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This article introduces and discusses the findings of the Canada School Choice Policy Index (CSCPI). This is the first index of its kind that measures the development of school choice policies across the Canadian provinces from 1980 to 2020 using eight unique indicators of choice. In contrast to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the CSCPI reveals that although Canada has witnessed an increase in school choice over time, this increase has largely been contained within public education systems rather than in the expansion of private education options. Our findings raise the importance of future research to address growing choice in public education systems across the provinces, in addition to choice in the private sphere.

Canadian immigration policy is widely considered successful in terms of policy endurance, process, programs, and politics. Canada’s focus on the recruitment of economic immigrants has been successful in a programmatic sense, while also maintaining the support of key stakeholders, enabling process success, and addressing political debates, enhancing political success. Favouring resettlement over asylum in refugee policy has addressed concerns over the abuse of the immigration system, while maintaining the support of stakeholders that benefit from the policy’s innovative private sponsorship provisions. Effective policy design is, however, only part of the story. Three contingent factors also stand behind Canada’s successful immigration policy. First, Canada’s isolated geography limits flows of asylum seekers and other unwanted immigrants. Second, the substantial power vested in the federal executive branch has enabled Canadian governments to respond to flows of unwanted migrants quickly. Third, the unplanned interaction of immigration settlement patterns, citizenship policy, and Canada’s electoral system has helped sustain a pro-immigration consensus among Canada’s major political parties. The importance of contingent factors in the success of Canadian immigration policy limits its portability. Even where policy design can be imitated, Canada’s reliance on strong executive-led actions to limit unwanted migration raises normative concerns that problematize our understanding of success in immigration policy.

Canadian immigration politics and policymaking are striking. Canadian admission targets have steadily increased since the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, regardless of the party in power and d...

Debates over religious accommodation in liberal-democratic states are common. I offer a framework for making sense of their often-abrupt eruption, unpredictable dynamics and variation across jurisd...

The German experience shows that liberal democracies are able to develop effective policies and maintain the support of voters when they demonstrate that immigration is in the public interest and can be well managed.

Introduction: In survey after survey, Canadians express strong support for the maintenance of relatively high levels of immigration and a policy of official multiculturalism. Canadian governments have long pursued aggressive immigration policies and, since 1971, have overseen a policy of official state multiculturalism. Public opinion in other industrialized democracies has been less supportive of immigration and, at least rhetorically, governments have been critical of multiculturalism. In this sense, references to "Canadian exceptionalism" in the sphere of immigration and multiculturalism politics and policy are credible. Canadians' support for immigration and multiculturalism has not, however, translated into an easy-going acceptance of demands for religious accommodation. This is especially true with respect to Islam. Public opinion toward Muslims is strikingly negative and efforts at meeting requests for accommodation have been resisted, at times strenuously. In this respect, Canada is anything but exceptional; attitudes toward Islam and Muslims are depressingly familiar. Our paper marks an attempt to make sense of this puzzling contradiction. How are we to understand the popularity of multiculturalism in Canada, on the one hand, and the frequency (and vociferousness) of anti-Muslim sentiment on the other? How can we begin to understand Canadians' exceptionalism with respect to support for immigration and multiculturalism and more typical antipathy toward Islam and Muslims? In an effort to address these questions, we advance a two-pronged argument. First, it is important to recognize that Islam is not just another minority religion. The stigma attached to Islam in Canada and other industrialized democracies is unique. Islam is cast by its critics as an existential challenge to liberal democratic states - a remnant of unenlightened, premodern thinking that is out of place in contemporary liberal societies. Second, we maintain that debates over religious accommodation in Canada trigger concern over the maintenance a particular mode of national identity, centered on liberal-democratic values and, ironically, multicultural tolerance. Intolerance of Islam is justified on behalf of protecting a secular, tolerant, liberal-democratic public ethos against a putatively premodern, intolerant and illiberal enemy. In a peculiar way, then, support for multiculturalism may inform opposition to Islam. After briefly touching on how immigration is changing Canada's religious landscape, we survey public opinion data on immigration, multiculturalism, and Islam. We then turn to practical manifestations of Islamophobia, including the troubling rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes. We go on to explore how anti-Muslim attitudes and behavior can thrive in a country defined by its commitment to multiculturalism. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's analysis of antisemitism in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1973), we argue that that fear of Islam is rooted in the history of the recent past, particularly as regards debates over immigrant integration that have been conducted against the backdrop of the so-called "war on terror." Anti-Muslim activists have exacerbated this fear by framing questions of integration in existential terms, whereby the compromises intrinsic to accommodation represent nothing less than a mortal threat to liberal democracy. We conclude by asking Canadians' conflicting views on immigration, multiculturalism and Islam have influenced electoral politics. We note that Canadian parties, particularly those on the Right, face a quandary. On the one hand, institutional dynamics which amplify the weight of new Canadians in electoral politics rule out heavy-handed attacks on multiculturalism; on the other, the deep well of anti-Muslim sentiment in Canada offers a tempting means of securing short term political advantages. We illustrate this dynamic through brief references to the 2015 and 2019 federal elections and the Conservative Party's 2016-17 leadership campaign.

Immigration is a contentious topic in most liberal democracies. Anti-immigrant politicians and parties have used nativism to generate electoral support and roll back immigration policies. In marked contrast, Canadian governments have continued to pursue an expansionary immigration program, with the support of the public. Explanations of Canadian exceptionalism point to Canada’s isolated geography and distinctive immigration and multiculturalism policies. We highlight the importance of three additional factors: the distribution of immigrants in Canada, Canada’s citizenship policy, and its Single Member Plurality electoral system. The interaction of these forces enhances the electoral weight of new Canadian voters. This, in turn, moderates Canadian political parties’ positions, helping shore up a robust cross-party political consensus. The portability of the “Canadian model” is therefore limited. While other countries may adopt Canadian policy approaches, given the contingent factors shaping the politics of immigration in Canada, generating similar degrees of political consensus will be difficult.

There is widespread agreement among scholars that the 1990s and 2000s witnessed a re-orientation of immigrant policies across western European countries. According to the literature, this re-orientation featured a new and strong focus on encouraging the adjustment of immigrants to the mainstream cultures and political norms of receiving societies. Our article looks back on the developments in Germany since the mid-1990s to examine these assumptions. We maintain that immigrant and immigration policy has shifted since the 1990s but that this shift is not as clear cut as many academic discussions would suggest. While there were good reasons to diagnose a (re) turn to assimilationism in the first half of the 2000s, we overestimated the strength and persistence of such trends. We draw on Rogers Brubaker's terminology in referring to current policies as a ‘new differentialism’. The new differentialism represents a novel trend in policy, reflective of broader societal transformations. These developments may comp...

Understood as a philosophy counselling group rights and concomitant public policies undertaken by governments to preserve and enhance group identities, multiculturalism has little purchase in European immigrant integration debates. However, based on interviews with various actors engaged in policies that affect immigrants in the Netherlands and Germany, we argue that multiculturalism remains a going concern if it is understood as a problem-solving practice through which governments acknowledge and work with ethnic and religious groups to address issues of mutual concern, particularly on issues related to gender. We label this ‘multicultural governance’ and argue that it supports the principal ends of integration policy: the socialization of immigrants into prevailing national languages, norms and institutions.

In this paper, we analyze Dutch policy debates that focused on the development of a distinct program to advance the social and economic participation of ethnic minority women (where this label captures immigrant women from non-Western countries). Drawing on intersectional analysis and theories of ethnic boundary formation, we argue that the parliamentary debates surrounding this policy program framed the social problems of these women to effectively reduce a diverse range of ethnic minority women into a narrowly defined group of Muslim women. Referencing multiple axes of difference, the adopted policies encouraged women to overcome ethnic distinctions and gender inequality by abandoning their (imputed) religious practices. Parliamentary debates on these policies generated bright boundaries and assimilationist approaches to the integration of ethnic minority women. In our conclusion, we suggest how our framework might be applied to inform analyses of integration policy making and boundary construction in other countries.

This special issue of German Politics and Society offers a retrospective look atthe German Citizenship Act (Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, StAG), which passed in1999 and came into force in 2000.1 The law was and continues to be understoodby many academics, policymakers, and lay commentators as constitutinga “paradigm shift” in German citizenship policy and, by extension,prevailing conceptions of German nationhood. The introduction of the lawof territory (jus soli), in particular, was greeted as a welcome acknowledgementof Germany’s de facto status as a modern immigration country. Childrenborn and raised in Germany would no longer be rendered permanentforeigners as a consequence of the dominance of the law of descent (jus sanguinis)in the Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz (RuStAG), 1913. Proponentsassumed that the reduction of the residency requirement for naturalizationwould also allow greater numbers of long settled immigrants to assume therights and privileges of German nationality. Just as importantly, Germanywould join the European mainstream as regarded citizenship policy. Thestigma associated with its traditionally ethnic conception of nationhoodwould give way to a more positive, civic identity.

What are the contemporary ‘limits of the liberal state’ with respect to immigration, citizenship and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in contemporary Europe? The papers in this special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies examine how recent developments in Europe raise new questions regarding the relationship between liberalism, migration, identity and belonging. In this introduction, we identify three major themes that run through the papers in the issue—the use of liberal norms by states for exclusionary purposes; the possibility of the emergence of ‘illiberal liberalism’; and the extent to which identity politics and policy-making may be increasingly transcending and transforming the limits of the liberal democratic state in Europe. After briefly presenting these three themes, we summarise the arguments of the individual authors and suggest possible directions for future research.

A number of European governments have pronounced multiculturalism a failure and opted for more aggressive means of integrating immigrants into their societies. This paper asks what we are to make of this trend: does it reflect deeply rooted illiberal prejudice or a novel shift in liberal-democratic states' approaches to nation-building? I suggest that aggressive integrationism is reflective of a distinctly ‘Schmittian’ liberalism, which aims to clarify the core values of liberal societies and use coercive state power to protect them from illiberal and putatively dangerous groups. In contrast to liberal multiculturalists, who counsel accommodation, compromise and negotiation among majority and minority groups, Schmittian liberals see the task of immigrant integration as part of a broader campaign to preserve ‘Western civilisation’ from illiberal threats. Their framing of the problem in existentialist terms allows them to justify policies that might otherwise be seen to contravene liberal principles of tole...

I take issue with the Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable’s assertion that the mode of deliberation that facilitated the formulation of its report might serve as a model for bridging deep disagreements on immigration policy among politicians. I point out that the institutional dynamics that have shaped immigration politics and policy-making in the United States have tended toward horse trading and desperate last minute deals rather than reasoned compromises. Whereas the Roundtable suggests that its sensible recommendations might hold the key to shaping a politically viable comprehensive reform package, I maintain that the way forward may lie in abandoning efforts at comprehensive reform and focusing instead on piecemeal changes to discreet aspects of the immigration system.

This article examines the liberalisation of immigration policy in Canada and the US in the post-World War II era. I argue that shifting norms pertaining to race, ethnicity, and human rights cast longstanding discriminatory policies in Canada and the US in a highly critical light. Opponents of racially discriminatory immigration policies exploited this shift in normative contexts to highlight the disjuncture between Canada and the US’ postwar commitments to liberal norms and human rights, on the one hand, and their extant policy regimes, on the other. The resulting pressure set in motion comparable processes of policy stretching and unravelling, which culminated in policy shifting in the mid-1960s. Policy shifting was, however, subject to very different political dynamics. Whereas Canada's institutional configuration granted the executive branch and bureaucracy a high degree of autonomy that enabled experimentation, the greater openness of the American political system led to a more politicised process, marked by compromises and deal-making. Thus while changing norms prompted the liberalisation of immigration policies in both countries, differences in their domestic political contexts resulted in very different admissions regimes.

Immigration has altered Germany’s religious landscape. While Catholics and Protestants are still dominant, Islam has emerged as the Federal Republic’s third largest religion with some four million believers. The German state has belatedly responded to this state of affairs by seeking to “integrate” Islam into its elaborate system of church-state relations. This process has been hampered by the politicization of Islam in Germany (and Europe more generally) and the difficulties in crafting a peak association for Muslims in line with those that represent Catholics, Protestants and Jews.

With the passage of a new citizenship law in 1999 and the so-calledZuwanderungsgesetz (Migration Law) of 2004, contemporary Germanyhas gone a long way toward acknowledging its status as an immigrationcountry (Einwanderungsland). Yet, Germany is still regarded bymany as a “reluctant” land of immigration, different than traditionalimmigration countries such as Canada, the United States, and Australia.It owes this image to the fact that many of today’s “immigrants”were in fact “guests,” invited to work in the Federal Republicin the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and expected to leave when they wereno longer needed. Migration was meant to be a temporary measure,to stoke the engine of the Economic Miracle but not fundamentallyalter German society. The question, then, is how did these “guestworkers” become immigrants? Why did the Federal Republicbecome an immigration country?

Transformations in global capitalism increased rates of international migration at the turn of the twentieth century, a period also marked by the wide- spread popularity of scientific racism, integral nationalism, and vaunted notions of state sovereignty. This paper considers how the intersection of these factors influ- enced migration and citizenship policymaking in Canada and Germany. In both cases, migration was harnessed to further economic objectives while groups deemed a threat to national integration because of their putative racial or ethno-national characteristics were excluded. The resultant policies would come to define Canada and Germany's approaches to the migration-membership dilemma for the much of the twentieth century. ***** Canada and Germany emerged as independent states in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Despite differences in geography, historical development, and regime type, similarities in the two states' approaches to the regulation of mass migration in this era of unprecedented globalization are striking. 1 Whereas migration was seized upon to meet the needs of rapidly expanding industrial and commercial agricultural sectors, restrictions aimed at guard- ing the nation against the "invasion" of "non-preferred" groups were also conceived, debated, and ultimately enacted. Globalization cat- alyzed a "double movement," facilitating the expansion of trans- national migration on a hitherto unsurpassed scale, while also prompting a political response in the form of immigration controls designed to further national integration. 2 In Canada, efforts to keep out "unwanted races" culminated in a complex policy regime based on discriminatory admission and naturalization policies. In Germany, the threat of "Polinization" led to the development of a temporary labor recruitment model, while efforts to exclude foreign Poles and east European Jews from membership drove the formulation of the highly restrictive Reichs- und Staatsange- horigkeitsgesetz of 1913. In both countries, solutions to the migration-membership dilemma were entrenched in durable insti- tutions that shaped policymaking in subsequent years. Exclusion based on race and ethnicity reinforced Canada's identity as a "white man's country" and Germany's volkish nationalism.

(2000). Power politics and nationalist discourse in the struggle for 'Northern Epirus': 1919-1921. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 149-162.

This paper argues that Aristotle's Rhetoric is a valuable source for contemporary theorists of the public sphere. Thus far, these scholars have failed to recognize that Aristotle's discussion of the art of rhetoric contains important elements of both rational/deliberative and agonistic models of the public sphere. Aristotle recognizes that persuasive political speech is reasonable, passionate, and reflective of the character of the speaker. After presenting a reconstruction of Aristotle's arguments concerning (1) the content of persuasive public speech and (2) its role in political deliberation, I discuss areas of agreement and disagreement between Aristotle and the two most influential representatives of rational/deliberative and agonistic models of the public sphere: Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt. The paper's conclusion refers to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s use of rhetorical speech in order to illustrate the advantages of Aristotelian persuasion over rational/deliberative and agonistic for...

The article presents a review and critique of Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. I focus primarily on the normative elements and consequences of Kymlicka's theory and present an alternative to his liberal defence of group‐differentiated rights. In marked contrast to Kymlicka, I argue that to truly protect their cultures minority groups must forge closer ties with their respective states. Furthermore, I suggest that multicultural citizenship can only be achieved through a commitment by both majority and minority groups to toleration and respect for deep diversity. To be effective, multiculturalism should be considered to be an ordering principle of the regime.

Immigration has long been central to Canada's economic development and nation-building aspirations. During periods of economic growth, immigration policy, with its attendant legislation and regulations, has sought to regulate if not solicit the orderly inflow of labor to capital. Through the late 18th and well into the 19th centuries the majority of immigrants entering Canada were either farmers encouraged to settle the Canadian agricultural hinterland – including, after the completion of the first transcontinental railway, Canada's vast and fertile western plains – or wage laborers who worked on Canada's canal and railway networks or in labor-intensive mining, forestry, and nascent manufacturing sectors. During periods of economic slowdown and shrinking employment markets, the Canadian welcome mat for immigrants was withdrawn and immigration policy redirected towards restricting the entry of jobseeking “foreigners.” The Canadian state's heavy-handed use of deportation ensured that “unwanted” immigrants would not place undue demands on existing forms of social provision or threaten stability through the spread of “mutinous ideologies” (such as socialism) and practices (such as union organizing). Keywords: race; assimilation and exclusion; ethnocentrism

By most accounts, the turn to a universal admissions regime in 1967 brought Canadian immigration policy into line with changing economic conditions. The points system would be used to recruit highly skilled immigrants needed for an increasingly complex postindustrial society. This chapter offers a revisionist account, arguing that the points system marked the culmination of a normatively driven political process catalyzed by the discrediting of scientific racism and emergence of human rights in the postwar period.

This article probes the consequences of Germany's 1999 citizenship reform as it pertains to the incorporation of immigrants. We maintain that the law's principled rejection of dual citizenship and related stipulation that children born into German nationality via the law's revolutionary jus soli provision choose between their German citizenship or that of their non-German parents between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three is unfair, potentially unconstitutional, and likely unworkable in administrative terms. We also argue that the decline in naturalization rates in Germany since 2000 is due to a combination of legal, administrative, and symbolic barriers in the law, as well as a lack of incentives for naturalization for immigrants from European Union member states and other rich industrialized countries. We believe that progress in the area of incorporation will require a shift in outlooks on the part of German political elites, such that immigrants are seen as potential members of a diverse community of free and equal citizens rather than untrustworthy and threatening outsiders.

Canada has emerged as an influential “model” informing discussions of immigrant integration in Europe (Kymlicka 2004). Proponents of the “Canadian model” cite its ability to promote social peace and liberal-democratic values, while also recognizing the identities and rights of ethnic minorities through a policy of official multiculturalism. Canadian politicians have done their share to encourage such thinking, rarely passing over an opportunity to laud Canada’s commitment to diversity, to both domestic and international audiences (Abu-Laban/ Gabriel 2002: 122). Canadian journalists and editorial writers have also felt free to prescribe Canadian solutions for ethnic tensions in European countries, as have scholars and a host of public intellectuals.