Pathways to Prosperity: Canada

Where immigrants choose to live continues to be an important topic in Canada, with implications for a wide range of issues that include economic wellbeing, access to skilled labour, business succession planning, infrastructure investment, population aging, daycare enrolment, sport, and cultural activities. As a result, federal, provincial, and municipal governments, as well as business, education and cultural groups, are involved in efforts to attract, recruit, and retain newcomers, employing a variety of tools and strategies. These efforts are of particular interest to smaller, rural, and remote centres, as well as to official language minority communities. The resulting pattern of demand for newcomers raises important questions about receptivity, including concerns around service availability and access. This theme focuses on supporting research on the important issue of immigrant location choice.  Multi-method, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral in scope, we are interested in learning about where immigrants choose to live and why and how they made their choices.

As such, this theme is interested in a wide range of potential topics, including:

• Initial destination choices and the impact of economic, social and cultural factors
• The efficacy and impact of recruitment strategies
• Selection policy, including the use of permanent versus temporary entry (and subsequent conversion to permanent status) vehicles
• Secondary migration within Canada
• Retention of immigrants, and the economic, social, and cultural factors that affect whether immigrants stay or engage in onward migration
• Service availability and the use of information and communication technologies to enhance service access
• How we can recruit and retain Francophone immigrants
• Labour mobility of immigrants
• The comparative impact of individual versus household and community characteristics