Mobility

• Time period: Ongoing
• Contact: Bree Akesson
• Out of Place: Stories from Syrian Families

Due to the sudden arrival of large numbers of Syrian families, refugee camps have developed rapidly, without attention to the socio-spatial implications of the refugee camp for children and families. In addition to the challenges of forced migration, everyday conditions in the camps are extremely difficult for refugee families. Everyday mobilities – such as access to home, school, play spaces, and social networks – are severely disrupted and compromised. Children may have decreased access to education, health services, and extended peer and social networks, compromising their physical and mental well-being as they find themselves trapped in their homes.

Nevertheless, few studies have examined how the everyday mobilities of children and families are affected by war, especially within a refugee camp context. The proposed research project fills this gap in the current knowledge base by exploring the everyday mobilities of children and families living in refugee camps. Using place-based mixed methods including narrative, mapmaking, photography and neighborhood walks. This research asks: what are children’s socio-spatial experiences and mobility patterns when living in refugee camps?

• Time period: 2019-2024
• Contact: Margaret Walton-Roberts
• Canadian co-applicants: Ivy Bourgeault (Ottawa), Danièle Bélanger (Laval)
• International co-applicants: Brenda Yeoh (NUS, Singapore), Felicitas Hillman (Leibniz-Institute for Research on Society and Space, Berlin Germany)
• Collaborators: Colin Robertson (Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada), Sharon Tarbotton (School of Health & Life Sciences and Community Services, Conestoga College, Canada).
• Website

International skilled migration is a key feature of the global economy and a major contributor to socio-economic development, yet skilled workers faces barriers in the non-recognition of credentials. This is particularly relevant in nursing, an occupation increasingly important under current conditions of feminized global migration and the crisis of elder care in developed nations. The international migration pathways that nurses engage in are heterogeneous in terms of their spatiality, costs, the range of state and non-state actors involved, and the degree of residence and citizenship rights offered. Furthermore, there is evidence of policy convergence occurring in the 'regime of skill', or types of credential and language assessments required by receiving nations, which can be interpreted as a form of racialized or spatial exclusion. Under such conditions skilled migration appears increasingly unsustainable.  In the case of nursing, structural gendered issues in the devaluing of care labour, how skills and competencies are assessed, and how workers are integrated into workplaces must also be taken into account.

This project addresses these issues through explicitly comparative gendered analysis. The three country pairs analyzed are differently positioned in terms of gender regimes, nurse training export and migrant integration policy models. Using data mining activities, policy scans, qualitative key informant interviews, surveys and story maps to illustrate the cumulative complexities of migrant nurses' journeys, this project contrasts three nurse migration pathways; two-step or study-work pathways that allow for visa change from student to permanent status (India-Canada), bi-lateral 'triple win' or fair migration agreements (Vietnam-Germany), and 'bus stop', temporary worker migration models that are a prelude to onward step migration (Philippines-Singapore). The research will examine how these cases are differentiated in terms of initial financial investment (states, markets, households), how nurses move (states, markets, networks), how they are spliced into destination labour markets (intersectionality, skills, credentials and workplace regulation) and differential migrant inclusion (temporary or permanent status, residency and citizenship rights and how these may be gendered).

• Time period: 2012–2017
• Contacts: Margaret Walton-Roberts; Jonathan Crush
• Disporas, Development and Governance in the Global South

Increasingly, governments in the Global South are turning to their own extra-national diasporic populations in order to boost economic development, build global trading and investment networks and increase their political leverage overseas.

Beginning in 2012, this project will enhance international understandings of the role of diasporas in development, identify best practices for policy engagement of diasporas and facilitate Canadian diaspora engagement in development. It consists of three parts:

• Critical examination of efforts by international organizations and governments in the South and North to facilitate development in the Global South through engagement with diasporas.
• Identification of new trends and best practices in diaspora engagement.
• Assessment of the current and potential role of migrant diasporas in Canada in the economic, social and political development of the Global South.

This will be the first initiative of its kind and is long overdue given the growing interest of states and international organizations in programs and policies to facilitate greater diaspora engagement.

Publications and Events

• Chikanda, A., Crush, J., and Walton-Roberts, M. (2015). Diasporas, Development and Governance. Springer.
• Walton-Roberts, M. Cultural Communities for Sustainable Development Consultations. Ontario Council for International Cooperation conference panelist. Toronto, April 30, 2015.
• Chikanda, A., and G. Haysom. (2013). Diasporas, Development and Governance in the Global South. Waterloo, ON: International Migration Research Centre.
• Manuelle Chanoine, Meredith Giel and Tâmara Simão. Effectively Engaging Canadian Diasporas Under the New Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. CIGI Junior Fellows Brief No. 6, 2013.

• Time period: 2015–2017

Drawing on public and private sector partners, this project aims to conduct academic research to provide quantitative data; consult diverse stakeholders at home and abroad to explore the economic impacts of pluralism and global connectivity; engage publicly using traditional and social media; and release policy recommendations in early 2017 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Confederation.

Publication

• Bessma Momani and Jillian Stirk. (2016). “In a highly competitive world, is diversity Canada’s advantage?” Globe and Mail.