Class and crime in war-time: Lessons of the American Vietnam war resistance in Canada

Class circumstances follow from as well as causally precede crime, and therelationship between class and crime is highly contingent. This tangled webof causation makes it challenging to meaningfully study links between classand crime. I propose that this tangled causal web can be better understoodif we direct more research to distinctive class settings in which particularkinds of crime occur. This implies directing more research attention to nonrepresentative samples that derive from nonrepresentativesettings, with the goal of increasing our leverage over theoreticallycontingent, class-connected contextual variables. This unconventionalresearch agenda is illustrated through an analysis of the lives of Americanswho resisted the draft and military service in Vietnam by ``dodging' and``deserting' military service and migrating to Canada, a new setting wherethese selective service and military ``criminals' were transformed by theiradopted nation's immigration policy into ``New Canadians' and unexpectedsymbols of Canadian sovereignty.