Neoliberal Fatigue: The Effects of Private Refugee Sponsorship on Canadians’ Political Consciousness

Private sponsorship has become a primary way that refugees access resettlement to Canada. Key in this program are the private Canadians who volunteer their money, time, and labor to sponsor and support refugees. Drawing on 25 interviews, this article examines the insights that these privileged citizens of the global north gain as they help refugees struggling with the marginalizing consequences of neoliberal austerity in their new hostland. While sponsors learn about the challenges facing working-class racialized newcomers (otherwise obscured to sponsors by their racial, class, and citizenship privileges), the program robs sponsors of the time and mental bandwidth to reflect on the structural nature of these challenges. Consequently, sponsors rarely understand refugees’ struggles as public troubles necessitating broader intervention, including modest policy reform. I call this cognitive outcome neoliberal fatigue. I conclude by discussing how this fatigue thwarts social change and reinforces neoliberal capitalism.

Canada’s Private Sponsorship Model Represents a Complementary Pathway for Refugee Resettlement

This article explains who can be sponsored in Canada’s Privately Sponsored Refugee (PSR) program, with a focus on how different types of sponsorship applications (including those supported by a Sponsorship Agreement Holder, Group of Five, or Community Sponsor) are assessed by government officials before sent overseas for processing. The article presents statistics on the number of applications approved in each PSR stream in the last ten years. The article also discusses a brief history of refugee resettlement to Canada and discusses how the selection process for refugees impacts integration outcomes, particularly when comparing refugees selected by the UNHCR versus those selected by Canadian sponsors.

Framing Community Sponsorship in the context of the UK’s hostile environment

The launch of the private sponsorship scheme, Community Sponsorship (CS), allowing individuals to resettle refugees in the UK, seems to be in contrast with the government’s approach towards immigration aimed to implement the hostile environment policy. Using frame analysis, this research looks at the diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framings used by policymakers in parliamentary debates related to CS to understand how the scheme and the hostile environment coexist. The findings show how the used frames allow the government to manage refugee resettlement more as a tool of migration management rather than exclusively as a tool of international protection, and how this strategy implements the UK’s hostile environment.

Welcoming the Stranger: The Canadian Church and the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program

Since the PSR program was founded in 1978, the Canadian church has portrayed a major role in the program. Many of the first sponsored refugees converted to the branch of Christianity that their sponsors practiced. Conversion was a mechanism for refugees to gain social capital and integrate into Canadian society. Today, sponsored refugees are able to tap into the rich diversity of religious communities found in urban Canadian centres and therefore are less likely to feel pressured to join their Christian sponsors in worship. This study demonstrates how the Canadian church has influenced the formation of the PSR program. The study provides an analysis of the role of Christianity in the identity formation of sponsored refugees and the inter-faith relationship between Christian sponsors and non-Christian refugees.

Welcoming the Stranger: The Canadian Church and the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program

Since the PSR program was founded in 1978, the Canadian church has portrayed a major role in the program. Many of the first sponsored refugees converted to the branch of Christianity that their sponsors practiced. Conversion was a mechanism for refugees to gain social capital and integrate into Canadian society. Today, sponsored refugees are able to tap into the rich diversity of religious communities found in urban Canadian centres and therefore are less likely to feel pressured to join their Christian sponsors in worship. This study demonstrates how the Canadian church has influenced the formation of the PSR program. The study provides an analysis of the role of Christianity in the identity formation of sponsored refugees and the inter-faith relationship between Christian sponsors and non-Christian refugees.

Working against and with the State

A handful of Canadian church congregations provide sanctuary to failed asylum seekers. Many also participate in resettling refugees through a government program called private sponsorship. Both sanctuary and sponsorship arise as specific modes of hospitality in response to practices of exclusion and inclusion under national migration regimes. Sanctuary engages oppositional politics, whereby providers confront and challenge state authority to exclude. Refugee sponsorship embodies a form of collaborative politics, in which sponsorship groups partner with government in settlement and integration. I demonstrate how the state’s perspective on asylum versus resettlement structures the relationship between citizen and state and between citizen and refugee. I also reveal that there is more collaboration in sanctuary and resistance in sponsorship than might be supposed.

Exporting Canadian immigration policy: a comparative analysis of private sponsorship methods in Canada, the U.K. and Germany

The private sponsorship of refugees (PSR) model, created in Canada 40 years ago, has a structure which allows citizens and permanent residents concerned about refugee resettlement to take action in their local communities by sponsoring refugees and providing them with financial, social and integration support. This paper critically analyzes and compares the private sponsorship of refugees (PSR) model in Canada, the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Germany and how it is being promoted, portrayed and received in each country. I argue that the PSR model should be a refugee resettlement option provided that the number of refugees admitted through this stream should not surpass the number of refugees admitted through government sponsorship; effective oversight and evaluation should be administered by governments and NGOs over groups and communities involved in sponsorship; and, diverse images and perspectives of refugees themselves should be used in the promotional material from governments and NGOs about private sponsorship. Key words: Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, private sponsorship, refugee, immigration policy, refugee resettlement

Exporting Canadian immigration policy: a comparative analysis of private sponsorship methods in Canada, the U.K. and Germany

The private sponsorship of refugees (PSR) model, created in Canada 40 years ago, has a structure which allows citizens and permanent residents concerned about refugee resettlement to take action in their local communities by sponsoring refugees and providing them with financial, social and integration support. This paper critically analyzes and compares the private sponsorship of refugees (PSR) model in Canada, the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Germany and how it is being promoted, portrayed and received in each country. I argue that the PSR model should be a refugee resettlement option provided that the number of refugees admitted through this stream should not surpass the number of refugees admitted through government sponsorship; effective oversight and evaluation should be administered by governments and NGOs over groups and communities involved in sponsorship; and, diverse images and perspectives of refugees themselves should be used in the promotional material from governments and NGOs about private sponsorship. Key words: Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, private sponsorship, refugee, immigration policy, refugee resettlement

Sustaining the Private Sponsorship of Resettled Refugees in Canada

For more than 40 years, groups of Canadian residents have raised funds and offered their time and energy to support over 325,000 refugee newcomers to Canada through the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program. In 2020, targets for private refugee sponsorship in the Canadian context were double the number of government-assisted refugees. Private sponsorship is therefore an important focus of analysis in relation to refugee resettlement, representing a complementary pathway to refugee protection through civil society mobilization. Yet, little research to-date has focused on private sponsorship. Based on an original qualitative study, this paper probes how voluntary sponsorship has been sustained over decades, despite the high personal and financial costs it entails, by analyzing the insights of those who have experienced sponsorship: former refugees who came through the program, long-term sponsors, key informants, and other community leaders. The authors argue that private refugee sponsorship is a community practice, a routine action that is part of a collective commitment, a way of connecting local community actions to global politics of injustice and displacement. Furthermore, refugee newcomers who land in Canada as permanent residents become part of the communities and society in which they stay. Having left family members behind in refugee camps and cities of refuge, many become sponsors themselves. This phenomenon of ‘family linked’ sponsorship is a defining and sustaining feature of the program, motivating family members in Canada to team up with seasoned sponsors to ‘do more’. Our data show that sponsorship occurs across scales—linking local sites in Canada to countries where human atrocities are common and neighboring states that host those who flee. Sponsorship connects people in various communities across the world, and these transnational links are important to understanding the sustainability of sponsorship over time in Canada. Our research pays attention to the narratives of sponsors and those they support with the objective of documenting the momentous contribution of this complementary, and expanding, pathway for refugee protection.

Refugee Sponsorship and Family Reunification

This article examines the choice made by resettled refugees and their sponsors to use the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program (PSRP) in Canada to reunite families and the benefits and challenges of doing so. The timing of our study is deliberate. Global efforts are underway to encourage other states to adopt private or community sponsorship schemes, and this spread renders examination of the benefits and burdens of this form of refugee resettlement urgent. Using data we have collected via interviews of resettled refugees and sponsors in Canada, we show that family separation has a marked impact on the ability of refugees to integrate into their new home. This conclusion highlights the possibility that there are host-state imperatives that can be better served by facilitating family reunification. Furthermore, we suggest that the successful deployment of the PSRP as a tool of family reunification depends too much on the preferences and perspectives of sponsors, who may not agree that reunification is valuable, or who may not have the capacity to facilitate such reunifications. They also may struggle with the thought that they are being forced to choose among which refugees are most in need of highly scarce resettlement spots. Together, these results generate additional support for the view, which we endorse, that states should be focused on doing more to protect family unity, especially for refugee families, outside of a private sponsorship scheme.