Toronto the Good? The Access T.O. Policy - Making Toronto a Sanctuary City

Abstract

This paper examines Toronto's Access T.O. policy, a policy created to transform Toronto into a sanctuary city. I argue that the Access T.O. policy has made progress towards turning Toronto into a practicable sanctuary city. However, I also highlight areas where the policy needs improvement and further expansion. I also show how the City of Toronto's Access T.O. policy offers an alternative approach to migration and settlement policies found at the level of the Canadian federal state and illustrate how these policies diverge and contradict. The Access T.O. policy, like other sanctuary cities, is shown to provide an alternative understanding and implementation of citizenship, belonging, rights, ethics and morality, human agency, security and borders to that found in federal state policies. The paper provides background information on sanctuary cities prior to entering this aforementioned discussion and concludes with considerations for Access T.O.'s continued expansion and implementation.

Seeing like a Zone: Privately deputized sovereignty within Toronto’s Sanctuary City

“…Sites employing undocumented migrants in Toronto benefit from endowed power to exile migrants and constitute zones of economic marginalization stemming from irregular citizenship status. As Pekic (2016) observes, Toronto disavows substantive intervention against deportations while providing migrants minimal services to ensure labour wellbeing, insofar as they benefit industries. This reveals how the private sector chooses and delineates migrant economic worthiness for inclusion while assuming sociopolitical exceptionality to exclude undocumented workers.…”