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This essay outlines a conceptual approach to everyday geographies of the nation‐state. The case study analyzed is the cross‐institutional response to human smuggling in Canada. The essay draws on qualitative research with government and nongovernment actors who responded to the arrival of four boats carrying migrants smuggled from Fujian, China to British Columbia in 1999. Findings regarding the everyday institutional contexts of work in the field of immigration prompt deconstruction of the conceptual boundaries that surround governance in more abstract epistemologies of the state. This poststructural approach to geographies of the nation‐state pays particular attention to the role of identity and language in the categorization of im/migrants and provokes contemplation of the transnational imaginary of the nation‐state from the standpoint of policing international borders.