Deporting Blackness: Canada’s History of Forced Removals

 

Deportation as Racial Governance

Canada is frequently portrayed—both domestically and internationally—as a humane, multicultural refuge, a nation defined by tolerance rather than coercion. Within this self-image, deportation appears as a neutral administrative tool, applied sparingly and without prejudice. Yet historical evidence tells a different story. From the late eighteenth century to the present, deportation and forced removal have functioned as racial technologies, disproportionately deployed against Black people to regulate who belongs within the Canadian nation.

This essay argues that deportation in Canada cannot be understood merely as an immigration enforcement mechanism. Instead, it must be examined as part of a long-standing project of racial statecraft—one that has consistently treated Black presence as provisional, conditional, and revocable. As sociologist Dorothy Roberts observes in a broader North American context, “the regulation of Black mobility has always been central to racial domination” (Roberts, 2015). In Canada, deportation has been one of the state’s most effective yet least examined tools for accomplishing this regulation.

 

Early Forced Removals: Black Loyalists and the Limits of Freedom

Broken Promises and Structural Exclusion

The story of deporting Blackness in Canada begins not with immigration law, but with betrayal. Following the American Revolutionary War, approximately 3,500 Black Loyalists arrived in British North America after fighting for the Crown in exchange for promises of freedom and land. While white Loyalists were largely integrated into colonial society, Black Loyalists encountered systemic discrimination, delayed land grants, and violent hostility.

Historian James W. St. G. Walker notes that “Black Loyalists were welcomed not as settlers but as a problem to be managed” (Walker, 1992). Many were deliberately assigned infertile land, denied legal protections, or forced into exploitative labor arrangements that closely resembled slavery.

The Sierra Leone “Solution”

By the 1790s, British authorities framed the Black Loyalist presence as a demographic and political liability. The so-called “solution” was relocation. In 1792, over 1,200 Black Loyalists were encouraged—or effectively pressured—to leave Nova Scotia for Sierra Leone, a British colonial project in West Africa.

While often described as voluntary migration, historians have increasingly characterized this movement as coerced removal. As historian Simon Schama writes, “freedom was offered only on the condition of departure” (Schama, 2006). Canada thus resolved its “Black problem” not through inclusion, but through exportation.

 

Slavery, Expulsion, and the Myth of Canadian Innocence

Slavery Without Deportation, Freedom With Removal

Although slavery existed in Canada until its gradual abolition in the early nineteenth century, free Black presence remained deeply contested. Paradoxically, Black people were often more vulnerable to removal after slavery ended than before.

Legal scholar Afua Cooper emphasizes that “Black freedom in Canada was conditional and revocable, subject to white economic and political comfort” (Cooper, 2006). Without the legal status of property, free Black people became removable populations—excluded from land ownership, skilled trades, and political participation.

Expulsion Through Poverty and Policy

Forced removal did not always take the form of formal deportation. Municipal policies, labor exclusion, and denial of resources functioned as soft expulsions, making Black life economically untenable. Historian Robin Winks describes this dynamic as “expulsion by neglect” (Winks, 1971).

 

Immigration Law and the Criminalization of Black Entry

The 1911 Order-in-Council: Making Blackness Deportable

One of the clearest examples of racialized deportation occurred in 1911, when the Canadian government drafted an Order-in-Council proposing to ban “any race deemed unsuitable to the climate or requirements of Canada”—a clause explicitly aimed at Black migrants from the United States and the Caribbean.

Although the order was never formally enacted, its intent was unmistakable. As historian Howard Palmer notes, “the state’s objective was not assimilation but exclusion” (Palmer, 1979).

Deportation as Population Management

During the early twentieth century, deportation laws expanded dramatically. Immigrants—especially Black and other racialized groups—could be deported for unemployment, illness, or minor legal infractions. These policies transformed deportation into a disciplinary threat, ensuring racialized populations remained economically vulnerable and politically silent.

Sociologist Ninette Kelley observes that “deportation became a method of shaping the nation by subtraction” (Kelley & Trebilcock, 2010).

 

Caribbean Migration and the Rise of Racial Surveillance

“Guests,” Not Citizens

After World War II, Canada recruited Black labor through programs such as the Domestic Workers Scheme, which brought thousands of Caribbean women into Canadian households. While framed as opportunity, these programs deliberately denied pathways to secure citizenship.

As historian Franca Iacovetta explains, “Black women were welcomed as labor but excluded as members of the nation” (Iacovetta, 2006).

Failure to comply with employment expectations often resulted in deportation, reinforcing a racialized hierarchy of belonging.

Criminality and Deportability

By the late twentieth century, deportation increasingly relied on criminal law. Minor offenses could trigger removal proceedings for non-citizens, disproportionately affecting Black communities subjected to over-policing.

Legal scholar Sherene Razack argues that “criminalization provides the moral cover for racial expulsion” (Razack, 2015).

 

Deportation in the Age of Multiculturalism

The Illusion of Inclusion

Canada’s adoption of multiculturalism in the 1970s did not dismantle deportation as a racial tool. Instead, deportation became less visible, masked by rhetoric of fairness and legality.

Sociologist Himani Bannerji critiques multiculturalism as “a technology that celebrates difference while preserving white dominance” (Bannerji, 2000). Deportation fits neatly within this framework—presented as neutral enforcement while reproducing racial inequality.

The Caribbean Deportation Pipeline

Since the 1990s, thousands of Black non-citizens—many of whom arrived in Canada as children—have been deported to Caribbean and African countries they barely know. Scholars describe this as a transnational dumping of social problems.

As Robyn Maynard notes, “Canada exports the consequences of its own racial injustices through deportation” (Maynard, 2017).

 

Deporting Blackness as a Continuum

Deportation must be understood not as isolated policy failure but as part of a historical continuum linking slavery, segregation, surveillance, incarceration, and border control.

Political theorist Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics is instructive here: the state decides not only who may live within its borders, but whose life is considered disposable (Mbembe, 2003). Deportation renders Black lives perpetually precarious.

 

Citizenship Without Security

Canada’s history of forced removals reveals a nation that has repeatedly resolved its racial anxieties through expulsion rather than justice. From Black Loyalists sent to Sierra Leone to contemporary deportations of Black non-citizens, the logic remains consistent: Black belonging is conditional, reversible, and surveilled.

As historian David Roediger reminds us, “racial systems persist not because they are hidden, but because they are normalized” (Roediger, 2005). Deporting Blackness is one such normalized practice—rarely acknowledged, seldom challenged, and deeply embedded in the Canadian state.

Until deportation is confronted as a racial practice rather than a neutral policy, Canada’s claims to justice and inclusion will remain fundamentally incomplete.

 

Further Reading:

  Himani Bannerji, The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000).

  Afua Cooper, The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2006).

  Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

  Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2017).

  Sherene H. Razack, Dying from Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries into Indigenous Deaths in Custody (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).

  James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992).

  Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History, 2nd ed. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1971).

  Yasmeen Abu-Laban, “The Politics of Race and Immigration in Canada,” Journal of Canadian Studies 32, no. 3 (1998): 29–53.

  Catherine Dauvergne, Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means for Migration and Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

  Nicholas De Genova, “The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant ‘Illegality,’” Latino Studies 2, no. 2 (2004): 160–185.

  Luin Goldring, Carolina Berinstein, and Judith Bernhard, “Institutionalizing Precarious Migratory Status in Canada,” Citizenship Studies 13, no. 3 (2009): 239–265.

  Alan B. Simmons, Immigration and Canada: Global and Transnational Perspectives (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2010).

  Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).

  Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (London: BBC Books, 2006).

  Harvey Amani Whitfield, Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860 (Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Press, 2006).

  Frances Henry et al., The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society, 4th ed. (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2014).

  Vic Satzewich and Nikolaos Liodakis, Race and Ethnicity in Canada: A Critical Introduction, 4th ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2017).

  Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).

  Elizabeth Comack, Racialized Policing: Aboriginal People’s Encounters with the Police (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2012).

  Akwasi Owusu-Bempah and Shaun L. Gabbidon, “Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice in Canada,” Crime and Justice 49, no. 1 (2020): 1–54.

  Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Vintage Books, 2015).

  Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–40.

  Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

  David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White (New York: Basic Books, 2005).

  Canada, Order-in-Council P.C. 1911-1324, proposed prohibition of Black immigration.

  Library and Archives Canada, Immigration Branch Records, Record Group 76 (RG 76).

  Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Security and Surveillance Files on Black Activism, declassified reports, Library and Archives Canada.

  Constance Backhouse, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900–1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

  David Austin, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2013).

  Reg Whitaker, The Border Within: National Security and Immigration Policy in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).