What is this research about?
Based on the Waterloo Region Immigration Partnership Community Action Plan, this study contributes towards understanding, maintaining, and developing responsive settlement programs and strategies that effectively serve all members of the KW community, including those with a precarious legal status and impacted by the intersection of different social identities. This project responds to the three core areas identified in the Community Action Plan: settle, work, and belong.
The project identified challenges that affect temporary migrants because of their gender and status, focusing on both individual- and system-level resilience. Resilience is understood to emerge at the intersection of individual/family capacity to respond to the challenges of migration, and institutional/community capacity to provide supports that foster newcomer resilience and respond to change. Lack of eligibility for settlement support, child care subsidy and other services for temporary migrants creates a disproportionate burden on women; nonetheless the same women assume important roles fostering family and community resilience, filling in the gaps.
What do you need to know?
Gender affects migrants’ entry to Canada, access to services, and how they cope with integration challenges. Gender-responsive services and programming do not concentrate exclusively on women. Rather, they take account of different experiences of men, women, and gender non-binary individuals and their impacts on migrant resilience. The Kitchener-Waterloo city network examines the experiences of temporary migrants and asylum claimants seeking to transition to permanent residence. Some gender-responsive programming exists, but it must be made more accessible and relevant.
What did the researchers do?
A workshop about “Fostering Gender Responsiveness in Migration Resilience, Research and Action” was held to engage community organizations that serve temporary migrants. Focus groups and semi-structured interviews with more than 70 participants yielded insights on their conditions of entry, coping strategies, access to a variety of services, challenges that they felt were unique to their gender, gender roles back home and in Canada, and gender-based violence in their communities. Over 20 interviews with service providers revealed gaps in the availability of gender-responsive programming for temporary migrants and creative strategies for addressing these.
What did the researchers find?
How can you use this research?
What is this research about?
The paper includes examples of how more advanced technologies could be used to improve integration outcomes in Intergovernmental Consultations on Migration, Asylum and Refugees (IGC) States. In particular, this paper discusses an algorithm that has the potential to direct newcomers to destinations where they are most likely to succeed economically, the use of virtual reality to provide newcomers with an immersive learning experience, and what big data can tell us about the role of citizenship in successful economic integration.
What do you need to know?
Although NGOs, the private sector and others have developed technologies to support migrant and refugee integration, this paper focuses primarily on those that have been developed, funded and/or are in use by governments in IGC States.
While digital tools hold significant promise in terms of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of integration systems in IGC States, they are not a panacea, nor are they a substitute for in-person learning and interaction. Many newcomers face barriers to accessing the internet, including connectivity issues and low levels of digital literacy. Digital tools are best used alongside more traditional forms of learning and training, and including the end user in the design of digital tools can help ensure their relevance, accessibility and effectiveness. Accordingly, in addition to highlighting specific uses of technology for integration purposes, this paper also offers best practices and considerations gleaned from research in this area.
What did the researchers do?
To better understand how technology is being applied in the integration context specifically, this paper draws on a 2020 information request from Belgium to other IGC States regarding their use of digital tools to support the settlement and integration of migrants and refugees, as well as broader research.
What did the researchers find?
Most IGC States use informational websites to provide general settlement and integration information, such as how to access basic services like education, healthcare, and housing. Oftentimes, these websites provide information in multiple languages, and also include details regarding immigration processes, local laws and customs, and how to access specific integration support. Complementary to websites, some IGC States are also making use of videos and apps in this regard.
In addition to websites, IGC States are also employing more targeted digital and online tools, including YouTube videos, interactive online courses, and apps to help newcomers learn the local language, find a job, prepare for tests, and pursue other key elements of the integration process. While the majority of these initiatives are for the benefit of newcomers themselves, some are designed to support language instructors, employers, and others involved in migrant and refugee integration.
How can you use this research?
The information in a report like this is at best incomplete and out of date as soon as it is published. It is worth continuing to capture and catalogue digital tools created by and for government, as well as funded by government, as well as those self-funded, or part of the private sector, in each country. For example, in Canada I have compiled and maintain a spreadsheet of interesting digital programs/projects in the immigrant and refugee-serving sector in Canada. Anyone can add their project, or one they know of, to this spreadsheet via the online form in the post linked to.
What is this research about?
This study examines the empirical relationship between immigration and firm-level productivity in Canada. It also examines the empirical connection between immigration and worker wages and business profits as the productivity effect of immigration will likely translate into changes in wages and/or changes in business profits.
What do you need to know?
The effect of immigration on the receiving country’s economy is an issue of intense policy and academic discussion. Previous studies on the impact of immigration on productivity in developed countries remain inconclusive, and most analyses are abstracted from firms where production actually takes place.
An emerging, yet still scant, body of studies has examined the effect of immigration on firm productivity in the U.S. and some European countries. These studies suggest that immigration can either negatively or positively affect the receiving country’s labour productivity through: changes in the factors of production; changes in skill content of labour; efficient labour specialization; and innovation activities in the firm. On the one hand, if a large supply of immigrant labour, and especially a large increase in the supply of lower-skilled immigrants reduces the costs of less skilled labour, immigration encourages firms to become more labour intensive and therefore reduces capital intensity and labour productivity. Furthermore, an increase in the share of lower skilled immigrants in a firm tends to lower the overall skill content of labour in a firm with a negative effect on labour productivity as immigrants often receive lower wages (a proxy for utilized skills) than the native-born workers.
On the other hand, if immigrants bring skills that are complementary to domestic-born workers and highly educated immigrants are more innovative than the domestic-born, the increase in immigration may increase specialization both within the firm and across firms in a local labour market, and stimulate innovation and the adoption of new technology in the firm, all of which contribute positively to labour productivity.
What did the researchers do?
Researchers used a data file derived from linking the Canadian Employer-Employee Dynamics Database that tracks firms over time with the Longitudinal Immigration Data file (IMDB) that includes sociodemographic characteristics at landing for immigrants who arrived in Canada after 1980.
What did the researchers find?
The study finds that there is a positive association between changes in the share of immigrants in a firm and changes in firm productivity. This positive effect of immigration on firm productivity is small, but it is stronger over a longer period. The effect is larger for low-skilled /less-educated immigrants such as recent immigrants who tend to work in low skill occupations, immigrants who intended to work in non-high skilled occupations, and immigrants who intended to work in non-STEM occupations. Those differences are more pronounced in technology-intensive and knowledge-based industries. Finally, this study finds that there is a positive effect of immigration on worker wages and business profits, but little effect on capital intensity.
Over a 10-year period, a firm that increased its share of immigrant workers by 10 percentage points experienced on average a 1.9% increase in productivity. This result is obtained after controlling for industry, province, capital intensity and firm size. It is also found that immigration has little effect on capital intensity.
For the period from 2000 to 2015, immigrants who arrived in Canada after 1980 made up, on average, 13.5% of workers in firms with at least 20 employees. The average increase in this share across firms over 10-year periods was 0.58 percentage points. Changes in the share of immigrants in a firm's employment varied greatly, typically ranging from a 15 percentage point increase to a 15 percentage point decline. The effects of immigrants on firm productivity varied considerably by immigrant characteristics and by industry sectors. The effect was higher for low-skilled/less-educated immigrants as compared with highly-skilled/university-educated immigrants. Those differences were more pronounced in technology-intensive and knowledge-based industries. The largest increase was for immigrants with official language skills and with university education. The smallest change was for immigrants who intended to work in science, technology, engineering, math and computer science (STEM) occupations.
The positive effect of immigration on productivity is consistent with the proposition that immigrants are complementary to native-born workers in terms of skills and firms increase job/task specialization to benefit from the comparative advantages of immigrants and native-born workers. It is also possible that technology-intensive or knowledge-based industries require a high degree of division of labour and specialization of functions.
This study also considers the effects of immigrants by length of stay in Canada, education, language, and immigration class. Economic-class or skilled principal applicants, who are selected for economic reasons, may have a stronger effect on productivity growth than other immigrants. By focusing on economic class principal applicants, we also have information about the skill level of their intended occupations and can identify intended Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) workers.
Finally, the effect of immigration on productivity may reflect the effect of immigration on innovation and technology adoption of a firm. While there is little evidence on the effect of immigration on innovation in Canada, studies in the U.S. and a number of European countries find that immigration has a positive effect on innovation.
How can you use this research?
Immigrant and refugee-serving organizations and advocacy groups have another empirical piece of research to support their work encouraging Canadian employers to hire newcomers. This research is consistent with other research showing the positive impacts of hiring newcomer talent, as well as the net positive impact of diversity and inclusion efforts by employers.
What is this research about?
Using integrated data from the 2006 and 2016 censuses, this study examines persistent overqualification over time among immigrants and non-immigrants. More specifically, the study examines the link between various characteristics associated with immigration and the probability of overqualification in both 2006 and 2016.
What do you need to know?
In the study, overqualification is defined as a situation in which university degree holders (bachelor’s degree or higher) hold jobs that require no more than a high school education. Overqualified workers earn lower salaries and have lower life satisfaction compared with workers who hold a position that corresponds to their level of education.
Overqualification among immigrants remains relevant in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In terms of job losses, the pandemic has had a greater impact on immigrants, particularly recent immigrants. The latter, who often work in sectors that have been hardest hit by the pandemic (retail, accommodation and food services), are among the subgroups most likely to be overqualified. Immigrants, many of whom are overqualified, are also overrepresented among workers in health service support sectors, which have been particularly exposed to the risk of contracting COVID-19. Lastly, while the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed difficulties in recruiting skilled workers in some key areas, immigrants are overrepresented among adults who have studied health but are not working in the health sector
What did the researchers do?
Some longitudinal studies on overqualification and its persistence have been conducted in Canada. Most have examined overqualification in the context of labour force entry. For example, some studies have analyzed persistent overqualification among new Canadian graduates in the years following graduation, while others have examined access to skilled employment by recent immigrants in the first years after being admitted to Canada. Other studies have examined persistent overqualification, but generally do not allow for an in-depth analysis of factors related to overqualification among immigrants.
By integrating data from the 2006 and 2016 censuses, this study adds to and expands this portrait by examining the issue of long-term persistence of overqualification among immigrants and non-immigrants (see the “Data sources, methods and definitions” textbox). The study is limited to those with a bachelor’s degree or higher and defines overqualification as a situation in which individuals with a university degree hold jobs that require no more than a high school education. It differs from previous studies in that it examines persistent overqualification based on many factors that have a significant impact for immigrants (location of study, place of birth, recent admission and age at the time of admission, official language proficiency, and admission category). It also examines the impact of other general factors (age, sex, region of residence, highest level of educational attainment and field of study) related to persistent overqualification, particularly by analyzing whether the impact of these factors differs among immigrants and non-immigrants.
What did the researchers find?
Some specific numbers:
How can you use this research?
Other than being frustrated with the same old story we've been documenting since the 1980's, the report can be used for ongoing advocacy efforts for labour market inclusion of newcomers.
The authors suggest that "Future work could also focus on dynamics that distinguish immigrants with foreign degrees from each other, based on their region of origin. In particular, the distinctive cases of Southeast Asia, and particularly Southern Asia, should be further explored. The effects of certain additional factors (work experience, competencies, belonging to certain population groups designated as visible minorities, the specific immigration program, having lived in Canada as a student or temporary worker for a certain number of years before obtaining permanent residency) should also be studied. It would also be relevant to directly examine the issue of formal and informal recognition of diplomas obtained abroad, which seems to be an important factor in differentiating certain groups of immigrants, but that a study of overqualification only allows us to examine in approximate terms."
What is this research about?
In 2018, World Education Services (WES) conducted a survey-based study. They examined the demographic characteristics of skilled immigrants as well as their experience and education, and studied how these factors affect their labour market outcomes. This report is based on that study. The study does not look at employer or demand side factors. It is intended to inform Canadian policy and practice with respect to skilled immigrants, and to increase awareness among prospective immigrants of the factors that are associated with labour force success.
What do you need to know?
The report has three sections:
Section one profiles the respondents’ age, gender, country of origin, entry class, province of residence, years of study, and pre- and post-migration work sector.
Section two examines respondents’ employment outcomes from two perspectives:
Section three explores the implications of these findings for various audiences - policy makers, service providers, and prospective skilled immigrants - and identifies information gaps where further research is needed.
What did the researcher do?
The findings in this report are based on data collected from a sample of people who had applied to WES between 2013 and 2015 for an Educational Credential Assessment and who were subsequently admitted to Canada as permanent residents. The data reflect the responses of 6,402 participants who resided in Canada at the time of the survey, all of whom had been admitted through one of the economic immigration categories now included under the Express Entry system.
What did the researcher find?
The survey results confirmed many of the trends in skilled immigrant employment outcomes that other research has revealed. However, the authors went further, exploring in greater depth those results that related to employment commensurate with skills, experience, and education. They saw both encouraging outcomes and persistent challenges for immigrants who arrive in Canada seeking work that leverages their skills, education, and experience.
On the positive side, more than 80 percent of survey respondents reported that they were employed, most of them in permanent jobs. This result aligns with Statistics Canada data, which show that the unemployment rate for newcomers in 2017 was at its lowest since 2006.
At the same time, the authors note that many immigrants encountered challenges that prevented them from securing employment which fully leverages their skills, education, and experience. Only 39.1 percent of survey respondents had jobs with duties mainly similar in type and complexity to their pre-immigration jobs. Demographics, skills, education, and experience are among the predictors of both employment status and the extent to which respondents had obtained commensurate employment.
How can you use this research?
While the gap between unemployment rates of immigrants and those of the Canadian-born has narrowed considerably, the study results indicate that many immigrants still encounter persistent barriers to commensurate employment in the Canadian labour market. The results of this research point to many opportunities to further refine policies and practices so that skilled immigrants can more fully contribute their skills and education to the Canadian workforce. Specifically, policy makers and practitioners need to gather information and data that will allow stakeholders to effectively address several key concerns:
What is this research about?
This paper reports on a research project that explores a gap in exploring infrastructures of formal migration, and their entanglements with migrants’ own subjectivities by arguing for a new research agenda on migration infrastructure. The study uses a ‘discursive mapping’ approach involving in-depth interviews and mind-maps sketched by 27 research participants based in Australia and Canada as they narrated their migration experience.
What do you need to know?
The recent ‘infrastructural turn’ in migration studies has provided valuable insights into the emergence and functions of different aspects of migration infrastructure such as the commercial migration industry, social networks, and technological innovations (Xiang and Lindquist 2014). The focus of current scholarship, however, has been on how these infrastructures mobilise migrants, predominantly across irregular migration pathways. There remains a gap in exploring infrastructures of formal migration, and their entanglements with migrants’ own subjectivities. This paper draws upon the experiences of three migrants to illuminate how their journeys are intertwined with and shaped by migration infrastructures - particularly media and regulatory processes. By (re)centring the infrastructural focus on migrants’ own agencies, desires, and life-courses, this study presents nuanced understandings of the lived experience of skilled migration infrastructures.
What did the researcher do?
The author reviewed empirical research, and presents arguments underlining the importance of exploring skilled migration infrastructures. This is followed by an analysis of the national case studies including a brief definition of skilled migration in the context of this study, the methodological considerations for this research, and an overview of mental mapping as a method. She then turns to the findings which zoom into migrants’ encounters with technology and regulatory infrastructures, to demonstrate the intricacies of skilled migration processes that span beyond categorical classifications and dichotomies of arrival/departure, temporary/permanent, skilled/non-skilled. In doing so this paper attempts to humanise the process of migration by shifting the infrastructural gaze from infrastructures to experiences. The author argues that this shift is critical in better understanding migration infrastructures that are not simply processes that migrants go through but are lived, felt and communicated with as they collide with migrants’ social worlds and individual subjectivities.
What did the researcher find?
Studies on “migration infrastructure calls for research that is less fixated on migration as behaviour or migrants as the primary subject” (Xiang & Lindquist, 2014, p. 122). Migrants themselves take a back seat as the focus is not on how migrants move but how they are moved. Through an analysis of migrants’ interactions with technology and regulatory infrastructures in this study, this paper demonstrates that such a framing discounts the role of migrants as active agents with social and material resources that they use to negotiate and navigate diverse aspects of their lives.
By zooming into migrants’ interactions with technological and regulatory infrastructures, this paper argues for a more holistic understanding of skilled migration processes that are entwined with participants’ social and individual subjectivities. Much of the work on infrastructural mechanisms in migration studies tends to focus on singular aspects of these assemblages. We have seen for example, a vast array of scholarship focused on migrants use of digital technologies (Leurs & Ponzanesi, 2018; Pink et al., 2016; Oh, 2016). While these studies have uncovered important ways in which migrants interact with digital and media infrastructures, the narratives in this paper demonstrate that these infrastructures are one aspect of the migration process, and their use depends upon migrants’ personal circumstances and needs. Migrants play an active role in choosing and switching between media platforms; and between receiving and providing advice.
Furthermore, a majority of scholarship conducted on migration infrastructures are based within sending contexts focusing on aspects of departure. As this paper shows, migrants encounter new and diverse types of regulatory infrastructures upon their arrival based on their legal and social status. The narratives demonstrate how participants’ plans, negotiations, and aspirations are enmeshed with regulatory infrastructures and migrants are involved in constant negotiations with these systems as they move across different stages in their journeys.
How can you use this research?
This paper attempts to redirect thinking on migration infrastructures by focusing on the lived experiences of infrastructures as the entry point in analysing migrant mobility. Mapping experiences of onshore migrants provides a methodological basis for following migrants life-courses rather than the dominant focus on departure, transit, and arrival or on analyses of policy categories. The author seeks to draw attention, instead, to the lived experiences of ‘migration as a process’ which is dynamic, multifarious, and ongoing.
What is this research about?
This report provides a summary of findings from a study on immigrant inclusion conducted collaboratively by researchers at the Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work (CRIW) at Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Hire Immigrants Ottawa, and World Skills Employment Centre. The study was undertaken to better understand immigrants’ experience of inclusion in Canadian organizations. In particular, this project aimed to uncover organizational practices and strategies to facilitate immigrant attraction, inclusion and retention.
What do you need to know?
Immigrants are critical to sustain Canadian economic growth by mitigating labor shortages associated to population aging and low birth rate. In the global war for talent, organizations able to leverage multiple sources of talent are better positioned to succeed in a global economic environment. Despite the critical role of immigrants for Canadian economic growth and organizational success, low levels of labor market integration of immigrants persist.
What did the researchers do?
Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work (CRIW) researchers conducted five focus groups with former participants of the World Skills Employment Centre’s Ottawa Job Match Network, a program that facilitates employment for highly skilled immigrants. The total number of participants in the study was 24. The participants included employees of government agencies, non-profit and business sectors, as well as self-employed individuals.
Most participants had an excellent command of the English and/or French languages, had graduate degrees, and were experienced professionals. The sample had a balanced representation of male and female participants.
During the focus groups, participants were asked to discuss their experience searching for jobs in Canada, their experiences after being hired, as well as their views about the ways the process of integration can be facilitated by immigrant-serving organizations and hiring employers.
What did the researcher find?
Participants in this study were appreciative of the support received by immigrant-serving organizations in general, and World Skills in particular. They reported receiving useful advice and assistance, and suggested that the Ottawa Job Match Network played a key role in providing them with employment opportunities. Through participation in the Ottawa Job Match Network, participants felt better informed about the Canadian job market, improved their job search strategies, and learned about employers’ expectations, and hiring norms. They also reported feeling better prepared and able to adjust to the new organization once they found employment. They highlighted the role of the program in supporting them to build and leverage professional networks which were instrumental in their careers. Many of the World Skills’ clients interviewed had relatively well-paid jobs aligning with their expectations and qualifications.
In contrast, those who used the services of immigrant-serving organizations less frequently, reported greater difficulty maintaining permanent employment.
Specific findings:
How can you use this research?
CRIW researchers identified a few actions policy makers, immigrant-serving organizations, employers, and immigrants can take to improve newcomers’ employability and transition to employment.
The key recommendations to policy makers are to modify the existing incentives structures and to provide supplementary funding for new programs to be offered by immigrant-serving organizations.
The main recommendation to immigrant-serving organizations is to assume a more active role in facilitating the development of immigrant professional networks and to more actively connect with successful alumni. In addition, they could offer advice on pursuing additional education and could offer more targeted programs intended for specific professions and occupations.
This study encourages employers to tap more into immigrant networks and to communicate with immigrant-serving organizations to a greater extent to identify employable newcomers. This study also suggests some recommendations to ensure greater integration of immigrants into their workplace.
One of the most important recommendations is for newcomers to continue interaction with immigrant-serving organizations even after they found their initial employment. This study also encourages immigrants to seek out mentors, especially among other immigrants and long-term employees, and to diversify their networking strategies. Finally, this study urges long-term immigrants, who have already become established in Canada, to reach out and assist other newcomers in their search for employment and integration into Canadian workplaces.
What is this research about?
This report provides a descriptive analysis of the labour market outcomes of new immigrants to Canada from 2006 to 2019.
Using estimates from the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS), our analysis evaluates participation, unemployment, and employment rates, as well as average hourly wages. This report compares trends in labour market outcomes from 2006 to 2019 among very recent immigrants (5 years or less since immigration), recent immigrants (5-10 years since immigration), and Canadian-born workers.
What do you need to know?
This report uses estimates of labour market outcomes from the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS). As LFS provides annual estimates up to 2019, it has the most recent data for labour market outcomes compared to other sources. Thus, using LFS data allows for timely comparisons of labour market outcomes between new immigrants and Canadian-born workers between 2006 and 2019. This report analyzes four labour market indicators by immigrant status and education level: participation rate, unemployment rate, employment rate, and average hourly wages. As this report presents descriptive analysis, characteristics other than educational attainment, such as age, gender, and country of origin, were not controlled for. The analysis emphasizes trends in labour market indicators between 2006 and 2019, rather than levels. However, this report recognizes that new immigrants have performed poorly on certain labour market indicators, in particular the unemployment rate and wages, resulting in a loss of their potential contribution to the economy.
What did the researchers do?
This report first reviews the literature on the economic integration of new immigrants to Canada. The second section discusses the data used in this report. In turn, the third section offers an overview of the labour force by immigrant status. The fourth section provides a descriptive analysis of the labour market performance of new immigrants, including comparisons in outcomes between immigrants and the Canadian-born. Next, section five compares LFS estimates with Census/NHS data, highlighting the similarities in trends between the sources. Section six discusses the potential reasons for the improved labour market performance of new immigrants. Finally, section seven offers concluding remarks, including a summary of the labour performance of new immigrants and a future research agenda.
What did the researcher find?
The authors conclude that the labour performance of new immigrants generally improved between 2006 and 2019. This report finds that new immigrants are on average younger and better educated than the Canadian-born. As a result, their labour force participation and employment rates were comparable to, if not better than, those of the Canadian-born. However, the unemployment rates of new immigrants were higher, and average hourly wages were lower. Over the 2006 to 2019 period, very recent immigrants enjoyed an absolute and relative improvement in all four indicators. Recent immigrants enjoyed an improvement in all four absolute indicators and three of four relative indicators; relative hourly wages were the exception.
New immigrants were major assets to the Canadian labour force, due to their younger average age and higher average education than the Canadian-born. As a younger and more educated population compared to the Canadian-born, new immigrants had high participation and employment rates, which increased in both absolute and relative terms over the period. These high rates, however, were unable to absorb all new immigrants in the labour force, resulting in unemployment rates remaining above that of the Canadian-born. Although unemployment rates remained much higher than the rate of the Canadian-born, new immigrants benefited from a substantial decline in absolute and relative unemployment rates over the period. The unemployment rates of new immigrants decreased significantly in absolute and relative terms from 2006 to 2019.
Improvements in wages were less impressive. While the real wages of new immigrants increased, as did the relative wages of very recent immigrants, the relative wages of recent immigrants fell. Given their lower average age and higher education relative to the Canadian working-age population, new immigrants represent an important strength for the Canadian economy, from the perspective of their contribution to the labour force and to tax revenues. This contribution could be even greater if the gaps in unemployment rates and relative wages were reduced further.
The report posits six reasons for the general improvement in the labour market performance of new immigrants:
How can you use this research?
Given the increasing significance of highly skilled immigrants in the Canadian labour market, further monitoring and research on the labour performance of new immigrants is imperative.
As this report does not control for variables other than education level, further research should examine whether the improved results for the labour performance of new immigrants would hold under more specific contexts. For example, studies could compare immigrant labour market outcomes in Canada across geographical areas (e.g. regions, provinces/territories), immigrant characteristics (e.g. gender, race, country of origin, immigrant categories including economic immigrants and refugees), and occupation (e.g. industry, high-skilled vs. low-skilled jobs). Furthermore, as previously discussed, more research is required to determine the reasons for new immigrants’ improvement in the Canadian labour market.
For example, studies could explore whether government supports for immigrants have improved and impacted the labour outcomes of new immigrants.
Finally, future research should also focus on new immigrants’ weaker outcomes in unemployment rates and earnings: why did highly educated new immigrants consistently have high unemployment rates and low relative wages between 2006 and 2019? More research should explore the potential factors behind these outcomes, such as discrimination and “brain waste”. In particular, research on job mismatching using more recent data would help determine whether “brain waste” could explain new immigrants’ relatively low wages despite high employment rates.
This case study examines how the hackathon as an instrument can aid settlement sectors and governments in fostering non-profit innovation to rethinking the trajectory of taking solutions to scale. It presents one practitioner’s perspective on the outcomes of two community hackathons, one exploring migration data sets and the other on language policy innovation, co-developed between 2016 and 2019 by MCIS Language Solutions, a Toronto based not-for-profit social enterprise, in partnership with various partners.
Background
In Canada, the non-profit organizations (NPO) and settlement sectors are increasingly reexamining their responsibility for service delivery and service design. With a growing interest in understanding how to include design principles and an "innovation" mindset in addressing the long-term outcomes of social services, new instruments are introduced as a way to experiment with different modes of engagement among the various stakeholders. A recent example is the hackathon.
The aim of community hackathons or civic hacks—a derivative of tech gatherings customized to fit public engagement - is to collaboratively rethink, redesign, and resolve a range of social and policy issues that communities are facing, from settlement, the environment, health, or legal services. Although hackathons and civic hacks aspire to be democratic, relationship-driven instruments, aligned with non-profit principles of inclusion and diversity, they are also risky propositions from the perspective of the non-profit organizational culture in Canada in that they tend to lack solid structure, clear rules, and fixed outcomes. Despite the challenges, the promise of innovation is too attractive to be disregarded, and some non-profits are embarking (with or without the government’s help) on incorporating hackathons into their toolkits.
Background
A recent government of Canada surge of interest around making the case for a nationwide innovation agenda inspired some NPOs to test new models of engagement, often mimicking the tech sector design and prototyping, while hoping to understand the scope of innovation. Broadly speaking, the scope of industry innovation is loosely defined by the Oslo Manual (OECD/Eurostat, 2019), and includes four organizational areas: culture, resources, products/services, and processes. In January 2019, while gathering feedback on sector innovation, the insights provided were clearly articulated (Senate Canada, 2019). To support the culture of innovation, the sector suggested “embedding innovation” and “having the agency” of a designated role or department. Data sharing was also identified as a primary innovation resource needing to be managed by public trusts, while products/services innovation was identified as ideal opportunities for participatory design and wider collaboration (e.g., implementing hackathons or similar methodologies).
MCIS, which stands for Multicultural Community Interpreter Services, is a service delivery driven NPO that specializes in facilitating language access to critical services. Their earlier attempts to bring hackathons to fruition was due to the absence of a mandate, budgetary constraints, insufficient access to partners in the civic tech community, and relevant data sets (Trinaistic, 2018).
The purpose of a hackathon (a portmanteau of “hacking marathon”), which has been a tool of the tech industry since the early 1990s, is to explore alternatives to existing design solutions and business as usual processes while promoting collaboration. Unlike technical hackathons—seen as a recommended part of career preparation, recruitment fairs, and an exercise in demonstrated readiness of young graduates with technical backgrounds to “netWORK” (Nardi et al., 2002)—community hackathons, sometimes interchangeably used with civic hacks, are considered to be “a subset of this trend that bring together ad hoc groups under the auspices of conceiving and prototyping technologies to address social conditions and concerns” (Lodato & DiSalvo, 2016). Being less about the technology, project pitches, and semi-finished products and more about conversations and bringing together a spectrum of people with varied professional and lived experiences, these events are meant to brainstorm on and crowdsource alternative solutions and facilitate participation by making all voices count and contribute equally.
Based on the data MCIS gathered through informal interviews and the survey of hackathon participants (primarily from non-profit sector across Ontario) in 2019,1 it is apparent that NPOs are polarized in their views of hackathons/civic hacks either as “interesting” and “promising” or “confusing” and “irrelevant.” Amongst reasons for such difference in responses are generational biases, swaying between reluctance in perceiving the usefulness of this model versus excited expectations around hackathon-based style of collaborative learning. Also, some participants are inclined to reject disrupted project management flow while others embrace non-linear prototyping and experimenting. For some, the lack of clear outcomes is distressing. For others, the ambiguity of “unfinished solutions” is wholeheartedly embraced as a tool of disrupting the business as usual. For these reasons, hackathons could be a disappointing experience for participants who are used to more structured engagement and support of the academia—and of students in particular—could be crucial in creating connections between more traditional, project management-fixed, and outcomes-heavy approaches and experiment-driven, agile, and flexible opportunities.
What did the researcher learn?
Civic, policy, or community hackathons are both spaces and instruments of rapid and equitable innovation that leverage service users’ input with appropriate technology and that are permeated by an attitude of open mindedness, positive practicality, and radical inclusion.
Lessons learned:
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