The Fifth International Metropolis Conference
Vancouver, Canada
November 13-17, 2000
PLENARY SESSIONS
Monday November 13: Welcome Reception, Opening Presentations
The conference will open in the evening with words of welcome
from dignitaries, with a presentation on Vancouver and its diverse
population, and with a presentation of an artist’s special perspective
on immigration. A reception will follow.
18:00 Words of Welcome: Meyer Burstein, Co-Chair,
International Metropolis Project, Canada Speech
Elinor Caplan, Minister of Citizenship
and Immigration, Canada
Valerie Mitchell, Deputy Minister
of Multiculturalism and Immigration Ministry, British Columbia,
Canada Paper
18:15 Portrait of Vancouver’s Diversity: Recent Immigrants in
the Vancouver Metropolitan Area
Chair: Philip Owen, Mayor of Vancouver, Canada
Elizabeth Ruddick, Citizenship
and Immigration Canada, Ottawa, Canada
PowerPoint Slides
18:30 An Artist’s Perspective on Immigration
Anita Rau Badami, author of Tamarind Mem and The Hero's Walk, Vancouver,
Canada Speech
Tuesday November 14
8:30 Opening Address
Elinor Caplan, Minister of Citizenship
and Immigration, Canada
8:40 International Panel of Immigration Ministers
Moderator : Dr. Gilles Paquet,
Centre on Governance, University of Ottawa
10:00 Racism and discrimination: Is Public Policy up to the
Challenge?
Countries of migration, whose social cohesion and economic prosperity
are tied to the integration of large numbers of immigrants, must
face the challenge of dealing with racism and discrimination which
have the potential to fracture societies and to diminish the contributions
that immigrants are able to bring to their new societies. Although
racism is not a new problem, recent changes in the source of migration
coupled with the concentration of immigrants in certain urban centres
are bringing new pressures to bear on efforts to control racism
and its effects. These new pressures demand new ways of responding.
Chair: Hedy Fry, Secretary of State (Multiculturalism) (Status
of Women), Canada Peter Li,
University of Saskatchewan, Canada Paper
Jan Niessen, Migration Policy
Group, Brussels Paper
Valerie Preston, York University,
Toronto, Canada Paper
PowerPoint Slides
11:45 Migrant Smuggling and Criminal Corporatism
Economic globalization, demographic imbalances, a revolution in
communications, receptive host communities and cheap travel have
created unprecedented incentives for clandestine migration and fertile
ground for international criminal organizations to exploit. The
factors are not entirely new but the scale is. We are, as a result,
moving from a cottage-industry stage of illegal migration to a corporate
stage with the emergence of horizontally and vertically integrated
criminal organizations. The horizontality refers to their links
with other illegal activities such as guns and drugs, thus drawing
upon existing transportation and distribution networks, and the
verticality to the production of pre-arrival illegal documentation
and post-arrival exploitation of migrants via the sex trade and
exploitative labour conditions. The growing power of these criminal
networks is threatening to undermine both established immigration
control mechanisms as well as the international asylum machinery.
Governments recognize the ineffectiveness of current measures, however,
no coherent national or international strategies have emerged for
responding to the threat. What is becoming clear is that solutions
will require fundamental policy realignments involving measures
that include addressing the root causes of migration, international
cooperative arrangements among police agencies, and local, community-based
strategies.
A panel of speakers will examine the transnational smuggling industry,
the root causes that shape its profitability and the policy and
program context in which it operates. Attempts will be made to discern
the future of clandestine migration and to identify the range of
public policy responses - from legislation, policing and punitive
measures through to stabilizing labour arrangements, fiscal measures
and international agreements – that will need to be brought into
play.
Chair: Guido Bolaffi, Ministry of Social Affairs, Rome, Italy
Ko Lin Chin, Rutgers University,
Newark, New Jersey
Jonas Widgren, International
Centre for Migration Policy Development, Austria Paper
Robert Paiva, International Organization
for Migration, Permanent Observer to the United Nations, New York,
USA Paper Speech
Wednesday November 15
9:00 Keynote address: "Immigration, Trust, and Social Order"
Chair: Howard Duncan, Metropolis Project, Citizenship and Immigration
Canada, Ottawa, Canada Bhikhu
Parekh, University of Hull, United Kingdom Paper
9:45 Transnational communities and their implications for citizenship
and social order
Academics and policy officials from a number of countries will
speak to the policy implications of well-established transnational
communities for citizenship and allegiance, civic participation,
and social order. If transnationalism and other manifestations of
globalization alter the bonds of citizenship, trust, and social
order, do they do so in ways markedly different from other forces
in contemporary society? Is transnationalism a feature of modern
society that demands special attention from government? How should
states meet the policy challenges produced by the changes in sending
and receiving states that are creating higher levels of dual or
multiple citizenship? To what extent should liberal democracies
extend rights and otherwise offer societal membership to non-citizen
residents? Does transnationalism significantly affect national interests;
does it affect the efficacy of traditional government responses;
and does it, as some have argued, require that public policy focus
on cities to an even greater extent than is warranted by their economic
and demographic prowess?
Chair: Francine Fournier, UNESCO
Michael Fix, The Urban Institute,
Washington D.C.
Patrick Weil, University of Paris
Stephen Castles, University of
Wollongong, Australia
11:45 Transnational communities and their implications for national
and local economies, for business, and for labour
Commentators from different countries - from transnational community
“source countries” and from “recipient” countries - will look at
the phenomenon of transnationalism from opposite points of view.
How do the benefits generated by transnational communities to the
source country (such as remittances, business and trade opportunities)
compare with those to the receiving country? What are some of the
costs to the receiving country and to the source country (such as
brain drain; loss of entrepreneurs)? How do we assess these costs
and benefits and how are they distributed between host communities
and transnational communities; how do we develop policies to respond?
Chair: Richard Bedford, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Steve Vertovec, University of
Oxford, United Kingdom
David Ley, University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Paper
Ivan Light, University of California,
Los Angeles, USA Paper
Thursday November 16
9:00 Youth and The Second Generation: Trends in Social and Economic
Integration
This session will be a discussion of the social and economic integration
of youth, the children of immigrants, into the new societies chosen
by their parents. Is the future one of economic prosperity, full
integration, and growing social harmony between the children of
immigrants and those of the native-born, or is it one of increased
ethnic, religious and racial segregation? Will our children live
together or apart?
Chair: Rinus Penninx, Co-chair, International Metropolis Project,
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Marie McAndrew, Immigration
et métropoles, Université de Montréal, Canada Paper
Jean Gaeremynck, Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité, France
Aristide Zolberg, New School
for Social Research, New York, USA
11:00 Keynote address: "Managing Gateways: The Moral Challenges
of a Liberal Democracy" Chair: John Scratch, Assistant Deputy
Attorney General, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Ottawa, Canada
Sarah
Spencer, Institute for Public Policy Research, London, United
Kingdom Paper
11:30 Migration and The Future of Borders: Schengen; Mexico/US/Canada
Few activities place greater stress on national border policy than
wide-scale migration. An example is the paradox resulting from liberalized
policies to increase trade, including the flow of information, the
flow of goods and services, and generally the level of international
co-operation. Accompanying this expansion in trade has been an opening
of borders, such as in the Schengen countries and between the US,
Mexico, and Canada. This has greatly eased access to developed countries
by ever larger numbers of irregular migrants, however, their presence
is generally resisted and their entry is seen as not being in accord
with perceived national interests. The result is a countervailing
pressure and an impetus to re-introduce strict border controls.
Does the developed world face an awkward choice between tight and
lax borders or can public policy produce a more favourable environment
in which trade gains can be maintained while public reaction against
undesirable migration is muted? To what extent would this involved
a shift from regulation of land borders to regulation of entitlements,
chiefly social and economic privileges? To what extent would national
fiscal transfers to the urban regions absorbing the majority of
migrants mediate local resistance and permit more favorable facilitative
arrangements?
Chair:Janice
Cochrane, Deputy Minister, Citizenship and Immigration Canada,
Ottawa, Canada Paper
Steven Peers, University of Essex, United Kingdom
Martha Nixon,
Assistant Deputy Minister, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Ottawa,
Canada Speech
Demetrios
Papademetriou, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington
D.C., USA Paper
Friday November 17
9:00 Keynote address: "Demographic Change and the Coming
Global Competition for Immigrants"
Chair: Meyer Burstein, Co-Chair, International Metropolis Project,
Canada
Joseph Chamie, United Nations,
Population Division, New York, USA
PowerPoint Slides
9:30 Building Social Capital: Culture and Civic Participation
Social capital is often said to be grounded in trust, in the willingness
of people to co-operate, to act together, and to share risks. Channeled
appropriately, social capital can be a powerful force in building
communities, cities and even nations. We must not assume, however,
that local bonds of trust will always form or that they will contribute
inevitably to the larger community of interests. Social capital
sometimes takes unwelcome forms. The introduction of newcomers challenges
governments to find the means to foster the kind of social capital
that both contributes to a richly textured city life and nurtures
the growth of a cohesive society. Social exclusion, isolating immigrants
and minorities, undercuts this kind of social capital and produces
unwelcome, negative adaptations that, once established, resist traditional
public policy interventions. The critical challenge for government
is to foster trust. How should societies and policy makers support
the development of positive social capital and how should they react
in the event that social capital assumes a negative, inward form?
Speakers will discuss a variety of venues where public policy might
effectively foster social capital, including participation in local
civic activities and participation in amateur sports. Speakers will
also review the effects of mass culture, including those of the
broadcast industry, on social capital.
Chair: Jonathan Crush, Southern African Migration Project, Capetown,
South Africa
John Helliwell, University
of British Colombia, Vancouver, Canada
Graeme Hugo, University of Adelaide, Australia
Belle Puri, Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation , Vancouver, Canada Paper
11:30 Competition for Highly Skilled Workers
The next several decades will introduce the developed world to
a major challenge in the form of rapidly aging workforces and below
replacement fertility. Economies will be placed under enormous pressures,
creating the impetus for wage hikes, technology shifts, behavioural
change and, or course, migration. While the exact mix will depend
on happenstance, local circumstance and public policy, it is clear
that migration will constitute one of the more important adjustments,
especially in the market for highly skilled and highly educated
workers, reflecting both the labour market and social adjustment
calculus of receiving societies. This plenary will speculate about
the nascent competition for labour by examining the global market
for high skilled workers, particularly in the high technology sector
which can serve as a proxy for future trends. The panel will look
at the factors that will make countries and cities competitive in
this global market for skilled workers and at the opportunities
and challenges that this poses for public policy. Since economic
success requires skilled labour and capital to be assembled and
retained, the discussion will focus on local challenges and responses.
Speakers will represent industry, government, including local
government economic development leaders, and think tanks. The countries
represented will include both those seeking migrants and source
countries who are competing for these self-same workers.
Chair: Herman Meijer, Alderman, City of Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Jairam Ramesh, Economic Secretary, All-India Congress Committee,
New Delhi, India
Joanna K.C. Lam, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Paper
Robert Crow, Information Technology
Association of Canada, Mississauga, Canada Paper
13:00 Words of Thanks
Howard Duncan, Deputy Head, Metropolis Project, Citizenship and
Immigration Canada, Ottawa, Canada
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