Established in 2016, Building Migrant Resilience in Cities (BMRC-IRMU) was a research partnership and a multi-sector collaboration. It drew on over 20 years of experience in bringing together a range of key actors working on issues of immigration and settlement through CERIS, a leading Ontario network of migration and settlement researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Our unique initiative explored the concept of social resilience to examine how institutions can facilitate migrant settlement in urban areas across Quebec and Ontario. We generated new knowledge for academic debate and discussion making it readily available to decision-makers and practitioners who strive to enhance migrant settlement.
What we accomplished
Multiple activities were carried out to address our overarching research questions and impact the lives of migrants. From a research perspective, our activities contributed to the growing field of migration studies, by incorporating and evaluating a resilience lens into the research.
- We compared the political, socio-economic, and individual factors that affect how migrants settle in different local contexts.
- We documented how organizations and institutions contribute successfully to the strength and resilience of migrants as they settle into new lives in Canada.
- We used the data and findings to pilot evidence-based strategies that can work in diverse contexts to foster healthy and successful settlement.
- We worked together to develop a model of social resilience for successful migrant settlement to be used in academic discourse, policy development, and community practice.
- We trained emerging migration researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who will be influencing, making decisions on, and implementing ongoing and future work related to migration in Canada.
- We developed a self-sustaining and bilingual research network to respond to changing migration trends and issues now and in the future.
What do we mean by resilience?
Resilience is a term with many meanings and understandings. Our conceptualization of resilience recognizes its contested nature even as we argue for its value as an overarching concept in migration research.
Resilience that stems from notions related to recovery from challenges or changes can be psychological, physical, environmental, or communal. Our work draws on a social resilience approach that acknowledges the distinct characteristics of vulnerable groups in specific contexts. This approach is particularly relevant for understanding migration. Social resilience views adaptation as a dynamic process in which overcoming one challenge often boosts the ability to take on future challenges. In this way, understanding resilience can identify factors that improve settlement outcomes.
Many of the questions that we ask daily while working in the migration and settlement sector come directly from a resilience perspective. Why do certain migrants succeed economically while others encounter more challenges? Why do some economically successful migrants still feel socially isolated or alienated from Canadian society? Why do particular migrants do better than others even when compared to their peers from the same background?
Our research explored resilience in a broad sense that goes beyond economic success and poses the question of how migrants develop capacities to overcome settlement challenges. We also paid close attention to views of resilience among key actors in settlement such as policymakers, service providers, employers, and migrants themselves.
Through case studies we have pinpointed some of the factors that improve resilience among migrants. Concentrating on the social institutions that influence resilience, the partnership has developed recommendations to enhance settlement and integration strategies.
The places we studied
We worked in cities across Quebec and Ontario. The two provinces have different immigration histories, institutional infrastructure, and migration policies that allowed us to compare and contrast migrant resilience in distinct environments. The social security systems are vastly different. In Quebec, the province has control over immigrant selection and settlement while in Ontario, the federal government has jurisdiction. The provinces also differ greatly in the relationship between non-governmental organizations and the private and public sectors and their migration histories.
Our initiative focused on large and small urban areas. We worked in Toronto and Montreal, two gateway cities that are the initial destinations for large numbers of migrants. In Canada’s largest gateway city of Toronto, we also investigated resilience in suburban areas in the York Region to provide an intra-urban analysis between downtown and the suburbs. We also studied resilience in large and medium-sized cities such as Ottawa-Gatineau, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Windsor. Analyzing settlement in Quebec and Ontario cities gave us an in-depth understanding of the strategies that migrants use to overcome settlement challenges in municipalities across Canada.
See our City Networks for more information.
Goals
Our goal was to leave a mark on contemporary migration and resilience research and to positively contribute to the outcomes of migrants in Quebec and Ontario. Our work benefitted academic scholarship, settlement outcomes, and institutional initiatives that promote migrant resilience.
Scholarly Contribution
The research conducted by teams across Quebec and Ontario generated new knowledge about settlement and migrant resilience in urban areas for academics, researchers, and students. As we used different research methodologies to gather data and provide analysis, we also contributed to novel ways to carry out research and contributed to the national and international agenda regarding immigration and settlement. We also built the capacity of emerging researchers, scholars, and students dedicated to better understanding migration, resilience, and integration issues. Through many opportunities for academic training and skills development, our network of emerging researchers has expanded. This enhanced research collaboration is part of a larger national and international conversation on migration issues and resilience.
Social Contribution
We worked through our networks to inform policymakers directly about new knowledge of migrants and resilience in urban areas throughout Quebec and Ontario. In collaboration with community and non-governmental organizations, we developed research about successful practices to respond to partners’ ongoing concerns and produce appropriate and effective interventions and services that promoted migrant settlement and incorporation in their communities.
