Abstract

"This article explores the impact of social networking sites on social movements and collective action. Literature on the subject ranges from celebratory claims to critical stances. However, the more sophisticated approach conceptualizing “connective action” broadens the theoretical scope. The case of Migration Aid, a Hungarian Facebook-based grassroots relief group for refugees, is such an example. In this study, we contextualize the group’s activities, exploring how they relate to the broader political environment, arguing for a need to reexamine the concept of contentious politics. We explore the characteristics that make connective action possible, with an emphasis on the group’s rhizomatic structure. The findings detail the characteristics of the rhizomatic organization and how these characteristics shape the group’s action repertoire."

(Note on "rhizomatic structure" from the authors- "As opposed to the formal, hierarchical, rigid structures built by clear-cut binary concepts, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) present the rhizome as a more informal, centerless, spontaneous, even hybrid system of relations. The organic, dynamic characteristics of the rhizome make it more adequate and suitable to our research than the network metaphor, which is more sterile, model-like, and structural. Although the network approach has great merits, the rhizome fits our research subject better.")

Findings

"Inquiry into how Migration Aid operated sheds light on how the concept of connective action can be applied and further developed to understand the specific ways a coherent organization is achieved in digitally born movements. Proposing that an emphasis on the rhizomatic structure of the group provides a unique insight, we have suggested that new rhizomatic social movements epitomize emerging types of organizations. Our inquiries led to the identification of four central characteristics of the rhizome as they appeared in the case of Migration Aid. The movement is nonhierarchical and lacks fixed starting and ending points. This organizational characteristic affected the group’s action repertoires in allowing a wide range of modalities of participation in Migration Aid’s activities. Furthermore, we also found that—although born digitally—the group was a hybrid organization. The blurring of lines between online and offline spheres within the structure also affected the group’s activities; we conclude that a hard-and-fast distinction between low- and high-threshold activities associated with offline/online operations is not applicable to rhizomatic movements.

The existence of a stitching platform in rhizomatic organizations was central for the group’s survival; in the case of Migration Aid, its Facebook group played such a role. A unique characteristic of the rhizome is its ability to reconfigure itself in both the short and long run. This flexibility, together with the stitching role of Facebook, leads to what we coin the information thermostat, a self-regulative system that permanently receives inputs from given surroundings and changes its outputs accordingly. In a broader sense, Migration Aid might be considered a manifestation of humanitarian activity in a posthumanitarian context in which the traditional principles of humanitarian action are being called into question. These principles are substantially endangered now; therefore, the relevance of Migration Aid and similar relief groups goes much further than their actual aid."

[pdf-embedder url="https://km4s.ca/wp-content/uploads/Born-in-Facebook-The-Refugee-Crisis-and-Grassroots-Connective-Action-in-Hungary-2016.pdf" title="Born in Facebook - The Refugee Crisis and Grassroots Connective Action in Hungary (2016)"]

Overview

"The goal of this report is to look at how the Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation (M4H) portfolio shifted or maintained services in humanitarian contexts using mobile technology, and how  MNOs engaged in this process. It also explores current trends in digital humanitarian programming."

Findings

While it is too early to predict the long-term effects of the pandemic on programming, this  report sheds light on some short-term impacts and trends."

The report is divided into five main sections. It begins by outlining the impacts of COVID-19 on humanitarian operations, providing a brief overview of the challenges the humanitarian sector  has faced and early indications of impact in the future. It then delves into the research findings in five sections:

1. Digital infrastructure looks at the critical role that mobile networks and digital infrastructure has played in the response to COVID-19, how MNOs have provided essential support and  how the humanitarian sector has come to rely on their services.
2. New challenges, new digital channels explores emerging issues brought on by COVID-19 and how humanitarian organisations have used mobile technology to respond to challenges  ranging from health to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and protection (gender-based violence and child protection).
3. Spotlight on mobile use cases features three ways mobile technology is being used in humanitarian contexts that have become particularly important during COVID-19: information as  aid, mobile money-enabled cash assistance and data collection and use.
4. New and existing risks explores risks that have been worsened by COVID-19, including the exacerbation of the digital divide and data protection risks, and how humanitarian  organisations are working to address them.
5. Lessons learned and looking ahead reflects on the lessons of the pandemic and considers the future and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on the humanitarian sector. While it is still too  early to draw conclusions, three key early trends are evident:
   1. The humanitarian sector relies heavily on mobile technology, and as operations become even more digitised, it is unlikely to go back;
   2. The pandemic has exacerbated the risk of exclusion and the digital divide, and it is vital to consider the needs of marginalised communities; and
   3. Partnerships are key, including those that extend beyond the traditional humanitarian sector.

[pdf-embedder url="https://km4s.ca/wp-content/uploads/COVID-19-and-digital-humanitarian-action-Trends-risks-and-the-path-forward-2021.pdf" title="COVID-19 and digital humanitarian action - Trends, risks and the path forward (2021)"]

What is this research about?

This research explores the access to and use of information by refugee students during their settlement process in Canada. Researchers conducted a pilot study to explore refugee students’ access to and use of information during the settlement process. Their goal was to help the Student Refugee Program (SRP) at University of British Columbia to advocate for and meet the information needs of refugee students by understanding what information is needed, when it is needed, and how to provide optimal access to it. Their findings begin to identify the scope and variety of information sources that students consult at various stages of settlement and their utility.

What do you need to know?

Refugee students face unique challenges in accessing and using information during the settlement process compared to other immigrant groups. Current models of immigrant settlement describe information needs and sources at different stages, but have not been evaluated for refugee students specifically. It's unclear if current information provided to refugee students is delivered in optimal formats and timing to meet their needs.

What did the researchers do?

Researchers worked with one refugee student to understand their information world, the sources they used, and the strategies they employed to meet their information needs. They conducted a pilot study using arts-based elicitation (Information World Mapping) and semi-structured interviews with the student. Researchers asked the student to visually map their "information world" - the people, places and things that help them find and use information.

What did the researchers find?

Refugee students often lack accessible information about the city, university, and academic policies before arrival. Everyday life information needs, such as finding jobs and managing daily expenses, are challenging to meet due to a lack of clear information sources. The preference for face-to-face interactions for obtaining information is prevalent among refugee students in the literature. Technology use varies, with some students facing difficulties in using required academic software. Financial struggles and the need to work while studying significantly impact students' academic performance and social integration. Social connections and ongoing support are crucial for the successful settlement of refugee students.

Findings

"This exploratory pilot study is the beginning of a project to address these questions, with the goal of evaluating, designing and reconfiguring information sources and how they are delivered to  facilitate essential information practices that aid the settlement process. We used a novel arts-based elicitation technique, Information World Mapping (IWM), and semi-structured interview to  appreciate a refugee student’s information world and the role of information within it."

The authors assessed information access and use during three phases of settlement:

1. Pre-migration stage or transitioning phase - Individuals gather information from many sources online and offline during pre-migration. There was an indication that our participant was not
   equipped with accessible information about the city, university, and academic program policies prior to arrival.
2. Immediate stage or settling in phase - This is followed by an immediate stage where basic language training, shelter and orientation needs are addressed. In addition to receiving orientation information, refugee students are also immersed in their course work right away, adding to their information load.
3. Intermediate and integrative stages or settled phase - Next, newcomers enter an intermediate stage where they utilize local government and institutional resources for long-term basic needs. The final integrative stage sees newcomers comfortably making their own way. Juggling work and academic studies caused physical stress (e.g., lack of sleep) and mental anguish; our participant explained that money was a major concern that affected the capacity to study. The student’s schedule left little time for coursework, affected the ability to seek support from  university services, participate in extracurricular activities, or form and maintain a social network.

How can you use this research?

If you work in higher education or refugee support services, this research can guide you to enhance the accessibility and timing of information provided to refugee students. Other points:

• Advocacy and Support: Use the findings to advocate for better information support systems for refugee students, ensuring that their information needs are met at each stage of settlement.
• Program Development: Develop and refine programs and services that provide timely and accessible information to refugee students, reducing information overload and addressing specific needs.
• Social Integration: Foster social connections and peer support networks to help refugee students feel more integrated and supported in their new environment.
• Technological Training: Provide training and resources to improve refugee students' technological literacy, helping them to better navigate academic and everyday life tasks.
• Policy Making: Inform policy decisions related to refugee student support, ensuring that information delivery methods and timing are optimized to meet their needs effectively.

 

Background:

"Differential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have brought deeply rooted inequities to the forefront, where increasing evidence has shown that racialized immigrant and migrant  (im/migrant) populations face a disproportionate burden of COVID-19. Im/migrant communities may be worst affected by lockdowns and restrictive measures, face less opportunity to  physically distance or stay home sick within ‘essential’ jobs, and experience severe barriers to healthcare. Insufficient attention to experiences of racialized im/migrants in current pandemic  responses globally highlights an urgent need to more fulsomely address unmet health needs through an anti-racist, equity-oriented lens. This commentary aims to highlight the need for public  health and clinical training, research, and policy to thoughtfully prioritize im/migrant health equity during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Global pandemic responses have neglected im/migrants by continuing to ignore or insufficiently address inequities, exacerbating COVID transmission, xenophobia, and occupational injustice.  Deaths, illness, stress, and other negative outcomes of the overlapping epidemics of COVID-19 and structural racism disproportionately borne by racialized im/migrants suggest the urgent need  for action. As evidence mounts about how im/migrants have been left behind in times of crises, we need enhanced focus on health equity within COVID-19 research and interventions, including  research that examines and pursues structural interventions necessary to mitigate these impacts, and that identifies patterns and harms of xenophobic policy, structural racism, and  white supremacy in shaping im/migrant health outcomes. We must also strengthen anti-racist and equity-oriented curriculum within health education, and ensure sufficient attention to the needs  of im/migrant communities within public health, clinical, and research training."

Conclusion:

"The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and rendered more visible the deeply rooted health and social inequities faced by racialized im/migrants across diverse settings. We argue for a  greater emphasis on equityfocused and anti-racist im/migrant health research, interventions, and training. Policymakers and practitioners must ensure that healthcare policies and practices do not  exacerbate inequities, and instead meaningfully address unmet needs of communities, including racialized im/migrants. Ethical and respectful community engagement, commitment and  collaboration with global, national, and local communities, policymakers, academics, and educators, as well as accountability across sectors, is critical."

[pdf-embedder url="https://km4s.ca/wp-content/uploads/Sharpening-our-public-health-lens-advancing-im-migrant-health-equity-duringCOVID-19-and-beyond-2021.pdf" title="Sharpening our public health lens - advancing im-migrant health equity duringCOVID-19 and beyond (2021)"]

Overview

"This study looks at how executives can support middle management to be more inclusive – and what middle managers can do to pave the way for immigrant success in their teams...

Middle managers have a significant influence on what happens after an immigrant is hired. It is middle managers who determine: do immigrant employees feel part of their team? Do they get the feedback they need? Do they get assigned strategic projects and responsibilities on a par with their non-immigrant colleagues? Through their day-to-day decisions and actions, middle managers make or break an immigrant’s sense of inclusion and therefore their performance – whether they will thrive or flounder.

The other key puzzle piece is executives, who set the vision and the strategy for the organization. Their commitment to and understanding of what is required for an organization to not only successfully embark on, but also sustain the inclusion journey is critical. However, exactly what executives need to do organizationally to support middle managers is less frequently discussed."

Findings

Based on the research findings, these are the top takeaways for executives and middle managers to advance immigrant inclusion within their organizations and teams:

Middle Managers

• Commit to creating a “bubble of inclusivity” – talk to team members about their working styles and experiences and ensure that the team dynamics work for everyone
• Assess how behaviours are being valued and how cultural norms affect those judgements
• Adjust hiring practices to uncover biases that diminish the value of international education and work experience
• Promote a mentorship culture by connecting newcomers and established immigrant employees to a mentor

Executives

• Understand what kind of challenges immigrants face in the labour market and in the workplace, and collect data on your organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts
• Hold middle managers accountable for diversity and inclusion, and set aside time, learning opportunities and budget for them to work towards diversity and inclusion goals and targets
• Create incentives for demonstrating inclusive behavior, whether eligibility for promotions or formal recognition
• Live up to the inclusion standards that you set for middle managers – show vulnerability, empathy and humility

[pdf-embedder url="https://km4s.ca/wp-content/uploads/Make-or-Break-How-middle-managers-and-executives-can-build-immigrant-inclusive-teams-2021.pdf" title="Make or Break - How middle managers and executives can build immigrant-inclusive teams (2021)"]

Abstract

"Developed democracies are settling an increased number of refugees, many of whom face challenges integrating into host societies.We developed a flexible data-driven algorithm that assigns refugees across resettlement locations to improve integration outcomes.The algorithm uses a combination of supervised machine learning and optimal matching to discover and leverage  synergies between refugee characteristics and resettlement sites.The algorithm was tested on historical registry data from two countries with different assignment regimes and refugee  populations, the United States and Switzerland.Our approach led to gains of roughly 40 to 70%, on average, in refugees’ employment outcomes relative to current assignment practices.This  approach can provide governments with a practical and cost-efficient policy tool that can be immediately implemented within existing institutional structures."

Key points

• Refugees frequently remain economically marginalized, with low levels of employment in the years following their arrival
• The assignment of refugees to different resettlement locations within a host country is one of the first policy decisions made during the resettlement process. It is also one of the most
  consequential in maximizing refugees’ economic integration and self-sufficiency as a first step toward a more comprehensive integration into society.
• Three sets of factors affect refugee integration: geographical context, personal characteristics, and synergies between geography and personal characteristics
• Host countries’ current procedures for determining how to allocate refugees across domestic resettlement sites do not fully leverage synergies between refugees and geographic locations
• The authors have developed a data-driven approach that, in contrast, can be immediately implemented by using existing data to optimize integration outcomes. Their algorithm has three  stages:modeling, mapping, and matching.
• Their analysis demonstrated large potential improvements, but they did not test the algorithm prospectively.
• In contrast to more expensive interventions (such as language or job training programs) that are sometimes implemented long after refugees’ arrival, the authors assert that their approach is cost-efficient and implemented before refugees’ arrival, giving them the strongest foundation possible from which to integrate into host societies

[pdf-embedder url="https://km4s.ca/wp-content/uploads/Improving-refugee-integration-through-data-driven-algorithmic-assignment-2018.pdf" title="Improving refugee integration through data-driven algorithmic assignment (2018)"]

Overview

"The Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health (the Centre) has reviewed the latest evidence on the implementation and effectiveness of virtual group therapy for children and young people. Here, we share the specific questions and search strategy that guided this review and present a summary of our findings, practice considerations and areas for future work."

Findings

"In a recent evaluation of the sector’s transition to delivering virtual care, young people and families reported that their experiences were positive overall (Danseco et al., 2020). In many cases, young people and families found that virtual services were more convenient to access than in-person services, since they no longer had to plan for childcare or travel to and from appointments. This finding is consistent with other studies showing that virtual care can reduce barriers for in-person services (for example, Banbury et al., 2018; Gentry et al., 2019)...

Organizations in Ontario’s community-based child and youth mental health sector are excited by the opportunities offered by virtual group therapy. However, several barriers prevent widespread
uptake. According to anecdotal evidence, counsellors lack knowledge about how to conduct virtual group therapy and are less comfortable using virtual platforms for group sessions. At the broader organizational level, barriers to virtual care include:

• a lack of access to stable internet connections.
• concerns related to privacy and confidentiality.
• challenges with building relationships with children, young people and families.
• difficulties engaging with younger children.

To encourage agencies to move toward offering virtual care as an option, more guidance and support are required to address some of these barriers."

Areas of guidance and support in the report:

Evidence on how to deliver virtual group therapy for children and young people with mental health challenges

• In-person group therapy for children and young people
• Effectiveness of virtual group therapy
• Adapting in-person group therapy to virtual formats
• Strategies for delivering virtual care

Dealing with common challenges when delivering virtual group therapy

• Accessibility and equity
• Privacy, confidentiality and safety
• Creating a therapeutic environment

[pdf-embedder url="https://km4s.ca/wp-content/uploads/Evidence-summary-for-child-and-youth-mental-health-service-providers-2021-1.pdf" title="Evidence summary for child and youth mental health service providers (2021)"]

Overview

"The importance of immigration for Canada will continue to grow and be an integral component of the country’s post-COVID-19 recovery. To succeed, it is essential to take stock, to re-evaluate Canada’s immigration and integration policies and programs, and to expand Canada’s global leadership in this area. The authors offer insights and recommendations to reinvigorate and optimize Canada’s  immigration program over the next decade and beyond."

Findings

The report provides a set of recommendations for action by the federal and provincial/territorial governments in these categories:

Immigration Policy

• Immigration Levels and Admissions
• Family Reunification
• Francophone Immigration
• Regionalization
• Two-Step Immigration
• International Students
• Temporary Foreign Workers
• Agricultural Workers
• Resettled Refugees and Refugee Claimants
• Migrant Detention and Deportation

The Settlement and Integration of Immigrants and Refugees

• The Economic Impact of the Pandemic on Immigrants and the Potential for Long-Term Scarring
• Health Care Workers
• Public Attitudes
• Settlement Sector

Canada’s Global Leadership in Immigration Policies and Programs

Abstract

"Existing literature on the regionalization of migration in Canada is limited in its understanding of migrants’ decision-making processes regarding their location choices and settlement experiences in small and mid-sized cities because of its urban and mobility bias. While research has primarily focused on migrants’ preference for larger centres, as indicated through their migration to metropolitan cities, there has been little attention paid to cases where immigrants and refugees have voluntarily decided to stay in small and mid-sized Canadian cities for extended periods of time.

This paper proposes an analytical framework to study immobility that centres migrants’ lived experiences and aspirations, using a life-course approach. The author argues that, asking why migrants stay, as opposed to why they leave, allows migration researchers to better understand the nuanced ways in which migrants form decisions to move to, stay in, build their lives in specific cities over time, in destination countries. By shifting the perspective to why some migrants stay in small and mid-sized cities, this paper encourages future research that goes beyond analyses shaped predominantly by methodological nationalism, neoclassical drivers of migration, binary explanations of mobility and immobility, and that which foregrounds the two-way relationship between migrants and local receiving communities in place-making and city-building."

Conclusion

"Throughout Canadian immigration history, immigrants and refugees have voluntarily stayed in small and mid-sized cities. While the flows to those small and mid-sized cities are not as significant as the populations going to larger metropolitan centres, we should not discredit the impact they can have on those communities. Often, their presence, long-term residence, and active involvement in those communities have helped to facilitate change to better welcome other newcomers, including by signalling the need for more diverse services and businesses. Some immigrants and refugees voluntarily stay in small and mid-sized cities because of their positive perceptions of those cities, their attachments to that city over time as they live there, their strong social bonds developed with personal contacts, the quality of life for their families, their ability to secure their livelihoods without stressing about competition with other co-ethnics, and their perceived ability to make social change and improve inclusivity for other newcomers in those cities.

As a result of this gap in research, this paper offers analytical and empirical questions that focus on asking why migrants voluntarily stay in specific cities for extended periods of time, using a life course approach. By asking this question, we aim to challenge existing approaches to studies on the regionalization of migration that rely on methodological nationalism, binary understandings of mobility and immobility, and neoclassical drivers of migration in their analyses. Rather, we aim to promote future research and policy agendas that take into consideration migrants’ dynamic and complex lived experiences, aspirations, and agency in decision-making and place-making processes."

[pdf-embedder url="https://km4s.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020_8_Nguyen_Michelle_Why_Migrants_Stay_in_Small_and_Mid-Sized_Canadian_Cities_Towards_a_New_Analytical_Framework_Using_a_Life_Course_Approach.pdf"]