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Chapter 6 Universalizing National Rights: Political Confrontation and Cultural Framing I ask you: if we don't listen to women now, when are we going to listen to them? When are they going to be taken seriously? Women around the world are suffering, and governments use all their powers not to develop, but to repress their people. ... This is the time for Canada to take a stand for the human rights and fundamental freedoms ofoppressed women. -Nada, refugee claimant, Ottawa Citizen, 11 March 1993 In the period leading up to the campaigns, emerging rights, resources , and collective interests provided important opportunities and building blocks for asylum seekers and their core supporters, while relations between asylum seekers and supporters shaped actor participation and the core campaign network's internal political culture as a whole. We now need to understand how subsequent campaigning processes influenced the external environment. Which fralning strategies and tactics mobilized the public and reversed government responses? How and to what extent did national and international rights and discourses influence campaign demands, strategic choices, and outcomes? What impact did asylum seekers specifically have upon political processes and outcomes? Underlying the following analysis is McAdam's concept of "strategic framing processes" or "signifying acts" (1996). Framing processes typically constitute "the conscious, strategic efforts of movement groups to fashion meaningful accounts of themselves a~d the issues at hand in order to motivate and legitimate their efforts" (McAdam 1996:39; see also Snow and Benford 1988 and 1992; Melucci 1989; Touraine 1981). Thus it describes ideology and identity as movement resources. McAdam's expanded concept of "signifying acts" observes that the ways ideologies and demands are developed and 176 Chapter 6 articulated by actors constitute important actions and tactics in themselves, both in influencing and responding to the external environment. Signifying work reflects movement-environment relations that shape one another over time, serving at least four broad purposes: attracting media attention, particularly of a favorable nature; mobilizing public support; constraining the social control options of the environment it wishes to influence; and influencing public policy and state action (McAdam 1996:353). The first section below uncovers the plurality and hierarchy of more to less radical campaign goals, policy demands, and pressure tactics characterizing the campaigns, and considers expected state responses to them according to social movement theory. The second section analyzes strategies and political processes in action at each stage of the campaign, uncovering campaigners ' evolving and strategic interaction with the state and public, and the overall pressure and impacts brought to bear.1 The final section considers asylum seekers' ongoing institutional influence by analyzing a database of precedents set in the first years under the Guidelines. Campaign Characteristics and Expected External Responses Priorities and Demands: Balancing Safety, Time, and Representation As shown previously, core supporters' involvement in the campaigns stemmed from a combination of factors including contact with asylum seekers , previous personal and professional experience, and new opportunities for action perceived to be constructive. Underlying these factors were deepcore values that, upon contact with asylum seekers, resulted in two fundamental reasons why supporters' got involved: individual need for immediate safe asylum and individual representation of a structural issue and persecuted group. Asylum seekers also stressed both needs as individuals and rights as part of a group as reasons for going public. Reflecting these two basic motivating factors, leading campaign priorities were to respond to individuals ' immediate needs for safety and to long-term collective or structural needs for safety. But what was the priority assigned to each? Different policy demands could be made that would satisfy either immediate or longterm structural needs, or both, depending on priority and perceived potential for attainment. Indeed, actors faced a crucial dilemma regarding the conflict between shorter and longer term priorities as interaction with the state evolved. With immediate safety as the overriding priority, we would ex- Universalizing National Rights 177 pect ends to be more important than means. Policy change under this scenario is only one means for securing asylum. Using existing legislation, asylum may be sought on a case-by-case basis using whatever means available to ensure individual safety (including ad hoc and non-Convention status), without regard for consistent application in future cases. In the medium to long term ends and means may merge if judicial precedents are set and promote incremental policy change, but the likelihood and time frame for this are unclear, leaving consistent outcomes in future cases unknown. On the other hand, policy goals may be ends...

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