2026 CMS Migration & Integration Conference

• Moderator: Winnie Chironga, Equity Director of AMSSA

Winnie Chironga is the Director of Equity at the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC (AMSSA), where she leads a broad equity, anti-racism, and inclusion portfolio. Her work includes advancing Indigenous Truth and Decolonization initiatives under the guidance of AMSSA’s Indigenous Advisory Council, supporting sector-wide capacity building, and strengthening organizational practices that promote belonging, accountability, and systems change across British Columbia’s settlement sector. Winnie brings a multidisciplinary background in law, business, and community development, alongside lived experience as an immigrant woman of colour. Her leadership focuses on bridging community-based knowledge with institutional systems, supporting culturally grounded approaches to mentorship and leadership development, and creating spaces where equity-deserving communities can thrive without having to diminish their identities.

• Geraldine Pratt, Professor and Department Head, Geography, UBCV

Dr. Geraldine Pratt is a Professor and Department Head of Geography at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on labour precarity, global migration, and emerging geographies of care. She has long engaged in collaborative and creative scholarship, working across film, installation, and performance. Her book with Caleb Johnston, Migration in Performance (2019), traces the international travels of their testimonial play, performed in Vancouver, Berlin at HAU1, Manila with PETA and Migrante International, as well as in Whitehorse and Winnipeg. She continues collaborative research with migrant organizations on temporary foreign worker programs, alongside new projects on aging and the changing geographies of care, and on housing (in)justice in the context of climate change with Rafi Arefin.

• Elizabeth "Biz" Nijdam, Assistant Professor, Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, UBCV

Dr. Elizabeth “Biz” Nijdam (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Teaching and settler scholar in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, where she serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the German Program. Biz’s research and teaching are grounded in the belief that popular culture is capable of both reflecting social and political discourse and intervening in it. Biz's scholarship examines the representation of complex histories in comics and digital and tabletop games, Tarot’s capacity for innovating classroom teaching, and the role of comics and arts-based research in preserving Indigenous knowledges, sharing Indigenous storytelling traditions, and revitalizing Indigenous languages. Biz established the UBC Comics Studies Cluster in 2023, where she continues to support community partners, local nonprofits, BC’s First Nations, and UBC faculty and students in making comics about the important issues facing society today. She is also the Director of the UBC Pop Culture Cluster, which is home to the UBC Critical Play Lab, and sits on the Executive Committee of the International Comic Arts Forum.

• Kamal Al-Solaylee, Director and Professor, School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, UBCV

Vancouver-based Dr. Kamal Al-Solaylee is the author of the bestseller Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, winner of the 2013 Toronto Book Award and a finalist for the CBC’s Canada Reads and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. His second book, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone) won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and was finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards for Nonfiction. His third book of nonfiction, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From, was published in 2021 and was named a Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and CBC Books. His nonfiction books mix geopolitics and personal narrative with field reporting. He has reported from 20 countries around the world, including Taiwan, Qatar, France, Britain, Jamaica, Malaysia, Egypt, Israel, Spain, Sri Lanka, Ghana, the Philippines and the United States. He is a two-time nominee for Canada’s National Magazine Awards in the column category, winning the Gold Medal in 2019. More recently, he wrote and produced documentaries for CBC’s flagship cultural program IDEAS on subjects as diverse as the Queen of Sheba, nineteenth-century English writer Wilkie Collins, and Asian port cities.

• Peter Klein, Professor, School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, UBCV

Dr. Peter W. Klein is an Emmy Award–winning journalist and Professor in the University of British Columbia School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, and a faculty associate at the University of British Columbia School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. He founded the Global Reporting Centre and served as Director of the School of Journalism from 2011 to 2015. He leads the Global Reporting Program, a year-long international investigative journalism course that has partnered with outlets including The New York Times, Toronto Star, The Guardian, PBS Frontline, Vice News, and Al Jazeera. His students’ work has received major honours from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Radio Television Digital News Association.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Advanced Digital Technologies to Support Immigrant Professionals’ Integration into the Canadian Labour Market
Abstract

Anusha Kassan, Associate Professor of Educational and Counselling Psychology, UBCV
Co-presenters: Fatemeh Kazemi, Senior Researcher, Centre for Immigrant Research at The Immigrant Education Society (TIES) and Kreisa Hilaro, Manager, TIES Centre for Immigrant Research

Immigrant Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence: Preliminary Findings from British Columbia
Abstract

Annamma Joy, Associate Dean, Faculty of Management, UBCO
Co-presenter: Ying Zhu, Associate Professor, Faculty of Management, UBCO

• Newcomers experienced a "love-fear-anxiety-anger-ambivalence complex" toward AI that is nonlinear and keeps looping back and forth. It is a complex feeling of appreciating AI’s helpfulness while simultaneously being concerned that the reliance on AI might take away the human element of their work, specifically their ability to think independently and stay creative.
• The way newcomers perceived the use of AI is resonated with their migration experiences of needing a safe space to navigate unfamiliar environments.
• Although AI provides newcomers a sense of security by being non-judgmental, it also risks hindering real-world social integration and exposing users to invisible algorithmic biases.
• Policymakers and practitioners need to recognize the diversities and needs of the newcomers when adapting AI services. Digital support tools are suggested to be designed with a human-centric approach, thus ensuring that AI remains supportive without creating barriers to social and economic equity.

Credentialized Aspirations and Differentiated Migrant Labour in Canada’s Digital Economy
Abstract

María Cervantes-Macías, CMS Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UBCV

• The systemic tensions in federal and provincial regulations stratify migrant labour in Canada’s digital economy. These tensions impact institutions such employers, which oftentimes fail to recognize immigrants’ international skills pushing newcomers to seek new credentials to make themselves legible to Canadian institutions.
• At the individual level, immigrants orient themselves to acquire new skills and credentials to make their past professional experiences more legible and marketable to employers, creating strategies to manage the risks of navigating complex and rapidly changing immigration policies and labour market trends.
• This study used the concept of “credentialized aspirations” to capture immigrants’ active adjustments of their investments in Canadian society to acquire credentials that make their skills readable to local employers and to manage the uncertainties created by systems at the national and institutional levels.

Humanizing Technologies: Translating Migrant Oral Histories into Immersive Surrealist VR Narratives for Cultural Resilience
Abstract

Annie Wan, Associate Professor, Creative Studies, UBCO
Co-presenter: Marcus Hobkirk, Undergraduate Student, Media Studies, UBCO

• The project used Mixed Reality (MR), AI, and archival oral histories from 1970s Hong Kong migrants to create immersive surrealist VR environments that translated emotional memory and intergenerational tensions into symbolic digital experiences.
• The VR experience employed dreamlike visual, spatial, and sonic elements (such as references to Hong Kong’s former airport) to materialize themes of displacement, rupture, and cultural resilience.
• The presentation demonstrated how immersive technologies can support migrant storytelling, emotional connection, and community resilience by creating participatory and embodied forms of cultural memory work.

Invisible Struggles, Emerging Patterns: Mental Health Indicators for Migrant Youth Across Two Decades in BC
Abstract

Shams M.F. Al-Anzi, MSN, Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre (SARAVYC), School of Nursing, UBCV
Co-authors: Monica Rana, Sessional Lecturer, Research Associate & Managing Director, Nursing School, UBCV; Mauricio Coronel, Research Associate, Nursing School, UBCV, and Elizabeth Saewyc, Professor & Director, Nursing School, UBCV

Shams M.F. Al-Anzi is a Doctoral Student at the University of British Columbia School of Nursing. Their research focuses on migration, youth mental health, and digital engagement. Their doctoral work examines how migration-related stressors, structural inequities, and experiences of belonging shape mental health outcomes among migrant and racialized young people in British Columbia, with particular attention to West Asian and North African communities. Using mixed-methods and population-based data, they explore how everyday mobilities, including digital and social forms of engagement, can function as both sources of empowerment and sites of marginalization. Grounded in intersectionality and postcolonial feminist frameworks, their work aims to inform equity-oriented policy, community-based interventions, and responsive health system practices for migrant populations.

Precarious Status, Precarious Health: Family Outcomes in Immigrant Substance Use Recovery
Abstract

Imroze Singh Goindval, PhD Student, School of Population and Public Health, UBCV

Imroze Singh Goindval is a PhD student in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia whose research bridges migration, disability, and care. His work examines caregiving for mandhbuddhi (intellectual and developmental disabilities [IDDs]) within Panjabi communities in Panjab (India) and the Panjabi diaspora in British Columbia. Drawing on transnational ethnography, medical anthropology, and feminist political economy, Imroze investigates how families navigate migration and structural inequalities to assemble care across borders and systems. He integrates arts-based and community-engaged research (ABER) and multilingual, culturally grounded mediums to collaboratively generate insights with participants and to build accessible knowledge pathways across linguistic and social worlds.

Digital Platforms, Identity, and Integration Among Chinese Canadians
Abstract

Aodi Cheng, Master’s Student & Research Assistant, Political Science, UBCV
Co-author: Xiaojun Li, Associate Professor, Political Science, UBCV

• This study finds that Chinese Canadians who rely more on China-based platforms, such as WeChat, tend to feel more connected to Chinese identity. They also appear to face more difficulties participating in local communities and Canadian cultural life.
• Using Western platforms does not seem to change people’s identity in a clear way. However, those who use Western platforms more often tend to feel more comfortable participating in Canadian society and report a stronger sense of belonging.
• Using both China-based and Western platforms appears to help Chinese Canadians stay connected to Chinese communities while also building stronger ties to Canadian society.

Public Opinion on Government Use of Artificial Intelligence: Support, Out-Group Bias, and Error Tolerance
Abstract

Maxime Coulombe, Affiliate Assistant Professor, Political Science, Concordia University (Bridging Divides Scholar Exchange)

• The study leverages a preregistered two-vignette survey experiment conducted among 8,000 respondents in Canada to examine public support for government use of AI across policy contexts, as well as citizens' tolerance for errors depending on their type and attribution.
• The authors observe nuanced attitudes toward immigrants. They find no out-group bias supporting the use of AI to process immigrant applications. They find some biases under specific conditions: respondents evaluate false negatives more negatively when they affect employment insurance applicants and false positives more negatively when they benefit immigrant applicants. They also find some positive and negative biases against immigrants in the case of false positives and false negatives.
• The study shows limited support for AI in general. Support for government use of AI declines sharply as the level of autonomy ceded to AI increases. Citizens react more negatively when AI makes errors than when public servants do.

Self-Recognition as Political Practice: Marrón Art, Racialization, and Inclusion in Argentina
Abstract

Ana Vivaldi, Sessional Instructor, Sociology, UBCV

Dr. Ana Vivaldi is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work explores how Indigenous territorialities are constructed in and from the city through active mobilities. She examines how migrant and urban Indigenous communities confront unspoken forms of racism through various strategies, including reconnecting urban spaces to traditional territories, fostering new forms of activism that unite members of different nations and individuals with unknown ancestry, engaging in artistic and cultural production, and advocating for anti-racist policies within state institutions. Through ethnographic and visual methodologies, her research sheds light on Indigenous sovereignties and emergent forms of urban conviviality, particularly how mobility among marginalized populations shapes social and spatial assemblages that challenge subordination.

Immigrant Experiences in Cosmopolitan Social Service Organizations
Abstract

Frankie Cabahug, PhD Student, Social Work, UBCV

• Drawing on a scoping review of 23 studies across 12 countries, the presentation examined how “cosmopolitan organizations” function as local arrival infrastructures that support immigrant belonging, participation, and integration outside explicitly immigrant-serving frameworks.
• The findings highlighted how immigrants navigate inclusion across diverse publics by balancing cultural continuity with adaptation while managing both formal organizational structures and informal social dynamics.
• The presentation argued that integration is shaped through relational and place-based community infrastructures, and called for further research on intersectional diversity and inter-organizational migration landscapes.

Stepwise, Digital, and Onward: Mapping the Mobility Pathways of Displaced Afghans and Ukrainians to/from Canada
Abstract

Sophie Liu, PhD Student, Sociology, UBCV
Co-author: Aryan Karimi, Assistant Professor, Sociology, UBCV

• Based on 80 life-history interviews with Afghan refugee women and displaced Ukrainian participants in Canada, the study demonstrated that refugee mobility often involves fragmented, stepwise, and onward migration pathways rather than linear settlement trajectories.
• The findings showed that digital infrastructures played a central role in anticipatory planning, migration decision-making, and mobility strategies, and that many participants experienced multiple sites of temporary safety before arriving in Canada.
• The presentation challenged rigid refugee-immigrant binaries by arguing that refugeehood should be understood as a fluid and politically mediated experience shaped by displacement, mobility, and evolving legal status.

Bridges of Belonging: Creating Bonds with Language and Place in a Forest-Based Augmented Storying Project 
Abstract

Harini Rajagopal, Assistant Professor, Language and Literacy Education, UBCV
Co-presenters: Kristiina Kumpulainen, Professor and Department Head, Language & Literacy Education, UBCV, and Melanie Wong, Associate Professor of Teaching, Program Advisor for the Online MEd in Literacy Education, Language & Literacy Education, UBCV