#StayHomeSaveLives: essentializing entry and Canada's biopolitical COVID borders

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a systematic closure of national borders at a global scale, and a subsequent but selective reopening under the guise of “essential” entry and labor. We examine the Government of Canada’s Twitter messaging around border closures and exceptions, using narrative and textual analysis to interrogate how the government has constructed essential and non-essential entry and work in support of national needs including critical infrastructure that sustains the Canadian economy and population. The Canadian government deployed the essentialization process as a biopolitical mechanism to access the labor pool that already existed within Canada and that was readily available beyond the border. Rather than complete closure, the Canadian border had to be “elastic” allowing the entry and making use of the labor of international students, temporary foreign workers, and people with precarious status to sustain national life. We argue that studying the digital spaces of migration management will remain key in any post-pandemic world.