Publications, Research & Reports

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.

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.

This article suggests the Federal Court could enhance privacy interests in immigration and refugee proceedings without compromising the open court principle. It suggests that any measures taken to protect privacy should be crafted to avoid amplifying unfairness in access to legal materials. The Federal Court must avoid creating access regimes that asymmetrically block research and technological development that could advance the interests of refugees and other displaced people.

This reports asks: Why and how have public attitudes towards immigration in Canada grown more positive in the last 20 years? Can the changes in attitudes be accounted for by changes in population characteristics, or in the change in the effect of these characteristics? Did the 2008-2010 financial crisis affect support for immigration?

This article describes a study that investigated the pandemic-related work of community-based adult educators in the ethno-culturally diverse Canadian province of British Columbia.

This paper examines the intersection of the increasing adoption of remote work in Canada and Canada's ambitious immigration targets aimed at tackling growing demographic and labour challenges.

This paper addresses the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in migration governance, support, and experience with particular attention to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, social media, and virtual reality.

This research looks at what it takes to make immigration work in Canada’s small and rural communities. It examines the availability of settlement services in small and rural communities under the current settlement service agreements, which began in 2020–21, and the final year of the previous settlement service agreements, 2019–20. It studies the institutional barriers to meeting the settlement needs of immigrants in small and rural communities and the role that government and other stakeholders can play in addressing these barriers.

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.

Drawing on an extensive review of recent literature about resilience and integration, this paper evaluates a social resilience approach to the integration of newcomers in Canadian cities. The authors advocate a social resilience approach that acknowledges how institutions of all types play critical roles in newcomers’ efforts to establish their lives in new places, especially when faced with unanticipated events such as a global pandemic.

This paper explores the COVID-19 crisis with a focus on immigration and migration in Canada using a political economy lens.

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.

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.

Approximately one-fourth of Canada’s international students study in Toronto, and their presence adds to existing diversity on campuses and in communities. This report documents international student trends and to better understand their impact on Toronto’s economic, social and post-secondary educational infrastructure.

This literature review provides a snapshot of the various trends that existed in settlement sector with respect to how newcomers settle in Canada before the COVID-19 pandemic started, as well as examples of how the settlement sector has significantly changed in response to the pandemic.

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 defines several introductory concepts relating to artificial intelligence and machine learning and provides a review of existing literature that acknowledges efforts made to establish clarity on how the Canadian government uses artificial intelligence to manage migration to date.

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 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.

This study examines the empirical relationship between immigration and firm-level productivity in Canada.

Using integrated data from the 2006 and 2016 censuses, this study examines persistent overqualification over time among immigrants and non-immigrants.

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 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.

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

This report provides a descriptive analysis of the labour market outcomes of new immigrants to Canada from 2006 to 2019.

This study found that recent immigrants were more likely than Canadian-born workers to move out of employment in March and April mainly because of their shorter job tenure and over-representation in lower-wage jobs.

This report suggests that fair treatment of Canada’s agricultural workers requires several urgent and significant reforms at both the federal and provincial levels.

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.

This study focuses on the economic immigrants who were selected under Canada's Express Entry system in 2015 and 2016. It compares the degree to which Canadian work experience before immigration and pre-arranged employment at the time of application predict the initial labour market outcomes of these economic immigrants.

This article examines the role of two-step selection in explaining differences in the short-term and medium-term outcomes of economic immigrants in four major admission programs: FSWP, PNP, QSWP, and CEC.

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.

Many actors have different rolesin these processes of welcoming and integrating immigrants to Canada. This report attempts to describe the operation of this sector in the province of Québec.

This paper provides some context regarding the care crisis in LTC facilities, in particular its relationship with the type and skill mix of labour, including the degree to which immigrant workers are represented in this sector.

In this article, the author explores why during the Corona Virus Pandemic that Canada suffers from a shortage of health care professionals, it cannot benefit from its own immigrant professionals who immigrated to Canada as skilled workers?

This report identifies, documents and assesses the many ways that the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been affecting migration, borders, immigrant populations, and Canada’s immigration and settlement system between March, 2020 and June, 2020.

There are studies that look at specific aspects of this process, for instance in terms of interdisciplinarity, theoretical and methodological developments, but research with a holistic approach is lacking. Our research question, therefore, is how has migration studies institutionalised in the past four decades?

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.

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 authors call for greater attention to this critical population and make nine recommendations that would contribute to solutions in each major issue area impacting the education of Canadian immigrant youth and their entry into the workforce.

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.

Migration studies have developed rapidly as a research field over the past decades. This article provides an empirical analysis not only on the development in volume and the internationalization of the field, but also on the development in terms of topical focus within migration studies over the past three decades.

The IOM Glossary on Migration is the result of a lengthy process of consultation within the Organization and with external academic and partner organizations and institutions. It is meant to reflect the way IOM understands a wide range of terms relevant to migration and to clarify how migration-related terms are legally defined or commonly used.

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.

Migrants and refugees have important health needs and face inequalities in their health status. Health care delivery to this patient group has become a challenging public health focus in high income countries. This paper summarizes current knowledge on health care delivery to migrants and refugees in high-income countries from multiple perspectives.

This report explores the implication of the changing world of work for immigrant selection systems, highlighting key challenges such as figuring out how to anticipate future labor-market needs, balance employer demand with human-capital considerations, and build an element of regional variation into selection processes.

Immigration, Discrimination, and Trust: A Simply Complex Relationship