Publications, Research & Reports

This article examines the use of artificial intelligence (AI), including generative AI, in the management of international migration. It explores the legal and practical considerations for responsible AI implementation by governments, focusing on transparency, regulatory frameworks, and the protection of migrants’ rights.

This report explores key themes around the resettlement experiences of privately sponsored Syrian refugees in Ontario. It particularly focuses on the impact of online pre-arrival contact via digital communication platforms like Facebook, Skype, and WhatsApp between refugees and their private sponsors.

In this report authors document the evidence on digital leisure in the forced displacement context, highlighting issues unique to it. They outline the main uses and potential benefits of digital leisure in refugee contexts.

In this report authors document the evidence on digital leisure in the forced displacement context, highlighting issues unique to that context. This report is a continuation of the desk review, and provides evidence from fieldwork carried out in two refugee shelters in the city of Boa Vista, Brazil – Rondon III and September 13 – at the end of 2021. The report focuses on the main uses and potential benefits of digital leisure in refugee contexts.

This report aims to build an evidence base of how mobile technology and mobile network operators (MNOs) have an important role to play in the delivery of dignified aid to refugees. The report provides humanitarian organisations and MNOs with unique insights and direction on how to work together to digitise humanitarian assistance and ensure the benefits of mobile technology are shared equally by all.

This scoping review applies the (Levesque et al. in Int J Equity Health 12:18, 2013) Patient-Centred Access to Healthcare model in exploring the potential of increased access through virtual mental healthcare services VMHS for these populations by examining the affordability, availability/accommodation, and appropriateness and acceptability of virtual mental health interventions and assessments.

This report examines outcomes in Canadian immigration decisions and in the Canadian immigration system that may systematically and unjustifiably disadvantage certain populations based on characteristics such as race and country of origin.

This article argues that AI will only benefit refugees if it does not replicate the problems of the current system.

The authors sought to answer two questions about mobile learning for refugees: What are the recently existing mobile learning apps for refugees? What are the characteristics of the recent mobile learning apps for refugees?

This report offers the beginning of a systemic analysis of migration management technologies, foregrounding the experiences of people on the move who are interacting with and thinking about surveillance, biometrics, and automated decision-making during the course of their migration journeys.

This report examines experiences of refugees that have settled in Newfoundland and Labrador and analyzes factors that can potentially enhance refugee integration and factors that can negatively impact their settlement experiences and retention in the province. The potential demographic and economic benefits of refugee settlement in the province cannot be realized if refugees come but then choose to leave.

Based on research conducted between February 2020 and March 2021, this joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documents serious international human rights violations that immigration detainees, particularly persons with psychosocial disabilities, face in Canada.

In this report the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) advocates for the development of a new legal framework for the protection of climate refugees that recognize climate-induced displacement and protects those displaced by weather-related hazards (estimated at over 21 million people per year).

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.

Settlement service organizations play an essential role in supporting newcomers to Canada; however, the processes that practitioners engage in when working with people navigating the refugee system remain understudied. This study explores the institutional ruling relations that regulate refugees’ settlement process in Toronto from the standpoint view of practitioners.

From 2018 to 2021, Allies for Refugee Integration (ARI) and its partners focused on creating more welcoming communities for privately sponsored refugees. This report outlines changes to policy and processes to improve settlement-sponsor collaboration for more successful integration of refugees.

The Highlights Report is a compilation of existing data and research that provides evidence on newcomer settlement outcomes that support integration within Canada, for both clients of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)’s Settlement Program and non-clients.

This report looked at the opportunities and limitations of digital tools in the Organization for Migration (IOM) Canadian Orientation Abroad Programme's (COA) Pre-Departure Orientation Training for refugees coming to Canada.

This primer is intended to provide basic information on the history and legacy of refugee resettlement in Canada and to highlight Ottawa’s role in these efforts. It contains basic facts about refugees and Canadian refugee policy, a brief timeline of refugee resettlement in Canada, highlights from Ottawa’s history of refugee resettlement, and a myth buster intended to dispel some of the misconceptions about refugees and refugee resettlement history in Canada.

The project identified challenges that affect temporary migrants because of their gender and status, focusing on both individual- and system-level resilience.

The effectiveness of resettlement initiatives on refugee assimilation in Canada is assessed using the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) to follow refugee income variations between 1982-2015.

The question of how ICT can be deployed for refugees’ integration is difficult one to answer. This panel looked at how the knowledge accumulated by the IS community can be leveraged to design targeted technological solutions to tackle this crisis and avoid the potential risks associated with it.

In this article, the authors compare programs of public-private cooperation in Germany and Canada and examine the relationship between the state and civil society with regard to these active refugee reception policies.

When asylum seekers and refugees are displaced, how do they use communication technologies to maintain links with friends and family during flight and forced migration? When they are detained, what role does technology play in the ways asylum seekers communicate with the "outside"?

This paper presents findings from a qualitative interview study with Syrian refugees who settled in Vienna, Austria.

The evolution of the Canadian labour market threatens to aggravate the challenges facing resettled refugees. This report proposes six recommendations for the Government of Canada to better support Government Assisted Refugees (GARs) to succeed in the labour market (2020).

This article discusses social media use by asylum migrants prior to and during migration. This study is based on in-depth  interviews with 54 Syrian asylum migrants who recently obtained refugee status in the Netherlands.

Since 2014, millions of refugees and migrants have arrived at the borders of Europe. This article argues that, in making their way to safe spaces, refugees rely not only on a physical but increasingly also digital infrastructure of movement.

This paper provides a small contribution to supporting the further development and delivery of programs for refugee youth prior to their arrival in Canada. How to leverage technology securely and safely to provide additional support for refugee youth coming to Canada, taking advantage of the pre-arrival time, and current and future partnerships with government agencies and other involved organizations.

There are wide-ranging lessons that can be shared across sectors and regions on the challenges and opportunities of providing mobile connectivity and services to this segment of the population which will be explored in this report.

In this paper, the authors examine the role of social media in facilitating and building transcultural communication and connections for forced migrants in today’s contexts of resettlement. The authors' focus is on recently resettled Syrian refugee youth in Ottawa, who arrived in Canada as part of a federal government resettlement initiative in 2015-2016.

Due to the unprecedented dependency of refugees on ICT, the authors investigate how e-learning can be used to support refugees in the integration process and contributes to their social inclusion into the host country.

This study asks two sets of questions. First, are refugees more likely to leave their initial destination city than economic immigrants when group differences in sociodemographic and contextual characteristics are taken into account? Among refugees, are GARs more likely to leave their initial destination city than PSRs? Second, to what extent does the impact of unemployment on secondary migration vary by admission category? Among refugees, are GARs more likely than PSRs to leave their initial destination city when they experience unemployment?

The inflow of refugees to Calgary fluctuates widely over time, and varies considerably by country of origin. Social agencies must adapt to a continuously shifting kaleidoscope of people, cultures, languages and needs.

This MPI Europe policy brief takes stock of sponsorship programs worldwide - from the well-established Canadian private sponsorship program, to much newer and smaller-scale initiatives in countries such as Argentina, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom - and lays out a variety of ways private philanthropic actors can support these programs.

This report focuses on the impacts of automated decision-making in Canada’s immigration and refugee system from a human rights perspective.

Mobilizing Global Knowledge brings together academics and practitioners to reflect on a global collaborative refugee research network.

This research focuses on the role of Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) in Syrian refugee resettlement through a case study of an official refugee reception centre in the Waterloo Region of Ontario and a series of interviews with key informants from multiple sectors involved in resettlement.

This report finds that many new tech tools for migrants have failed to live up to their promise, in part because of extensive duplication in the sector, limited understanding of refugees’ needs, and funding and organizational limitations.

While a growing body of literature in HCI [human-computer interaction] is focusing on the initial needs of the refugees soon after their migration, most challenges associated with the long-term process of their integration with the host communities using technology have still remained understudied. This work builds on a 3 year-long fieldwork with the refugees in Canada, extended observations, and interviews with 26 participants (19 refugees, 4 refugee sponsors, and 3 refugee workers) to illustrate how refugees encounter various challenges in accessing necessary services in Canada through its computerized infrastructures.

The Syrian Outcomes Report provides a thematic overview of the outcomes of the Syrians who were resettled in Canada between November 2015 and December 2016. This report provides a comprehensive overview of Syrian integration outcomes to date for this group of newcomers.

This report provides a profile of immigration in Waterloo Region by presenting data on both recent and established immigrants as well as temporary residents. The purpose of the report is to increase the understanding of immigrant populations in Waterloo Region to ensure that as a region and community, appropriate services and strategies are planned to include the broader needs of this population.

This paper provides a summary of the EMPP, the partners, and government branches involved in its implementation, and the lessons that have been observed thus far. It explores the policy dimensions and implications of merging two distinct, and traditionally separate worlds, and the innovative partnerships integral to the successful implementation of complementary labour pathways in the long term.

This narrative study, sponsored by the Edmonton Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, captures key milestones, representative stories and observations about a unique time in our history as a multicultural community, both to salute those involved and to glean insights that may inform our collective future.

The purpose of this report is to summarize the findings from ARI’s Environmental Scan, conducted between July 2018 and February 2019. The results of the scan will form our baseline understanding of the current settlement-sponsor relationship.

While there is considerable literature on the settlement experiences of refugees, relatively little is known about the experiences of Syrian families, especially in rural Ontario. This brief engages with existing literature to consider the recent arrivals of thousands of Syrian refugees and particularly the roles and needs of Syrian women who have settled in rural Ontario.

This thesis investigates how refugees in Rome, Italy, use smartphones to improve their well-being and whether, according to the Capability Approach, smartphones can expand refugees’ capabilities, choices and freedoms.

Based on the capability approach, study findings reveal dependencies between properties of ICTs and their use, ICT-enabled capabilities relevant for refugees, and the corresponding contribution of ICTs to the processes of social inclusion.

With a challenge of integrating refugees into hosting societies comes the question about the role that ICTs could play in the ongoing integration efforts. Indeed, unprecedented reliance of refugees on technology, especially smartphones, is an important distinction of the current refugees’ crisis.