This project corresponded to a transversal theme that was relevant to the Partnership’s examination and understanding of resilience in relation to immigration and settlement across the two provinces (ON&QC) and 8 city networks. Governance structures and policy discourses are driving and shaping resilience processes and outcomes at multiple scales, from the individual/family/household to neighbourhood, community, civil society, local/urban and regional levels. On the one hand, it is important to identify the jurisdictional and institutional context that helps to shape the immigration and settlement landscape in Ontario and Quebec and the 6 city networks. Adopting a political economy approach to understand the governance structures at various scales and how they have changed over the recent past (partly through processes of state restructuring) provided essential background information to inform and support the comparative analysis of the project findings across the two provinces and 8 city networks. On the other, much can be learned from how different levels of government support and/or hinder resilience. To advance the conceptual, policy and practice contributions of the Partnership, we needed to consider how the concept of resilience has been mobilized in a productive manner (or not) by various actors, including governments, non-profits, and communities themselves.
Based on multiple conversations among team members (including at the BMRC-IRMU Strategy meeting on June 8-9, 2017), our framework was built on three interrelated and complementary analytical lenses. The Transversal project 1 focused on the structures of governance and policy discourse of the three levels of government and provided the bases for the other two:
- Transversal project 1: High level analysis of governance structures and policy discourse (duration: 18 months, September 2017-February 2019)
- Governance: Jurisdictions/institutional arrangements at various levels and changes over time
- Policy discourse: How is resilience used by the state and framed in policy documents?
- Develop a common methodology to address these across six city networks, two provinces, and at the federal level of government
- Transversal project 2: Examination of institutional practices and experiences
- How is notion of resilience implemented/taken up by policy makers?
- What are the impacts on/strategies of policy/programme design, development, and/or implementation?
- Transversal project 3: Impacts on settlement sector and practitioners
- How is notion of resilience implemented/taken up by settlement sector organizations and practitioners?
- What are the impacts on/strategies of nonprofits/service providers?
Principal Investigators:
- Christina Gabriel, ChristinaGabriel@Cunet.Carleton.Ca
- Luisa Veronis, lveronis@uottawa.ca
Co-investigators:
- Virginie Mesana (University of Ottawa)
- Brian Ray (University of Ottawa)
- Rupaleem Bhuyan (University of Toronto)
- John Shields (Ryerson University)
- Chedly Belkhodja (Concordia University)
- Gabrielle Désilets (Concordia University)
- Damaris Rose (INRS)
- Margaret Walton-Roberts (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Community Partners:
- Enrico del Castello, IRCC;
- Ville de Gatineau;
- Hindia Mohamoud, Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership (OLIP);
- Stephan Reichhold, Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI);
- Tara Bedard, Waterloo Region Local Immigration Partnership (WRLIP).
- Community outreach
- Mesana, V. and Veronis, L. Newcomers, Resilience and Settlement: Knowledge Exchange. Building Migrant Resilience in Cities Partnership, Toronto, June 5-6, 2018
- Academic conferences
- Veronis L. and V. Mesana. Immigration et résilience au niveau municipal : analyse comparative des discours politiques et des structures de gouvernance à Ottawa et Gatineau. ACFAS 2019, 30 Mai (Gatineau).
- Veronis L. and V. Mesana. 2018. Policy discourse analysis of immigration and resilience in Canada’s three levels of government. 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. and 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.
- Mesana, V., D. Boutin, R. Bhuyan, V. Leung, S. Proulx-Chénard, and L. Veronis. 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.
- Book chapters
- Veronis, L., Palmerin, D., Walton-Roberts, M., and Mesana, V., (Forthcoming) “Comparative analysis of municipal policy discourses on immigration and resilience: Uncovering actually existing resilience(s) in context” In Building Migrant Resilience in Cities. Editors Preston, V., Shields, J and Bedard, T., McGill University Press.
