This project aimed to add to and complement the ongoing ‘transversal’ project entitled “Analysis of governance structures and policy discourses shaping migration and resilience: an examination of Canada’s federal, provincial and municipal governments” by conducting semi-structured in depth personal interviews with representatives of the three levels of government. These representatives all worked in ministries, departments and/or offices that relate directly to immigration and, in the case of Montreal and Toronto, to resilience. The objective of the project was two-fold:
- to discuss and verify the findings of the transversal project on policy discourse analysis with officials of respective levels of government;
- to investigate government officials’ views and perspectives on how the notion resilience is mobilized and framed by their respective levels of government.
The latter issue was discussed in relation to:
- The broad use of the notion resilience within their respective level of government;
- The use of the notion resilience within their particular ministries/departments/offices;
- Their own views and understandings of the notion resilience in relation to immigration and immigrants in Canada;
- The translation and enactment of these abstract notions of resilience into concrete policies and programs.
What was our approach?
Specifically, based on a Foucauldian notion of governmentality (Rose 1999; Larner 2000), the interviews gave new insights into how public servants and policy makers as individuals within an institution understand, mobilize and use the notion resilience(discourse), why they do so (rationale),and how they translate these into concrete policies/programs (technologies of power)in relation to immigration and immigrant settlement and integration in Canada(see Trudeau & Veronis; Mountz 2011).
- Stage 1.Ethics & Data Collection(Aug-Dec2018)
- Aim 1: Developed interview guide and submitted ethics application (Aug2018)
- Aim 2: Conducted interviews with government representatives as follows: 2 Federal government, 2 Ontario, 2 Quebec, 5-7 municipal governments (at least 1 each in Montreal, Ottawa, Gatineau, Toronto, and Kitchener-Waterloo), 1 Resilience Office in Montreal, and 1 Resilience Officer in Toronto. Total interviews: 13-15.
- Methods: semi-structured in-depth personal interviews.
- Stage 2. Analysis (October2018-April 2019)
- Aim 1: Qualitative data analysis -thematic analysis based on constructivist and interpretive paradigms (Cloke et al. 2004)
- Aim 2: Triangulation with data from the policy discourse analysis
- Team: All+ RA
- Stage 3. Write up & dissemination(winter-spring-summer 2019)
- Team: All+ RA
- Networking activities:
- Regular meetings were held within city networks.
- Regular conference calls were held across city networks, especially for design of research instruments and for data analysis.
- We took advantage of the Writing retreats planned in the ‘transversal ‘project and of Partnership meetings to meet as a team and undertook analysis and write up of findings: Writing retreat infall 2018; Partnership meeting (spring 2019) for data analysis, draft summary reports & policy briefs, plan & prepare dissemination activities.
Principal Investigators:
- Virginie Mesana, virginiemesana@gmail.com
- Luisa Veronis, lveronis@uottawa.ca
Co-investigators:
- Gabrielle Désilets
- Margaret Walton-Roberts
- Rupaleem Bhuyan (University of Toronto)
Community Partners:
- E.del Castello, IRCC;
- Cristian Penca, Ville de Gatineau;
- Hindia Mohamoud, OLIP;
- Stephan Reichhold, TCRI;
- OCASI;
- Tara Bedard, WRLIP
- Louise Cockram, Luisa Veronis, Christina Gabriel, Virginie Mesana. 2021 Structures of Governance and the Role of Canada’s Federal Government in Immigration and Settlement. Research Report–Building Migration Resilience in Cities.
- Veronis, L., Mesana, V., Walton-Roberts, M., Bhuyan, R. & Leung, V. (2019). Framing (im)migrant resilience: A comparative policy discourse analysis of Canada’s three levels of government. 2019 International Metropolis Conference, Ottawa-Gatineau, 24-28 June.
- Veronis, L. & Mesana, V. 2019. Immigration et résilience au niveau municipal : analyse comparative des discours politiques et des structures de gouvernance à Ottawa et Gatineau. 87e Congrès de l’ACFAS, Gatineau, 30 Mai.
- Veronis, L., Mesana, V., Walton-Roberts, M., Bhuyan, R. and Leung, V. (2019, June). Framing (im)migrant resilience: A comparative policy discourse analysis of municipal governments in Canada. International Metropolis Conference, Ottawa, ON.
- Mesana, V., D. Boutin, R. Bhuyan, V. Leung, S. Proulx-Chénard, & Veronis, L. 2018. Multi-level comparative analysis of immigration and resilience within provincial and municipal discourse across Ontario and Quebec. Annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers held jointly with the International Geographical Union, IGU-CAG 2018, Québec (QC), 6-10 August.
- Mesana, V. & Veronis, L. 2018. Framing migrant resilience within Canada’s federal government policy. Annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers held jointly with the International Geographical Union, IGU-CAG 2018, Québec (QC), 6-10 August.
