Belonging in Unceded Territory: Immigration and Settler Identity in Vancouver

How do non-Indigenous Canadians – both immigrant and native-born – articulate and negotiate their identity as settlers on Indigenous territories?

AMIS Guest Lecture by Antje Ellermann, Professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm(Musqueam) territory.

Abstract

Drawing on over 30 in-depth interviews and 2 talking circles conducted in 2021 with community leaders and activists in Vancouver, British Columbia, this paper examines the constitutive elements of an emerging settler consciousness set within a broader political agenda of Truth and Reconciliation and decolonization. This paper explores how non-Indigenous community leaders seek to personally and organizationally negotiate the politics of settler belonging and examine possibilities of decolonizing place-based relationships. Many of the interviews took place in immigrant and refugee serving organizations and thus foreground the dilemma of settler organizations in welcoming immigrants to territory that is not rightfully theirs. Finally, in exploring decolonizing narratives of belonging, the talks draw on talking circle conversations with Indigenous community activists.

Everyone is welcome!

Bio

Antje Ellermann is a Professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm(Musqueam) territory. Her research focuses on the politics of migration and citizenship in liberal democracies. She is the author of The Comparative Politics of Immigration: Policy Choices in Germany, Canada, Switzerland and the United States (2021, Cambridge University Press, recognized with the Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize by the International Political Science Association) and States Against Migrants: Deportation in Germany and the United States (2009, Cambridge). Her current research focuses on the intersection of migration, Indigeneity, settler colonialism and the comparative study of immigration bureaucracies.