Forty-five years ago, Lithwick and Paquet stated that, “a discussion of urban policy currently being implemented in Canada requires little space. There is in fact no such thing” (Reference Lithwick and Paquet1968: 269). Thirty years ago, Sancton described the study of cities and local governments as an “academic ghetto” (Reference Sancton, Magnusson and Sancton1983: 310). Even recent contributions suggest that this lack in the scholarship is ongoing (Taylor and Eidelman, Reference Taylor and Eidelman2010). However, this pessimistic view about the state of urban research in Canadian political science is belied by one emerging area of study; interest in municipal public policies and immigration has flourished over the last 20 years.
Scholars have begun to study the consequences of major immigrant influxes on cities,Footnote 1 as well as municipalities’ de facto responsibility for immigrants’ integration. Not only do municipalities provide essential services—social housing, culture, planning, transportation, police, sports and leisure, interpretation and translation and, depending on the province, health and social services—but they are also instrumental in supporting community organizations, acknowledging diversity in urban spaces, implementing employment equity programs, and preventing discrimination and racial profiling. In short, municipalities have the capacity to respond to newcomers’ needs and to represent their interests at the political level.
The literature dealing with immigration and the integration of newcomers as it relates to municipal policies is very heterogeneous in terms of conceptual frameworks, methodologies and studied cases. If this diversity is a clear sign of its richness, it also makes it difficult to have a comprehensive view of the field. This article tracks the evolution of this research. It asks, what are the major contributions? What is this field and what are its lines of demarcation? What are some new potential avenues for research?
I examine publications since the mid-1990s insofar as they impacted the study of public policy. Due to the number of cases studied, the length constraints of this article, and the importance of a situated, contextualized and anchored approach to political science (Noël, Reference Noël2014), I deliberately give more examples from BC, to counterbalance the fact that Ontario cities have been analyzed more, and from Quebec, to compensate the lack of Quebecois specificities in Canadian comparisons (Fourot et al., Reference Fourot, Sarrasin and Holly2011). First, I retrace how municipal policies for immigrants have been studied. Second, I focus my analysis on the dynamics of agenda setting, as well as variables for decision making and implementation. Third, I underline three propositions for future research, which are i) to examine the reciprocal relationship between attitudes towards immigration and local public policies and politics; ii) to study local public policy as constructions rather than responses and iii) to revisit the use of national models of integration for cities. In conclusion, I underline the positive outcomes of “bringing cities back in” to Canadian political science, not only to better understand political regulation and Canadian federalism, but also to have a more accurate view of the integration of immigrants.
Political Science, Cities and Immigrants in Canada: How a Blind Spot turned into a Kaleidoscope
Political science did not take municipal policies for immigrants very seriously until recently. First, due to a constitutionalist vision of regulation and federalism in Canada, political scientists tend to prioritize the two “superior” orders of government (federal and provincial) while perpetuating a (mis)representation of municipalities as non-political institutions. Since responsibility for immigration and the integration of immigrants does not fall clearly within municipalities’ jurisdiction, it was long supposed that municipalities could not develop policies in this area. The second reason lies in a truncated definition of integration policies—either multicultural or intercultural—based on the vision of a nation-state model of integration. As a result, cities were seen as incapable of implementing their own policies towards newcomers, and when they did, it was assumed that they replicated the policies adopted at the federal level (or at the provincial level in Quebec).
Establishing the existence of municipal policies for immigrants and intra-provincial specificities
The overwhelming settlement of immigrants in cities, hostility towards immigration and the backlash surrounding multiculturalism have led researchers to look at municipal policies and practices (Abu-Laban, Reference Abu-Laban and Thomas1997). The federal government announcement in 1995 of its participation in the “Metropolis Project” and the creation of Centres of Excellence for research on immigration and integration in Canadian cities certainly encouraged this shift in focus. Researchers in the mid-1990s began by tackling the assumption that cities are non-political in character; looking at Canada's three largest cities, they studied the manner in which the municipalities responded to immigration. For instance, Mitchell (Reference Mitchell1993) and Abu-Laban (Reference Abu-Laban and Thomas1997) studied the City of Vancouver, Tate and Quesnel (Reference Tate and Quesnel1995) compared Toronto with Montreal and Labelle and colleagues (Reference Labelle, Legault, Cloutier, Lavoie, Marhraoui, Fall, Hadj-Moussa and Simeoni1996) focused on Montreal.
Researchers also intended to explain the divergence between cities, even within the same province, challenging the assumption that municipalities just replicated federal or provincial policies. Their comparisons assessed municipalities’ autonomy and demonstrated the importance of local factors in analyzing integration policy. Canada's three largest metropolitan areas have been studied the most. Partly as a result of the Metropolis Project, the pioneering works of Edgington and Hutton on the municipalities of Greater Vancouver (Reference Edgington and Hutton2002), of Frisken and Wallace on the municipalities of Greater Toronto (Reference Frisken and Wallace2003), as well as Germain and colleagues on the municipalities of Greater Montreal (Reference Germain, Ansereau, Bernèche, Poirier, Alain and Gagnon2003), have indisputably shown that an exclusively provincial focus does not allow for a full understanding of policies towards immigrants. They indicated that, not only do municipalities have a certain degree of latitude vis-à-vis their respective provinces, but that they have also “enjoyed” more autonomy, in particular because of the withdrawal of federal and provincial services and subsequent downloading of responsibilities to municipalities. In this context, Edgington and Hutton note that local governments in BC have been more engaged in the area of multicultural policies even if they observe a “policy gradient” that “ranges from relatively high levels of multicultural policies and program implementation in the core municipalities of Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby and New Westminster, down to much lower levels of provision in both the middle group of councils and the ‘outer’ eastern municipalities along the Fraser Valley” (Reference Edgington and Hutton2002: 15). In Ontario, Frisken and Wallace (Reference Frisken and Wallace2003) reach a similar conclusion: municipal responses to immigration vary considerably, not only in content and comprehensiveness but also in degrees of initiative. Differentiating between “proactive,” “reactive” and “inactive” municipalities, they contrast the proactive City of Toronto with its largely inactive suburbs, such as Mississauga and Brampton that refuse to pay specific attention to immigration. In Quebec, Germain and colleagues also document how municipalities’ approaches differ in the Greater Montreal area. However, in their study of three domains for which cities play an important role—sports and leisure, social habitation and places of worship—they conclude that municipalities share similar concerns and practices: cities tend to fear ghettoization and see religious diversity as a threat to the neutrality of urban public spaces.
Having established that cities have some degree of autonomy, researchers then sought to determine the degree of this latitude. Through interprovincial comparisons, they have gained a better understanding of the different relationships between levels of governments and their impact on local policy making. For example, Poirier contrasts the policies of Ottawa with those of Montreal and Vancouver (2006a), and Good (Reference Good2009) offers an analysis of municipal policies in Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver. An important theme in both of their works is how municipalities advocate for more power and political recognition vis-à-vis the provincial and federal governments. Poirier insists that all three cities ask for more recognition of their political roles in immigration along with more fiscal resources But, specifically regarding autonomy, Good's findings are more nuanced: because provincial-municipal relationships in BC have comparatively been stronger and more stable and co-operative than in Ontario, British Columbian cities were keener to accept the jurisdictional status quo in immigration and, contrary to Ontario, did not mobilize for more municipal autonomy.
Enlarging the scope of cases through comparisons of provinces and municipalities sizes
Since these early studies, the range of cities and provinces studied has increased and it has been established that a “one size fits all approach” to municipalities and immigration is “untenable” (Tolley, Reference Tolley, Tolley and Young2011: 5). As a result, the number of cases studied has grown. The most recent works tend to focus on the differences between suburbs and larger cities as well as on the specificities of mid-sized and smaller municipalities. For example, a book co-edited by Tolley and Young (Reference Kataoka, Magnusson, Tolley and Young2011) emphasizes both the intra- and interprovincial differences through a broad overview of policies on immigrant integration in 19 different municipalities across four provinces. In order to have a broader view of municipalities’ responses to immigration, Tossutti (Reference Tossutti2012) proposes a typology of municipal policies implemented by six major immigration centres. For example, she shows that in BC, Vancouver has a “multicultural” discourse and is “comprehensive” in terms of its initiatives whereas Abbottsford has a “civic-universalist” approach and has developed “limited” initiatives to address immigration issues. Smaller communities and rural areas have also been studied as key actors of the regionalization of immigration and key players who stand to benefit the most from attracting and retaining immigrants (Belkhodja and Vatz Laaroussi, Reference Belkhodja and Laaroussi2012; Yan Reference Yan2015).Footnote 2 But if municipalities try to be active in terms of attracting immigrants, they are essentially reactive in settling and retaining them. In BC, municipalities such as Whistler, Squamish, Pemberton and Merritt often address specific concerns (such as housing, transportation, cultural amenities) only after they have arisen. Moreover, their “municipal staff are generally short on resources, time, and the necessary training to provide this service in a consistent manner” (Wiginton, Reference Wiginton2013: 43). In Quebec, Vatz Laaroussi (Reference Vatz Laaroussi2005) insists on the lack of services and the isolation of immigrant families. Overall, authors highlight the lack of experience and expertise of small communities (for instance Kelowna and Port Alberni in Kataoka and Magnusson, Reference Kataoka, Magnusson, Tolley and Young2011, or Lac Mégantic in Vatz Laaroussi, Reference Vatz Laaroussi2005).
In all of these studies, the case of Toronto is described as unique, as the city has implemented a formal immigration and settlement policy and celebrates ethnic diversity as a part of its identity (Tolley and Young, Reference Kataoka, Magnusson, Tolley and Young2011; Tossuti, Reference Tossutti2012). Further proof of this specificity (Siemiatycki, Reference Siemiatycki2014), is the unanimous adoption by the city council of a newcomer strategy for promoting immigrant integration in 2013.
In short, the literature shows that the degree of differentiation between cities has increased over time. Large Canadian cities are no longer the only municipalities that have specific settlement and integration policies; suburban municipalities and smaller cities also have their own approaches now. Municipal responses vary within the same province and borrow from multiple repertoires. In terms of methods, several studies have privileged a quantitative approach, using surveys to assess how municipalities respond to immigration and cultural diversity (for instance Edgington and Hutton, Reference Edgington and Hutton2002; Paré et al., Reference Paré, Frohn and Laurin2002; Qadeer and Agrawal, Reference Qadeer and Agrawal2011). However, the overwhelming majority of the work done is qualitative, focusing on interviews of elites and documentary evidence. These conclusions have also been reached through an increasing use of comparison and we may expect that this will continue in the future. So far, three types of comparison seem to be underexplored. First, there is a lack of a comparative design specifically dedicated to suburban cities. Second, as few diachronic comparisons have been made, we still know little as to how municipal public policy changes over time. Finally, systematic international comparisons are missing. In all cases, these works would improve our understanding of the dynamics of agenda setting and decision making.
Dynamics of agenda setting and decision making
The emergence of municipal policies to newcomers: impacts of ethnic configuration and triggering events
The existence of municipal policies towards newcomers and their specificities being acknowledged, how can we explain whether municipalities decide to put immigration on their agenda? First, is agenda setting dependent on the number of immigrants or racialized minorities living in a municipality? Is there a critical threshold at which issues of diversity and integration make it onto the municipal agenda? Second, what is the role of triggering events—such as demonstrations or riots—in policy making? Here, I discuss demographic makeup and triggering events, because they have been mobilized by pioneering works on municipal policies as forms of “critical junctures” (Pierson, Reference Pierson2004) or “turning points” (Abbott, Reference Abbott2001) to explain institutional change (Krasner, Reference Krasner1984; Thelen, Reference Thelen1999), such as the emergence of a new municipal policy domain. Many authors have subsequently used these turning points to assess their role within other cities.
Most of the work on immigration at the municipal level starts with a description of the city's ethnic composition and tends to view municipal policies as responses to demographic change. However, the critical threshold at which a municipality would decide to implement specific measures (either receptive or hostile to diversity) still remains unclear. Wallace and Frisken (Reference Wallace and Frisken2000) consider that in Ontario the percentage of immigrants and the period of immigrants’ arrivals have little influence on decision making. In Quebec, Germain and colleagues insist on the absence of a “direct link between the presence of immigrants and municipalities’ formal policies” (my translation, Reference Germain, Ansereau, Bernèche, Poirier, Alain and Gagnon2003: 171). Paré and colleagues (2012) also demonstrate the absence of a systematic correlation between a strong immigrant population and the accessibility, receptiveness and type of policies towards immigrants. In BC, Ontario, Alberta and Quebec, Qadeer and Agrawal (Reference Qadeer and Agrawal2011) show that the percentage of immigrants has little to no impact on the policies adopted, particularly for large and medium-sized cities. Conversely, Edgington and Hutton estimate that there is a critical threshold; BC municipalities decide to put immigration on their political agendas when approximately 25 to 30 per cent of their population are racialized minorities (Reference Edgington and Hutton2002: 16). Using the “social diversity” approach, Good (Reference Good2009) made an important contribution in specifying that the presence of a large number of immigrants and racialized minorities is a necessary condition to municipal public policy in Ontario and in BC, although this condition does not wholly explain municipal responsiveness to immigration.Footnote 3
Triggering events have also often been used to explain why municipalities put immigration on their agenda. In Toronto, Wallace and Frisken (Reference Wallace and Frisken2000) reveal that the first city committee on race relations was created in 1981 in response to the emergence of white supremacist organizations, racist incidents and increasing tensions between the police and racialized minorities. In Montreal, Labelle and colleagues (Reference Labelle, Legault, Cloutier, Lavoie, Marhraoui, Fall, Hadj-Moussa and Simeoni1996) outline the role that crises and critical incidents play in agenda setting. In particular, the death of Anthony Griffin, a young black man who was shot by a police officer in 1987, has often been seen as a pressure for the city to take measures against racism and discrimination. Indeed, the first administrative structure dedicated to immigrants and racialized minorities was created just one year after this tragic event (Fourot, Reference Fourot2013). During that same period, the battle over “monster homes” in Vancouver also triggered a series of stringent municipal zoning amendments that continue to shape Vancouver's policies (Abu-Laban, Reference Abu-Laban and Thomas1997; Li, Reference Li1994). However, the effects of these events on the public policies are not automatic.
Neither cities’ demographic makeup (number, ratio, ethnic configurations) nor triggering events can fully explain the dynamics of agenda setting. If they can partially explain why the biggest cities in Canada have started to put immigration on their agenda since the 1980s and 1990s, it is also clear that these variables have little influence on the current dynamics of municipal policies. Thus, the literature has turned to other variables to explain the agenda setting and decision making around, and the implementation of, local policies towards immigrants. Some of these variables are unique to particular contexts, while others seem to be more consistent across cities.
Explaining differences between cities: factors influencing public policy
Four main factors explain cities’ divergent trajectories: the state of intergovernmental relations, the particular politico-administrative regime, the civil society actors and the discourses about immigration and diversity (Fourot, Reference Fourot2013). Whereas the first two factors speak to classical institutionalist and regionalist approaches to urban politics, the last two illustrate a shift towards a society-centred approach that is more focused on urban governance than on urban government (Graham et al., Reference Graham, Phillips and Maslove1998; Taylor and Eidelman, Reference Taylor and Eidelman2010). Certain authors emphasize some factors over others, depending upon their particular approach. All such factors, however, affect municipal approaches to immigration. It is in essence a case of “the same ingredients, different recipes” (Biles et al., Reference Biles, Tolley, Esses, Andrew, Burstein, Andrew, Biles, Burstein, Esses and Tolley2013: 319).
First, as the pioneering works on intra- and interprovincial comparison have shown, place-based policies have led to a heightened interest in intergovernmental relations and the extent to which they drive or impede municipal policies. In general, each city develops a specific relationship with its province. For example, the strong relationship between Greater Vancouver and the province means that local leaders are able to turn to the province for support for their initiatives (Good, Reference Good2009). In Quebec, this is also true of the strong partnership between the City of Sherbrooke and the province (Chiasson and Koji, Reference Chiasson, Koji, Tolley and Young2011: 176). On the contrary, in the case of Laval, the relations have been tumultuous; the city would have preferred to break the negotiations regarding an immigration agreement rather than comply with intercultural principles favoured by the province (Fourot, Reference Fourot2013).
Provinces are not the only level of government that municipalities interact with, even if as provincial “creatures,” it was long assumed that municipalities could not directly engage with the federal government. This assumption is reinforced by the fact that provinces tend to see any action taken by the federal government towards cities as a tactic designed to weaken provincial powers. This argument was indeed evoked by the Conservatives in 2006 when they decided, in the name of “open federalism,” to bury the Liberal “New Deal for Cities and Communities” launched only two years before (Bradford, Reference Bradford2007).
However, place-based mechanisms enable different forms of multi-level governance arrangements. The 2005 Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA), which recognized municipalities as key players in the integration of newcomers, was the best example of federal-provincial-municipal collaboration in this area. One of its most significant impacts was the creation of the Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) in 2008, which provide indirect services to newcomers and aim to strengthen different forms of collaboration at the community level. The scope of these initiatives is currently growing (Bradford and Andrew, Reference Bradford and Andrew2010; Burstein et al., Reference Burstein, Esses, Lacassagne and Nadeau2012) and we can anticipate an increased interaction within the immigration sector between the actors of the three levels of government.
BC is an interesting case since the province had its own immigrant integration agreement with the federal government. However, in 2012, the federal government's abrupt decision to recentralize provincial immigrant integration and settlement services put this decentralization process on hold. While it is too early to analyze the consequences of this recentralization process for municipalities—the transfer being effective only since 2014—we may see significant changes in terms of intergovernmental relations. A first consequence of this change is the increased number of LIP implementation strategies in BC (for example, Surrey since March 2014) and we may anticipate this number growing in the future. However, a recent CIC-funded study examined the applicability of the LIP model in rural communities in BC (Yan, Reference Yan2015). Many service provider organizations (SPOs) expressed “a strong desire to reactivate and expand partnerships that were developed under Welcoming Communities”—the model used before the federal repatriation of settlement services—rather than formalize new structures such as an LIP (14). With the exception of Squamish/Whistler, and Langley, other SPOs in rural communities consider that the funding offered along the lines of the provincial model was more effective in promoting partnership and collaboration (14).
Second, this growing complexity in intergovernmental relations has been accompanied by an increased interdependence between actors. We cannot, therefore, focus solely on the vertical relationships between levels of government, but must also consider horizontal forms of co-ordination between local actors. Reflecting the high degree of heterogeneity of local governments, the literature looks at a number of different factors: (i) cities’ administrative structures; (ii) differences in municipal party systems; and (iii) the role of elected officials and bureaucrats.
Provincial restructuring of municipal governments has important impacts on municipal public policies. For instance, the de-amalgamation process in Montreal led to more diverse responses to immigration as the city's boroughs gained more responsibilities (Jouve, Reference Jouve2006). Conversely, the creation of the Regional Conference of Elected Officers in Laval (Conférences régionales des élus) in 2003 increased the regional scale's significance and reinforced the city's approach in terms of immigrant integration (Fourot, Reference Fourot2013). On the contrary, party politics do not structure deliberations in the councils of the vast majority of Canadian cities. According to Good (Reference Good2009), the impact of party ideology on multicultural policies in BC is non-existent. However, in Quebec, Fourot (Reference Fourot2013) emphasizes the role of the Montreal's Citizen Movement (MCM) in framing the city's intercultural policy. Mayoral leadership plays a determinant role in local policy making (Mévellec, Reference Mévellec2009), particularly in terms of immigration, as attitudes and representations of local officials play a great role in shaping municipal programs (Good, Reference Good2009; Poirier, Reference Poirier, Young and Leuprecht2006a; Tossuti, Reference Tossutti2012, Young, Reference Young, Tolley and Young2011). For instance, Laval's former mayor Gilles Vaillancourt, who controlled City Hall for almost 25 years, exercised an extraordinary degree of influence that clearly shaped the municipal's universalistic type policy (Fourot, Reference Fourot2013). Likewise, in Surrey, former mayor Douglas McCallum's perception of the municipalities’ role in immigration was significant in terms of the non-implementation of multicultural initiatives (Good, Reference Good2009). Nevertheless, the influence of municipal bureaucracy is also crucial to our understanding of public policy. For instance, Frisken and Wallace (Reference Frisken and Wallace2003) consider the representative function of bureaucracy, the impact of street level bureaucrats, and the role of professional norms as particularly relevant to understand how municipalities respond to immigrant clients. However, if municipal bureaucracy is characterized by a low level of politicization (Collin and Léveillée, Reference Collin and Léveillée2003), its role should not be limited to implementation, but should also include the stages of agenda setting, policy formulation and decision making. Despite evident municipal differences, studies also agree that immigrants and racialized minorities are underrepresented at the city level. This underrepresentation is particularly notable since members of ethnocultural minorities are deemed to be better represented municipally than at other levels of government (Collin and Bherer, Reference Collin and Bherer2008). Factors such as the community size, spatial concentration in smaller electoral districts, majority electoral systems, and the nature of municipal issues are believed to encourage immigrants and racialized minority representation (Collin and Bherer, Reference Collin and Bherer2008). Yet, in their study of electoral representation in eleven Canadian cities, Andrew and colleagues (Reference Andrew, Biles, Siemiatycki and Tolley2008) come to the opposite conclusion. For instance, in the case of Vancouver, Bloemraad (Reference Bloemraad, Andrew, Biles, Siemiatycki and Tolley2008) notes that racialized minorities are less represented at the municipal rather than federal level, and do not mirror the general Vancouver population. However, interesting changes in terms of electoral participation—such as the Toronto city council's approval in 2013 of a motion endorsing non-citizen municipal voting rights (or the similar moves subsequently taken in Kitchener and Saint-John in 2014)—could enhance the representation of ethnic minorities at the municipal level. These changes are, of course, contingent on approval by their respective provincial governments.Footnote 4 Moreover, once elected, immigrants and racialized minorities are often relegated to minor roles or are instrumentalized as “representatives” of ethnocultural minorities (Jouve, Reference Jouve2006). Indeed, the links between greater political representation of minorities and the adoption of more diversity-friendly policies are ambiguous (Andrew et al., Reference Andrew, Biles, Siemiatycki and Tolley2008). From a statistical point of view, there is no correlation between municipal policies and the representation of racialized minorities on municipal councils. In BC, Vancouver is considered to be receptive, although racialized minorities make up only 10 percent of its councillors. The opposite is true in suburban municipalities such as Richmond, which is less receptive to diversity even though racialized minorities make up 25 per cent of its city council (Good, Reference Good2009). Abu-Laban (Reference Abu-Laban and Thomas1997) and Simard (Reference Simard2003) both underline that local minority candidates and politicians—respectively in Vancouver and Montreal— “reflected on the complexity of their own representation role … in terms of whom they serve, and whom they are seen to serve” (Abu-Laban, Reference Abu-Laban and Thomas1997: 86). As Simard writes, while some try to “defend and promote ethnic groups’ interests in their municipal ridings,” others are “extremely reticent” to serve as “mediator[s]” for these groups (my translation, 2003: 67). Similarly, while representative institutions (such as consultative city councils) were created in order to increase the role of immigrants in the decision-making process, their influence remains limited (Poirier, Reference Poirier, Jouve and Gagnon2006b).
Third, beyond the traditional roles of politico-administrative actors, one must also consider civil society actors, such as associations, service provider organizations and business sector actors. Whether examined through a lens of urban governance (Andrew et al., Reference Andrew, Graham and Phillips2002) or that of urban regime theory (Good, Reference Good2009), the influence of such actors cannot be ignored.
Relations between municipalities and civil society organizations involved in immigrant settlement and integration services not only shape municipal policies but also tend to reorganize the activities of these organizations. In Vancouver, Abu-Laban notes that since the beginning of the 1990s, the municipality provided significant support to these groups, attributing approximately $500,000 annually to civil society organizations (Reference Abu-Laban and Thomas1997: 84). This municipal support has grown significantly over time: in 2005, the Community Services Grants Program distributed approximately $3.4 million to civil society organizations serving immigrants or ethnocultural minorities (Good, Reference Good2009: 68). This increase in funding has shaped the settlement agencies’ services, as they tend to avoid activities that could be perceived as political “advocacy” and to only work with “eligible” clients as defined by the government (Kataoka and Magnusson, Reference Kataoka, Magnusson, Tolley and Young2011: 249). This “advocacy chill” can also be observed in Laval as a consequence of the Politique de soutien communautaire (Community Support Policy) that was implemented in the mid-1990s and which required community organizations to be culturally, ethnically and religiously neutral in order to receive municipal funding. In Montreal, one of the first objectives of the Bureau Interculturel de Montréal (Intercultural Office of Montreal), created in the 1980s, was to identify spokespersons with whom the city would be able to communicate. By legitimizing certain leaders and communities over others, the municipality tailored the organization of ethnocultural communities to its own views (Fourot, Reference Fourot2013). Finally, as Young writes, “a perennial question about policy at the municipal level is whether local business predominates in making it” (Reference Fourot, Sarrasin and Holly2011: 316). Given a clear tendency towards the privatization of Canada's immigration regime, employer-driven demands are an important factor to consider in the making of local public policies. This is particularly the case for small communities actively seeking to attract newcomers for economic development. Considered as a tool to foster economic growth, immigrant recruitment strategies are essentially market driven and municipalities (such as Whistler, Squamish, Pemberton and Merritt in BC) provide incentives for attracting immigrant entrepreneurs (Wiginton, Reference Wiginton2013).
Fourth, representations of the “other,” whether positive or negative, have an impact on discourses around diversity and the way in which municipalities perceive immigration. Graham and Phillips (Reference Graham, Phillips, Banting, Courchene and Seidle2007) identify two competing paradigms in Canada: one in which the municipality considers diversity to be a problem, the other, an advantage. Alexander (Reference Alexander2007) proposes another typology based on the concept of host-stranger relations. Depending on whether municipalities perceive immigration to be transient or permanent and whether or not they consider recognition of otherness to be legitimate, five kinds of integration policies are identified. In municipalities with non-policy or guest worker policies, immigration is considered to be transient, whereas in the other types of policies, it is viewed as permanent. The degree of municipal recognition of otherness also varies from one type of policy to another. Assimilationist policies ignore otherness and anticipate its progressive disappearance; pluralist policies recognize otherness and believe it should be retained; and intercultural policies lie somewhere between the two. In Canada, Tossutti (Reference Tossutti2012) has recently made use of this typology. She shows that cities have adopted different discourses and practices even if, in most cases, intercultural or civic-universalist approaches to immigration prevail.
In sum, researchers have identified a heterogeneous set of explanatory variables (intergovernmental relations, politico-administrative regimes, civil society actors and discourses about immigration) explaining whether and how municipalities implemented local policies towards immigrants. These variables, and the varied analytical lenses adopted, demonstrate the richness of this literature, but also its fragmentation. Moreover, since research has focused on the factors explaining municipal public policies, that is, policy outputs, few studies evaluate the impact of policies on immigrants’ integration, that is, policy outcomes. Because most studies have used interviews of elites, as well as municipal documents and archives, immigrants’ narratives are absent. Yet we would indubitably gain from hearing from them, since it would be crucial for our understanding of the implementation and the evaluation stage of public policy. In order to continue to improve and diversify this literature, the following section proposes three detailed suggestions for future research that could enhance our understanding of municipal policies towards immigrants.
Future Direction for Research
Attitudes, politics and public policy
Public opinion plays a critical role in policy development and evaluation. In the context of immigration, governments frequently make use of public opinion surveys to obtain citizens’ views on policies and draw from them when making changes to their programs (Li, Reference Li2001). Public opinion matters at the provincial and national levels but its use has not been extensively studied at the municipal level. And yet, location affects and informs public opinion (Mahtani and Mountz, Reference Mahtani and Mountz2002). For instance, Hiebert (Reference Hiebert2003) as well as Mahtani and Mountz (Reference Mahtani and Mountz2002) show that there is a difference between the provincial and the metropolitan scales in terms of the support of multiculturalism. If the greatest degree of opposition appears to be in the provinces with the highest immigration rate—in this particular case, BC—residents of their major cities (Vancouver and Victoria, for example) tend to see immigration as beneficial, whereas residents of smaller and rural centres (such as Prince George) tend to associate ethnic diversity with problems. Hiebert (Reference Hiebert2003) suggests that urban residents may have more positive views towards immigration because more immigrants live in these metropolitan areas. In Quebec, however, Bilodeau and Turgeon (Reference Bilodeau and Turgeon2014) show that the greatest opposition toward immigration occurs at the metropolitan level (suburban residents from Laval) and in the municipalities located in the regions relatively close to Montreal (Laurentides and Lanaudière). Confirming the results of Gallant and colleagues (Reference Gallant, Bilodeau, Lechaume, Laaroussi, Bernier and Guilbert2013), suburbanites consider immigration more threatening than people living in rural and remote areas (such as Lac Saint-Jean). Since more and more immigrants settle in second and third tier immigrant cities, additional research comparing large centres, suburbs and remote and small centres would improve our understanding of the factors that shape public opinion. To do so, new information, such as original datasets on municipal attitudes, would be needed to overcome methodological challenges.Footnote 5
Moreover, a promising direction for future research would be to study the reciprocal relationship between public opinion and attitudes towards immigration and racialized minorities and local public policies. An important aspect of the geography of attitudes lies in electoral considerations, in particular when immigration is regionally concentrated (Young, Reference Young, Tolley and Young2011). However, we still know little about the ways in which attitudes towards immigration in local politics shape public policy. If approved by the provinces, the recent initiatives allowing immigrants to vote in municipal elections may also contribute to this area of research, as immigrants would gain considerable political weight in local politics.
Conversely, it is also important to study how public policy shapes attitudes. Comparing the US with Canada, Bloemraad (Reference Bloemraad2006) demonstrates that federal multicultural policies have a positive impact on attitudes towards immigration at the national level, but no comparable work has been done at the local level. One key goal of the Welcoming Communities Initiative is to change representations of and attitudes toward immigration (Tossutti and Esses, Reference Tossutti and Esses2011). Could we anticipate a virtuous circle, in which policies shape attitudes, which in turn, shape policies? Not only would this type of work improve our comprehension of factors shaping public opinion by adding public policy to the set of variables usually considered in this literature (economic, demographic, cultural, linguistic or social factors), but it would also help us to have a better sense of the effects produced by different types of policies.
Studying local initiatives and policies as constructions and not only responses
Despite the wide range of disciplines from which studies of municipal policies and programs for immigrants emerge, political science literature tends to adopt a positivist and functionalist interpretation of public policies, stemming from the tradition of policy science and policy cycles. For instance, the ethnic makeup of a city is considered to be an independent variable while public policy change is seen as a dependent variable, occurring in response to the needs of a changing population. To analyse the responses to these changes, the Canadian government's multicultural commitment is then used as a benchmark, as it is implicitly understood as the norm for integrating immigrants.Footnote 6 However, based on the literature review, this causal link is debatable. First, settlement and integration policies developed by municipalities borrow from more than one repertoire and multiculturalism cannot be used as a reference for Quebec cities. Second, the correlation between the ethnic composition of a city and policy implementation is far from systematic. Indeed, it appears important to question how municipalities perceive (or refuse to recognize) these demographic changes or how they represent their inhabitants’ needs.
Deconstructing the concepts of “settlement,” “integration” and “diversity” at the municipal level, and their impact on local policies, could be a good starting point. As Magnusson and Kataoka argue, viewing immigrant settlement policy as integrating people from outside of Canada tends to hide the history of settlement in Canada and delegitimize the fact that the aboriginal peoples, “who settled the land at least 12,000 years ago, have been faced with a huge immigration problem for the last 500 years” (Reference Magnusson and Kataoka2006: 7). The concepts of integration and diversity also carry many unspoken assumptions. Multicultural discourses on integration often preach acceptance despite being intolerant toward cultural specificities deemed outside the Canadian mainstream (Li, Reference Li2003). Similarly, “diversity” is often stressed as a competitive advantage despite the risks of commodification of immigrants (Abu-Laban and Gabriel, Reference Abu-Laban and Gabriel2002). Because of these assumptions, exploring how racialization and neoliberalism influence cities’ representations of their own roles in immigrant integration could be particularly fruitful.
Third, the development of local policy for newcomers is not always a question of demand (that is, a response to clients’ needs), but also a question of supply. In the case of Vancouver, Mitchell (Reference Mitchell1993) convincingly demonstrates that the city's involvement in the domains of anti-racism and multiculturalism was due to a desire to integrate Vancouver into the international networks of global capitalism rather than a response to discrimination towards new Hong Kong immigrants. The supply aspect of policies also applies to smaller communities that are calling for their “fair” share of immigrants. As immigration has become an area of competition between communities and municipalities, developing strategies to attract and retain immigrants in partnership with other governments and multiple stakeholders has become an instrument of community and economic development. In those cases, the question is not only how municipalities respond to demographic changes but also how they use immigration as a leverage to create those demographic shifts. On these grounds, it seems that considering municipal policies as constructions is a promising avenue for research and encourages us to revisit the concept of a “national model of integration” and its implications for studying local public policies.
Revisiting the use of the national model of integration for cities
In the past, distinctions among models of integration have been useful to express the sheer variety of municipal approaches to immigration, to show that cities have room to manoeuvre in adopting policies distinct from provincial and federal governments, and to compare cities among them. In most of the studies cited in this article, national models of integration are seen as an important factor, framing local actors’ discourses as well as shaping municipal policies. If this line of reasoning is instrumental in characterizing attitudes of municipal actors, the use of this concept for cities can be problematic.
First, while the notion of “national models of integration” helps to sort and compare cases, the use of descriptive typologies tends to fix a set of changing ideas and practices and neglects the dynamics of politics and policy over time. For example, when referring to municipal multicultural policies, do we refer to social multiculturalism, aiming to remedy injustice among groups and create “tolerant national citizens,” or to the neoliberal version of multiculturalism, indifferent to inequality and focused on “competitive market actors” (Kymlicka, Reference Kymlicka, Hall and Lamont2013: 111)? The same applies to “interculturalism,” a model advocated for cities (versus multiculturalism) by the Council of Europe. Defined by its “diversity advantage,” one can ask how interculturalism differs from the neoliberal version of multiculturalism? In the Canada and Quebec context, the sempiternel debates about the differences and/or similarities between interculturalism and multiculturalism (among others, Bouchard, Reference Bouchard2011; Gagnon and Iacovino, Reference Gagnon and Iacovino2007; Garcea, Reference Garcea2006; Kymlicka, Reference Kymlicka, Meer, Modood and Zapata-Barrero2015) also clearly illustrate the polysemy of these categories, especially as they often have been characterized by normative and ideological perspectives (Rocher and White, Reference Rocher and White2014; Salée, Reference Salée, Banting, Courchene and Seidle2007). These inconsistencies partly explain why many authors disagree over the parameters of models of integration and why some call for their abandonment altogether (Bertossi, Reference Bertossi2011).
Second, when these authors do agree, they focus on the links between models of integration and narratives of nationhood (Bouchard, Reference Bouchard2011; Kymlicka, Reference Kymlicka, Meer, Modood and Zapata-Barrero2015; Taylor, Reference Taylor2012) as well as competing nation-building projects (Gagnon and Iacovino, Reference Gagnon and Iacovino2007; Winter, Reference Winter2011). Thus, when we use the concept of national models of integration to characterize municipal policies, not only do we use a notion that seems less relevant for cities, but we also take the risk of “re-emphasiz[ing] nationally bounded and nation-state sustaining views of the politics of immigration” (Favell, Reference Favell2014: 43).
Finally, disputes over definitions are not limited to scholars and institutions: political actors give different meanings to the same model. As a result, despite actors’ references to a specific model of integration, a city can mix different repertoires at the same time (Poirier, Reference Poirier, Young and Leuprecht2006a; Germain and Alain, Reference Germain, Alain, Jouve and Gagnon2006). Moreover, local actors can advocate for a certain type of model in their discourses while implementing another type of policy in practice. In this sense, we should be attentive in avoiding the use of the category “models of integration” as both dependant and independent variables. For all these reasons, I would argue that, looking at models of integration as dependent variables, rather than explanatory ones, might be a fruitful direction for future research.
Conclusion
In this article, I have privileged a diachronic approach to public policy to explain the evolution of research on immigrants and municipalities. Twenty years after studies focused on municipal policies for immigrants first emerged, it is now well established that nation-state approaches to integration tend to hide important variations at the subnational level and that immigration and the integration of immigrants cannot be fully understood without taking into account the role of policies at the municipal level. The necessity of a local focus has been established through the use of comparative methods, which have been crucial to the evolution of literature on settlement and integration policies in Canada. Based on the observation of both intra- and interprovincial differences, researchers have demonstrated that municipalities have much more latitude than an exclusively federal and provincial perspective on immigration and integration policies would have us believe. Researchers have also analyzed the conditions and the factors explaining the municipal policy-making processes. If the ethnodemographic configurations and triggering events were first used to understand why pioneering cities decided to put immigration on their agenda, other factors were explored and analyzed, taking into consideration the fact that more and more municipalities (even rural centres) are addressing immigration issues. These variables are intergovernmental relations, the organization of the politico-administrative system, municipal relations with civil society organizations and, discourses on ethnocultural diversity. Certainly, depending on the cases and the analytical approaches, some factors are favoured over others. This conceptual and empirical diversity contributes both to the literature's richness and its fragmentation.
Since this literature has made considerable progress in understanding municipal policies towards immigrants, I propose three axes for future research that could make a positive contribution. First, while we know that federal and provincial governments use public opinion for electoral reasons, we are still missing research that explores whether local attitudes towards immigration shape local policies. Reciprocally, while we know that geographical, socio-economic, political or demographic factors influence attitudes, we do not know if local public policies shape the attitudes of their inhabitants. Second, a positivist and functionalist perspective prevails when researchers study municipal policies as responses to the diversity of their population, even if several studies have demonstrated that there is no causal link between the demographic makeup of a city and its policies. Moreover, this perspective fails to acknowledge that in several cases, local public policies are also a question of supply. Looking at policies as constructions, therefore, helps to prevent us from reproducing unsolved debates at other scales of political regulation. This leads to my third proposition, which is to consider “models of integration” as dependent rather than independent variables. Overall, the existing body of literature asks us to move beyond the constitutionalist vision of regulation by ceasing to consider federalism as synonymous with only federal and provincial relations. In highlighting the role of municipal services and policies as well as the mobilization (or not) of local actors and communities for immigrants, this literature has also indubitably contributed to a more accurate view of immigration and integration in Canada.
