Unsettling Citizenship: Visual Interventions and Migrant Perspectives in Canada’s Discover Canada Study Guide

Candidate: Luisa Pereira Seabra da Cruz Communication and Culture MA

This project-paper critically and creatively examines the Discover Canada citizenship study guide, arguing that its visual and textual narratives invite newcomers to imagine themselves as citizens only through the eyes of the host state. By analyzing the guide’s images and discourse, I show how it forecloses the possibility of a migrant gaze and suppresses diasporic, multicultural counter-narratives. Drawing from my personal archive and the work of contemporary Canadian artists, I present a research-creation intervention on the study guide that reimagines citizenship through the appropriation of its official frameworks. This project advocates for a more relational and participatory visual field—one that enables newcomers to see themselves as citizens on their own terms, challenging the limitations of state-sanctioned multiculturalism and inviting critical engagement with the politics of belonging in Canada. Citizenship; Citizenship education; Critical multiculturalism; Politics of recognition; Research-creation; Visuality.