Understanding The Refugee Experience In The Canadian Context

This volume on the resilience, commitment, and survival of refugees brings together the latest research and insights from 32 authors across multiple disciplines, united in their pursuit of social justice for the economic, social, and political rights of refugees. The book adopts a reflexive and relational stance without compromising the rigour and quality of research to allow the reader to appreciate the shared and distinct immigration and (re)settlement experiences of refugees and their communities in all of their complexity. This book will be a valuable resource to, and a source of reflection for, researchers, educators, students, service providers, and policymakers who are committed to envisioning Canada as a country where all newcomers feel rooted and safe.

Recent immigrants and refugees — both children and their families — often struggle to adapt to Canadian education systems. For their part, educators also face challenges when developing effective strategies to help these students make smooth transitions to their new country. In Immigrant and Refugee Students in Canada, researchers join educators and social workers to provide a thorough and wide-ranging analysis of the issues at the preschool, elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels. By understanding these issues within the unique Canadian context, educators can work more effectively with newcomers trying to find their way. This book pursues three lines of inquiry: What are the main challenges that immigrant and refugee children and families face in the Canadian education system? What are the common aspects of successful intervention? What can we learn from the narratives of researchers, educators, social workers, and other frontline workers who work with immigrant and refugee families?

Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, over 5.6 million people have fled Syria and another 6.6 million remain internally displaced. By January 2017, a total of 40,081 Syrians had sought refuge across Canada in the largest resettlement event the country has experienced since the Indochina refugee crisis. Breaking new ground in an effort to understand and learn from the Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative that Canada launched in 2015, A National Project examines the experiences of refugees, receiving communities, and a range of stakeholders who were involved in their resettlement, including sponsors, service providers, and various local and municipal agencies. The contributors, who represent a wide spectrum of disciplines, include many of Canada's leading immigration scholars and others who worked directly with refugees. Considering the policy behind the program and the geographic and demographic factors affecting it, chapters document mobilization efforts, ethical concerns, integration challenges, and varying responses to resettling Syrian refugees from coast to coast. Articulating key lessons to be learned from Canada's program, this book provides promising strategies for future events of this kind. Showcasing innovative practices and initiatives, A National Project captures a diverse range of experiences surrounding Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada.

Exploring "refuge" and "refugee" as concepts that shape Canadian nation-building both within and beyond national borders, Refugee States takes an interdisciplinary and critical approach to describing how refugees articulate their relation to and defiance of official discourses. Through close examinations of refugee movements, contexts, and subjectivities, this collection reveals how Canada has relied upon the rejection and inclusion of refugees as a crucial means of statecraft. Bringing together renowned and emerging scholars from multiple disciplines, Nguyen and Phu illuminate the historical, political, and cultural conditions that produce refugees as well as the narrative of humanitarian benevolence that persists nationally and internationally. Highlighting landmark cases, the editors and contributors together develop critical refugee studies as a framework for understanding, nuancing, and critiquing the production of Canadian humanitarian exceptionalism – the international image and discourse of Canada as a liberal, tolerant, and welcoming haven for people fleeing oppression, persecution, and unfreedom. In doing so, Refugee States offers alternative modes of understanding past and present refugee passages to and within Canada, and brings to light the many ways in which refugee subjects navigate displacement, migration, and resettlement.

When you have to leave behind almost everything you know, where can you call home? Sometimes home is simply where we are: here. An imaginative, lyrical, unforgettable picture book about the migrant experience through a child's eyes. When a little girl and her younger brother are forced along with their family to flee the home they've always known, they must learn to make a new home for themselves -- wherever they are. And sometimes the smallest things -- a cup, a blanket, a lamp, a flower, a story -- can become a port of hope in a terrible storm. As the refugees travel onward toward an uncertain future, they are buoyed up by their hopes, dreams and the stories they tell -- a story that will carry them perpetually forward. This timely, sensitively told story, written by multiple award--winner Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Sendak Fellowship recipient Rashin Kheiriyeh, introduces very young readers in a gentle, non-frightening and ultimately hopeful way to the current refugee crisis.

The focus of this book is on the experiences of government-sponsored refugees in the early stages of integrating into Canadian society. Combining data gleaned from a longitudinal study of relatively recently arrived refugees in Calgary, Canada, with a close focus on the case of a physician from Colombia and his family, this volume illustrates how the cultural and social capital of refugees is marginalized and, in some cases, erased by the undervaluing of their education, training, credentials, and other knowledge. The findings presented in the book underscore the importance of addressing the challenge of integrating highly trained professionals into the professions for which they are credentialed.

Since 2015, the cross-border movement of migrants and refugees has reached unprecedented levels. War, persecution, destitution, and desertification impelled millions to flee their homes in central Asia, the Levant, and North Africa. The responses in the Global North varied country by country, with some opening their borders to historically large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers, while others adopted increasingly strict border policies. The dramatic increase in global migration has triggered controversial political and scholarly debates. The governance of cross-border mobility constitutes one of the key policy conundrums of the 21st century, raising fundamental questions about human rights, state responsibility, and security. The research literatures on borders and migration have rapidly expanded to meet the increased urgency of record numbers of displaced people. Yet, border studies have conventionally paid little attention to flows of people, and migration studies have simultaneously underappreciated the changing nature of borders. Borders and Migration: The Canadian Experience in Comparative Perspective provides new insights into how migration is affected by border governance and vice versa. Starting from the Canadian experience, and with an emphasis on refugees and irregular migrants, this multidisciplinary book explores how various levels of governance have facilitated and restricted flows of people across international borders. The book sheds light on the changing governance of migration and borders. Comparisons between Canada and other parts of the world bring into relief contemporary trends and challenges. Available formats: hardcover, trade paperback, accessible PDF, and accessible ePub

"Between 1973 and 1978, six thousand Chilean leftists came to Canada as exiles from the Pinochet coup d'état.