Annual Howard Adelman Lecture
“Canada assafe haven? Documenting two generations ofUS war resister migrations”
Guest Speaker: Alison Mountz, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Migration at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University
This talk draws on oral histories with US war resisters who migrated to Canada during US-ledwars in Vietnam and Iraq. Although these two generations entered distinct political and legal landscapes in Canada and faced different outcomes in their quest for protection, there are important parallels in their histories and in the social movements they forged. This research prompts timelyquestions aboutwhat kind of safe haven Canada has been historicallyand might continue to be for people migrating from the United States for political and legal security.
Alison Mountzisageography professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Migration at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. Before moving to WLU, shespent eight years atSyracuse University’s Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs. Shealso spent two years at Harvard University’s Canada Program, most recently as the Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies.Herwork explores how people cross borders and access migration and asylum policies.Mountz’srecent scholarship examinesdetention and asylum-seeking on islands, and US war-resister migration histories in Canada. Hermonograph,Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border (U of Minnesota) was awarded the Meridian Book Prize from the Association of American Geographers. She has a new book out in 2018 -Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention in the United States (U of California,with Jenna Loyd), and anotherforthcoming:The Enforcement Archipelago: Hidden Geographies and the Death of Asylum(U of Minnesota).Mountz directs WLU’s International Migration Research Centre,edits the journalPolitics & Space,and is a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada.
