The Limits of de Tocqueville: How Government Facilitates Organisational Capacity in Newcomer Communities

I argue that state intervention can foster immigrants’ and refugees’ ability to establish and to sustain community organisations. Drawing on 147 qualitative interviews and documentary information from the Portuguese and Vietnamese communities in metropolitan Boston and Toronto, I show how settlement and multiculturalism policies provide material and symbolic resources that immigrants can use to build a large and diverse organisational infrastructure. These findings challenge arguments inspired by de Tocqueville's image of self-sufficient and self-started civic associations. Instead, my evidence suggests that migrants benefit from government involvement. One important implication is that, by facilitating community building, host societies can encourage migrants’ participatory citizenship in their new home.