“Bringing Cities Back In” To Canadian Political Science: Municipal Public Policy and Immigration

Abstract

Usually, the state of urban research in Canadian political science leads to pessimistic evaluations. This pessimism is belied by one emerging area of study: research on Canadian municipal public policies and immigration, which has flourished over the last 20 years. This article tracks the evolution of this research. First, I retrace how municipal policies for immigrants have been studied, and show how comparison is a central component of this literature. Second, I analyze the dynamics of agenda setting, as well as variables for decision making and implementation. Third, I make 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 complete view of the immigrant integration policies.

Settling in: how newcomers use a public library

“…In the Greater Vancouver area, municipal support of diversity ranges from comprehensive policies in the city of Vancouver to civic universalism in the outer suburbs (Edgington andHutton, 2000/2001;Tossutti, 2012). Municipal policies are often not aligned with those of senior levels of government and many factors appear to influence local government diversity policies (Fourot, 2015).…”

The EU Urban Partnership on Inclusion: Institutionalizing Local–Supranational Integration Governance

“…We undertook a comprehensive analysis of internal and public Partnership documents, conducted 14 expert interviews with Partnership members, held a focus-group discussion with all Partnership members, and asked them to complete a structured questionnaire. 2 Subsequently, we analyzed all material through structured qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2015).…”

“…In the late 2000s, the growing engagement of local authorities and civil society in efforts to integrate migrants and refugees inspired migration scholars to rethink the dominant conceptualization of municipalities as spaces of migration (Caponio and Borkert 2010). Within this "local turn," migration scholars began to approach local authorities and governments as collective actors of local integration governance (Caponio and Borkert 2010;Penninx et al 2014;Fourot 2015;Scholten and Penninx 2016;Spencer and Delvino 2019). Although some scholars claim that local authorities are more welcoming and pragmatic than national governments when it comes to international migration (Schrover and Vermeulen 2005;Poppelaars and Scholten 2008), others criticize this generalization, highlighting passivity (Schammann et al 2021) or even exclusionary policy-making at the local level (Mahnig 2004;Ambrosini 2013).…”

Comparing Ambiguities: Municipalities, Francophone Minority Communities and Immigration in Canada

“…Municipalities and FMC organizations began designing and implementing measures and policies toward immigrants in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, respectively. Their involvement along the continuum (from attraction/selection to citizenship) became more visible in the 2000s, corresponding to their increased participation in multilevel and collaborative governance arrangements (Fourot, 2015). Both entities are most active in the area of integration and the provision of services.…”