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Canadian Cities and Global Migration: Comparing Local Responses to Demographic Change

The paper examines how municipal governments in six Canadian cities have adapted their corporate policies, programs and structures to address immigration, settlement, and ethnocultural diversity issues. The audit is based on interview and documentary sources, and provides the database for the development of a three-dimensional typology that classifies cities according to: the normative premises underlying the recognition or non-recognition of immigration and ethnocultural differences; the breadth of their initiatives; and the bureaucratic locus of authority for these issues. We found evidence of wide variations in local models of ethnocultural diversity management that can be attributed to differences in political and bureaucratic cultures, rather than to provincial contexts and the size of a community’s immigrant and visible minority population. The paper also examines whether and how international migration has influenced the planning priorities, challenges and responses of municipal parks and recreation officials. It found that no city adopted a monocultural approach by overtly encouraging immigrants to assimilate into the Canadian sports and recreation culture, or by rejecting accommodation requests outright. The strategies and concrete responses they have adopted reflect civic universalist (e.g. prohibitions against discrimination, program subsidies for the less well-off) and intercultural (e.g. encouraging more interaction between dominant and minority cultural groups in the recreational sphere, encouraging newcomers to participate in “traditional” Canadian sports as well as sports that are popular in their homelands) or multicultural (e.g. special initiatives to address ethnic preferences and needs) philosophies. More structured and proactive approaches to the management of ethnocultural diversity in the parks and recreation policy domain were found in cities where there was corporate support for these initiatives and staffs with professional backgrounds in social work.