’ There seems to be an endless sense of entitlementthat we’ve helped to create’ (cited in Butler, 2006). For both Simpson andCollacott, the extra-territoriality of these Canadians is a central problem.Presence in Canada is seemingly fundamental to belonging. It is as though one’sCanadian identity vanishes once the country’s international borders have receded.Further, the alleged ephemerality of the commitment to Canada also appears to beattached to a presumption that the evacuees were ‘new’ immigrants, thereby dis-regarding the long history of Lebanese settlement in Canada and invoking suspi-cion towards ‘new’ immigrants and naturalized citizens.

The certainty with which the ‘citizens of convenience’ accusation was asserted isbelied by the weakness of the evidence to either support or dispute it. Beyondanecdotes and rough estimates, we do not know how many of the evacuees wereliving permanently in Lebanon and how many were working there temporarily orvacationing. We also do not know why only about 15,000 out of around 40,000people registered decided to seek the government’s assistance to flee the war zone.Further, we do not know how many of the evacuees were Canadian born or foreignborn, or how many of the evacuees returned to Lebanon permanently once thesecurity situation improved.6 In several exchanges before the Senate Committee onForeign Affairs and International Trade, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and hisofficials were obliged to acknowledge this lack of information (Parliament ofCanada, 2006a,b). In response to a question regarding how many evacueesreturned to Lebanon, the minister stated: ‘I have heard only anecdotally thatapproximately 50 percent of that number (15,000) has returned. Again this infor-mation is anecdotal’ (Parliament of Canada, 2006b: 16). Indeed, given its anecdotalquality, it is difficult to know why the minister responded with such a figure at all.

Of course, acquiring such information would provide a more nuanced picture ofwhether, how and which Canadians live their lives transnationally. But when the




question of residence is posed against a backdrop of concern for evacuation costsand commitment to Canada, the issue of Canadians abroad in potential crisissituations becomes politically charged. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs sug-gested, considerations of policy reform emerging from the evacuation experiencewould undoubtedly include some reflection on whether a person who has livedoutside of Canada for some time should have the same expectations of their citi-zenship as people who live in Canada (Parliament of Canada, 2006b: 21).5

Although we can infer that Canadians generally acknowledge the mobile,transnational life of some of their fellow citizens, particularly those who arerich and/or famous, much of the popular and political discourse around theevacuation suggests that, in the public imagination, a bona fide Canadian issomeone who works and lives within Canadian borders and demonstrates hisattachment to the country by paying taxes and abiding by the law. As SenatorCorbin queried, ‘I . . .would like to know if that policy [dual citizenship] will belooked at in view of the heavy burden foisted . . . on bona fide Canadians’(Parliament of Canada, 2006b: 21). A bona fide Canadian is thus producedthrough the construction of the evacuated citizen. The evacuee is deemed to bea non-committed, non-participant, non-contributing (non-)member. The evacueesbecome ‘they’ who abuse ‘us’ by using ‘our’ Canadian passport for their conve-nience. Their naturalized or birthright citizenship tie to Canada notwithstanding,the evacuees are understood as Lebanese, and their primary or only kinship tie isasserted to be to Lebanon, the ‘real home’ where they were ‘found’. Such asentiment obscures the fact that those Canadians who are ‘at home’ in theCanadian territory also came from elsewhere (except indigenous peoples) andmay equally call another land their ancestral home. Hence, we see a complicatedoverlapping of place, kinship and belonging in the claim to the right to consularprotection.

Of course, there were also strong voices of support for the evacuation effort andfor the Canadian citizens and permanent residents who had been affected by thecrisis. In some cases, this support was rendered in the straightforward language ofcitizen entitlement, but in others, and as Honig’s insights surrounding the enchant-ment with the nation offered by the (presumed) foreigner would suggest, theemphasis was placed on the benefits of immigration to Canada. In the lattercase, the evacuees were ‘other’ to Canada, but in a way that reinforced Canada’scommitment to multiculturalism and recognized the dynamics of transnationallives in an era of globalization.

With regard to the entitlement of citizens, the responses of Canadians to agovernment-sponsored poll conducted by Ipsos Reid in the summer of 2006 arerevealing. Eighty per cent of Canadians agreed that ‘every Canadian citizen has aright to be evacuated by their government when an armed conflict erupts.’ Seventy-five per cent felt that the entitlement to rescue exists ‘regardless of cost,’ and 69%agreed that ‘Canada still has an obligation to protect Canadians who now live inLebanon’ (Heinrich, 2007). Intriguingly, these results were made public not by thegovernment, but by the Association for Canadian Studies, and did not come to




light until a year after the poll was conducted. In the interim, Canada’s conserva-tive government had announced a review of dual citizenship provisions andmounted a public relations campaign drawing attention to the sixtieth anniversaryof the law establishing Canadian citizenship, a celebration that was remarked uponbecause of its departure from those anniversaries that are generally held to besignificant (Aubry, 2007; Heinrich, 2007).

Liberal Member of Parliament, Dan McTeague, expressed the xenophilic sen-timent of the value of immigrants to Canada and the reality of multiple citizen-ships in an era of globalization. Commenting on the issue of dual citizenship as ithad emerged in the debate surrounding the Lebanon evacuation, McTeaguestated: ‘dual citizenship gives Canada a perspective on the world and an abilityto connect with the world in a way in which other countries cannot . . . It’s beenvery beneficial for Canada . . . It’s very much the Canadian way’ (Butler, 2006).Similarly, an editorial in the Globe and Mail spoke about Canada’s ‘wisdom’ ingranting ‘citizenship to people from around the world. It does so withoutdemanding that they remain in the country, because it is in Canada’s interestto have its people living and working around the globe, providing contactsabroad and being ambassadors for this country’ (Globe and Mail, 2006: A16).While these comments are certainly counter to the negativity of the ‘citizens ofconvenience’ narrative, they rest on a similar assumption: that the evacuees,despite being Canadian citizens or permanent residents, at least partially‘belonged’ somewhere else. Rather than giving rise to suspicion though, the evac-uees’ alleged duality was regarded as an asset to Canada.

In contrast to the Lost Canadians, the voices of the Canadians directly affectedby the crisis in Lebanon were rarely audible. As we have noted, much of the dis-cussion surrounding the evacuation circulated around attachment to Canada andthe costs of the operation. But that said, there were instances in which Canadianswho claimed Lebanese descent were able to engage, if not entirely disrupt, thetrajectory of the discussion. In an article in the Globe and Mail, Marie-JoelleZahar, a professor at the University of Montreal offered a savvy rejoinder to theevacuation’s critics. She stated:

I am a Canadian of recent vintage, having obtained my citizenship two months ago.

I am also Lebanese. I chose Canada because I could be a ‘hyphenated’ Canadian.

I chose Canada for its positive engagement in the world, its advocacy of multicultur-

alism and its reputation for humanitarianism . . .This is the Canada that reminds me

of my homeland, Lebanon, traditionally a land of refuge for persecuted minorities,

a land of diversity and a beacon of tolerance – at least before it descended into

civil war. . . . .

My Canada stands behind its values; my Canada spends my tax dollars to help those

in need in faraway locales; my Canada does not differentiate between its citizens –

especially in their hour of need.

Zahar (2006)




Zahar speaks to the values that Canadians cherish, justifying her entitlement toequal treatment by the state and the community. But she goes further by challeng-ing Canadians’ assumptions regarding the uniqueness of their purported respect fordiversity even as she claims Canada as her own.

While Zahar deftly mobilized reverence as critique, Elias Bejjani, chairman ofthe Lebanese-Canadian Co-ordinating Council, was more willing to accept thescript of the dominant discourse. Quoted in the Ottawa Citizen, Bejjani stated:

‘If you are on vacation and you are a taxpayer, you are entitled to get all the help that

your government could afford’ . . .As for those who simply took the free ride – a sealift

from Beirut to Cyprus or Turkey and then a flight back to Canada – and who don’t

pay taxes in Canada, Bejjani said they probably should have been billed.

Cited in Blanchfield (2007)

In other newspaper stories, Canadians with Lebanese heritage mobilized birth-place, length of residence, status in Canada and employment to advance theirclaims to belonging. In this way, they asserted their sameness with otherCanadians and their worthiness to claim Canada as their own. Mounir Khoury,for example, ‘was born in Lebanon and moved to Canada with his parents when hewas still in diapers’ (Payton and Singer, 2006). Ottawa restaurateur, Al Saikali’sdual commitments to Canada and Lebanon were represented in the followingdescription:

After building his successful business in Ottawa over the last four decades, Mr. Saikali

and his wife, Jeanette, now allow themselves the luxury of spending their summers in

Kfar Mishki, the small village in the Bekaa Valley where Mr. Saikali was born.

Payton and Singer (2006)

Michel Abimikhael, a Tim Horton’s coffee and donut shop franchisee who cameto Canada from Beirut in 1987, observed, similarly, that the phenomenon ofCanadians spending their summers in Lebanon was the same as other Canadiansgoing to their cottages in the summer or to Florida in the winter (Jimenez and Ha,2006). Indeed, Robert Desjardins, Director General of the Consular Affairs Bureauof DFAIT, confirmed that a full 40% of the annual travel between Lebanon andCanada occurred during the summer months (Parliament of Canada, 2006a: 20).

The dual sentiments of xenophobia and xenophilia towards the foreigner areclearly at work in these newspaper stories and in the statements of governmentofficials. Fear and mistrust of immigrants is evident in the unfounded assumptionsthat the people evacuated from Lebanon were ‘citizens of convenience’ and in callsfor demonstrations of attachment or decreased citizen entitlements. On the otherhand, the evacuees, their defenders and the journalists who wrote positive storiesabout them underscored the choice-worthiness of the Canadian polity by empha-sizing the love of these ‘not quite Canadians’ for Canada, their commitment andhard work, and their desire to contribute to Canadian society. It is notable that, in




both the criticisms and the defences of the Canadians evacuated from Lebanon, theissue of economic contribution was asserted as a key marker of dedication andattachment.

The mixture of sentiments exposed in the public discussion of the evacuationshows how an ‘organic’ Canadian national identity surfaces when Canada’s col-lective identity is politicized through the citizenship claims of ‘immigrants’ (conve-niently distinguished from other Canadian settlers/colonists). In the context of theevacuation, a distinction was drawn between the ‘authentic’ and the ‘pseudo’ cit-izen. Whereas the ties of authentic Canadians were to the territory described byCanada’s national boundaries, pseudo citizens belonged elsewhere because theywere seen to originate elsewhere. This view invokes a racist logic that geographi-cally assigns racialized bodies to ‘natural’ homes associated with major continents.As David Theo Goldberg explains:

. . . those whose ‘racial origins’ are considered geographically somehow to coincide

with national territory (or its colonial extension) are deemed to belong to the

nation; those whose geo-phenotypes obviously place them originally (from) elsewhere

are all too often considered to pollute or potentially to terrorize the national space,

with debilitating and even deadly effect.

Goldberg (2009: 7)

To conclude this section, the story of the evacuation of Canadians fromLebanon in the summer of 2006 was the story of a challenge to the citizenshipentitlements of certain ‘suspect’ Canadians – dangerous, external nationals. Foundabroad in their thousands, these citizens quickly became targets of anxiety regard-ing attachment to the Canadian nation state. What mattered, it seemed, was whereone was located relative to the national territory rather than any concrete evidencefor one’s deeds, commitment, self-identification or sense of belonging. In both thesuspicion and in the defence, racialized concepts of insider and outsider were mobi-lized, connections between ancestry and national belonging were implied, and themeaning of membership in the Canadian polity revealed itself in stark precision.

Lost Canadians

As noted in the introduction, the passport requirements of the Western HemisphereTravel Initiative sparked the most recent recognition of the Lost Canadians phe-nomenon, but it was by no means the first instance of status denial resulting fromthe workings of Canadian citizenship law. The fact that people believe that theyhave Canadian citizenship status when, in fact, they do not stems from an array oflegal technicalities and life circumstances. Until the 2008 amendments to theCitizenship Act, the determination of citizenship status differed depending onwhether you were born prior to 1 January 1947; between that date and 15February 1977; and after that date. The recent amendments have replaced therules that governed the 1947–1977 category and now cover people born between




1947 and 1 June 2009, with yet another set of criteria for people born after thatdate. The marital and citizenship status of one’s parents, whether you were bornabroad or in Canadian territory, if you were born abroad, whether you affirmedyour citizenship in time and whether your ‘responsible parent’ took out citizenshipin another country were all factors in assessing one’s citizenship status, but again,their relevance depended on which Citizenship Act pertained at the time of one’sbirth. As is apparent from this brief list and from the summary in Table 1, criteriaof birth and parentage are the key factors in determining whether or not one canclaim ‘birthright’ citizenship.

The Lost Canadians provided powerful testimonials to their worthiness andentitlement to the Canadian citizenship they had presumed they had all along inthe media stories describing their plight and in their representations before theHouse of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Interms of our theoretical framework, the Lost Canadians asserted their entitlementto be understood as members, and rooted this entitlement in their claims to ‘exaltedsubject’ status and in their kinship ties. In making their cases for inclusion, thearguments of the Lost Canadians are often subtended by a xenophobic/xenophilicdichotomy in which they represent themselves as having an organic connection tothe nation in ways that ‘immigrants’ do not. They are neither dangerous internalforeigners nor dangerous external nationals, but simply the victims of bureaucraticmishap.

The Lost Canadians mobilized a variety of strategies for advancing their claimsto belonging. Several witnesses who appeared before the House of Commons com-mittee appealed to lineage. Don Chapman, for example, asserted that his great-grandparent was William Alexander Henry, a Father of Confederation (Foot,2007a; Parliament of Canada, 2007h: 13). Pauline Merrette noted that her father’sfamily had been in Canada since the American Revolution (Parliament of Canada,2007f, at 12:15) and many witnesses appealed to their fathers’ military service toCanada in World War II as evidence of sacrifice and commitment to the country,and thus of their children’s birthright to Canadian membership. In an exemplarymobilization of the host/guest dichotomy, Joe Taylor fumed, ‘I’m the son of aCanadian soldier who risked his life fighting for the country in World War II.And for Canada to not welcome the wives and children of those soldiers as citizensis disgusting’ (Foot, 2007b).

The case of war brides and their children took on special poignancy as publicinterest in the Lost Canadians intensified. Their arguments for entitlement wereswept up in an epic tale of romance that foregrounded their contribution toCanadian nation building. Melynda Jarrett was a frequent witness before theCommons Committee and perhaps the most impassioned advocate for warbrides. As she described it, the arrival of war brides and their children inCanada was a heady occasion, and the inclusion of these foreign brides into theCanadian fold was broadly supported. Indeed, the war brides continued to com-mand iconic status. As Jarrett enthused, ‘they are the most revered and respectedcitizens, whom Canadians have fallen in love with’ (Parliament of Canada, 2008,




Tab

le1.

Chan

ges

inC

anad

ian

citize

nsh

ipla

w

Citiz

ensh

ipA

ctSC

1946,c.

15

Citiz

ensh

ipA

ctR

SC1985

c.

C-2

9(1

976

Act

inco

rpora

ted

into

this

late

rve

rsio

n)

Citiz

ensh

ipA

ctR

SC1985

c.C

-29

Pre

-1947

1947–1977

1977–2009

2009–

No

Can

adia

nci

tize

nsh

ipla

w

Can

adia

ns

are

Bri

tish

subje

cts,

Can

adia

nnat

ional

s,nat

ura

lized

or,

inim

mig

ration

law

only

,

‘Can

adia

nci

tize

ns’

a

Intr

oduct

ion

of

Can

adia

n

citize

nsh

ip

––

Pri

vyC

ounci

lO

rder

858

–

gran

ted

Can

adia

nci

tize

nsh

ipor

Can

adia

ndom

icile

(dependin

g

on

the

citize

nsh

ipof

the

hus-

ban

d)

tofo

reig

nbri

des

and

child

ren

of

Can

adia

n

serv

icem

en

a

Ifw

arbri

des

and

their

child

ren

were

resi

dent

inC

anad

aon

1

Januar

y1947

beca

me

Can

adia

n

citize

nsa

Can

adia

ns

born

abro

ad

and

resi

din

gab

road

for

six

or

more

year

shad

toaf

firm

citize

n-

ship

by

age

21

(age

shift

ed

ove

r

these

year

s–

eve

ntu

ally

by

age

24)a

Affir

mat

ion

of

citize

nsh

ipsh

ifts

tose

cond

genera

tion

born

abro

ad–

must

do

soby

age

28

year

s.B

ut

not

retr

oac

tive

a

Seco

nd

genera

tion

born

abro

ad

isnot

gran

ted

Can

adia

nci

tize

n-

ship

,exce

pt

inca

ses

where

the

child

would

be

stat

ele

ssb

–Pro

hib

itio

nag

ainst

dual

nat

ional

-

ity.

Thus,

ifa

fam

ilyhead

ed

by

a

mar

ried

couple

move

dab

road

and

the

fath

er

took

citize

nsh

ip

inan

oth

er

countr

y,C

anad

ian

cit-

izensh

ipw

asre

voke

dfr

om

him

and

from

his

min

or

child

ren.

In

anunm

arri

ed

fam

ily,

sam

eru

le

but

thro

ugh

the

moth

era

Dual

nat

ional

ity

perm

itte

d,

but

not

retr

oac

tive

.(B

enne

rv.

Can

ada

S.C

ourt

finds

the

limita-

tion

of

this

pro

visi

on

toch

ildre

n

born

from

15

Febru

ary

1977

on

unco

nst

itutional

c

Citiz

ensh

ipre

inst

ated

for

anyo

ne

who

was

born

inC

anad

asi

nce

1

Januar

y1947

b

(continued)




Tab

le1.

Continued

Citiz

ensh

ipA

ctSC

1946,c.

15

Citiz

ensh

ipA

ctR

SC1985

c.

C-2

9(1

976

Act

inco

rpora

ted

into

this

late

rve

rsio

n)

Citiz

ensh

ipA

ctR

SC1985

c.C

-29

Ifa

child

was

born

‘inw

edlo

ck,’

citize

nsh

ipw

asin

heri

ted

from

the

fath

er.

Ifa

child

was

born

‘out

of

wedlo

ck’

citize

nsh

ip

from

the

moth

er1

Mai

nta

ined

Inheri

tci

tize

nsh

ipfr

om

moth

er

or

fath

er

–but

not

retr

oac

tive

.

(Aug

ier

v.Can

ada

–S.

Court

finds

the

limitat

ion

of

the

stat

ute

to

child

ren

born

from

15

Febru

ary

1977

on

unco

nst

itutional

)d

Apers

on

born

from

1947

on

to

aC

anad

ian

citize

n,

rega

rdle

ssof

wedlo

ckst

atus

or

sex

of

Can

adia

npar

ent

isgr

ante

d

Can

adia

nci

tize

nsh

ipb

aTa

ylor

vCan

ada

(Min

iste

rof

Citiz

ensh

ipan

dIm

mig

ration)

2007

FCA

349,(2

008)

3F.C

.R.324.

bC

itiz

ensh

ipA

ctR

SC1985

c.C

-29

(as

amended).

cBen

ner

vCan

ada

(Secr

eta

ryof

Stat

e)(

1997)

3.SC

R389.

dAug

ier

vCan

ada

(Min

iste

rof

Citiz

ensh

ipan

dIm

mig

ration)(

2002)

FCT

1185

(Can

LII).




at 15:55). Further drawing on the lineage argument for citizenship entitlement,Jarrett noted that the numerous Atlantic crossings that brought the war bridesand their children to Canada were known as ‘Operation Daddy’ (Parliament ofCanada, 2008, at 16:25).

While members of the Committee on Citizenship and Immigration found theseromantic, nationally celebratory stories virtually impossible (and politically unde-sirable) to question, the historical record reveals a more prosaic rendition ofCanada’s interests in its soldiers’ romantic liaisons as well as the lives of at leastsome war brides. In Joe Taylor’s situation, for example, he was conceived beforehis parents’ marriage and, indeed, his parents were forbidden from marrying by hisfather’s commanding officer in advance of the D-Day invasions. The rationale forthat prohibition was that ‘Canada was not in the business of creating widows andorphans’ (Parliament of Canada, 2007d, at 14:45). By denying soldiers permissionto marry, Canada avoided the responsibility and the claims to entitlement of theirsoldiers’ lovers and any subsequent children. Even for couples who did manage tomarry and come to Canada, the situation was not always happy. Again, in JoeTaylor’s case, his parents did marry after his father returned from Normandy, buttheir efforts to establish a life in Canada promptly ended in divorce and the returnof Joe and his mother to England (Taylor v. Canada, 2006: para 16). Similarly,Sheila Walshe’s mother made the journey to Canada with her young daughter, buteventually returned to England, telling Walshe that her father was dead(Parliament of Canada, 2007b, at 11:45). Many years later, Walshe discoveredthat her father was very much alive and she returned to Canada to meet himand his second family (Parliament of Canada, 2007b, at 11:45). Neither Taylornor Walshe had spent their lives in Canada. Nonetheless, their claims to Canadiancitizenship, based on lineage to Canadian fathers they barely knew, received asympathetic airing. In Taylor’s case, which involved a lengthy legal battle, hereceived a special grant of citizenship that was bestowed on him at a citizenshipceremony of his own devising (Bramham, 2008; Harder, 2010).

As these examples illustrate, the Lost Canadians were clearly focused on assert-ing their Canadian authenticity. In addition to appeals to lineage and to centralroles in the construction of Canada’s national identity, the Lost Canadians alsosought to mark themselves as insiders by distinguishing themselves from ‘immi-grants’. This strategy was invoked quite boldly in claims that the governmentdepartment responsible for untangling their citizenship status – Citizenship andImmigration Canada – did not know anything about citizenship, but was solelyfocused on ‘immigrants and refugees and foreign workers’ (Joe Taylor quoted inFoot, 2007b). A representative from the British Columbia Civil LibertiesAssociation echoed this view, asserting: that ‘we need to keep a firm focus onwhat citizenship means and on the fact that it’s not the same thing as immigration’(Christina Godlewska in Parliament of Canada, 2007c, at 12:30). And in a 2005rehearsal of the Lost Canadians debate, John Reynolds, then a conservative oppo-sition member, articulated the hierarchy of Canadian citizenship in his statement inthe House of Commons that ‘what amazes me is that the parliamentary secretary




who became a Canadian citizen is denying people who were born here theirCanadian citizenship. That is shameful’ (Parliament of Canada, 2005a, at 17:45).

Similarly, when it was proposed that Lost Canadians could resolve their claimsby applying for citizenship, outrage ensued. A member of the Bloc QuebecoisParty, for example, asked the minister of citizenship and immigration if she feltit was reasonable for a person born in Canada to become an immigrant in his orher own country (Meili Failli in Parliament of Canada, 2007e, at 15:50). BarryDevolin, a conservative member of the Commons Committee, recounted the situ-ation of a constituent who took out Australian citizenship in the 1960s (in order toparticipate on the Australian Olympic field hockey team) and consequently, andunwittingly, lost his Canadian citizenship. The hockey player subsequently receivedlegal advice that his wife – an immigrant to Canada – should sponsor him toreclaim his Canadian citizenship. In Devolin’s view, this was unconscionable.‘Someone who was born in another country was actually going to be sponsoringhim to become a Canadian citizen’ (Parliament of Canada, 2007a). Despite hernaturalization as a Canadian, the wife was still a foreigner, while the husband,despite his willingness to take on the national identity of another country, assertedgreater proximity to the national ideal. The hockey player’s Ontario birth certifi-cate was the membership card that should have conferred exalted status on him asan authentic Canadian (Parliament of Canada, 2007a).

The racial dimensions of the Lost Canadians’ claims to belonging provide fur-ther evidence of their efforts to distinguish themselves from ‘othered’ Canadians.Racialized commentary was variably offensive, but in each case the distinction ofthe Lost Canadian’s identity was linked to authenticity, while the racializedCanadian was distinguished from that authenticity. For example, in a 2005exchange before the Commons Committee, a representative of the war bridesresponded to Inky Mark, a conservative committee member who had immigratedto Canada from China in the mid-1950s. Interrupting Mark’s expression of empa-thy, the representative for the war brides stated, ‘I mean, who would know betterthan you? Citizenship is such an important thing’ (Parliament of Canada, 2005b).Mark’s categorization as racially Asian was a means to designate him as an immi-grant, whereas the whiteness of the European settlers defined their organic con-nection to Canada in the same motion that erased their own history of settlement.Don Chapman, the previously noted great-grandchild of a Father ofConfederation, made a more offensive claim. He had lost his Canadian citizenshipwhen his father became an American citizen in the 1950s. While a private member’sbill had been passed in 2005 that enabled Chapman to regain his citizenship, thelegislation did not enable the children of reinstated citizens to claim their allegedbirthright. This shortcoming, in Chapman’s view, was akin to the law that bannedslavery in the British colonies: while future slave ownership was outlawed, existingslaveholders kept their slaves (Parliament of Canada, 2007h: 14). One might dis-miss the equation of slavery with the privileged status of an American citizenseeking to re-acquire a second citizenship as the ill-chosen rhetoric of a singularindividual. However, the metaphor was deemed suitably pertinent to be included in




the Standing Committee Report on reclaiming citizenship for Lost Canadians. Assuch, Canada’s parliamentarians were willing to obscure the historic wrongs of thisprofound institution of racism in a bid to advance the urgency of restoring citi-zenship to Lost Canadians.7

This brief sampling of the arguments advanced by Lost Canadians for the res-toration of their citizenship reveals both the power and the contradictions of aclaim to an authentic Canadian identity. While the content of any national identityis fluid, contested and an achievement of power, it is one of the great ideologicalaccomplishments of nationalism that we commonly understand those identities tobe fixed. But Canada, as a settler nation, has had a more ambivalent relationship tonational identity. In official multiculturalism, in the recognition of two officiallanguages and in its efforts to cultivate an international reputation of respect forliberal rights, Canada is sometimes perceived as having no distinctive identity, andhence of being broadly xenophilic, hospitable and consent based. The argumentsadvanced by and for the Lost Canadians, and by and for the Canadians evacuatedfrom Lebanon, however, suggest that Canada has a very strong sense of itself andone that exists at some distance from an inclusive respect for diversity.

The policy resolution: Amendments to the Citizenship Actof Canada

In response to the perceived challenges posed to Canadian citizenship law bythe evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon and the revelations of LostCanadians, the conservative government insisted that citizenship required theassumption of responsibilities as well as the assertion of rights, and thatresponsibility was to be embodied in a demonstrated attachment to Canada,defined in terms of residence in the country (Parliament of Canada, 2007a).8

Ultimately, however, the new amendments to the Citizenship Act merelyrequire birth in the territory for the children of Canadians who were bornabroad, while Canadian citizenship is reinstated for people who were born inCanada or born to a citizen parent, but may have spent very little or none oftheir lives in the country. Further, despite the pathos of the war brides’ stories,the new amendments do nothing to rectify their contested claims for citizen-ship, since the amendments only pertain to people who were born in Canadaafter 1 January 1947. It is also not clear whether the amendments will domuch to alleviate the problem of evacuating Canadians from countries encoun-tering civil conflict or natural disasters since the second-generation rule doesnot prevent territorial Canadians or their first-generation, born-abroad kinfrom travelling or living abroad. Nonetheless, placing a limit on the inheritanceof citizenship for people not resident in Canada does circumscribe the state’sresponsibility to some modest group of people who might have claimednational membership. Canada may be willing to celebrate the ‘global village’that constitutes its internal population, but that celebration only grudginglyand unreliably extends to those people when they leave its territory.




The epigraph to this article states that the introduction of the second-generationrule protects the value of Canadian citizenship by limiting its inheritance. This newrule is claimed to depart from the possibility of endless generations of Canadianswith no attachment to the country. But only in the rarest of circumstances has itbeen possible to pass on Canadian citizenship beyond the second generation underprevious law. Under the rules introduced in 1947, in order to pass on citizenship, amale Canadian born abroad would have had to marry and have a child before histwenty-first birthday, while a Canadian woman born abroad would have had achild out of wedlock, prior to her twenty-first birthday. Under the 1977 rules, therewould be slightly more chance of passing on citizenship beyond the second gener-ation since the age of citizenship affirmation extended to 28 years. If this assessmentis correct, then the imposition of the second-generation rule does virtually nothingto resolve the crises from which it emerged (although other provisions within theamendments do reinstate citizenship for several categories of Lost Canadians).What the second-generation rule does accomplish is a rhetorical reinforcement ofthe Canadian identity as linked to residence, but ultimately dependent on kinship.Birth in the territory serves as a proxy for the attachment that was claimed to beflouted by ‘citizens of convenience’, although nothing prevents a person from leav-ing Canada at a tender age only to return to ensure the citizenship of a child. Andperversely, the rule denies citizenship to the progeny of people who immigrated toCanada as children themselves, lived their lives in the country, but were abroadwhen their children were born (see Bramham, 2009). The conservative governmenthas re-stated its authority as the variably hospitable and hostile host with thepower to delineate who will be in and who will be out.

Generalizing from the cases of the Canadians evacuated from Lebanon and theLost Canadians, the dynamic process of determining what it means ‘to belong’, tobe part of ‘the people’ that the state claims as its own, is marked by selectivereadings of the history of settlement and, indeed, an obscuring of the relationsof power that have enabled settlement to proceed over time. These selective read-ings include racialized assumptions regarding authentic citizens, and they areassumptions that sit awkwardly with the rules of kinship that articulate theformal basis of membership in the polity. What, after all, does it mean to bekin? In the realm of citizenship, it means that people are born and stand in relationto each other based on the rules established by the state. If we fall between thecracks of the state’s rules, or we look like we might be defined by some other state’srules, deep disturbances begin to sound in the coherence of national identity. Thenation state may rush to quiet and incorporate those disturbances, or exploit themin the service of juxtaposing the dissonance from the harmony, but in either case,there is an articulation of what it means to belong.

The assertion that birth in the territory constitutes national attachment is indic-ative of a very thin conception of what it might mean to be a member of the polity.But it is clearly much easier for political societies to structure their terms ofmembership around kinship rules than to devise more substantive criteria ofattachment – and to risk the possibility that some people might refuse to consent




at all. Kinship rules of national membership keep us in our place, they let usknow what our place is, and they underscore what it means to be ‘out of place’.But what the juxtaposition of the Canadians evacuated from Lebanon and theLost Canadians tells us is that the place and the kinship of Canadians arein tension with racialized assumptions of belonging. New nation states confrontestablished (though shifting) politicocultural forms that assert a prior claimon the proper order of human beings on the planet. In demonstrating how politicalthese claims are – from the rhetoric of public debate to the contestation overwhat the rules of kinship should be – this analysis has aimed to disrupt thenaturalized logic of belonging and expose some of its nefarious consequences.We thus issue an invitation to engage in the hard work of crafting alternativesthat disrupt racist logics and challenge exclusion, and, perhaps, disrupt the nation-state itself.

Funding

This research received support from the University of Alberta’s Killam Research Fund.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declare that they do not have any conflicts of interest.

Notes

1. Throughout the paper we will refer to this provision as the second-generation rule.

2. According to information presented by government officials to the senate committee, thepeople evacuated were: (1) Canadian citizens with passports at hand; (2) Canadian cit-izens issued temporary and emergency passports; (3) non-citizens allowed to accompany

minors; and (4) permanent residents of Canada. Citizenship and Immigration Canadaofficials, responsible for issuing required documentation, provided visa services to imme-diate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents who wished to leave

Lebanon. Over 2000 visas and 1817 emergency and temporary passports were issued bythe embassy in Beirut from 12 July to 31 August 2006 (Parliament of Canada, 2007g: 6).Under the current regulations, a permanent resident of Canada must maintain residencein the country for at least 2 years within a 5-year period.

3. On the securitization of immigration see, for example, Abu-Laban (2004); Pratt (2005);Razack (2007); Stasiulus and Ross (2006).

4. Sweden and the USA started their evacuations on 17 July 2006. It should be noted that

Canadians constituted the largest proportion of foreign nationals in Lebanon(WorldReach Software, 2007: 1).

5. Rainer Baubock (2009) has recently proposed a theory, based on a stakeholder model,

that elaborates the basis and scope of how the state of origin could regulate relations orconnections to its citizens abroad, or what he calls ‘external citizens’. Baubock suggeststhat the right of return and the right to diplomatic protection are life-long rights ofexternal citizens unless they renounce their citizenship status.

6. Forty-nine per cent of the Lebanese population living in Canada was born outside thecountry and the majority of immigrant Canadians of Lebanese origin came to Canada inthe last two decades (Statistics Canada, 2007: 9). As of 2001, there were almost 144,000




people of Lebanese origin living in Canada, being ‘the 6th largest non-European ethnicgroup in the country’ (Statistics Canada, 2007: 9).

7. Clearly statelessness is a significant issue that merits mobilization and policy action.

However, many Lost Canadians did have another citizenship identity and so were not,in fact, stateless.

8. It should be noted that their liberal predecessors maintained a very similar view

(McKnight, 2006: C5).

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Claims of belonging: Recent tales of trouble in Canadian citizenship

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