Pathways to Prosperity: Canada

The Pathways to Prosperity Partnership had a very productive 2017. This included a variety of completed, new and ongoing research projects; enhanced strategies for training of highly qualified personnel; and a variety of opportunities for knowledge exchange. Our governance bodies operated effectively to provide representation and input into decision making by academics, members of the settlement sector, and representatives of municipal, provincial, and federal governments. We thank the members of the Management Committee, Board of Directors, Standing Committees, Planning Committees, and P2P staff for their dedication and contributions to the continuing success of the partnership.

Research Activities

2017 saw a great deal of research activity within Pathways to Prosperity, including a variety of completed projects, now posted in the P2P website library, and a number of ongoing and new projects underway. This included projects led by P2P Co-investigators and projects funded through National Calls for Proposal to Partners and Collaborators for Research on P2P Priority Themes.

Projects completed this year include:

• Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program Environmental Scan
• Assessing the Changes to Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program: Improving Security or Deepening Precariousness?
• How Can We Engage Diasporas as International Entrepreneurs: Suggestions from an Empirical Study in the Canadian Context
• Spaces of Encounter: French-speaking Immigrants’ and Refugees’ Experiences of Social and Cultural Integration in Francophone Minority Communities
• The Image Of Muslims In Canadian Parliamentary Debates – Some Preliminary Results
• The Transformation of the Quebec Model: A First Portrait of the Impact

New and ongoing projects in progress, funded through the CFPs for Collaborators and Partners include:

• Accessing Canadian Healthcare for Immigrants: Empowerment, Voice and Enablement (ACHIEVE)
• An Examination of Racial Micro-aggressions among Refugee Youth in Two Canadian Cities
•  Are SMEs with Immigrant Owners Exceptional Exporters?
• Examination of Older Immigrants’ Contributions to Canadian Society: A Pilot Mixed Method Study
• Exploring Immigrant and Refugee Students’ Experiences of Belonging: The Open Studio Project
• In Search of Welcoming Neighbourhoods and Adequate Housing: The Experiences of Recent Immigrants in Northeast Ontario
• Paternity in a Migration Context: Redefinition of the Paternal Role?
• Portfolio-based Language Assessment in LINC Literacy Classes: The Need for Data to Guide Policy and Practice
• Recognizing the Informal Sector: The Welcoming of Francophone Immigrants in Saskatchewan by Established Immigrants
• The Contradictory Geographies of Newcomer Volunteering in Canada: New Research Directions to Understand Economic Integration, Social Participation and Civic Engagement
• Who Stays and Who Leaves Atlantic Canada?

New and ongoing projects led by P2P Co-investigators include:

• Fostering Research Partnerships for Improved Labour Market Integration and Employment of Skilled Immigrants and Refugees in Edmonton, Calgary, and Fort McMurray
• Immigrant Language Ability, Occupational Choice, and Employment Skill Match Quality
• International Students as Future Citizens: Understanding the Relation between Universities and Cities
• The Art of Immigration
• The Health Outcomes and Health Service Use of Immigrants in New Brunswick: An Investigation Using Linked Administrative Data
• Warmth of Welcome: Australian, Canadian, and U.S. Immigration Systems Compared
• Welcoming Newcomers to Canada: Strategies for Increasing the Warmth of the Welcome and Promoting a Sense of Belonging among Newcomers

To be launched in early 2018, a new cross-regional project being conducted by P2P researchers across the country will examine attitudes toward immigrants and immigration in smaller and larger Canadian communities, with a focus on determinants of these attitudes. Initial input into the design and content of this project was obtained through roundtables held at the 2017 Pathways to Prosperity National Conference in Toronto. Updates on this exciting project will appear in upcoming eBulletins.

Training of Highly Qualified Personnel

The Standing Committee on Student Engagement continues to contribute its energy, enthusiasm and new ideas to the Partnership. Members of the committee sit on the P2P Board of Directors, participate in the planning of the Pathways to Prosperity National Conference, and receive registration and travel funding to attend the conference in exchange for volunteering a few hours of their time during the conference. The committee members also organize their own events. Members of the Committee now regularly organize Junior Scholars of Migration Graduate Student — Faculty workshops. Two such workshops were held in 2017, one a half-day workshop at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Toronto, and the other a session during the Pathways to Prosperity National Conference in Toronto. During these workshops, a total of seven students presented on their work and received feedback from experts in the field. We thank Claudia Prévost (Université Laval) and Serperi Sevgur (Dalhousie University) for serving as the Standing Committee Co-chairs in 2017 and for being willing to continue in this role for 2018. The committee is now discussing the possibility of expanding its constituents to include postdoctoral fellows, with the goal of promoting continuity to the committee and providing opportunities for interested individuals to continue to participate in P2P post-graduation.

As an additional opportunity for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, 2017 was the third year of the P2P Student and Postdoctoral Exchange Program, designed to provide graduate students and postdoctoral fellows the opportunity to participate in new research or broaden the scope and breadth of research they already have underway. Two graduate students benefited from this program in 2017. Marc Yvan Valade from Ryerson University jump-started data collection for his dissertation by travelling to Brandon, Manitoba to begin fieldwork examining the capacity of local networks in attracting immigrants to smaller Canadian cities. Nassibeh Ahadi from the University of British Columbia, Okanagan is using travel funding from P2P to conduct research in Surrey, Burnaby, and Coquitlam, British Columbia on the settlement and integration experiences of recent immigrants from the Middle East. The 2018 National Call for Proposals for the Student and Postdoctoral Exchange Program will be announced in the Spring.

To enhance opportunities for graduate students in 2017, Pathways to Prosperity was a partner on the Summer Institute on the Policy and Politics of Refugee Resettlement in Canada, led by Mireille Paquet and Chedly Belkhodja of the Centre for Immigration Policy Evaluation at Concordia University. Speakers included Canadian and international scholars, community actors, and government representatives, as well as representatives of international organizations, providing a robust exchange of information. The Summer Institute attracted graduate students from across the country and internationally, with a total of 17 students participating.

Knowledge Mobilization

Pathways to Prosperity continues to actively engage partners, researchers, and stake-holders through a variety of knowledge mobilization products and activities. The bimonthly eBulletin – covering new research findings, P2P activities and events, research opportunities, and partner and collaborator activities – now has over 4,000 subscribers, reaching a broad audience well beyond P2P’s formal membership. The P2P website has been expanding, with many new additions to the library, new videos, and the addition of the Find an Expert section this year. The website attracted approximately 5,500 visits per month in 2017.

P2P also publishes content on four YouTube channels with over 330 videos now available. These videos have received over 400,000 views to date and have close to 1,250 subscribers. The most popular is the Immigrant Story Bank, a series of approximately 45 video interviews focusing on the personal stories of immigrants in Canada and highlighting their journey to Canada and reasons for choosing Canada, as well as discussing issues of settlement, integration and identity. We are about to launch the new video series, P2P investigates, which highlights research being conducted by P2P co-investigators, collaborators, and partners. This new series will include short video interviews of project leads discussing research objectives, methodology, key findings, and implications of the research for policy and practice.

Initiated just before the 2015 National Conference, we tweet @P2PConnects, with over 700 followers. We tweet about news related to Canadian and international immigration, updates about new P2P research and activities, and we promote the activities of our partners and collaborators.

In 2017, P2P held a variety of workshops on priority topics identified by our partners and collaborators. During the Printemps de l’École des hautes études publiques at the University of Moncton in early May, two workshops were organized by Christophe Traisnel and Irving Lewis, co-chairs of the P2P Standing Committee on Francophone Immigration. The first workshop focused on the multilevel dynamics that characterize migration policies and the issues encountered by Francophone minority communities when dealing with welcoming newcomers. The second workshop examined the relation between employment, family life, school, and successful integration of Francophone immigrants.

Two workshops were held in Toronto in November as preconferences to the Pathways to Prosperity National Conference. The first was the Annual Preconference for Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) and Réseaux en immigration francophone (RIFs), organized by LIP and RIF representatives across the country, and chaired by Petrusia Hontar of the St. Thomas – Elgin Local Immigration Partnership  and Christian Howald of the Réseau de soutien à l’immigration francophone du Nord de l’Ontario. Attracting more than 150 attendees, the day provided an opportunity for the Local Immigration Partnerships and Réseaux en immigration francophone to exchange information and discuss common topics of interest, such as the measurement of RIF and LIP outcomes, and improving LIP and RIF operations. Powerpoint presentations and videos from this preconference are now available on the website here. Now a regular feature of this preconference, LIP and RIF achievements were also solicited prior to the event and were included in a Powerpoint presentation shown during the preconference and in a published booklet distributed at the preconference.

The second preconference – a smaller, targeted workshop of approximately 50 participants, organized by Actions Interculturelles and Pathways to Prosperity – focused on a research project examining the Development of Immigrants’ Literacy and Essential Skills. The Powerpoint presentations from this workshop are available on the website here.

To cap off the year, the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership held its Fifth Annual Conference in Toronto in November – Canada’s Place in the World: Innovation in Immigration Research, Policy, and Practice. With the highest attendance level of our annual conferences to date (over 400 attendees across the three days of the preconferences and main conference), it included five plenary sessions, eighteen workshops, a poster session, and six roundtable sessions designed to obtain input on important issues within the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership. Opening addresses by Stacey LaForme, Chief, Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, and Robert Oliphant, MP and Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, focused on the need for improved relations between indigenous and immigrant communities, and updates and new perspectives on Canada’s immigration program. The special keynote address by the Honourable Lloyd Axworthy, Chair of the World Refugee Council and former Minister of Immigration, laid out many of the decisions and alternate pathways ahead of us in the area of immigration. The conference also included a theatrical production, We Are Not the Others, a play based on the findings of a two-year research project examining immigrant women’s experiences. Judging by the enthusiasm of participants and the more formal feedback, the conference was a tremendous success. Thanks are due to the many individuals who participated in the conference planning committee and ensured that it addressed the interests of all stakeholders. All Powerpoint presentations and videos from the conference are now available on the website here.

Thanks for another great year!
Victoria Esses and Jean McRae