A practical framework that positions collaboration along a continuum, including but not limited to co-creation and co-funding, to support ethical engagement across different levels of partnership.
Information
Information involves sharing knowledge to increase awareness, transparency, and access. Because research often takes place within academic or organizational structures, clarity, openness, and usability for communities affected by migration policies are essential. There is a shared responsibility to consider context, impact, and how information is used.
Information exchange is most effective when it is timely, relevant, and shared responsibly.
- Engaging with community organizations to better understand current migration issues, service gaps, and policy contexts.
- Sharing research findings with newcomer-serving organizations in clear, accessible formats.
- Hosting public talks, producing policy briefs, and offering webinars that mobilize migration research.
Consultation
Consultation means community organizations and people with lived experience actively inform research decisions. While final decisions may still rest with one party (often academia), external perspectives intentionally shape research questions, methods, and interpretations.
Consultation works best when it happens early, is properly resourced, and is honest about what can and cannot be changed.
- Consulting settlement workers and migrant leaders when shaping research questions.
- Reviewing research tools, consent processes, and findings in collaboration with community partners.
- Creating advisory roles that meaningfully influence, even if they do not fully direct, the research process.
- Clearly communicating how feedback will be used and reporting back on how community perspectives informed decisions.
Collectivity
Collectivity means research is shaped and carried out together through shared processes. Roles, responsibilities, and contributions are negotiated, and learning flows in multiple directions. While power is not equal, it is actively examined and shared wherever possible.
Collaboration emphasizes relationships, reciprocity, and practical relevance, even within existing institutional constraints.
- Co-defining research goals related to migration, settlement, and labour conditions.
- Involving community partners in methodology design, analysis, and knowledge mobilization.
- Creating shared training spaces where academics and practitioners teach and learn alongside one another.
Sovereignity
Sovereignty reflects a shift in power and perspective, reframing academia’s role away from knowledge neutrality and ownership. Research moves from being done with communities to being led, governed, and owned by them, guided by their priorities, timelines, and ways of knowing. In this approach, academia acts as an ally rather than the center of decision-making.
From a decolonial perspective, many communities, especially migrant, newcomer, and racialized groups, have historically been treated as data sources rather than knowledge holders. This stage affirms community authority over research questions, methods, data, interpretation, and use.
This layer is rare, uneven, and often constrained by institutional structures, but naming it helps clarify what deeper transformation can look like.
- Initiating research within community organizations and inviting academic collaboration.
- Ensuring data ownership and governance rest with communities or community-led bodies.
- Structuring funding to flow through, or be controlled by, community partners.
- Designing research outputs to support community action, advocacy, or systems change first.