Spaces and geographers of the 'Smart Border" : technologies and discourses of Canada's post 911 borders

This study investigates Canada's border security policy, practices and technologies and the discourses in which they function, to better understand the U.S-Canadian "Smart Border" and the post-9/11 geographies of the nation-state. With the erasure of economic and military borders and the erection of new security-oriented police borders, Canada's "Smart Border" is no longer at the edges of territory but is a series of spaces reproduced in and outside of Canada through technologies such as the passport, immigration and anti-terrorism legislation, security agencies, monuments, and maps. The "Smart Border" perpetuates colonial distinctions and projects as a site of tension between the national construction of Canadian identities, policing technologies and the enforcement of a global apartheid that restricts access to political and economic resources by enforcing a regime of differential access to mobility. As a site of resistance, the "Smart Border" is also a space from which to displace colonial-national genealogies