Publications, Research & Reports

This report examines how recent newcomers living in Scarborough learn about and use free community and settlement services, and why many do not access them.It aims to identify information and service accessibility, challenges, and gaps for newcomers who have lived in Canada less than five years and have used only one or no settlement services.

This research synthesizes findings from empirical studies on how digital technologies (DTs) are used with immigrant plurilingual language learners in educational settings. Its explores contexts, methods, and outcomes of technology use for facilitating language learning and plurilingual teaching practices, as well as to assess how much current research integrates plurilingual approaches.

The article examines how undocumented Venezuelan migrants traveling through Central America toward the United States‑Mexico border navigate a landscape of “information precarity” and confront disinformation.

The study investigates digital equity and inclusion in settlement‑service delivery for newcomers living in the Peel Region of Ontario. The report uncovers persistent digital inequities for newcomers in Peel, such as language, digital‑skill, and awareness barriers, while highlighting the critical role of hybrid service models and community partnerships (libraries, device‑loan schemes).

The report evaluates the Newcomer Introduction to Classes Online (NICO) initiative run by the Calgary Immigrant Educational Society (CIES). Its purpose is to identify barriers and needs that prevent newly arrived immigrants, especially those at Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 3 or lower, from succeeding in online English‑language learning.

The agreement seeks to create a shared vocabulary for digital‑literacy‑related concepts, provide implementation guidance for organizations across sectors, and propose a standardized set of indicators for measuring progress and barriers.

The paper investigates dark patterns in privacy (DPPs): interface‑design tactics that manipulate users into disclosing more personal data than they intend, to the benefit of the service provider.

This environmental scan provides a detailed, sector-specific overview of AI adoption in Canadian settlement services, highlighting both the promise and the challenges of integrating AI in a human-centered, ethical, and collaborative manner. It provides actionable recommendations for organizations, policymakers, and researchers, and sets the stage for future work in this evolving area.

The research explores ongoing and emerging digital literacy gaps among newcomers in the Toronto South area, with a focus on how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the sector’s shift to online and hybrid service delivery.

This report looked at the state of evidence for the use of communication apps (specifically cultural-language translation apps) with immigrant seniors in long-term care (LTC) and community settings. The study focused on understanding the acceptability, accessibility, and utility of these digital resources for older immigrant adults who have limited English proficiency, and how these tools impact health equity and care quality.

This is an evaluation report for a year-long digital literacy initiative conducted by Cecil Community Centre in Kensington-Chinatown. Multilingual seniors attended weekly classes, workshops, and optional drop-in sessions to build foundational digital skills. The project focused on Mandarin and Cantonese speakers.

This research report details the Josoor Project, an Arab Community Centre of Toronto (ACCT) project aimed at improving settlement services for vulnerable newcomer and refugee women in Ontario.

This qualitative study examined the experiences of patients from equity-deserving populations (EDPs) who received care from a Virtual Emergency Department (ED) in Toronto, Canada. The researchers wanted to understand how virtual care compared to in-person care for EDPs and what aspects promoted or hindered equitable access and experiences.

This study explores the digital learning needs and preferences of Arabic-speaking older immigrants in Canada, focusing on their experiences with information and communication technologies (ICTs) and digital literacy programs.

The research investigates how newcomers to Canada use Reddit to find settlement information, which is also available through formal settlement service providers. The study aims to understand the extent to which informal online conversations on Reddit align with formal settlement service categories and to explore the potential for using this information to improve settlement services.

This research examined how racialized newcomers experience information and communication technologies (ICTs) during their settlement journey in Canada, focusing on digital equity and systemic racism. The study aimed to explore the intersection of systemic racism and digital inequity and to identify policies and practices that can support racialized newcomers more effectively.

The research focused on understanding the needs and gaps in employment support services for skilled Newcomers in Canada. The study identified the needs and gaps in labour market integration supports for Newcomers and to determine which services are most effective in helping them secure employment that matches their skills and qualifications.

This report explores how smartphones, viewed as essential lifeline devices, can be designed to better serve individuals in vulnerable, disadvantaged, or transitional contexts. It emphasizes the critical role smartphones play in providing access to resources, services, and vital communication, especially in precarious situations such as natural disasters, migration, and poverty.

This research investigates the role of multicultural media in the settlement process of immigrants in Ottawa, Canada. It focuses on four ethnocultural and immigrant communities (EICs): Chinese, Spanish-speaking Latin American, Somali, and South Asian. The study aims to understand how these communities use different types of multicultural media (print, broadcast, and digital) and how factors such as immigration category, length of stay, and household income influence media use.

This research explores the role of technology in addressing the social and cultural needs of newcomer youth in Ontario, Canada. It examines how newcomer youth, aged 17-24, and settlement service staff perceive and use technology in the settlement process.

This report highlights the language limitations of most digital humanitarian services, leaving millions of crisis-affected individuals excluded. It demonstrates the demand to make services available in the language that people need. Researchers propose a collective approach to language technology development. Researchers analyzed the barriers to inclusion in digital humanitarian services and identified best practices and potential solutions.

The Langley Local Immigrant Partnership Research project: Access to Settlement and Other Service Information took place from November 2021 to March 2022 and explored these two questions: What hinders new immigrants from accessing information about settlement and other services? How to improve immigrant access to information?

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.

Researchers examined refugee mothers’ access to virtual social support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their objective was to understand the provision of virtual social support for refugee mothers from the perspective of service providers and recently arrived refugee mothers to Canada.

Drawn from a larger study on the information behavior of immigrants, this paper mainly reports the semi-structured interview findings on the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants who used formal information sources with discussion on how that affected their post-arrival settlement into Canada.

Seniors’ adoption of emerging technologies is crucial to their social connectedness, well-being, and digital participation in society. This article presents a Canadian study on how immigrant seniors established and sustained social connections through their engagement with digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This report provides essential insights about the intersecting obstacles that people seeking asylum face when accessing healthcare digitally. It explores the impacts of digital exclusion on both wellbeing and access to healthcare for people seeking asylum in England, and sets out solutions for how to address this.

Settlement services are key to Canada's success in welcoming and integrating immigrants. Offered mainly in person prior to COVID-19 by non-governmental agencies reliant on and regulated by government funders, services were forced online and delivered by staff working remotely. The authors document this transition between September 2020 and September 2021 in Ontario, Canada and the conditions that influenced it.

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.

The Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) has released its initial evaluation of the CANN E-Link, a technology platform developed by S.U.C.C.E.S.S. as a part of its Community Airport Newcomers Network (CANN). CANN E-Link aims to tackle the challenge of newcomer awareness and engagement with free settlement services during their critical initial months in Canada.

The goal of the report is to offer guiding questions and considerations for humanitarian organizations deciding if a chatbot is an appropriate tool to address program and community needs. It also contains use cases highlighting the experiences of practitioners working in diverse geographic contexts and issue areas.

In this study, the authors evaluate the performance of several widely-used GPT detectors using writing samples from native and non-native English writers. Their findings reveal that these detectors consistently misclassify non-native English writing samples as AI-generated, whereas native writing samples are accurately identified.

The articles in this edition of Canadian Diversity should provide you with some inspiration and ideas. You should want to learn more about the projects and research. Hopefully they will encourage you to share what you’re working on.

This paper contributes to the growing literature on the use of social media for digital knowledge mobilization, drawing particular attention to TikTok and its unique potential for collaborative knowledge mobilization with underserved communities who experience barriers to health care and health inequities (eg, equity-seeking groups).

This report presents a review of relevant literature and an analysis of 25 programmes selected from across the world that have used innovative information and communication technologies (ICTs) in literacy and education for refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

This research explores newcomers' experiences in using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for settlement purposes. In particular, it focuses on their uses of Settlement.Org, a website that provides information and resources about settling in Ontario.

This report examines the settlement-related content in different types of mainstream and ethnic media in Ontario to identify gaps in the current delivery of settlement media content.

This study establishes a Canada-wide baseline for online platform usage, effectiveness and inclusiveness during the pandemic, with a particular focus on social media platforms.

This paper sets out a framework of core components of digital inclusion - including access/use, quality of access/use, affordability, and digital skills - and briefly considers policy implications.

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 highlights the various initiatives that both IOM and other organizations have taken, to provide resources and guidance for those looking to transition their activities online in the areas of migrant training, integration and social cohesion. It also presents some knowledge products and reports, and online campaigns that are particularly geared towards combatting hate speech towards migrants and misinformation on COVID-19.

The objective of the survey is to assess how has pandemic impacted access to services among newcomer who have limited access to technology and how digital literacy affect service accessibility.

This report explored how the digital divide has impacted Canadian newcomers, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As immigrants continue to seek information online, Immigrant service provider organizations (SPOs’) websites hold value in increasing the health literacy and health-wellness of immigrants. This research assessed the current state of immigrant SPOs’ websites as information infrastructures and reveals areas for improvement.

The Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) has incorporated data from IRCC's Settlement Program and Resettlement Assistance Program focusing on services accessed by recent immigrants up to April 2021. The current article examines the settlement services accessed by adult immigrants admitted from 2016 to 2020.

The purpose of this research report is to provide a framework for educational institutions to understand the different needs and behaviors of international Millennial student segments as a means of informing international student enrollment strategies.

In this report, the authors surveyed more than 1,500 people who have used programs staffed by Digital Navigators, and interviewed the leaders of more than 40 Digital Navigator programs to understand and evaluate the role impact Digital Navigators have had on addressing the digital divide.

This study examines the settlement experiences and information practices of recently-arrived Afghan immigrant and refugee youth in Toronto. As part of this ethnographic study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven Afghan youth between the ages of 18 and 28 who had lived in Canada for less than 10 years.

This report provides commentary and recommendations on how the City of Toronto’s digital inclusion and digital equity initiatives can align to help accelerate progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This report offers insights on programs designed to increase digital inclusion, through a dual focus on digital literacy and on options to make services more affordable.

This paper provides evidence from the 2018 Canadian Internet Use Survey on the effect of social media usage, internet usage for employment search and internet usage for training purposes on the employment of immigrants relative to the Canadian-born.

This paper argues that recent changes brought about by COVID-19 highlight that computational advances need to incorporate human rights throughout design and development stages, extending well beyond technical feasibility. This also extends beyond tech company references to inclusivity and transparency and requires analysis of systemic risks to migration and mobility regimes arising from advances in AI and related technologies.

This scan provides a snapshot of the use of digital messaging in direct service delivery by Canadian Immigrant and Refugee-serving organizations.

Social media usage has been recognized as an integral part of immigrants’ acculturation experiences, yet research on social media is just emerging, and more detailed understanding is needed. In this report, researchers sought to understand how Chinese immigrants’ social media use influences their acculturation experiences. They looked at which social media platforms Chinese immigrants use and for what purposes, as well as what influence social media use has on their acculturation process in Canada. Their findings echo and reinforce what we have heard and know about newcomer use of social media and information practices, offering additional evidence and practical tips for immigrant and refugee-serving organizations.

This series highlights digital divides across Canada, in hopes that by recognizing the interrelated issues of internet access, adoption and quality, a clearer path toward meaningful digital inclusion and equity can better shape our technology governance and digital policies.

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.

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.

This exploratory pilot study is the beginning of a project to evaluate, designe and reconfigure information sources and how they are delivered to  facilitate essential information practices that aid the settlement process.

The social inclusion of newly resettled refugees is a significant issue confronting both refugees and their host societies. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly  viewed as a useful resource in programs that provide settlement services or promote participation in society. This paper moves beyond the conventional discussion on the digital divide to  explore what people are actually able to do and achieve with ICTs.

The purpose of this study was to examine how the distribution of resources within and outside an Enhanced Language Training Program (ELT) affected a group of newcomers’ access to Internet literacy development; and to discuss ensuing pedagogical and curricular implications for the ELT Program.

This article looks into ways in which existing studies address the possibilities and vulnerabilities of mobile communications, the social conditions, and the agency of refugees in engaging with mobile technologies in the different temporal and spatial dimensions of their migration trajectories.

This report is based on results from two online surveys (one for service providers and one for newcomers) supplemented by phone interviews with newcomers who have been unable to access remote services. The report outlines the extent to which the transition to online service delivery has impacted newcomers, especially those in vulnerable situations in the Toronto area.

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.

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the settlement experiences of immigrants, such as their use and satisfaction with settlement services and how these services may influence integration into educational institutions, the labour market and the wider society and to examine common trends within five Canadian data sets.

The researchers examined the nature of information in foreign-trained health professionals’ lives as they attempt to integrate into the North American labor market and the role that online discussion forums play in channeling the discussions.

This report examines how and why immigrants to Canada make use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) as they move through the stages of immigration.

This study 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.

This project aimed to uncover organizational practices and strategies to facilitate immigrant attraction, inclusion and retention.

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.

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"?

In this study, the researcher sought to answer these questions: What motivates immigrants to use information and communication technology (ICT)? What are the factors that influence immigrants’ ICT behaviors?

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

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.

This report is a synthesis of recent literature on how information can be used to address settlement and integration barriers experienced by newcomers to Canada.

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.

This report focuses on the work undertaken by the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Committee of the Agency of the Future (AoF) Project. The AoF Project is a national initiative being developed collaboratively by the Pathways to Prosperity research consortium, settlement service providers and settlement umbrella associations.

This study examines the importance of access to information about health and health-related services as an enabler of access to health care, in a highly multicultural setting.

Jangles Productions was contracted by Citizenship and Immigration Canada Ontario Region in August of 2009 to conduct a print campaign to promote three settlement services.

This Scoping Review discusses the effective use of the Internet for the provision of integral information to new immigrants.