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Cities of Migration

Comparing Local Immigrant Incorporation Regimes

Sara Pavan

Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University

Paper Prepared for the ECPR General Conference, August 26-29 2015, Montreal

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Introduction

Immigration is making cities increasingly ethno-racially diverse. Understanding how such diversity is

accommodated at the local level, and the drivers of different local level approaches, is therefore a pressing

issue. Accumulating evidence about city-level differences in paradigms of accommodation signals that the

local level can no longer be understood as simply implementing nationally-determined integration policies

(Scholten 2012). As a result, ascertaining whether more variation exists across national-level immigrant

accommodation paradigms or across city-level approaches is an important empirical concern, with

theoretical consequences in terms of the taxonomies we adopt to classify what are commonly called

immigrant integration policies.1

Additionally, scholars are progressively highlighting the local context as the primary arena for immigrants’

early involvement in the socio-political mainstream (Penninx et al. 2004; Bird at al. 2010). Local level

approaches to accommodating ethno-racial diversity can therefore be plausibly hypothesized as even

more consequential than national-level integration policies. As such, assessing the impact of such

different approaches is an important scholarly concern with compelling policy implications.

Unfortunately, a significant chunk of the extensive comparative literature mapping different policy

responses to immigration-generated ethno-racial diversity and empirically addressing their

consequences, is based on national-level taxonomies. Comparative literature describing and explaining

local-level variation in accommodation strategies and its ramifications is currently underdeveloped,

particularly in North America.

1 This paper was made possible by generous research funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council – Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar program; the Trudeau Foundation as well as the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University.

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This paper aims to contribute to the debate on local level approaches to the accommodation of

immigration-generated ethno-racial diversity, theoretically and empirically. Conceptually, this paper

suggests the analytical benefits of using the concept of local-level immigrant incorporation regimes vis-à-

vis the more commonly used concept of local-level integration policies. The former concept, in particular,

indicates that what is consequential in local-level approaches to the accommodation of diversity are not

only policies, but also the different configurations of relationships between institutions and civil society

actors, which arise from different policy frameworks but might generate autonomous consequences for

the incorporation of immigrants in the mainstream of their countries of immigration. Moreover, the paper

proposes an original strategy for comparing immigrant incorporation regimes across cities. It contends

that studying the density of the provision of services offered to immigrants, and mapping the sources of

public and/or private funding for different areas of service provision, helps understand variation of city-

level approaches as a synthesis of different national discourses about immigration and local pressures and

demands, arising both from structural concerns (e.g., unemployment) and the strength (or lack thereof)

of organized immigrant interests.

Empirically, the paper provides original evidence about the different local level incorporation regimes in

multicultural Toronto, Canada, and laissez-faire San Jose, United States. Relying on data from Citizenship

and Immigration Canada, the Government of Ontario, the County of Santa Clara as well as twenty months

of field research and 12 semi-structured interviews with service providing organizations in the San

Jose/Silicon Valley area, this piece describes the different infrastructures for immigrant incorporation in

the two metropolitan contexts and their different underlying assumptions about the process of

naturalization.

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The paper concludes by discussing how the comparative analysis of different city-level incorporation

regimes based on immigrant services provision suggests ways to operationalize the mechanisms through

which such regimes might influence the actual processes of immigrant incorporation2.

Assimilation, integration, multiculturalism: identifying the terms of the debate

In the past decade, a significant scholarly debate has emerged that categorizes and empirically assesses

the impact of different existing paradigms of accommodation of immigration-generated ethno-cultural

diversity. While it is not possible to do justice to such debate in the context of this paper, it is important

to clarify the types of approaches identified in the literature as well as the unit of analysis adopted to

comparatively assess the effects of such approaches. Additionally, identifying categories of

accommodation paradigms clarifies why the generic label of “integration policies” might be misleading,

as “integration” is often understood as a particular subset of such accommodation policy paradigms.

A conspicuous part of this literature has been dedicated to analyzing the effects of a particular approach

to the accommodation of ethno-cultural diversity, identified as “multiculturalism”. While the concept of

multiculturalism has been often unfortunately used to signify different phenomena, in this debate

multiculturalism refers to a particular public policy approach as well as a national discourse (Bloemraad

and Wright 2014) recognizing the legitimacy of the preservation of collective ethnic identities in the public

sphere of countries receiving large inflows of immigrants. While in the 1990s such approach appeared to

be the preferred choice for a number of advanced democracies (Glazer 1998), multiculturalism is often

described as having fallen out of grace, certainly at the discursive level (Brubaker 2001; Banting and

Kymlicka 2013), and particularly in Western Europe. Canada, Australia and Sweden are currently the

countries that most closely approximate the ideal-type of the multiculturalism approach.

2 This paper is part of a larger project, which analyzes the effects of different local-level regimes on immigrant incorporation, with a particular focus on the processes of immigrants’ involvement in the political realm of their country of immigration.

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Other approaches to the governance of ethno-cultural diversity have been identified in the literature.

Rather different from the underlying philosophical principles of multiculturalism, “assimilationism”

implies that minority cultures require acculturation and that an integrated whole can be achieved by

subsuming them under the cultural norms and practices of the majority population. In its extreme, illiberal

version, assimilationism refers to the “normative expectations, analytical models, public policies, or

informal practices associated with the ideal of Anglo-conformity” (Brubaker 2001: 533) or “any of the

other many lamentable instances of harshly homogenizing state projects” (ibid).

In its less extreme, contemporary version, assimilationism can no longer be connoted as a strategy of

majority ethno-cultural domination; rather, it has been identified as a process of “becoming similar”, on

the part of an immigrant minority population that is no longer considered as “a mouldable and meltable

object” but as an active subject in the process of becoming similar (Brubaker 2001: 542). Policy-wise, the

new assimilationism can be understood as comprising different integration approaches, ranging from

illiberal versions of compulsory civic integration programs, to liberal, voluntary approaches; it implies a

“process of adaptation by newcomers to fit in with a dominant culture and way of life” (Vasta 2010:5) but

it may also reflect a “genuine process of supporting immigrants to integrate into the receiving society”

(Vasta 2010: 6).

The empirical analysis of the effects of different approaches to the accommodation of ethno-cultural

diversity has generally focused on determining the impact of the most accommodating variant, i.e.

multiculturalism, and/or the distance between the incorporation outcomes of multiculturalism and those

of other approaches (Hooghe et al. 2007; Kesler et al. 2010). Since a review of such literature is not the

topic of this paper, for here it suffices to say that no consensus has been reached regarding the effects of

multiculturalism in the socio-economic realm, while moderate positive effects have been found on

political incorporation (Wright et al. 2012; Koopmans 2013).

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Relevant to the topic of this paper, it should be also noted that the large majority of the now extensive

empirical literature on the effects of different approaches towards the accommodation of diversity has

relied on national-level comparisons, implicitly suggesting the national level of government as the most

consequential in terms of its policy impact on immigrant minorities.

Different indexes have been generated that classify Western democracies in terms of the extent of their

commitment to the accommodation of immigration-generated diversity. For instance, a consortium of

research institutions, think tanks and policy institutes, with financial support from the European Union

Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nations, has created the MIPEX index, which claims to “measure

policies to integrate migrants in all EU Member States, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, South Korea,

New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and the USA”3. Additionally, Koopmans et al. (2005) have

categorized a number of European countries according to their citizenship approaches across two

dimensions: the ease of individual access, ranging from civic-territorial (such as, for example, in France)

to ethnic (such as, for example, in Germany and Switzerland), and the accommodation of cultural

differences and group rights in the public sphere, spanning cultural monism (like in France) to cultural

pluralism (like in the Dutch multicultural model or in the UK).

Moreover, Banting and Kymlicka have created the multiculturalism policy (MCP) index, which allows to

compare Western advanced democracies’ commitment to multiculturalism, as a normative discourse and

a public policy, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. The eight policy areas the MCP index tracks are:

the constitutional, legislative or parliamentary affirmation of multiculturalism; the adoption of

multiculturalism in school curricula; the inclusion of ethnic representation/sensitivity in the mandate of

public media or media licensing; the availability of legal exemptions on ethno-cultural grounds (for

3Migrant Integration Policy Index, http://www.mipex.eu, accessed on July 28th, 2015. Note that this index presents analytical problems because it conflates policies and their effects. For instance, labour market mobility and political participation are considered policy areas, rather than areas where integration policies might be consequential.

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instance, from dress-codes, Sunday-closing legislation, etc); the possibility of dual citizenship; the funding

of ethnic group organizations to support cultural activities; the funding of bilingual education or mother-

tongue instruction; and affirmative action for disadvantaged immigrant groups4. Since the index explicitly

aims to measures countries’ commitments to multiculturalism policies, it taps into other types of policy

approaches to the accommodation of diversity by measuring their distance from the multicultural ideal-

type on a scale ranging from 0 to 8.

The three indexes just described have generated informative comparative literature on the effects of

different approaches to immigrant socio-economic and political incorporation (Koopmans 2012;

Koopmans et al. 2005; Wright and Bloemraad 2012; Bloemraad and Wright 2014). A significant limitation

of such literature, however, is its inability to shed light on within-country variation of approaches towards

diversity. Perhaps associated to this limitation is also the under-theorization of the mechanisms according

to which different policy approaches to diversity are supposed to have an impact on individuals (whether

immigrants or not). Addressing both these limitations requires a local focus.

In the next section, I will draw on European literature to suggest the need to further document local level

variation in policy approaches towards diversity, particularly in North America. Before turning to a

description of different local incorporation regimes in the Greater Toronto Area (Canada) and in Silicon

Valley (USA), I will then suggest an original way to compare local level approaches to diversity that might

be consequential, in particular, for the study of the political incorporation of immigrants.

Adopting a local focus: lessons from European scholarship

While it has been a “long held contention in the literature that migrant integration policies are driven by

historically rooted national models of integration” (Scholten 2012: 218), European literature has recently

4 Multiculturalism Policy Index, http://www.queensu.ca/mcp/, accessed on July 28th, 2015.

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started to acknowledge how local level policies might significantly deviate from national paradigms and

across different urban contexts (Poppelaars et al. 2008; Schiller 2015; Ambrosini et al 2015). This has

possibly been the result of a political move towards emphasizing the role of cities as autonomous agents

of immigrant incorporation, spearheaded by the European Commission “as part of its supranational

immigrant policy agenda” (Schiller 2015: 1122).

There are theoretical reasons to expect a deviation of local approaches to diversity from national

paradigms. Some have suggested for instance that, as nation-level incorporation regimes move

increasingly towards citizenship models based on the integration paradigm, local level policies might

maintain a more accommodative outlook, due to the pressure on local governments to manage the

everyday complexities of ethno-cultural diversity and process the demands of locally organized ethnic

interests (Poppellars 2008). This claim, however, would predict a homogenous trend towards

accommodationism across urban locales. Evidence exists, however, that complicates this scenario and

suggests other possible determinants of cross-city variation. Local incorporation regimes, for instance,

might be affected by the ethnic composition of urban areas (Good 2005; Good 2006); the partisanship of

local councils (Ramakrishan et al. 2008); the length of the history of immigration in a particular area and

its proximity to traditional immigration gateways (De Grauuw, Gleeson, Bloemraad 2014) and the strength

of local anti-immigration movements (Provine 2010). Testing the relative strength of all of these factors

would require tackling the collection of empirical evidence on local level approaches to ethno-cultural

diversity, an underexplored area in North America, with a few exceptions (Good 2006; Gleeson 2010;

Bloemraad and Gleeson 2012; Bloemraad and De Grauuw 2011).

Investigating differences between national and local levels in Canada and in the United States, as well as

across cities within these two countries, however, would considerably enhance our understanding of the

determinants of local incorporation regimes, since Canada and the United States are distinctively different

from European countries in a number of ways.

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First, Canada has not experienced the same kind of backlash against multiculturalism that has been

pervasive across most Western European countries. The hypothesis of a divergence between national and

local level incorporation policies, the former towards integrative citizenship models and the latter towards

multiculturalism, cannot therefore easily travel across the Atlantic. Second, the Unites States represents

a unique case in the Western democracies for not having a national-level integration policy (Bloemraad

and De Grauuw 2011). For such country, local level policies might be expected to vary more as a result of

the absence of a unifying national discourse as well as to be more consequential than in other countries

in terms of their effects of immigrant incorporation.

In the remainder of this paper, I will contribute to the understanding of local-level incorporation regimes

by focusing on one Canadian and one American metropolitan area, respectively, the Greater Toronto Area

and the San Jose/Silicon Valley Area, to describe how local level approaches to incorporation might

diverge from each other and from national-level measures. I will also to suggest that the density of local

immigrant services provision can be used an analytically useful way to measure local incorporation

regimes, particularly when our goal is to transform them into the explanans of incorporation outcomes.

Greater Toronto Area and Silicon Valley: comparing two high immigration density urban areas

Located respectively in a highly ethnically diverse and immigration dense province and state, the Greater

Toronto Area and the Silicon Valley share some significant demographic traits and vary wildly in terms of

their local level approaches to immigration-generated ethnic diversity. Currently, non-native born

individuals amount respectively to the 48% and the 38% of the total population in Toronto and in the

Santa Clara County (National Household Survey 2011; 2013 American Community Survey). If Toronto is

often cited as a special case because of its ethnic composition, such that no one ethnic group clearly

dominates the immigration population, the Silicon Valley is possibly the most demographically similar to

Toronto of all the US large urban areas, with the Santa Clara County being the most diverse in the country

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(Gleeson 2013). The two areas also share significant amounts of highly skilled immigrants, the former as

a result of Canadian immigration policies privileging highly-skilled and linguistically competent

immigrants, and the latter as a result of the immigration-magnet high-tech industry.

While sharing important demographic characteristics, the immigrant incorporation regimes in the Greater

Toronto Area and in the Silicon Valley differ significantly from each other (and possibly from the Canadian

and American national measures).

In terms of local-national comparisons, if as of 2010 the MCP index ranks Canada as one of the countries

with the highest commitment to multiculturalism (Canada scores 7.5/8 in the index), evidence suggests

that Toronto goes above and beyond the commitment to multiculturalism of the average Canadian city.

The United States score instead a 3 on the same scale. If a formal national integration policy does not exist

in the US, its approach to the accommodation of diversity can be characterized as one of “benign neglect”

(Vasta 2010). The state, in other words, plays no role in facilitating the participation of immigrants in the

public sphere, “relying on the integrative potential of the private sphere, such as the family and the

community” (Vasta 2010: 5). Unlike other areas with a long history of immigration, such as San Francisco

and New York, in San Jose the laissez-faire flavor ideology that has powered the tech industries of the

Silicon Valley has translated itself into little to no proactive attempt on the part of local institutions to

facilitate the incorporation of immigrants and target them as a social category worthy of specific policy

attention.

Comparing local contexts: from policy approaches to incorporation regimes

Different ways have been proposed to systematically compare local integration approaches. Focusing on

twelve European countries, for instance, Alexander (2004) suggested a typology of city-level approaches

to immigrant integration based on the visibility of migrants and ethnic minorities in ten policy areas,

including: the ethnic composition of local advisory councils on ethnic minority issues; the level of political

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inclusiveness to immigrant minorities in local policy bodies; the relations between city councils and

migrant organizations; the presence of labor market policies facilitating the representation of immigrants;

the visibility of ethnic minorities in schools policies; language education; immigrant specific social services;

public awareness initiatives regarding ethno-cultural diversity; housing policies and urban development

policies (either reinforcing or dispersing migrant enclaves).

Additionally, in an effort to assess the impact of the ethnic composition of different urban locales on the

breadth, range, and depth of policies that municipal governments put in place to manage diversity, Good

(2006) established the following indicators of multiculturalism policy “comprehensiveness”: the

establishment of a separate unit of government to manage diversity; the availability of grants to

community organizations, in-kind support and research initiatives; the presence of employment equity

initiatives; political inclusiveness; an immigrant settlement policy; access and equity in service delivery;

anti-racism initiatives; the incorporation of multiculturalism in the municipal image; and the promotion

of multicultural festivals and events.

What do we know about the diversity policy approaches in the Greater Toronto Area and in the Silicon

Valley? The City of Toronto can be identified as a prototype of comprehensive and proactive

multiculturalism (Good 2006). Assessing the immigrant incorporating infrastructure in Toronto, Good

singled out a number of institutions and policies that support such definition. These include the presence

of a city “Immigration and Settlement Policy Framework” with two goals: to attract newcomers and to

provide supports to enable them to develop a sense of identity and belonging and fully participate in the

social, economic, cultural and political life in the City” (Good 2006: 60). According to Good, additional

indicators of comprehensiveness can also be found, such as the presence of an inclusive municipal image

(Toronto’s motto is “Diversity our strength”); the existence of the specific position of Diversity Advocate

in the City Council, functioning as a “primary spokesperson and advocate on diversity issues” as well as

the presence of five Access and Equity Policy Advisory Committees, including a Race and Ethnic Relations

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Advisory Committee composed of members of the community and at least one elected member of the

council; the availability of city funding for anti-racism initiatives through the Access and Equity Grants

program, which provides targeted funding to groups that represent ethno-cultural minorities, and

requires that services provided by all community-grants recipients (including mainstream agencies) be

accessible to all Toronto residents; the constitution of TRIEC, the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment

Council, a city-sponsored coalition of prominent community leaders that has formed to address barriers

to employment faced by immigrants.

These and other initiatives, such as the Ontario-sponsored Diverse City, the Greater Toronto Leadership

Project, focusing on empowering leaders to contribute to a more diverse leadership and thus “create a

stronger and more prosperous city region”5, or the 2008 Toronto-specific City of Toronto Newcomer

Initiative, funded by CIC and developed in collaboration with the provincial and municipal governments

to assist newcomers wishing to access municipal services by placing settlement workers in public health

offices, childcare facilities, shelters, and recreation centres make Toronto a unique case in emphasizing

the visibility of immigrants as the targets of particular policy goals.

On the other hand, what we know about San Jose’s commitment to the incorporation of immigrants

suggests that the city of San Jose appears as an “urban centre that has not yet established a more mature

infrastructure for dealing with its immigrant population” (Gleeson et al. 2012), having delegated the

organization and funding of activities geared at the incorporation of immigrants either to the Santa Clara

county or to civil society. Though generally a socially progressive, pro-immigrant locale, which prides itself

for being a sanctuary city (Gleeson 2013), and which has provided a strong base for labor organizing that

has targeted particularly immigrant workers (the Justice for Janitors campaign, for instance, was launched

in San Jose), the City of San Jose has launched no specific action to increase the visibility of immigrants as

5 See http://diversecitytoronto.ca/

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a social category worthy of policy attention. Even one of the most extensive sources of city support for

immigrant communities in the city of San Jose, the Strong Neighbourhood Initiative, ‘works with several

immigrant-serving organizations to foster civic engagement and address community concerns in 20

neighbourhoods”, it was not explicitly designed to target-foreign residents (Gleeson 2013: 107).

Compared to the City of San Jose, the Santa Clara County has taken a slightly more proactive role in

fostering immigrant incorporation. Though currently staffed with 1.2 people, the County has created a

specific office for Immigrant Relations and Integration Services (IRIS) within its Human Resources

department. In 2000, it also sponsored a needs assessment study of the immigrant community residing in

the country, which went beyond assessing the needs of low-socio-economic status immigrants in the Area,

mostly Latino and Vietnamese, and resulted in the production of a research report called Knowledge of

Immigrant Nationalities (KIN). The IRIS office has also been instrumental in founding the Citizenship Day

Initiative, and an immigrant leadership training program, and in 2014 still reportedly funded initiatives in

the area of civic education, naturalization, and regularization particularly for immigrant minors (interview

with Santa Clara County IRIS officer, July 2014). However, interviews with immigrant service providers

identified a marked drop in financial support from the county after 2000. The director of an organization

providing legal services to immigrants in San Jose, in particular, noted that

“over the last 15 years, the funding has not always been at the same level from the County. It was

at a high point right after the year 2000 document, and then when the County started having

budgetary issues, then the funding started to drop. Recently it started to inch up a little more but

not to the level of right after the [KIN] document” (Interview with Director of legal services

providing organization, San Jose, July 2014).

In the next section, I will attempt to expand our knowledge of the incorporation contexts in the Greater

Toronto area and in San Jose/Silicon Valley. In particular, I will look at local-level immigrant service

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provision and the patterns of funding supporting these services initiatives. I will focus both on the density

of different types of services and the actors funding these initiatives. I will contend that the local-level

focus is important for two reasons. First, it allows us to understand local-level immigrant incorporation

contexts as a synthesis of national–level discourses and priorities regarding immigration as well as of local

actors’ responses to local pressures and demands. Additionally, focusing on local immigrant service

provision helps identify patterns of interactions between public institutions supporting the services and

the non-profit civil society organizations that actually deliver them. These interactions, in turn, suggest

mechanisms that we can empirically study, according to which interactions between levels of government

and civil society actors might drive the impact of different incorporation contexts.

Data

These preliminary results about local immigrant service provision in the Greater Toronto Area and in the

Silicon Valley have been derived from different sources. For the Greater Toronto Area, I have used 2013

Public Disclosure data from Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) Canada6 about federal disbursement for

immigrant service provision. I have tracked all non-profit organizations that received funding from CIC in

2013. I have then compared such list of non-profit organizations to the list of immigrant service providing

organizations created by the Government of Ontario7. I have then used publicly available information

about the non-CIC funded organizations to determine the types of immigrant services they offer. There is

no mechanism such as CIC Public Disclosure for the Ontario Ministries or the City of Toronto. As a result,

it is impossible to determine the areas of service priority for these two levels of government at this stage.

Reputational interviews with service providing organizations have allowed me to add two service

providing agencies to the official Ontario list.

6 http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/disclosure/grants/index.asp. 7 http://www.citizenship.gov.on.ca/english/newcomers/agencies.shtml Accessed February 3rd 2015

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Since immigrant service provision in the Silicon Valley is not nearly as developed a sector as in the Greater

Toronto Area, I have used multiple sources to create a list of agencies offering services to immigrants.

Data presented in this paper derive from a list of immigrant services created by the Santa Clara county; a

semi-structured interview with the Santa Clara County Immigrant Relations and Services officer; twelve

semi-structured interviews with service providing agencies in the area, and eight months of field research

conducted from May to December 2014.

Mapping immigrant service provision in the Greater Toronto Area

Located in the Southern part of the province of Ontario, on the shores of Lake Ontario (see Figure 1), the

Greater Toronto Area is a large metropolitan area and a designated Census Metropolitan Area (CMA),

with a population of 5,583,064 at the 2011 Census. Data from the National Household Survey of 2011

reveal that 48% of the residents in the Toronto CMA were born outside of Canada. More in particular,

54% of the Toronto CMA population over the age of 15 years was first-generation immigrant. Of all the

immigrant population in the Toronto CMA, 19% had immigrated over the past 5 years; 50% over the past

15 years 8 . Census data from 2006 reveal the tendency for newcomers to Canada to settle

disproportionately in the suburban areas of the Toronto CMA. As of 2011, visible minorities represented

49.1 of the population of the City of Toronto, 53.7% of the population in the City of Mississauga, 66.4% of

the population in Brampton, and 72.3% of the population in Markham9 (see figure 2). Around one third of

these visible minorities are born in Canada.

The lay understanding of the Greater Toronto Area includes a broader portion of the Southern Ontario

Territory (often including the Hamilton/St. Catherine’s Area) than the official CMA (see Figure 2). In the

8 http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/rel/Rp-eng.cfm?TABID=2&LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=1&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GK=0&GRP=0&PID=92633&PRID=0&PTYPE=89103&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2006&THEME=80&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF= 9 https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm#a4

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context of this paper, I adopt the narrower definition of the Greater Toronto Area, corresponding to the

CMA. Since the CMA includes only a small portion of the Durham region, east of the City of Toronto, and

the large majority of the immigrant populations reside in the Peel and Halton regions, the York Region,

and the City of Toronto, I focus on these three areas when I assess the provision of immigrant services.

FIGURE 1. MAP OF SOUTHERN ONTARIO

Priorities of the federal strategy for immigrant incorporation

Immigrant incorporation is a multi-level governance issue in the Greater Toronto, with significant funding

for immigrant services hailing from different levels of government. Citizenship and Immigration Canada

(CIC), is a department of the Canadian federal government, with the mandate to “facilitate the arrival of

immigrants, provide protection to refugees, and offer programming to help newcomers settle in Canada.

It also grants citizenship, issues travel documents to Canadians, and promotes multiculturalism”. In the

scenario of immigrant services, CIC is the biggest player, directly providing funding to organizations

delivering services to immigrants via a regional office of the federal government. Other federal agencies,

such as, for instance, the Department of Public Safety, or Industry Canada, also provide funding to help

newcomers settle in Canada, notably, to promote initiatives to promote their integration in the labor

market. Additionally, organizations providing services to immigrants also receive non-federal funding,

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prominently from the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, and the City of Toronto. Like it is

explained later in this paper, Ontario Ministries and the City of Toronto may also receive CIC funding for

specific initiatives.

FIGURE 2. THE GREATER TORONTO AREA (GTA) AND THE CENSUS METROPOLITAN AREA (CMA)

This section will start by assessing the number and type of immigrant service initiatives in the Greater

Toronto Area funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada in 2013.

As Table 1 indicates, the two top priorities in terms of immigrant service provision for Citizenship and

Immigration Canada, measured in terms of the number of agencies receiving funding for a particular

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activity, are Language Instruction and

Settlement Counselling. In particular, twenty-

eight agencies received funding from CIC for

language instruction services just in the City of

Toronto (62% of those offered in the entire

GTA); an additional seventeen agencies were

funded in the Peel/Halton region and the York

region, where recent immigrants tend to

disproportionately settle.

Settlement counselling encompasses a number

of referral and information, interpretation and

translation, services that are available for

landed immigrants in the first three years

immediately after immigration. The number of

settlement counselling initiatives funded by CIC immediately follows that of language instruction services.

In 2013, in particular, CIC funded forty-one agencies to provide settlement counselling services, 78% of

which were located in the City of Toronto.

The third area of priority for CIC funding, after language instruction and settlement counselling, is

represented by social and professional networking support initiatives. In 2013, CIC funded twenty-two

agencies (the large majority of which based in the City of Toronto) to conduct activities that facilitate the

socio-economic incorporation of immigrants. The type of agencies that received networking support

funding range from community centres, the Toronto Public Library, to School District Boards.

TABLE 1. CIC-FUNDED IMMIGRANT SERVICE PROVISION, GTA

2013

Type of service

Number of immigrant services funded by CIC in the Greater Toronto Area, 2013

Language Instruction 44

Settlement Counselling 41

Social and Professional Networking Support 22

Local Immigration Strategies 16

Employment Assistance 10

Health and Mental Health 4

Housing and Community Building 3

Leadership and Citizenship 2

Refugee Services 1

Other 2

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Additionally, CIC funded sixteen agencies to develop and support local-level strategies and partnerships

to foster immigrant incorporation. The area of highest priority for the strengthening of local strategies in

2013 was the streamlining of the provision of settlement services. Ten out of the sixteen agencies that

received funding under this rubric did so for initiatives such as: the development of consultative

partnership councils and local settlement strategies; the maintenance of the settlement.org website and

settlement information kiosks; and the Settlement workers in Schools and Library Settlement partnership.

Two agencies received funding for the improvement of local language services, one of which for English

Language training (i.e., development of the Ontario conference of Teachers of English as a Second

Language) and the other for French Language instruction. In addition, CIC funded three initiatives to

improve the provision of employment assistance. In particular, it funded the Ontario Ministry of

Citizenship and Immigration to develop the Ontario Bridge Training Program, geared at the “competitive

and transparent selection of Ontario non-profits that seek to help skilled immigrants who are facing

barriers to workforce integration and retention in the Ontario labor market”. It also supported the City of

Toronto – Economic Development and Culture for the management of an Intergovernmental Committee

for Economic and Labour Force Development in Toronto. Finally, in 2013 CIC funded a well-established

non-profit, COSTI Immigrant Services, for the provincial coordination of the Orientation to Ontario project,

that is designed to expedite and facilitate the settlement of newcomers to Ontario and to help them make

better and more informed choices, as well as for the coordination of the Ontario job search coordination.

In 2013, CIC funded ten additional employment assistance programs, five of which are specifically geared

at highly skilled immigrants. For instance, CIC provided financial support to the Toronto Region Immigrant

Employment Council, a well-established institutions promoting matching and mentorship initiatives for

immigrants, to “find solutions to better integrate immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area labor market”.

Finally, four mental health initiatives received CIC federal funding, two of which were about actually

providing services and two were about developing tools and expertise to address mental health concerns

20

among immigrant and refugee populations (for instance, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in

Toronto received funding for the development of E-tools and a community of practice for refugee mental

health; the Hong Food mental Health association received funding for the initiative “Journey to promote

mental health”, consisting of mental health training offered in English and French with the objective to

enhance the capacity of settlement workers to address mental health issues).

Finally, low priority areas in CIC funding for 2013 were: temporary accommodation (with two agencies in

Toronto receiving funding for that); community building and leadership initiatives (with the YMCA of

Greater Toronto receiving funding for “leadership development for Newcomer youth”). The support of a

specific refugee strategy for the Greater Toronto area was not an area of high concern for CIC in 2013,

since only one non-profit in the Peel/Halton region received funding to provide “in transit assistance to

Government Assisted Refugees arriving at Pearson airport”.

Residual CIC-funded initiatives that cannot be merged to the other categories so far discussed include the

publication of FOCUS, a newsletter on immigration and integration, and the funding for newcomer

information centre project, directing eligible newcomers to appropriate settlement services.

21

FIGURE 3. CIC-FUNDED IMMIGRANT SERVICES IN GTA, 2013

FIGURE 4. CIC-FUNDED IMMIGRANT SERVICES IN GTA, 2013 PER REGION

City of Toronto

Peel/Halton Region

York Region

Language

Instruction Settlement

Counselling

Social and

Professional

Networking

Support Local

Immigration

Strategies

Employment

assistance Health and

Mental

Health

Other Refugee

Services

Leadership

and

citizenship

Housing

22

FIGURE 5. NON-CIC FUNDED IMMIGRANT SERVICES IN GTA, 2015

FIGURE 6. NON-CIC FUNDED IMMIGRANT SERVICES IN GTA, PER REGION

City of Toronto

Peel/Halton Region

York Region Housing

and

Community

Building

Legal

Clinics

Language

Instruction

Settlement

Counselling

Employment

Assistance

Health and

Mental

Health

Housing

and

Community

Building

Leadership

and

Citizenship

Refugee

Services

Legal

Clinics

23

Beyond CIC-funding: locally supported immigrant services

The initiatives funded by CIC do not exhaust the scenario of immigrant service provision in the Greater

Toronto Area. A significant number of other initiatives exist that receive funding at the provincial and city

level, which on one hand reconfirm federal priorities but also meet local needs and demands.

FIGURE 7. NON-CIC FUNDED IMMIGRANT SERVICES, 2015

CIC priorities, i.e. language instruction and settlement counselling, are partially reconfirmed at the local

level. Settlement counselling is the area with the highest density of service provision among non-CIC

funded initiatives, with thirty-four agencies present in the GTA, 52% of which are based in the City of

Toronto. Language instruction services total fourteen. The pattern of distribution of settlement services

across the GTA is similar for CIC and non-CIC funded agencies: unlike all other areas of service provision,

where agencies are mostly located within the City of Toronto, settlement services are more evenly

distributed across different regions of the GTA.

On the other hand, the majority of employment services in the Greater Toronto area (twenty-four out of

a total of thirty-four) appear to derive funding from sources other than CIC. Just like settlement

counselling services, thirteen of the non-CIC funded employment services are based in the City of Toronto,

while ten are located in the surrounding regions. Employment services encompass job search workshops;

Type of service

Number of immigrant services

not funded by CIC in the Greater

Toronto Area, 2013 per type

Language Instruction 14

Settlement counselling 34

Employment Assistance 24

Health and Mental Health 11

Housing and Community Building 15

Leadership and Citizenship 3

Refugee Services 2

Legal Clinics 3

24

job matching; pre-employment preparation; pathways to self-employment and industry-specific

employment counselling. Five of these twenty-three employment assistance services are administered by

ethno-racially specific agencies. While the reference to a particular ethno-racial group does not imply that

these agencies will only serve that particular population group, it can reasonably be assumed that their

services will take into account the particular employment challenges of their specific constituency.

Areas of service provision with a pronounced discrepancy between CIC funding and local density are those

of housing/community building and health/mental health. While CIC in 2013 only supported one

temporary shelter initiative (administered by COSTI Immigrant Services), there are five agencies in the

City of Toronto providing access to housing services. Additionally, eleven non-CIC funded agencies provide

micro-community building initiatives, initiatives for youth mentorship, and school-library connections.

Regarding health and mental health initiatives, the majority of federally-funded initiatives aim to create

an infrastructure recognizing immigrants as a separate category worthy of policy attention. On the other

hand, locally-funded services are largely geared at specific population groups and focus on the actual

service provision. For instance, the Punjabi Community Health Services of Brampton received CIC funding

for settlement counselling initiatives. Locally, however, this agencies plays a significant role in the

provision of mental, geriatric and family health services in the Punjabi-dominated city of Brampton.

Additionally, the non-CIC funded Centre for Spanish Speaking peoples provides HIV/AIDS community

prevention programs for the low-income Spanish speaking population mostly residing in the Western part

of the City of Toronto. Moreover, the 519 Church St. Community Centre, a City of Toronto Agency with a

mandate to support the health and participation of the LGBTQ community, provides specific counselling

services to the LBGTQ refugee claimant population in the inner core of the City of Toronto (where other

refugee-only services are also located, such as Sojourn House).

25

Finally, legal clinics seem to operate mostly under provincial or city funding. Part of the reason why this

might happen is that they do not qualify as newcomer services, i.e. they are not specifically meant to

facilitate the integration of newcomers in the first three years after migration. Rather, they provide

culturally sound and population specific legal services, and work to support immigrant populations

beyond settlement.

FIGURE 8. TOTAL NUMBER OF IMMIGRANT SERVICES IN GTA, 2013-2015

26

FIGURE 9. TOTAL NUMBER OF IMMIGRANT SERVICES IN GTA 2013-2014, PER REGION

Language

Instruction

Settlement

Counselling

Social and

Professional

Networking

Support Local

Immigration

Strategies

Employment

Assistance

Housing and

Community

Building

Health and

Mental

Health Leadership

and

Citizenship Refugee

Services

Legal

Clinics Other

27

SILICON VALLEY

What is commonly known as the Silicon Valley is not an actual geographical or administrative territory.

Rather, the label serves to identify that part of the San Francisco South Bay Area known for the density of

high-tech corporations that developed as a result of the “dotcom revolution” in the 1990s.

Administratively, it virtually overlaps with the Santa Clara County. The US Census Bureau estimates the

population of the County at 1,871,107 in 2014. According to the American Community Survey of 2013,

695,499 were foreign-born, 62.3% of which were born in Asia, and 26.4% in Latin America. Just like in

the case of the Greater Toronto Area, the boundaries of the Silicon Valley are malleable. Given, for

instance, the significant amount of high-tech workers living in Fremont, this area is sometimes considered

as part of the Valley, despite the fact it administratively belongs to the Alameda County. San Jose is the

largest urban area in the Silicon Valley and in the Bay area as well. The US Census Bureau estimated the

city’s population to be 998,537 in 2013. It is currently the 10th largest urban centre in the United States.

FIGURE 10. THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

28

FIGURE 11. THE SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA

The scenario of immigrant services is evidently different from the one in the Greater Toronto Area, starting

with the way these services are publicized and listed. While in the Greater Toronto Area, an official list of

services is available on the Ontario’s government website and the Federal Government funded an Ontario-

based non-profit, OCASI (Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants), to maintain the website

Settlement.org (both in English and French), which provides an updated list of all immigrant services

available in the Greater Toronto area, per region, a list of immigrant services in Silicon Valley is even hard

to find.

An inventory of eighty-nine services can be found on the website of the Santa Clara County, which

maintains a section called “immigrantinfo10”. Such list, however, is not immediately comparable to the

ones existing for the Greater Toronto Area.

10 http://immigrantinfo.org/resources.cfm?type=local, Accessed April 20th 2015.

29

Type of service Number of agencies providing the service

Cultural reproduction organizations 19

ESL 19

Advocacy and leadership 13

Legal services 12

Family services 9

Refugee services 7

Professional organizations 6

Health and mental health services 6

Services for low-income individuals 5

Employment services 6

Services for seniors 4

FIGURE 12. NUMBER OF AGENCIES PROVIDING IMMIGRANT SERVICES IN THE SILICON VALLEY, 2014

The table above summarizes the areas of operation described as immigrant resources by the Santa Clara

County. It should be noted that the mode frequency (nineteen organizations) refers to cultural

reproduction civil society organizations, which do not provide actual professional services to immigrants

but rather serve as loci for cultural preservation and reproduction. Examples of organizations falling under

this category are the Eritrean Community in Santa Clara County (ECSCC), which “provides adult and youth

workshops, organizes cultural shows, picnics, celebrates Eritrean national holidays and provides support

in response of the community request in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner”; the Japanese

American Museum, which “collects, preserves and disseminates the culture and history of Japanese

Americans in Santa Clara Valley”; the Mexican Heritage Corporation of San Jose, which “exists to affirm,

30

celebrate and preserve our rich cultural heritage by promoting the arts, building community and

advancing social and economic development”.

Six additional organizations in the list of eighty-nine provided by the Santa Clara county are ethnic

professional organizations, such as the South Asian Bar Association, whose mission is “to ensure that Bay

Area South Asian lawyers are provided an avenue to develop professionally, network among peers and

volunteer within the South Asian community”; or the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Silicon Valley,

whose mission is to “maximize Hispanic business and economic development of Silicon Valley by serving

as an advocate and resource for its members, business owners, professionals, students and the

community in general by being the premier voice for Hispanic and minority businesses”.

I exclude these two categories from the comparison of immigrant service provision between the Greater

Toronto Area and the Silicon Valley, since they do not provide specific professional services to immigrants.

While it can be argued that these organizations do offer opportunities for immigrant incorporation,

including these organizations in my comparison would require adding all immigrants’ civil society

organizations in the analysis, both for the Greater Toronto Area and the Silicon Valley, while theoretically

these can be considered an effect of the particular types of interaction between public institutions and

civil society actors one can proxy by analyzing the provision of immigrant services and their sources of

funding.

Some other initiatives included in the Santa Clara county list are also excluded from the comparison either

because they do not offer services (for instance, the research Centre for Healthy Aging in Multicultural

Populations based at San Jose State University;); because they are not offered in the Silicon Valley (for

instance, the San Mateo County Hot meals list) or because they serve transnational support purposes

(such as the Mexican Consulate in San Jose).

31

Of all the agencies left in the list that actually provide services to immigrants, the largest numbers fall

under the categories of ESL instruction, the legal services and advocacy/leadership.

As regards legal services, one of these in the list (i.e. the Victim Witness Assistance, which refers victims

of crime to legal services, therapists and doctors) is provided by the Santa Clara County in English, Spanish

and Tagalog. The other legal service providers in the Silicon Valley are professional but belong mostly to

the civil society sphere, receiving funding mostly from private foundations (the Silicon Valley Community

Foundation being one of the greatest sponsors of initiatives in the area) and charging nominal fees from

clients in order to cover the running costs of the organization (Interviews with providers of legal services

in San Jose, 2014). The services these organizations offer revolve around adjustment of status,

naturalization and citizenship; family reunification workers’ rights, housing issues and access to public

services. Interviews with providers of legal services also revealed the County’s financial engagement into

the implementation of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Three of the eleven legal services

in Silicon Valley have a marked ethno-racial character (i.e, the Asian Law Alliance; the Catholic Charities

of Santa Clara county; and the Portuguese Community Centre).

The area of service provision where the Santa Clara County provides most support is that of leadership

and citizenship services. The County directly manages the Saving for Citizenship fund, i.e. a “matching

grant to apply for US citizenship, open to anyone who is legally ready to apply for US citizenship, speaks

and understands enough English to pass the citizenship test, lives in Santa Clara county and meets income

restrictions”. Additionally, the Santa Clara County Office of Human Relations directly offers an immigrant

leadership program for community leaders of different ethno-racial groups represented in the Silicon

Valley.

32

Two additional agencies provide citizenship preparation services. For instance, the Centre for Employment

and Training in San Jose offers free citizenship classes. The East Side Unified School District manages a

website with resources to prepare with citizenship interview.

The remaining agencies active in the area of leadership and citizenship focus community education,

leadership development and collective action, and community political organizing. More specifically,

Asian Immigrant Women runs programs in the areas of Education, Leadership Development and Collective

Action; the Council of American-Islamic Relations focuses on community mobilizing for the purposes of

advocacy and lobbying; the Sacred Heart Community services focuses on the training of community

leaders with the goal of “impacting policy and organizing to address the root causes of poverty”; Silicon

Valley Asian American Voices focuses on “educating the community and identifying key policy issues that

facilitate integration; SIREN – Services Immigrant Rights and Education Network runs leadership

development and electoral organizing programs; Silicon Valley Asian American Voices targets community

education and the identification of key policy issues that facilitate integration and Somos Mayfair

organizes collective action to impact policies and build power).

Semi-structured interviews with service providers in Silicon Valley have revealed the presence of however

dwindling Santa Clara financial support for this kind of initiatives. It should be noted that the majority of

leadership and citizenship initiatives in Silicon Valley have an ethno-racial character: six of the eleven

agencies cater to the Asian American community, while two focus on the Latino population.

The densest area of service provision after legal counselling and citizenship and leadership is that of family

support, which has a predominantly Latino and low-income audience. Programs mostly focus on child and

adult education and literacy support; housing assistance; after school programs; domestic violence, family

counseling and women’s support.

33

Following closely the number of family services, the Silicon Valley hosts seven agencies that provide

specific refugee services, which are eligible for federal funding from the Department of Justice and

Department of Homeland Security. Four of the seven agencies (i.e. the American Red Cross, the Catholic

Charities of Santa Clara County, the International Rescue Committee and the Jewish Family Services of

Silicon Valley) focus on refugee resettlement and retraining. Two provide application assistance and legal

consultation for refugees and other such categories (such as political asylees, victims of human trafficking

and other crimes, petitioners based on the Violence against Women Act). One agency (Asian Americans

for Community Involved) provides mental health counselling to refugees and victims of torture.

An area of priority in terms of public financial assistance is that of immigrant health and mental health. Of

the six health and mental health services targeting immigrants specifically in the Silicon Valley, four

receive some type of governmental assistance. State and county-level financial resources support the

Asian American Recovery Services; the Asian Americans for Community Involvement; the Filipino Family

and Support Services, and the Healthier Kids Foundation, which all focus on improving access to health

and mental health services by low-income children, individuals and families. Health and mental health

initiatives that, upon inspection of their annual reports, do not appear to receive public funding are PRANA

(a specific program with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation focusing on culturally tailored programs, health

related services and educational resources for South Asians) and the Family Alliance for Counselling Tools

and Resolution, (a program providing mental health therapy, clinical and social services for immigrant

individuals and families impacted by deportation and detention).

Unlike in the Greater Toronto Area, where there are thirty-four publicly funded employment services,

including for highly skilled immigrants, there are six employment services in the Silicon Valley, only one of

which targets highly-skilled immigrants (Upwardly Global, affiliated with another agency in San Francisco)

and serves approximately 300 cases per year (personal correspondence with staff at IMPRINT, Immigrant

Professional Integration, New York, 2014). The other services cater to low-skilled immigrants, mostly

34

Spanish and Vietnamese-speaking. Similar to the Greater Toronto Area, where employment services are

more evenly distributed throughout the metropolitan area than most other services, two of the low-

skilled employment services are located in San Jose, and the other three in surrounding areas.

Another area of marked difference in the service provision sectors of the Greater Toronto Area vis-à-vis

the Silicon Valley is that of language instruction. If ESL initiatives represent the densest area of service

provision in the Valley, I could count nineteen (versus fifty-eight in the GTA) agencies offering English

Language instruction, twelve of which are community-based and faith-based organizations and seven are

public libraries in the main centres in Silicon Valley. While previous evidence suggests County involvement

in the funding of ESL programs as of 2008 (Gleeson and Bloemraad 2012), in 2014 I could find no evidence

of such financial support. Semi-structured interviews also revealed ESL instruction reliance on volunteers

in the Silicon Valley (Interview with staff at immigrant and refugee service providing agency, 2014). English

language instruction needs are otherwise privatized, with 7 community colleges and 7 adult education

programs offering classes for a fee.

Another area of service provision that did appear to receive County assistance in 2014 was that of

initiatives not for immigrants as such, but as low-income individuals. The Santa Clara County Office Social

Services Agency provides health insurance coverage via MediCal or the Healthy Families/Healthy Kids

programs and the Santa Clara Valley Medical Centre Financial Assistance offers a financial counselling

service, which assists individuals in obtaining medical assistance. The County also offered referral services,

such as a list compiled by the Santa Clara county of all hot meals available in the county, in English, Spanish

and Vietnamese; a website providing information for people representing themselves in the Court,

maintained by the Santa Clara County Superior Court and the Santa Clara County Housing search service,

a free service to list and find Section 8 and affordable housing in the Santa Clara county).

35

Finally, four specific programs for immigrant seniors exist, one of which sponsored by the Santa Clara

county (a resource guide of transportation option and services in Spanish). The other three services are

all community-based and cater to Asian Seniors (India Community Centre, Self Help for the Elderly and Yu

Ai Kai).

36

FIGURE 13. IMMIGRANT SERVICES GTA, 2013-2015.

FIGURE 14. IMMIGRANT SERVICES, SILICON VALLEY 2014

37

Comparing the Greater Toronto Area and Silicon Valley: discussion

What conclusion can be drawn from the description of immigrant services provision in the Greater

Toronto Area and in Silicon Valley? In this section, I will explore the main features of the two contexts. I

will describe how local-level service provision helps identify local incorporation regimes as a synthesis of

national discourses on immigration and naturalization and local integration needs.

Inspecting Figure 12 and 13 reveals the scale of immigrant service provision in the two urban contexts as

one of the major differences between the Toronto and the Silicon Valley regimes. Overall, even

considering the different population size of the two areas, 5,521,235 (of which 2,642,910 foreign-born)

in the Greater Toronto Area and 1,862,000 (of which 695,499 foreign-born) in the Santa Clara County, the

number of immigrant service providing agencies is larger in the former context than in the latter. Focusing

on specific areas of intervention provides a more nuanced perspective. While the extent of ESL initiatives

is similar, once taking foreign-born population size into account (which is 3.8 times larger in the GTA

compared to the Santa Clara County), the number of employment assistance initiatives in the GTA is 5.6

times larger than in Silicon Valley. On the other hand, the larger sizes of the citizenship and leadership

initiatives, as well as of legal clinics, in the Silicon Valley vis-à-vis Toronto, suggests the predominance of

these activities in the former incorporation regime, particularly considering that the target population of

these initiatives is smaller, in absolute terms, than in the latter context.

An additional major difference between the Greater Toronto Area and the Silicon Valley incorporation

regimes is the clientele that immigrant service agencies cater to in the two contexts. In the Greater

Toronto Area, immigrant services are offered to all immigrants, regardless of their status (voluntary or

refugees), and of their levels of skill and income. A bias toward low-skilled, and low socio-economic status

immigrants is present instead in the Silicon Valley. Additionally, unlike in the Greater Toronto Area,

38

refugees appear to be a distinct social category in terms of service provision, and certainly the one

privileged by the federal government as a social category worthy of specific policy attention.

Finally, a comparison of the two urban contexts highlights differences in the patterns of service provision

and related sources of funding. These, in turn, suggest that the local level incorporates some of the

national-level priorities regarding immigrant incorporation. The two most conspicuous areas of service

provision are Settlement Counselling and Language (largely English) instruction, and Citizenship and

Immigration Canada (CIC) funds the majority of agencies providing services in these two areas. It should

also be noted that, as international literature indicates, the majority of immigrant service initiatives are

located in the City of Toronto, i.e. the part of the Greater Toronto Area with the longest history of

migration, and not in the neighbouring cities (located in the Peel/Halton and York region) where,

paradoxically, the majority of newcomers currently reside. However, CIC funding patterns for language

instruction and settlement counselling violate this model. Of all service areas supported by CIC, language

instruction and settlement counselling services are the most evenly distributed across the Greater

Toronto Area.

Observing the areas of funding priority for Citizenship and Immigration Canada also helps identify the

socio-economic integration of immigrants as an important part of the national incorporation model. While

an analysis of the development of the Canadian national multiculturalism policy would require a

longitudinal appraisal of the possibly shifting areas of priority for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, it

is plausible that the federal focus on socio-economic integration incorporates the international policy shift

towards integration and social cohesion.

Additionally, examining the funding patterns of CIC singles out decentralization as an increasingly

important pillar of Canadian multiculturalism. In 2013, CIC funded 16 sixteen agencies (including the

39

Ontario Ministry for Citizenship and Immigration and two departments of the City of Toronto) to develop

local strategies and partnerships for successful incorporation.

Looking at the number of employment assistance initiatives in the Greater Toronto Area suggests that

labour market incorporation is more of a local than a federal priority. Looking qualitatively at the features

of employment assistance provision reveals a strong focus on employment “that is commensurate with

immigrants’ skills and abilities”. This might be a response to the debate on the recognition of foreign

credentials and the increasing evidence about newcomers’ difficulty positioning themselves on the

Ontario labor market in line with the expertise accrued abroad.

Areas of relevance to newcomers’ everyday experiences, such as accessible housing, culturally

appropriate health and mental health care, and community building also appear to be the domain of local

immigrant service initiatives.

Finally, it should be noted the relatively low number of leadership and citizenship initiatives and of

immigrant legal clinics in the Greater Toronto Area, respectively five (two of which funded by CIC) and

three (all locally funded). This suggests that Canadian multiculturalism, nationally and locally, is predicated

upon a conceptualization of naturalization based on the provision of opportunities for institutional

incorporation (through language instruction and pro-active orientation to the Canadian institutional

context), rather than on legal remedies or immigrant activism. Additionally, the small number of initiatives

specifically targeting refugee populations indicates an incorporation paradigm that does not emphasize

different trajectories for “regular” vis-à-vis “forced” immigrants.

The San Jose/Silicon Valley immigrant incorporation regime reveals different assumptions and priorities,

as a result both of national level discourses about immigrant integration as well as local demands.

Not unlike the Greater Toronto Area, the largest number of immigrant service initiatives can be found in

the realm of language instruction. While existing scholarship documents a commitment of the Santa Clara

40

County to fund these initiatives, in 2014 I cannot find any evidence for such commitment, either from

online resources of the Santa Clara county, or from interviews with Santa Clara county officials, or from

service providers. It should be noted, however, that seven of the nineteen language instruction initiatives

are offered by public libraries in the major centres of the Silicon Valley area, testifying a commitment of

public institutions to ESL Instruction. It should also be noted that these initiatives are mainly geared at

low-income, low-literacy immigrants, unlike in the Greater Toronto Area, where language instructions is

described as a strategy for successful labor market integration, in line with the skills and education of

newcomers.

The second and third largest areas in terms of immigrant service provision in the San Jose/Silicon Valley

area are leadership and citizenship initiatives as well as legal clinics. It should be noted that many of the

agencies active in one of these fields are also active in the other. Interviews with Santa Clara County

officials and service providers in Silicon Valley reveal county engagement in funding citizenship and civic,

and legal education initiatives. Conceptually, these areas of initiatives can be understood as a functional

equivalent of what settlement counselling is in the Greater Toronto Area. While the goal of both is

substantive incorporation through the facilitation of citizenship, features of the Toronto incorporation

context reveal that this goal is understood to be achieved through institutional orientation in Canada and

through grassroots activism and community leadership in the United States.

One additional feature worthy of attention in the comparison between the Toronto and Silicon Valley

local incorporation contexts is the largest proportion of ethno-racially specific agencies operating in the

legal and citizenship/leadership arena in the latter context. Contrary to the predictions of critics of

multiculturalism, which posit increased ethno-specific organization as a result of institutional and

discursive incentives for the preservation of cultures boundaries, the patterns of community mobilization

in the Silicon Valley suggest that ethno-racial boundaries might provide increased, rather than reduced,

opportunities for collective action in the absence (or scarcity) of public funding.

41

Another significant difference between the two contexts is the distinct features of refugee services in the

Greater Toronto Area versus the Silicon Valley. While the Canadian incorporation regime postulates no

specific difference between the immigrant and refugee population, the density of agencies providing

services in different areas and the patterns of availability of federal funding suggest that, while there is

no explicit American immigrant integration policy, there is indeed an American “refugee and other such

categories” policy, such that refugees from particular foreign regimes, political asylees and victims of

violence or human trafficking are considered more deserving of specific policy attention than other

categories of immigrants.

The analysis of the distribution of services across areas of intervention also suggests how local

incorporation regimes respond to local demands. Compared to the Greater Toronto area, where

employment assistance represents the third most important area of total public engagement with

immigrant integration, employment assistance programs in the Silicon Valley area rank significantly below

ESL, legal and citizenship services, as well as refugee services, probably reflecting the role of the Silicon

Valley as a national (and global) economic engine.

Related to the point above, it is also important to point out how the entire structure of the incorporation

regime in the Silicon Valley is predicated on an understanding of immigrants as predominantly low-skilled

and low-income. Despite the substantial number of highly-skilled immigrants in Silicon Valley, only one

employment service for professional immigrants is present. Civil society mobilization around the provision

of immigrant services suggests that immigrant status is only secondary to socio-economic status as a focus

of collective action. In other words, the structure of immigrant service provision in the Silicon Valley

resembles an anti-poverty mobilization approach rather than an incorporation strategy based on the

recognition of the specific position of immigrants (regardless of their socio-economic status) in the social

structure and the attempt to facilitate their full participation in the socio-economic and political

mainstream.

42

Some important limitations of this comparison should be pointed out. First of all, the focus here has been

on the density of organizations providing immigrant services across different areas of intervention. A

different approach might entail tracking the total spending for each area of intervention. Unfortunately,

insufficient data is available for that line of inquiry at the moment. While CIC publishes the fund it provides

to different agencies for specific purposes, acquiring data on amount and type of funding available (i.e.

the specific level of government it comes from) for all service provide agencies in the GTA and the Silicon

Valley would require a significant time and resource investment. Secondly, and related to the previous

point, more conclusive inferences about the priority areas of different levels of government regarding

immigrant incorporation would require assessing the number of initiatives funded over all applications

for funding submitted. Certainly, these data are not made public in the United States.

Conclusions

In this paper, I have provided a contribution to the understanding of local level immigrant incorporation

contexts. I have focused on the provision of immigrant services as a criterion for comparison. I have

suggested that the focus on immigrant service provision and relative sources of funding helps disentangle

the combination of national discourses and local pressures that inform the local contexts of incorporation.

This analytical strategy suggests important future areas of inquiry. More knowledge needs to be acquired

regarding local level variation in incorporation contexts. If national discourses trickle down to local

strategies, it is possible that differences in incorporation strategies are still larger at the national level than

they are at the across cities.

Looking at immigrant service provision at the local level also suggests the importance of looking beyond

policy when identifying local incorporation contexts. The analysis of the San Jose/Silicon Valley context

singles out how civil society actors might mobilize around areas left unattended (or insufficiently

attended) by policy, whether at the local or national level. Whether such civil society actors are more or

43

less consequential than government institutions (whether local or national) for immigrant incorporation

is a matter for empirical investigation, rather than for assumption.

In particular, more work is required on the effects of the particular configurations of state-civil society

organizations that are forged by different levels of policy commitment towards immigrant incorporation.

The Toronto model, characterized by the heavy interdependence of governmental institutions and civil

society organizations actually offering immigrant services, might serve as a beacon for the development

of immigrants’ organizational capacity, as existing literature suggests. It could also possibly result in the

institutionalization and the co-optation of immigrants’ civil society.

As a result, a focus on local-level immigrant incorporation regimes, as opposed to solely integration

policies, can help shed a better light on the different structures of state and society interactions and

develop alternative hypotheses as to how these different structure might impact the incorporation of

immigrants, particularly in the political realm.

44

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