Canada’s Deportation of ‘Mentally and Morally Defective’ Female Immigrants After the Second World War

Abstract

This study investigates female immigrants who were targeted for mental health and moral infractions under the Immigration Act from 1946 to 1956. Most of these women were admitted as war brides, single displaced persons brought in through the domestic employment scheme, or as the wives of male Displaced Persons (DPs) who were selected as labourers through the International Relief Organization. There was also a small number of non-immigrants who came to Canada as visitors, students or temporary workers. It was a period of expansive growth in regard to the economy as well as immigration admissions. This decade was also marked by radical changes vis-à-vis the immigration programme and legislation. Some scholars reveal that beneath the rhetoric of openness and acceptance towards these newcomers there was a pervasive fear of deranged and damaged immigrants posing a threat to the wellbeing of Canadian society. While the focus during the mid to late 1950s was on violent male DPs, female immigrants were actually far more likely to be committed to an asylum and issued with a deportation notice by the federal immigration programme than their male counterparts. This chapter provides some insight into the lives and experiences of postwar female deportees who were targeted under the mental health clause; it describes the department’s stance and actions in regard to this process; it identifies the specific qualities and conditions that rendered these women vulnerable; and finally it recounts how they responded to the department’s efforts to deport them from Canada.