Frontiérités québécoises : Représentations de la zone transfrontalière québéco-américaine au Congrès des États-Unis, 2001–2016

Abstract

Quebec borderities: Representations of Quebec-US borderlands in the United States Congress, 2001–2016: Scholarly consensus holds that the Canada-US border has unilaterally tightened on the American side in reaction to 9/11. A careful analysis of the representations of the Quebec-US borderlands in the United States Congress leads us to draw more nuanced conclusions. In this paper, we surveyed all interventions pronounced by members of Congress between 2001 and 2016 on the Quebec portion of the border. We coded these discourses to highlight tensions between security and flow at the border and between assertions of a strong sense of community and a sentiment of otherness. Rather than witnessing a unilateral will to tighten border controls, our analysis sheds light on contradictory dynamics of bordering and debordering in the Quebec-US borderlands. These demands shape borderities by influencing the policies governing the border, the experiences of people crossing it, and daily life in the borderlands. We complete our analysis with case studies of the most vocal legislators on issues related to the Quebec-US border—Senators Patrick Leahy (Vermont), Susan Collins (Maine), and Representative Mark Souder (Indiana) — illustrating the diversity of representations of these borderlands.