Bureaucrats as Immigration Policy-makers: The Case of Subnational Immigration Activism in Canada, 1990–2010

Since the 1990s, subnational governments in Canada have become increasingly active towards immigrant selection and immigration integration. In dialogue with scholarship on immigration policy-making and public administration, this article demonstrates that bureaucrats, acting as policy entrepreneurs, have been instrumental in initiating subnational immigration activism in Canada between 1990 and 2010. By studying immigration policy-making ‘from the ground up’, three types of entrepreneurs are identified based on empirical research in the 10 Canadian provinces: classical entrepreneur, policy puzzler and diagonal innovator. New research questions are generated by the demonstration that subnational immigration politics in Canada is a form of client of mode politics, but where clients are absent and where independent within state actors are the moving forces.