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⁶ While the term ‘interdiction’ is sometimes used narrowly, to describe the interception of refugees at sea, I employ it more broadly, much like ‘non-entrée’ or ‘non-arrival’ practices, which James Hathaway defines as ‘the array of legalized policies adopted by states to stymie access by refugees to their territories’, The Rights of Refugees Under International Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 291.Google Scholar

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⁸ Research on visa practices has grown considerably in recent years, especially with the development of the Schengen visa in Europe. For example, see Walters, William, ‘Mapping Schengenland: Denaturalizing the Border’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20 (2002), pp. 561–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Beyond Europe, far less research has been undertaken. Key exceptions include Mark B. Salter, ‘The Global Visa Regime and the Political Technologies of the International Self: Borders, Bodies, Biopolitics’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 31: 2 (2006), pp. 167–89; Eric Neumayer, ‘Unequal Access to Foreign Spaces: How States Use Visa Restrictions to Regulate Mobility in a Globalized World’, Transactions of the Institute for British Geography, 31 (2006), pp. 72–84; and Horng-Iuen Wang, ‘Regulating Transnational Flows of People: An Institutional Analysis of Passports and Visas as a Regime of Mobility’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 11 (2004), pp. 351–76.

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¹¹ Indeed, as Gibney and others have pointed out, Guantánamo was first used by the Americans to house interdicted Haitian refugees, ‘ “A Thousand Little Guantanamos” ’, p. 324.Google Scholar

¹² Didier Bigo, ‘Frontier Controls in the European Union: Who is in Control?’, in Didier Bigo and Elspeth Guild (eds), Controlling Frontiers: Free Movement into and Within Europe, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2005, pp. 49–99; Jef Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU, London, Routledge, 2006; Walters, ‘Mapping Schengenland’.Google Scholar

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¹⁴ Agamben, Homo Sacer, part II, ch. 6.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Bigo, ‘Frontier Controls’, p. 86.Google Scholar

¹⁶ A large body of literature explores whether interdiction contravenes the UN Refugee Convention, given that its purpose is to shield states from the principle of non-refoulement so central to the Convention. For a good survey of this literature, see Ataner, Atilla, ‘Refugee Interdiction and the Outer Limits of Sovereignty,’ Journal of Law and Equity, 3: 1 (2004), pp. 7–29.Google Scholar

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²³ Gibney, The Ethics and Politics of Asylum.Google Scholar

²⁴ Here, I follow Bigo's suggestion that ‘… researchers tend to underestimate the role of the professionals of politics in the construction of migration as a problem. They address logical flaws of the argument put forward as if they had discovered something the politicians did not know where, in fact, politicians know perfectly well but nevertheless choose a different agenda’, Bigo, ‘Frontier Controls’, p. 60.Google Scholar

²⁵ Zetter, Roger, ‘Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratic Identity’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 4.1 (1991), pp. 39–62;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Roger Zetter, ‘More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 20: 2 (2007), pp. 172–92

²⁶ Audrey Macklin, ‘Borderline Security’, in R. Daniels, P. Macklem and K. Roach (eds), The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada's Anti-Terrorist Bill, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001, pp. 384–401.Google Scholar

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²⁸ In Britain, the government response to the arrival of Czech Roma resembled the Canadian response in a number of respects – and there were also similarities in the media depiction. But while Canada accepted approximately 90 per cent of the refugee claims made by the Czech Roma arriving in 1997, not a single Czech Roma asylum seeker arriving in the UK was granted refugee status in this same period.Google Scholar

²⁹ Will Guy argues that the immediate increase in the number of Roma leaving the Czech Republic after the video aired demonstrates that the videos ‘were not the prime cause of the sudden departure of Czech Roma, but merely the trigger precipitating what was already a premeditated course of action’, in ‘ “No Soft Touch”: Romani Migration to the U.K. at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century’, Nationalities Papers, 31: 1 (2003), pp. 64–5.Google Scholar

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³² Allan Thompson, ‘Asylum Not Assured, Czech Gypsies Warned: Many Reported Booking Flights to Canada’, Toronto Star, 14 August 1997, A10.Google Scholar

³³ Globe and Mail, 20 August 1997, A6.Google Scholar

³⁴ Laurie Monsebraaten, ‘Gypsies Here to Escape Persecution, Family Says’, Toronto Star, 22 August 1997, A28.Google Scholar

³⁵ Allan Thompson, ‘Immigration Stalls Gypsy Refugee Bids: Canada Checks for Criminal Records’, Toronto Star, 22 August 1997, A1, A28.Google Scholar

³⁶ One front-page article began with the statement, ‘Homeless shelters in Metro Toronto are days away from having to refuse families who turn up at their doors after Gypsies from the Czech Republic flooding in the city have grabbed the hostel system's few remaining empty beds’, Margaret Philip, ‘Gypsy Influx Floods Shelters’, Globe and Mail, 21 August 1997, A1.Google Scholar

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³⁸ Some of the claims were rejected because they were put forward by claimants found not to be Roma at all. For this reason, as Ronald Lee has argued, the actual rate of success for Czech Roma refugee claimants was probably well over 90 per cent. ‘Post-Communism Romani Migration to Canada’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 13: 2 (SpringSummer 2000), pp. 51–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ Since 2004, the EU has been demanding that Canada (as well as the USA and Australia) remove its visa requirements on all the EU accession countries or face a reciprocal visa requirement for Europe as a whole.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ P.C. 2007-1652 29 October 2007.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Canada, Immigration Act, Regulations Amending the Immigration Regulations, 1978, P.C. 2001-2217 29 November 2001 SOR/2001-525 29.Google Scholar

⁴² Division 5, Section 190:1. Currently, 145 countries are omitted from the list, meaning that their citizens require a visa to enter Canada.Google Scholar

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⁴⁴ Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Minutes of Proceedings. 36th Parl., 2nd sess., 2 December 1998: 1620.Google Scholar

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⁴⁶ Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Minutes of Proceedings, 37th Parl., 1st sess., 27 November 2001: 1020.Google Scholar

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⁵² Geza v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2006 FCA 124: 65.Google Scholar