The Local Governance of Migration

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, Canadian immigration and integration policies have seen a considerable degree of decentralization and empowerment of the subnational level driven by the goal to align immigration policies more effectively with the needs and objectives of different communities. While the nation-state still has the prerogative as regards the recruitment progress, provinces and, often in a more informal capacity, cities have taken on a more pronounced role in attracting and settling newcomers. This article examines how, in the Canadian context, cities have been proactive in utilizing immigration as a tool to address local labour needs, to develop strategies for becoming “welcoming communities”, and to provide a sense of urban citizenship. Cities have responded to the challenge by building public-private partnerships in which settlement organizations, service providers, and employers play a prominent role. The most effective initiatives are those that increase the city’s ability to draw on multi-stakeholder networks and to enable policy coordination in Canada’s system of multilevel governance.

Notes

1 In addition, I rely on statistical material and reports published by Statistics Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the Canadian Citizenship & Immigration Resource Centre and the Government of Canada.

2 In 2016, nationally, 16.4 percent of all recent immigrants – or 27.3 percent of economic migrants – arrived through a PNP.

3 Recent census data also shows that more than three-in-five immigrants (60.3 percent) who arrived between 2011 and 2016 were admitted through an economic program (see: https://www.cicnews.com/2017/10/immigrants-make-up21-9-of-canadas-population-statscan-109735.html#gs.Mzs=_XU). From a critical perspective, Flynn and Bauder (2015) have described how the regulatory process of this policy domain is increasingly driven by a neoliberal, market-based logic – to the detriment of humanitarian considerations.

4 Here it is worth pointing to massive expansion of Canada’s Temporary Workers Program that, also in its problematic aspects, shows some striking similarities to the German guest workers program of the post-war decades.

5 The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has been adamant in its quest for a fuller inclusion of municipalities in the organization and funding of Canada’s settlement services.

6 A prominent example would be Ottawa’s comprehensive immigration strategy that seeks to build broad cross-departmental planning capacity, facilitate a city-wide immigration network, and support innovative settlement programs: https://documents.ottawa.ca/sites/documents.ottawa.ca/files/municipal_immigration_strategy_en.pdf (accessed 2 May 2018).

7 Similarly, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM 2011) highlights both the role of cities as the first point of contact and integration for newcomers to Canada, and the challenges that Canadian cities face in fulfilling this important role due to their limited fiscal resources and their informal status in the settlement and integration policy process. The report calls on the federal and provincial governments to create a formal role for municipalities, using the tripartite Canada-Ontario-Toronto Memorandum of Understanding on Settlement and Integration as a model.

8 While not comparable to the current scale in Europe, the influx of irregular refugees has been a challenge to Canadian cities. Periodically, as a result of political developments in the USA, Canada receives considerable amounts of refugees. Most recently, over 25 000 irregular refugees have crossed into Canada from the USA, testing the settlement capacity and political support of majorly affected communities.

9 The Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement, signed in 2005, formalized a federal and provincial relationship in settlement and integration services for newcomers, explicitly included municipalities and made a substantial amount of funding available (CAD 920 million over five years).

10 See the Federation of Canadian Municipalities publication: https://fcm.ca/home/issues/immigration-and-refugee-settlement-.htm

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oliver Schmidtke

Oliver Schmidtke is a Professor in the Departments of Political Science and History at the University of Victoria where he currently also serves as the Director of the Centre for Global Studies and holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European History and Politics. His research interests are in the fields of the politics of migration, citizenship, and the governance of migration and integration in Europe and Canada.