Deportation and the Confluence of Violence Within Forensic Mental Health and Immigration Systems

The practice of deportation for those identified with 'mental illness' in Canada allows contemporary conceptions, interpretations, functions of discourse, and technologies of 'mental illness', 'criminality', and 'race' to be studied through the shared texts of the mental health, criminal justice, and immigration systems. These systems rely on seemingly separate operations in order to continue common violent projects of segregation, confinement, removal, the application of harm to the physical body and the identification of people as inherently dehumanized. The practices and technologies of evaluation and decision making used by professionals, police, lawyers and experts are questioned in this book for their participation in the perpetuation of historical forms of colonial violence through the enforcement of racial and eugenic policies and laws in Canada.

Ameil Joseph is Assistant Professor of the School of Social Work at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He has over ten years of direct practice experience working in the mental health field in assertive community treatment, community-based early intervention, supportive housing, crisis respite, and governance settings.