Public policy discourse: anti-terrorism and migration

This chapter investigates what it calls a ‘false conflation’ between terrorism and migration, which has become embedded in both political and legal discourses in the U.S. and to some extent in Canada (among other countries). It studies narratives of the construed Terrorist Other to argue that the false assumptions that dominated post-9/11 discourse continue to cause unjustified deprivations of foundational human rights for noncitizens, with a disparate impact on marginalized groups and with a significant impact in the realm of migration. As much of that discourse has been normalized in the course of time, faulty political imaginations and scenarios serve as a shaky foundation for the development of legal provisions, which, in turn, provide their own shaky foundation for the further development of political discourses. The chapter accounts for the discourse of the Terrorist Other across several thematic domains such as the Guantanamo Bay detentions, Donald Trump’s infamous ‘Muslim ban’, and the case of Mohamed Harkat, long detained in Canada under an immigration security certificate.