Framing “us” and “them” in Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States
Monica Gagnon, CERC Migration, Toronto Metropolitan University
Contact: monica.gagnon@torontomu.ca
In a global climate of ever-increasing volume and scrutiny of migration, this research interrogates how contemporary discourses around asylum seeking are produced and reproduced in Canada and how they influence policy. The work focuses on recent developments in the Canada–United States Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), examining how discursive framing can affect the legitimization of exclusionary policies in the Canadian context. Policies that illegalize immigrants and asylum seekers create divisions between “us” and “them,” calling into question Canada’s identity as a multicultural nation. The research aims to reveal the unexamined forces at play in shaping and dictating Canadian immigration policy.
Key objectives of this study include:
- To trace the ways in which the discourses have evolved in legal, political, and social discussions of the STCA.
- To map the evolution of the discourses onto the evolution of the policy, examining how differently situated actors have framed issues and solutions differently, in order to better understand how immigration policies are justified.
What are the origins of contemporary discourses around asylum seeking and how are they mobilized in Canadian immigration policymaking?
The Canadian government defines a “safe third country” as one that respects human rights and can offer genuine protection to refugee claimants. However, in 2017, attention to the STCA heightened in Canadian social and political discourse due to questions about the suitability of the United States as a safe third country. Despite challenges to the policy, in 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada decided that the STCA remains constitutional. The legal, political, and media discourse in Canada around the evolution of the policy variably portrayed groups of migrants as “asylum seekers,” “refugee claimants,” “queue jumpers,” and “illegal” or “irregular” border crossers. These labels can create drastically different impressions in the public eye. They can either criminalize or inspire sympathy for migrants, and they can have profound effects on policymaking and on the ways in which people are perceived and treated.
This research focuses on discursive norms as well as policy developments that took place between 2017 and 2023. Using interpretive policy analysis, media coverage and government sources related to the STCA will be analyzed to understand how the issue has been framed. Interviews will be conducted with people both internal and external to the policymaking process to get a range of perspectives on the relationships between dominant discourses and policy developments. The analysis focuses on how the problem being addressed by the STCA is framed by different actors, what solutions are proposed and how they are framed, and how competing political positions are framed as legitimate or illegitimate.
Data collection and analysis.
June 2026
Social Science and Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
Migration, immigration policy, asylum seeking, immigration discourse, illegalization, interpretive policy analysis, Canada