Client Politics, Majoritarian Politics or Legitimacy? Subnational Immigration Politics in Settler States

In Canada and Australia, states and provinces are now semi-matures players in immigration management and in the implementation of integration policies. Past research on these two comparable cases has focused on the creation of venues for subnational involvement in national immigration programs or on the activism of specific subnational cases in intergovernmental relations related to immigration. As a result, much less is known about the subnational politics of immigration in these two countries. What are the roles of parties, political entrepreneurs and other political actors in the debates and decision-making processes? Is immigration something that is decided on during elections? How are immigrant populations affecting the subnational politics of immigration? To explore these issues, in this paper, I ask: what is the best model to explain subnational immigration policymaking in settler states? I explore how the subnational nature of these political communities and their involvement within a broader federal regime render classical models of immigration politics – in particular Freeman’s accounts of modes of politics (1995) and Boswell’s “third way” (2007) – either applicable or inoperable.