The Role of the Canadian Settler-State in Facilitating Flows of Transnational Executive Capital

Abstract

What does the neoliberalization of extractive and border infrastructures by the Canadian settler-state illuminate about its relationship to transnational extractive capital? To answer this question, I first examine how neoliberalism has shaped border and extractive policies. In the second section, I look at how flows of transnational extractive capital are made flexible by Canadian settler-state policies, while simultaneously securitizing colonial borders against racialized migrants. In the third, I investigate how material and epistemological challenges to extractive infrastructures from Indigenous land defenders and racialized migrants challenge the legitimation by accumulation processes the Canadian settler-state employs. Ultimately, I argue the settler-state selectively securitizes pipeline and border infrastructures to facilitate the flow and accumulation of transnational extractive capital as a means of self-legitimation that relies on normative imaginings of a white Canadian nationhood. Furthermore, these imaginings rely on upholding certain logics of racial capitalism that construct a white Canadian nationhood, such as white supremacy, colonialism, and hetero-patriarchy.