Sanctuary Cities and Urban Securitization in Federal States

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.

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.

Scholarship is split between seeing the Sanctuary City movement in a progressivist light of anti-border civil society movements, or, viewed as another iteration of citizenship controls. Critics point out how Sanctuary Cities, wherein municipalities provide services regardless of immigration status, do little to guarantee security for undocumented peoples who are at constant risk of deportation. Those who are optimistic about the movement’s emancipatory potential celebrate Sanctuary Cities’ ability to challenge the policing of migration. Why are the interpretations of Sanctuary City policies so polarized? I argue Sanctuary City literature suffers from trying to resolve the contradictions of state-based citizenship, devolving the challenge to the city, thus obscuring how state officials, business, and civil society actors can each possess local sovereignty control over urban space. My paper develops the metric of ‘private deputized sovereignty’ to trace how local policy discretion can implement or contest control over citizenship enforcement powers. I investigate how ‘private deputized sovereignty’ emerges from zoning technology inherent to urban spatial production. Conceptually, I introduce ‘seeing like a zone’ as a heuristic to challenge methodological nationalism and cityism which assume sovereignty resides with corporeal structures. In applying zoning analysis to Toronto’s Sanctuary City policy, the paper identifies economic and sanctuary zones where jurisdictional exceptions empowers local authorities, civil society, and/or private actors to either grant amnesty or exile migrants. Toronto being located within an immigrant federal state and being a global city offers a case for multiscalar analysis where migrants’ well-being and harm depends on the ‘privately deputized sovereign’s’ zoning choices in workplaces, healthcare, schools and the street.

<p>Cities across the world are contending with the human rights and policy consequences of exclusionary national and international migration regimes. Those in federal states have distinctive opportunities to create safe and inclusive (sub-)urban environments and to provide access to sub-national social services, like health, housing, and social assistance. But they also risk provoking hostile reactions from national governments and heated jurisdictional conflicts that can carry serious political and fiscal consequences. This is certainly true of cities in the United States, but it has not been true of Canada whose short history of sanctuary is defined by conflict avoidance. The federal government has not once taken an official stance on the legality of sanctuary city policies, while Mayors and City councils have carved off from broader struggles over the authority to govern migration and borders. This strategy has not served non-status migrants for whom avoiding contact with the federal government is their primary self-interest every day well; above all else, they need municipalities to stand up, intervene, and defend their right to the city. Drawing on empirical research on Toronto, Canada, this chapter reflects on the practical and political failings of localist approaches to sanctuary. Set in the context of struggles for control over data, legal space, and political identity, Toronto’s experience with sanctuary has been defined by the absence of political stewardship marked by an unwillingness to risk conflicts with the federal government. The failings of these policies, and of provincial conceptions of sanctuary, may serve as a lesson to cities in other national jurisdictions.</p>

<p>Cities across the world are contending with the human rights and policy consequences of exclusionary national and international migration regimes. Those in federal states have distinctive opportunities to create safe and inclusive (sub-)urban environments and to provide access to sub-national social services, like health, housing, and social assistance. But they also risk provoking hostile reactions from national governments and heated jurisdictional conflicts that can carry serious political and fiscal consequences. This is certainly true of cities in the United States, but it has not been true of Canada whose short history of sanctuary is defined by conflict avoidance. The federal government has not once taken an official stance on the legality of sanctuary city policies, while Mayors and City councils have carved off from broader struggles over the authority to govern migration and borders. This strategy has not served non-status migrants for whom avoiding contact with the federal government is their primary self-interest every day well; above all else, they need municipalities to stand up, intervene, and defend their right to the city. Drawing on empirical research on Toronto, Canada, this chapter reflects on the practical and political failings of localist approaches to sanctuary. Set in the context of struggles for control over data, legal space, and political identity, Toronto’s experience with sanctuary has been defined by the absence of political stewardship marked by an unwillingness to risk conflicts with the federal government. The failings of these policies, and of provincial conceptions of sanctuary, may serve as a lesson to cities in other national jurisdictions.</p>