Sonya Roy

Sonya Roy is a Ph.D. student at McGill. She is interested in the history of immigration/deportation, citizenship, border control, social policies, and ethno-cultural relations. Her doctoral thesis “Contrôler les frontières de la Cité: les autorités montréalaises et le phénomène des chômeurs migrants et sans-abri pendant la crise économique des années 1930” studies unemployed transient men in Montreal during the Great Depression, a particularly difficult period for these men who were broadly excluded from government aid policies. Her study explores the measures put in place by the municipal authorities to curb the arrival of unemployed migrants on its territory, ensure their surveillance and control access to public assistance reserved for unemployed Montrealers. It analyzes the impact of notions of ethnicity, gender and citizenship on the organization and distribution of relief. In particular, it highlights the power relations between the various social actors and the unemployed transients, who, in order to assert their rights and assure their survival, respond through gestures of conciliation, contestation and resistance.

She is the editor of the Manuel populaire de citoyenneté: réponse au conservatisme canadien (2012)