(In)Essential Bordering: Canada, COVID, and Mobility

Abstract

The global spread of Covid-19 not only disrupted transborder movement. In many (if not most) states, stasis and closure became the default norm at and within borders. This, in turn, generated exceptions organised around an idea of ‘essential’ entry. The category of ‘essential’ was produced, revised, and represented through the interaction of pandemic-driven exigencies and nationally-specific articulations of the legal, political, and economic priorities and constraints in play. To understand how the admission into Canada of certain people was accepted as legally, economically, and/or politically essential, one must take account of Canada’s character as a settler society and its economic integration with the United States. Other relevant considerations are the growing dependence on migrant workers to subsidise the cost of food production for Canadian agribusiness, and on international students to subsidize the cost of higher education for nationals.