Producing bodies and borders: A review of immigrant medical examinations in Canada

Abstract

Anxiety about our borders is not a new phenomenon. Distrust of immigrants, external threats, fraud and efforts to secure borders to deflect risky outsiders features prominently in political paranoia today and has since the fortification of state boundaries. This article is concerned with such anxiety and paranoia as it shapes Canadian political discourse, policy and practice in efforts to secure our borders and keep out potential risks. These risks – the poor, the unhealthy, the fraudulent – operate as real concerns for our political elite. Despite liberalized changes to border technologies, specifically citizenship and immigration legislation and practice, I argue that the assumptions about these ‘risks’ remain.