Small town governments in North America have, in recent years, posed the most aggressive challenge to national immigration policy and multiculturalism. Immigration-related municipal ordinances were introduced by local officials to defend the rights of local residents from the adverse effects of (unauthorized) immigration. Municipal measures proposed to control im/migrants not only present a constitutional challenge to the federal pre-emption in matters of immigration law (which ineptitude they purport to redress), they expand on what Didier Bigo called a 'governmentality of unease', where migration is increasingly rationalized as a security problem. Municipal measures are re-bordering the inclusion/exclusion of (unauthorized) migrants by expanding the territorial and political rationality of immigration control from the border to the interior, and by imposing and dispersing new mechanisms of control into the everyday spaces and practices of im/migrants regarded as 'illegal' and undesirable. This article examines two immigration-related municipal measures (Hazleton, PA and Hérouxville, QC) which impose a logic of immigration control and identity protection through deterrence and incapacitation strategies, and thus erode civil rights of im/migrants. Copyright (c) 2009 The Author. Journal Compilation(c) 2009 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Multiculturalism became an official policy of the Canadian government in 1971. Since then, Canada has been cited as a world leader in diversity issues and a model of social engineering and institutional arrangement. In particular, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau is remembered as its visionary author. Another debate, mostly internal to Canada, criticizes the Multiculturalism Act as limited and flawed, and questions its impact. The present article submits that multiculturalism as a policy is not the product of longstanding, intentional initiatives, but more an ‘accident’ or a coincidence of several factors. Moreover, multiculturalism as a social reality and/or nationalist vision is not the result of the policy, but a deeper social history. Canadians, even scholars, know very little about why multiculturalism ‘works’ or does not work, and why it has taken root in different ways in different cities. We suggest a theory regarding the central role of urban public space, not only as a decreed place for public life, but rather as the place for an emerging process of democracy. En 1971, le multiculturalisme est devenu une politique officielle du gouvernement canadien. Depuis, le Canada a été cité en exemple sur les questions de diversité et en modèle pour la construction sociale et l’aménagement institutionnel. L’ancien Premier Ministre, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, s’est notamment inscrit dans les esprits comme son créateur visionnaire. Un autre débat, national pour l’essentiel, critique la Loi sur le Multiculturalisme comme étant limitée et imparfaite, et remet en cause son impact. Cet article avance que le multiculturalisme en tant que politique n’est pas le produit d’initiatives intentionnelles sur le long terme, mais plutôt un ‘accident’ ou une coïncidence entre plusieurs facteurs. De plus, le multiculturalisme en tant que réalité sociale et/ou vision nationaliste ne résulte pas de la politique, mais d’une histoire sociale plus profonde. Les Canadiens, intellectuels compris, en savent très peu sur ce qui fit que le multiculturalisme ‘marche’ ou pas, et qu’il s’ancre de manières différentes dans des villes différentes. L’article présente une théorie sur le rôle central de l’espace public urbain, non seulement en tant que lieu décrété pour la vie publique, mais surtout comme site pour un processus de démocratie naissant.
Mexico City is a well-known case of urban expansion. Most of the growth has been in its peripheries, occurring during two phases of housing privatization: a predominantly self-built urbanization by residents establishing irregular settlements (starting in the 1930s); and a relatively recent surge of mass-produced small-scale single-family housing built by state-sponsored development companies (underway since the year 2000). Informality, we argue, should not be understood as a mode of housing production setting in opposition self-build practices against industry-led and/or state-sponsored processes, but rather as a dia lectical urbanization logic shaped by the entanglements of in/formal processes in gov ern ance practices, land privatization and regularization, and urban infrastructure and ser vices deficits. We are particularly interested in a dominant narrative whereby the embed dedness of informality is constantly underplayed and irregular settlements are cast as a residual category, a problem to tolerate or in need of intervention, or the inevitable combination of demographic growth and housing shortage, rather than the direct outcome of urban policies and development processes. Conversely, recent housing policy in Mexico is officially narrated as an economic stimulus, a means to control and order (irregular) urban expansion, and an impulse to democratize homeownership. Our discussion of the entanglements of informality in Mexico City is based on an extended literature review of academic articles and official reports (predominantly in English), supplemented by a series of street and neighborhood explorations (in the summers of 2012 and 2013) across the metropolis.
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