Canadian Settlement in Action: History and Future

The five chapters of this book encapsulate the past, present, and future of Canadian immigration and settlement. The topics, in part, cover the history of immigration to Canada through an objective lens that allows readers to learn what transpired with the settlement of specific ethnic groups, as well as address Canada’s current policies and approaches to immigration. This leads to an exploration of the challenges that newcomers to Canada and the settlement sector are encountering today. Readers and learners of settlement studies will embark on a journey of self-reflection throughout this book as they engage in many activities, quizzes, and interactions which may be self-directed or instructor led.

All in the (Definition of) Family: Transnational Parent–Child Relationships, Rights to Family Life, and Canadian Immigration Law

International human rights conventions, Canadian law and academic research all support the right to family life. Internationally and domestically, multiple definitions of family are recognized, acknowledging that long-term interpersonal commitments can be based on biological relationships as well as co-residential, legal, and emotional ties. Yet, the Canadian immigration system’s limited and exclusionary understanding of parent–child relationships complicates migrant family reunification. Drawing on qualitative interview and survey data from separated families and key informants who support them, we analyze national status and class assumptions embedded in Canadian immigration standards. We argue that Canadian immigration policies disproportionately deny the right to family life to transnational Canadians and their children who hail from the Global South and/or who are socio-economically disadvantaged. Immigration policies neither recognize the globally accepted “best interests of the child” welfare standard nor the human right to family life. We offer suggestions for addressing these inequities in practice and policy.

Taming and Training Greek “Peasant Girls” and the Gendered Politics of Whiteness in Postwar Canada: Canadian Bureaucrats and Immigrant Domestics, 1950s–1960s

Drawing on the voluminous government records as well as selective interviews in a large oral history archive created over several years, this article explores Canada’s recruitment of Greek female domestics in the 1950s and early 1960s within the context of the feminist scholarship on female labour schemes as well as more recent whiteness literature on the in-between racial status of peripheral Europeans. In considering the contradictory features of a large but little-known labour scheme through which more than ten thousand Greek women arrived, many of them before their families, it documents the role of the bureaucrats – who envisioned the domestics’ transformation into models of modern domesticity while portraying them as victims of their patriarchal communities and manipulators of Canadian immigration policy – and that of the women who negotiated various challenges. To account for the scheme’s remarkable longevity, a key argument probes the mix of factors that repositioned a traditionally non-preferred Southern European group of women into a desirable white source of immigrant labour and future Canadian motherhood. Ultimately, Greek women enjoyed a racial privilege and mobility not afforded to later arriving women from the Caribbean and Philippines.

The Diversity of French Expatriates’ Migration Projects in Quebec: a Typology in Four Dynamic Portraits

Based on a qualitative study conducted between 2016 and 2018 among thirty French people who migrated to Quebec, this article proposes to distinguish four types of migration projects: the exploration, settlement, circulation and return projects. The trajectories and narratives collected show that these projects are not mutually exclusive or fixed in time, but that there is a fluidity between them, which moreover do not always correspond to the administrative categories of migration statuses in Canadian immigration policy. Basado en una encuesta cualitativa realizada entre 2016 y 2018 con treinta franceses que emigraron a Quebec, este artículo propone distinguir cuatrotipos de proyectos migratorios: el proyecto de exploración, de establecimiento, de circulacion y de retorno. Las trayectorias y las narativas recopiladas muestran que estos proyectos no están separados o fijos en el tiempo, y que, por lo tanto, existe una fluidez de los proyectos de migración, que además no siempre corresponden a las categorías administrativas de estatutos migratorios de la política de migración Canadiense. À partir d’une enquête qualitative menée entre 2016 et 2018 auprès d’une trentaine de Français ayant migré au Québec, cet article propose de distinguer quatre types de projets migratoires : le projet d’exploration, d’établissement, de circulation et de retour. Les trajectoires et propos recueillismontrent que ces projets ne sont pas disjoints ni figés dans le temps, et qu’il existe donc une fluidité des projets migratoires, qui par ailleurs ne correspondent pas toujours aux catégories administratives de statuts migratoires de la politique migratoire canadienne.

Nostos and Nineteenth-Century Italian-Canadian Immigration: Mapping the Earliest Latin Quarters

In this article, I examine the formation of the first Latin Quarter in London (ON) at the end of the nineteenth century, and thus at the dawn of modernity. I analyse how these first (mostly Southern) Italian immigrants attempted to soothe their need for a sense of belonging, how they negotiated their collective nostos and, concomitantly, how they dealt with the palpable nostalgia for a return to their Mediterranean homeland.

Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Access To The Justice System By Abused Refugee Women In Canada

This paper reviews literature about the Canadian justice system’s responses to woman abuse in general, with a particular focus on abused refugee women. Due to the complexity of the issue of woman abuse, this topic is examined using the following theoretical frameworks: Systemic Racism Theory, Cultural Racism Theory, Social Ecological model and the hindrance put forward by the Neo Liberalism ideology. A general overview of the Canadian immigration and refugee system is necessary, in order to systematically contextualize current and former policies and practices. The impact such policies have on refugee women when accessing the justice system can be severe, firstly due to current justice systems’ intersectionalities, secondly due to the lack of coordination between the criminal, family and immigration justice systems, and thirdly due to barriers in services. Furthermore, alarming recent changes in Canadian immigration legislation, will create further difficulties in access to justice by refugee women experiencing violence.

Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Access To The Justice System By Abused Refugee Women In Canada

This paper reviews literature about the Canadian justice system’s responses to woman abuse in general, with a particular focus on abused refugee women. Due to the complexity of the issue of woman abuse, this topic is examined using the following theoretical frameworks: Systemic Racism Theory, Cultural Racism Theory, Social Ecological model and the hindrance put forward by the Neo Liberalism ideology. A general overview of the Canadian immigration and refugee system is necessary, in order to systematically contextualize current and former policies and practices. The impact such policies have on refugee women when accessing the justice system can be severe, firstly due to current justice systems’ intersectionalities, secondly due to the lack of coordination between the criminal, family and immigration justice systems, and thirdly due to barriers in services. Furthermore, alarming recent changes in Canadian immigration legislation, will create further difficulties in access to justice by refugee women experiencing violence.

The bureaucratic organization of race in deportation and Canadian immigration policy

This MRP presents a literature review on race, immigration and Black male surveillance. It situates the discourse of racialization in a historical and contemporary context, drawing from different disciplines and frameworks to contextualize the interrelationships between race, crime and immigration. This research includes a critical analysis of the history of anti-Black racism in Canadian state policies such as deportation and presents the case of Alvin Brown as an illustration This paper argues that deportation represent a racist discourse that reinforces the criminalization of Black people, specifically Jamaican males. Razack’s concept of bureaucracy highlights deportation as a process that legitimizes the removal of legal rights in the name of public security. The case of Alvin Brown is utilized as an illustration of the processes through which deportation becomes racialized and ‘Jamaicanized’ based on the reification of criminal stereotypes in policy and practice.