Reasoning Canada’s rights in immigration matters, 1867-1977: The conceptual labour of state sovereignty

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dc.contributor.authorLu, Wenjuan
dc.contributor.supervisorMarks, Lynne Sorrel
dc.contributor.supervisorLepp, Annalee E.
dc.date.accessioned2025-05-24T00:26:38Z
dc.date.available2025-05-24T00:26:38Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of History
dc.degree.levelDoctor of Philosophy PhD
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation investigates how parliamentarians reasoned Canada’s rights in immigration matters, including admission, exclusion, and deportation. I look at parliamentary debates over immigration from 1867 to 1977, with an eye to discerning the patterns of lawmakers’ thinking on the “right” question. My finding is that they developed multiple lines of reasoning over the decades. Critics and defenders shared some metalogics, including assumptions about Canada’s territorial ownership and its power over Indigenous peoples, international law, imperial policy and interest, and governing principle. In addition, critics mobilized citizenship right, and defenders reasoned with autonomy, the British North America Act, and sovereignty. Furthermore, to understand the historical significance of the “right” debates, I examine them in relation to Canada’s construction of its state sovereignty. Using an integrated analytical framework, I study how legislators’ modes of thinking intersected with Canada’s sovereignty project vis-à-vis Britain, the international society of sovereign states, and Indigenous nations. The integrated framework illuminates the ripple effects of lawmakers’ lines of reasoning and the cross-pollination of ideas amongst the three strands of Canada’s sovereignty enterprise. My argument is that in reasoning the “right” question, parliamentarians performed sustained conceptual labour that moved forward Canada’s braided sovereignty project.
dc.description.embargo2026-05-07
dc.description.scholarlevelGraduate
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/22307
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Web
dc.subjectimmigration
dc.subjectstate sovereignty
dc.subjectrights
dc.subjectparliamentary debates
dc.subjectCanada
dc.subjectpolitical history
dc.subjectconstitutional history
dc.subjectsettler colonialism
dc.titleReasoning Canada’s rights in immigration matters, 1867-1977: The conceptual labour of state sovereignty
dc.typeThesis

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