“Worldwide, large-scale conflicts and other situations of economic and environmental insecurity have led to unprecedented numbers of people migrating across international borders. Yet, many people experiencing the same crises choose to stay within their country of origin. This project seeks to understand how individuals in these insecure situations make decisions whether to migrate, where to settle if they decide to leave, and when to return home. While others have highlighted economic and safety considerations, this project focuses on internal values, such as dignity concerns and nationalism, that may influence this decision-making process. We examine how these values affect migration decisions within several different forced displacement crises, including the Syrian Civil War, the economic collapse of Venezuela, and the gang and domestic violence fueled migration out of Central America. Spanning multiple disciplines and across the sub-fields of political science, this research furthers understanding of how political dynamics shape individuals’ values and consequently, their migration decisions. We also study these issues in a range of different country contexts to help discern which decision-making considerations are universal and which are context specific. Large migration events can challenge the bureaucracies of even wealthy democracies like Canada, the U.S., and those in the E.U. For governments to effectively address these events, they need a better understanding of why forced and potential migrants make the decisions that they do.
This project is funded by the NSF.”
Research Partners
Yang-Yang Zhou, UBC
Margaret Peters, UCLA
“How does the presence of large migrant communities affect processes of national identity formation for nearby host citizens? If these host citizens share ethnic and cultural ties with the migrants, are they more accepting and inclusive of migrants, or do they seek to differentiate themselves by excluding or “”othering”” the migrants? Tackling these questions is critical, especially in light of the current displacement crisis. According to the UNHCR, there are now almost 80 million people forcibly displaced from their homes. Within the past decade, hosting migrants has become one of the most politically contentious issues throughout Europe and the U.S., which is reflected in the growing wave of scholarship on forced migration in these regions. Yet the vast majority of migrants fleeing crises, more than 85%, remain in the Global South, almost always in the border regions of a neighboring country. Unlike OECD countries, in these contexts, migrants are almost always located in the border regions of neighboring host countries, where they share cultural and ethnic ties with citizen groups living these areas. These citizen groups are also often considered ethnic minorities within their countries. We have much to learn about refugee-hosting dynamics in developing country contexts, which my research seeks to address.
My book project explores how the presence of refugees and other types of migrants affects the social and political identities and behaviors of nearby, often coethnic, citizens. Immigration scholars might predict that due to these coethnic ties, there would be less discrimination against and greater inclusion of migrants. Additionally, scholars of ethnic politics might expect these nearby citizen groups to feel greater ethnic as opposed to national identification, particularly since they are often marginalized by the state themselves. However, I theorize that the refugee hosting policies of the state and subsequently how the state and elites portray refugees will shape how nearby coethnic citizen groups will react.
This project has received funding from SSHRC and NSF. ”
Over the past two decades, populism has swept across the Global North, questioning the legitimacy of policymaking by established elites and framing immigrants as a threat to national identity and economic welfare. This project explores the impact of anti-immigration populism on bureaucratic organizations. The rise of anti-immigration populism challenges the legitimacy of bureaucracies responsible for immigration. It disturbs traditional immigration policymaking, the agreed upon goals of national immigration programs, and official state discourse on immigration. Yet, while much has been written on the impact of populism on parties and elected officials, its impact on bureaucratic organizations, and immigration bureaucracies more specifically, remains poorly understood.
Funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, this project examines how comparatively powerful bureaucracies in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom have navigated policymaking in contexts that have been marked by anti-immigration populism since the early 2000s. In particular, this comparative study documents and compares how bureaucratic organizations responsible for immigration define and respond to the legitimacy challenges stemming from anti-immigration populism.
Research Partners
Antje Ellermann, Political Science; Director, UBC Centre for Migration Studies (Co-PI)
Mireille Paquet, Political Science, Concordia University (Co-PI)
This three-year, SSHRC-funded study responds to an urgent need to understand the implications of the increasing arrival, settlement and integration of racialized French-speaking immigrants and refugees for community cohesion in Canadian Francophone minority communities. Our ethnically diverse and bilingual research team (Drs. Suzanne Huot, Luisa Veronis, Leyla Sall, Nathalie Piquemal and Faiçal Zellama)will advance understandings of the relationship between French speakers’ intersectional identities and engagement in “collective occupations” (e.g., group activities) within 4 cities across Canada: Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Moncton.
Research Partners
Dr. Suzanne Huot, PI, UBC
Dr. Luisa Veronis, University of Ottawa
Dr. Leyla Sall, Université de Moncton
Dr. Nathalie Piquemal, UNiversity of Manitoba
Dr. Faiçal Zellama, Université de Saint-Boniface
This report analyzes, compares and contrasts the growing number of provincial legislative schemes aimed at addressing known recruitment and employment abuses of temporary foreign workers through registration and licensing schemes, with a view to identifying best practices and recommendations for further improvement that will enable the effective operationalization of these statutes and the realization of their core goals to protect temporary foreign workers in Canada.
This study examines the migration of Europeans and North Americans to Thailand for eldercare, and specifically dementia care. Based on ethnographic research at two centres in Chiang May and interviews with owners, managers, care staff and family members, we explore the factors that propel this migration, and the experiences of care in Thailand. One phase of the project involved working with a Berlin-based theatre company, Costa Compagnie, to create a theatre performance, staged in Berlin and Newcastle in November 2019. My collaborator, Caleb Johnston, and I are currently working with a UK-based filmmaker to create a 50-minute film based on this research.
Research Partners
Caleb Johnston, Newcastle University
Costa Compagnie, Berlin
“In 2010, former Prime Minister Harper finalized an agreement with the 14th Dalai Lama to settle 1000 Tibetan refugees in Canada. Resettlement took place from 2013 to 2017 at sites across Canada including greater Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast. The resettlement program provided pathways to citizenship for individuals and families who had been living in protracted exile since 1959, in remote settlements in
Arunachal Pradesh. After nearly 60 years in exile in the densely multilingual eastern Himalayas, Tibetans from Arunachal Pradesh have complex linguistic backgrounds. As these individuals build their lives in western Canada, they face challenges in supporting their young children’s continued connection to their heritage through language in a drastically new diasporic setting.
To better understand and ultimately address these challenges, this project examines the social and linguistic development of the first generation of Tibetan children born in Canada through this resettlement program. Using methods from ethnography and field linguistics, we are documenting and analyzing toddlers’ mother tongue language acquisition alongside cultural practices in their homes. We aim to understand the social, cultural, and linguistic facets of language shift as
manifested in individual children’s developing language repertoires.”
Research Partners
Shannon Ward, PI
Mark Turin, Collaborator
Nawang Seldon, Community Partner
The book offers an innovative critical framework to examine cultural dynamics pertaining to migrations between China and Italy, as well as their intersections in or through American culture. The book deploys the Chinese concept of 衣食住行 (clothing, food, residence, mobility) in structuring discussions about Italian and Chinese material cultures and their representations in primary sources culled from diverse media and archives. Ultimately, the book aims to refine theorizing concerning the relationships between migration and material culture.
This project examines how and what it means to take responsibility for various “isms”, analyzes the significance of the responsibilities, and focuses on critically understand belonging without the concomitant need to blame based on differential group membership.
Principle Investigator: Wilkes, Rima Department of Sociology, UBC