Non-Status Citizenship and the Paradoxes of Immigration Regimes in a Sanctuary City

Non-status people face a socio-legal precariousness that contradicts the promises of an inclusive city. Marking Toronto's tenth anniversary of its “sanctuary city” policy, our research assesses the progress and potential of social planning and municipalist agendas to support irregularised residents. Drawing from interviews with service providers, city officials, and non-status citizens in Toronto, we propose a decolonial politics of urban citizenship recognition we call “non-status citizenship”. This concept addresses specific paradoxes related to irregularisation, access, jurisdiction, and regularisation. By framing our discussion around these paradoxes, we highlight the discomfort and transformative potential of non-status citizenship for immigration regimes in sanctuary cities. We argue that recognising non-status citizenship goes beyond notions of urban citizenship to claim formal recognition and security, which resolves the four paradoxes theoretically, politically, and practically. We also emphasise the role of cities in expanding service delivery and calling out the failure of planning across levels of government.