immigration Archives | Research & Innovation

Historian did groundbreaking research on Finnish pioneers

fmaquito — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Shortly before she died last Thursday, Finnish historian and Professor Emerita Varpu Lindström was presented with a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal as a tribute for her lifetime of scholarship and her pioneering work documenting the history of Finnish Canadians.

She was nominated by 91��ɫ linguistics Professor Sheila Embleton and given the award by Halifax MP Megan Leslie (BA Hons. '03). In 2010 Leslie gave the first Varpu Lindström lecture, an annual event created in Lindström's honour.

Varpu Lindström

Professor Lindström died in Beaverton of brain cancer. She was 63.

91��ɫ will lower the flag to half mast from July 6 at 9am to July 7 at 1pm in her memory.

A memorial service will be held July 6 at 2 pm at , 6150 Yonge Street. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the , P.O. Box 278, 27 St. Clair Ave. E., Toronto, ON M4T 1L0. A private funeral has already been held.

Born in Helsinki, Finland in 1948, Lindström immigrated to Canada in 1963. Her mission to document the Finnish-Canadian experience began one summer while she worked as a Finnair public relations officer and heard old immigrants talk about how hard it was to carve out a new life in Ontario’s backwoods in the 1920s. Lindström, whose father had dragged her “kicking and screaming” at 14 from Helsinki to Oshawa, could relate. “I thought, my goodness, somebody should record this,” she told magazine in a 2006 interview. So she did. The tapes inspired her BA, MA and PhD theses and launched her academic career at 91��ɫ in an emerging new field – Canadian immigration history.

During her distinguished career as a professor and scholar at 91��ɫ, she specialized in North American social history, immigration and women’s studies, focusing primarily on the experience of Finnish immigrants to Canada. Her first book was based on her thesis: Defiant Sisters: A Social History of Finnish Immigrant Women in Canada, 1890-1930. She also published From Heroes to Enemies: Finns in Canada, 1937-1947.

Inspired by Defiant Sister, filmmaker Kelly Saxberg invited Lindström to be researcher and historical consultant for her 2004 National Film Board documentary, . The critically acclaimed documentary was shown on national TV in Finland and at film festivals around the world, and won awards at Manitoba’s 2006 Blizzards Awards.

Until the 75-minute film was released, few knew about the 2,800 young Finnish-Canadians returned to Russia in the 1930s with dreams of a starting a new society and ended up victims of Stalinist purges. “It was not even a footnote in Canadian history books,” Lindström told . From there, Lindström went on a quest to discover what happened to the families caught in the Karelia “fever”.

Lindström became known as a “memory keeper” in Finnish-Canadian communities. Over several decades, she amassed diaries, family correspondences, financial ledgers, war-relief funding and other organizational records about Finns who immigrated to Canada in the 1880s to early 1900s as a result of economic depression and war in Finland. She also collected sound recordings of oral histories, folk music, documentary films, and more than 1,000 books, almanacs and plays published by Finnish authors in North America. Her research into Karelia “fever” took her to Russia where she photocopied rare documents, such as two volumes of a Soviet register of Finnish war crimes, a list of persons found in the mass grave at Karhumaki, and Soviet lists of North American Finns who journeyed to Karelia to help build a socialist utopia. In May, she donated all this to 91��ɫ’s Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections.

Lindström started teaching history at Atkinson Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies in 1984. In addition to teaching and research, she played a vital role in 91��ɫ’s administration. She was founding chair of 91��ɫ’s groundbreaking School of Women’s Studies, was chair of Atkinson’s History Department and coordinator of its Canadian Studies Program. While master of Atkinson, she helped the Atkinson Students' Association through a fractious period and they, in gratitude, established the Varpu Lindström Scholarship. She served as an elected Senate representative on 91��ɫ’s Board of Governors and on many University committees, and was acting director of the School of Social Work.

In 2006, she was named a University Professor. Lindström’s personal qualities of quiet determination and selflessness made her a mentor and inspiration to so many, said her nominator, Rhonda Lenton, then Atkinson dean. At the core of all her activities was “her profound respect for human dignity, equity and learning.”

Lindström leaves sons Allan Best (BA 97) and Martin Best, and husband Borje Vähämäki.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Jonathan Edmondson receives international prize from Spanish Museum

fmaquito — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0000

They say two heads are better than one. Jonathan Edmondson, chair of 91��ɫ's Department of History, now has an extra one – a Roman bust. He received it from the National Museum of Roman Art in Spain as the 18th winner of the international prize, Protective Spirit of the Colony of Augusta Emerita (Genio Protector de la Colonia Augusta Emerita).

The annual prize, inaugurated in 1994 by the Association of Friends of the National Museum of Roman Art (Museo Nacional de Arte Romano), recognizes the contributions of individuals, academics and researchers who have expanded the knowledge of the historical, cultural and archeological heritage of the Roman world, in particular of the city of Mérida in Spain. It was presented to Edmondson at the museum's 25th-anniversary celebrations in September.

Above: Holding the award – a copy of a Roman bust of the Genius (Protective Spirit) of Augusta Emerita – are, from left, winner Jonathan Edmondson; María Angeles Albert León, Spain's director general of fine arts and cultural property; Trinidad Nogales Basarrate, education and culture minister for Extremadura region; and a representative for Extremadura president José Antonio Monago Terraza.

Edmondson received the award for his research on the colony of Augusta Emerita and Roman Spain over the years while at 91��ɫ and for the fundamental contributions he made toward the study of Emeritan society and the structure of the former colony. He was also recognized for his “work in disseminating knowledge about the archeological heritage of Emerita across the world.”

Left: The awards ceremony inside the National Museum of Roman Art

“It’s really international recognition for my scholarship,” says Edmondson. “I’m the first English-speaking scholar who has won it.”

Through his research on Roman Spain, Edmondson has been instrumental in bringing the history, culture and archeology of the colony of Augusta Emerita in the region of Extremadura, one of 17 autonomous regions in Spain, to a world audience. When Edmondson first started studying Roman Spain, he was one of the few international scholars to do so. There had been much research on Roman Italy, France and Britain among others, but not Roman Spain, and not written in English.

Right: Jonathan Edmondson delivering his acceptance speech for the international prize, Protective Spirit of the Colony of Augusta Emerita, at the National Museum of Roman Art

It was the Roman province of Lusitania, overlapping both Portugal and Spain of which Augusta Emerita (modern Mérida) was the capital, that really piqued Edmondson’s attention as it had been mostly overlooked until then. He continues to be interested in the social, economic and cultural history of Mérida, from the military veterans who settled there and the city’s military importance to the study of family structures, marriage patterns, slavery and immigration.

“It’s a very rich city in terms of surviving evidence,” he says. "There are Roman houses, burial grounds, aqueducts and Roman roads – all of which were found while digging the foundations of the museum."

One of the things in his research that surprised him is that Mérida was a major centre for medical training. This Edmondson learned through a series of inscriptions about doctors, one of which told of a slave from another city (Olisipo, modern Lisbon) being sent to Mérida to be medically trained and another which detailed the slave’s journey back to Lisbon and his later importance there as a doctor.

Left: Rafael Mesa Hurtado, president of the Friends of the National Museum of Roman Art (and the first cousin of Toronto Raptor José Calderón) presents Jonathan Edmondson with a commemorative plaque

Edmondson has often been the first to publish Roman inscriptions from Mérida, of which there are more than 1,000 and still more being discovered. He began interpreting the inscriptions on tombstones and moved to study the style of funerary monuments and how they changed over time. He is now researching indigenous religion in Lusitania and the extent to which the Roman authorities allowed indigenous divinities to be worshipped.

Edmondson is the editor of Augustus (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), co-editor of Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2008) and Flavius Jospephus and Flavian Rome (Oxford University Press, 2005), among others. His monograph, Granite Funerary Stelae from Augusta Emerita, appeared in 2007. In 2002, he was elected a corresponding member of the Real Academia de la Historia of Spain and, in 2009, was made a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London.

As winner of the Protective Spirit prize, Edmondson is in good company. Previous winners have included Walter Trillmich, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin; José María Blázquez, former professor of Roman archaeology at the Complutense University of Madrid; Pierre Gros, former professor of Roman archaeology at the Université d'Aix-en-Provence; and Rafael Moneo Vallés, a world-renowned architect who designed the National Museum of Roman Art.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Obiora Okafor elected to UN Human Rights Council advisory committee

fmaquito — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Last week, 91��ɫ law Professor Obiora Okafor was elected to the advisory committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The Nigerian-born professor brings his expertise in international law, human rights law, and immigration and refugee law, especially as it relates to Africa, to the .

“The committee is the think tank of the Human Rights Council,” says . “It’s where the thinking begins.” He sees participating on the committee as a form of public service and an opportunity to make an impact at a relatively high level.

Okafor (left) was nominated by Nigeria to represent Africa on the 18-person committee for the next three years. The Geneva-based committee meets twice a year.

The son of an Ibo lawyer concerned about social justice, Okafor studied, practised and taught law in Nigeria before coming to Canada. He won a scholarship to the University of British Columbia, earned two graduate degrees and joined Osgoode Hall Law School in 2000.

“Human rights gave me a language and framework for expressing my concerns about social justice,” says Okafor.

At Osgoode, the award-winning teacher lectures on international human rights law, human rights in Africa and the international law of south-north relations.

His most recent research projects include a study of human rights activism in Nigeria and a comparison of refugee rights in Canada and the United States post 9/11.

He is also affiliated with 91��ɫ’s , the and the Graduate Program in Socio-Legal Studies.

Okafor has served as an expert panellist for the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent and a human rights consultant for the British Department for International Development. He has been a visiting scholar at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, and in Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program.

“I’m interested in a full range of issues, but the preponderance of my work is on human rights in Africa,” he says.

He has written three books: ; ; and .

He has also co-edited three books: ; ; and .

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Judge blasts ruling by refugee board member with zero acceptance rate

fmaquito — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

The day the Toronto Star broke the story on a wide variation of acceptance rates by refugee board members, a Federal Court judge issued a decision chastising an adjudicator who had not granted asylum to anyone in three years, wrote :

In an order issued Friday on an appeal by failed refugee claimant Bingrou Xu, the judge eight times repeated that the credibility findings by Immigration and Refugee Board member David McBean were "unreasonable".

McBean rejected Xu’s refugee claim last summer, stating 14 times that the claimant’s story was unsatisfactory and lacked credibility. Xu fled Belize in 2007 with his two children, claiming his wife was shot to death in a botched robbery of their convenience store and his family continued to be threatened.

“The (refugee) board’s conclusion . . . appears to have been based on the cumulative effect of the ‘discrepancies, contradictions and other problems’ that the board identified,” Justice Paul Crampton ruled.

. . .

Data analysis by Osgoode Hall Law School Professor revealed last week that McBean granted asylum to none of the 169 cases assigned to him since his 2007 appointment, with most of his rejections citing claimants' credibility as an issue. The data also showed several board members had extremely high acceptance rates.

Rehaag's and reveals startling differences in the acceptance rates of individual adjudicators. His findings were later .

Rehaag is also a member of the .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Refugee board disputes Professor Sean Rehaag's study on bias and refugee boards

fmaquito — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Asylum rejection rates have no bearing in the quality and consistency of decisions made by adjudicators, says Canada’s refugee board, reported the :

In fact, the board insists that each decision must be examined on a case-by-case basis.

“Statistics on the acceptance and rejection rates of individual IRB members who determine refugee claims made in Canada require context,” Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) spokesperson Anna Pape said Friday. “Each refugee protection claim referred to the IRB is reviewed on the evidence presented in that individual case and decided on its merits. Each case is unique.”

The IRB was responding to a by Osgoode Hall [Law School] Professor that found a wide range of rejection rates among its members, even when dealing with claims from the same country.

The findings have already cast doubt on IRB member David McBean’s ability to judge fairly. McBean rejected all his asylum cases since his 2007 appointment – 62 in 2010, 72 in 2009 and 35 in 2008.

Rehaag also discussed the study, which examines the practices of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board and reveals startling differences in the acceptance rates of individual adjudicators, on CBC’s “As It Happens”, “Au Dela De La 401” and “Le Telejournal Ontario” March 4.

Rehaag is also a member of the .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Osgoode Professor Sean Rehaag's study raises concerns about bias on refugee board

fmaquito — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

If you were a refugee seeking protection in Canada, you wouldn’t want to cross the path of David McBean, wrote the , in a story about a new 91��ɫ study that shows evidence of bias among different adjudicators on the Immigration & Refugee Board (IRB) of Canada:

According to an analysis of IRB data obtained through an access-to-information request, McBean was one of a handful of board members who granted asylum in fewer than 10 per cent of cases last year, said the Star. The others were Anna Brychcy (6.45 per cent), Pasquale A. Fiorino (6.93 per cent), Michele Pettinella (6.67 per cent), Edward Robinson (4.29 per cent), Carolyne Wedgbury (9.66 per cent), Andrea Wojtak (2.94 per cent) and Colleen Zuk (9.46 per cent).

“There is a concern of bias,” said Osgoode Hall Law School Professor , who obtained and analyzed the data. “It is an issue if the case outcome hinges on who made the decision. You’re lucky if you had Cathryn Forbes (who granted asylum in 35 out of 35 cases). If you had David McBean, you would have no chance.”

Individual claimants may vary in their personal profiles and circumstances of persecution even if they are from the same country. However, the discrepancies remain when Rehaag controlled the variables such as the country of origin of the claimants.

Rehaag said his data also showed that those claimants who had legal representation at the asylum hearing tended to have a much higher success rate (48.58 per cent) than those who were unrepresented (11.79 per cent). Refugee board members are appointed by the government from a pool of qualified applicants who must pass an exam to prove their knowledge of immigration and refugee issues. The terms are between one and three years. They are paid in the range of $102,300 and $120,400 a year.

Rehaag is also a member of the .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Roger Keil says multiculturalism more successful in Canada than Europe

fmaquito — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Declarations by European leaders that multiculturalism is a failure are not applicable to 91��ɫ Region, academics and immigration advocates said, wrote the :

The dialogue sparked by the leaders mystifies 91��ɫ City Institute director Roger Keil, himself a newcomer from his native Germany in the 1990s. “I’m puzzled (that) the national debate in Central and Western Europe is a point of reference in Canada,” he said. “Those making the comments have a specific agenda. They’re right wing and are under various influences, some fascist.”

Citing France’s republic, Germany’s federation and Italy’s struggles to define itself during a wave of Tunisian immigration, Keil said Canada demonstrates vastly different policies and history.

Canada has the highest per-capita immigration rate in the world, driven by economic policy and family reunification. Multiculturalism in Canada was adopted as the official policy of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s government in the 1970s.

. . .

Our welcoming nature and immigration policies have created a critical mass of socio-ethno cultural groups, creating a mosaic of diversity that outweighs influences by camps and enclaves found in Europe, Dr. Keil said. “Europe has a different political spectrum,” he said. “They have outspoken nationalists pushed by fascist forces stirring up unrest. We don’t see those forces operating in 91��ɫ Region.”

Keil leads the SSHRC-funded Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century project, which is the first major research project to take stock of worldwide suburban developments in a systematic way.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Nazilla Khanlou's research advocates for immigrants and mental health

fmaquito — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Imagine the stress of uprooting your family to make a new life in a new country in a new language. For women, adapting can be a very different experience than that of their children. Depending on their resilience and their situation, some adapt better than others.

Nazilla Khanlou knows. An immigrant herself, she's been studying the mental health of new arrivals – mainly women and youth – for a decade. But her community-based research goes well beyond gathering information. Whatever she learns about the mental wellbeing of newcomers and the services they need to adjust and integrate she shares with community agencies, health and social service providers and policy makers.

Right: Nazilla Khanlou

In fact, check out her new website and see that since 2008, when she joined 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health as the first Echo Ontario Women’s Health Council Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research, she has shared her research on immigration and mental health at dozens of conferences and with government ministries. The nursing professor never turns down invitations to speak to local community groups, has started a newsletter and has launched a speaker series at 91��ɫ – anything to help improve the transition of immigrant women, youth and their families into Canadian society.

In her office suite in 91��ɫ Lanes, one room serves as a meeting room, resource library and workspace for her community-based partners, visiting scholars, graduate students and her research team. “I like the connection between academia and community,” says Khanlou, who has put up pictures on the wall and tried to make the room a welcoming, comfortable space.

Khanlou practised as a psychiatric nurse and spent seven years as health domain leader of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement in Toronto.

She believes in caring for the individual as well as providing systemic support to promote the mental wellbeing of immigrant women.

“When we talk about women, we’re not talking about a homogeneous group,” says Khanlou. Immigrant women come from varying cultures, religions, regions and educational backgrounds. They juggle many of the same day-to-day responsibilities and face the same pressures and multiple-role expectations as their Canadian-born peers.

Newcomers also face barriers – linguistic, social, cultural and gender-based – and discrimination. Isolation, family pressures and fear of stigma can prevent many from seeking help. To flourish, immigrant women, like everybody else, need fulfilling relationships, self-confidence and a sense of security. They need support systems that provide access to employment and good housing, health and social services, and equitable treatment.

“Good mental health doesn’t happen on its own,” she says. “We need a way to focus on society and systemic issues but not to lose sight of each person's resilience and challenges because at the end of the day, you need to attend to the individual.”

Most recently, Khanlou has collaborated with community partners on a variety of studies. One looked at how newcomer teenagers from Afghan, Colombian, Sudanese and Tamil communities understand mental health and seek help. Another compared the perceptions of newcomer immigrant and Canadian-born residents of Toronto’s St. James Town of their neighbourhood, social relations and access to health and social services and the effect on their wellbeing. With faculty in 91��ɫ's School of Nursing, a third explores the connection between immigrant women’s participation in their community and their success at settling in a community, and a fourth aims to improve the measurement of child and youth resilience.

Khanlou has also reviewed policies on immigrant health and mental health for federal and provincial agencies.

All Khanlou’s studies come with recommendations on how to remove barriers and improve services to promote mental health.

“It’s an exciting time to be in the mental health field because more people are talking about the relevance of mental health to all of us,” says Khanlou. “Hopefully our efforts come together to take away the fear of stigma so when families experience mental illness they are able to access good services and are able to talk about it. We all need good mental health.”

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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IRIS launches book calling for systemic changes to fight climate change

fmaquito — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

It's not enough to plant trees in exchange for carbon emissions in the fight to mitigate climate change, say 91��ɫ environmental studies Professor Anders Sandberg and 91��ɫ environmental studies master’s student in their new co-edited book Climate Change – Who’s Carrying the Burden?: The Chilly Climates of the Global Environmental Dilemma.

Nor is it enough to set up a supposed green company in the Global South to offset the spewing emissions of companies in the Global North. Without a substantial system change, an alternative way of living, climate change will continue unabated, says Anders Sandberg. “I don’t see any change, frankly. Carbon emissions are still increasing dramatically.”

When carbon emissions are traded or bought for offsets, such as planting trees, they are done so at the end of the carbon change cycle, rather than at the beginning. A lot of money continues to go into the development of more carbon sources. “From my perspective it’s not very positive,” says Sandberg. Much of the offset purchasing is by large multinationals in the Global South, where they set up green companies to offset pollution in the United States, but by doing so they displace many of the local people and their economic livelihoods.

In the book, the Sandbergs write, “The concept of climate change itself can be an oppressive force…hiding the historical connections of the carbon economy to colonialism, capitalism and rampant and exploitive resource extractions."

“We’re asking people to look at the climate change issues from a broader perspective, which could bring forth more ideas,” says Sandberg.

In , the third volume in the Our Schools/Our Selves book series, 2010, published by the , the Sandbergs look at who is most affected by climate change and the need for systemic change beyond capping and trading carbon emissions.

They don't believe that free markets, new green technologies and international agreements are enough to alleviate climate change. Despite green technologies, levels of consumption will likely remain high. Even if all the cars are electric, there will still be suburbs, roads and gridlock, potentially leading to an increase in the amount of electricity used and the building of more hydroelectric dams, which then affects the environment and the people who use it. “I think we need to look at and imagine other ways of living,” says Anders Sandberg.

Left: Anders Sandberg

Although climate change is a global issue, the solutions are not. What’s needed is a closer look at the origins of climate change and the areas it most impacts, he says. Areas such as the Tar Sands of Alberta, the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, the Canadian north, the coastal regions of Bangladesh and the island states of the Pacific.

“We have to look at the people on the ground who are harmed by this. What we are trying to do is turn the prism from the global to the local. But we’re not just looking at the horror stories; we’re also looking at the hope and resiliency of these communities and whether they might have some answers to the climate change problem.” For one thing, it’s important to understand the vulnerabilities that have built up in these communities, explore their origins, call for reparations from those who are responsible and build on the resiliencies that remain.

One of the contributors to the book, 91��ɫ environmental studies master's student Jelena Vesic (BES Spec. Hon. '08), points to the polar bear as a symbol and a victim of climate change. There is now a threat to First Nations who harvest them because they are considered endangered, yet a closer look reveals that in some regions the polar bear is holding its own. Banning their harvest would affect First Nations communities that have hunted polar bears as part of their culture for centuries. The ban would also affect the local economy and the resiliency that’s built into the particular relationship between the Inuit and the polar bear.

Right: Tor Sandberg

Climate Change – Who’s Carrying the Burden? contains a collection of papers from prominent people such as Stephen Lewis, Canada's former ambassador to the United Nations, who looks at the health impact of global climate change; author and journalist Naomi Klein, who talks about paying the climate debt; and scholar and activist Vandana Shiva on the G8/20 summit and climate change. Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May explores shrinking ecological footprints and expanding political ones, while visiting Fulbright scholar at 91��ɫ Professor Noël Sturgeon challenges the family values and environmental practices that are tied to the carbon economy.

The majority of articles, however, are written by junior scholars and graduate students in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental Studies who are passionate about climate justice. They write on a range of topics, including the recent climate-focused conferences in Copenhagen and Cochabamba, climate change-induced migration, Hurricane Katrina, the Niger Delta, the First Nations youth adoption of hip hop music to fight HIV/AIDS. the largest squatter settlement in Europe (the free town of Christiania in Copenhagen) and food policy in the Greater Toronto Area.

The Sandbergs discuss what they see as the dominant story – cap and trade and offsets –and the alternative story that calls for systemic change and climate justice, which emerged at the 15th United Nations conference on climate change they attended last December in Copenhagen.

Anders Sandberg is currently using Climate Change – Who’s Carrying the Burden? in his course – Environmental Studies 1200, Taking Action, Engaging People and the Environment.

The book will be officially launched by 91��ɫ’s (the Sandbergs were part of the institute's delegation to the climate change conference in Copenhagen) on Wednesday, Oct. 20, from 3 to 4:30pm at 305 91��ɫ Lanes, Keele campus.

The themes of the book will also be featured in a session titled “Climate Change, Climate Justice and Human Rights” during 91��ɫ’s Inclusion Day – Dialoguing Across Differences tomorrow.

For more information on the book, visit the website.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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Immigration workshop to address issues faced by people with precarious migratory status

fmaquito — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

There’s a tendency to think that the problems faced by people with precarious status – temporary workers, refugee claimants, failed claimants and people without status – are not Canadian issues, but 91��ɫ sociology Professor disagrees. To shed light on the emerging body of research in this area, the Research Alliance on Precarious Status, which Goldring initiated, will present a public workshop, titled “Producing and Negotiating Precarious Migratory Status in Canada.”

The workshop will run from 9am to 5:30pm, on Thursday, Sept. 16, at the International Conference Centre, 5th Floor, 91��ɫ Research Tower, Keele campus. Anyone wishing to attend should RSVP to migrationconf@gmail with their name and institutional affiliation by Sept. 14.

Right: Professor Luin Goldring

The workshop's goal is to discuss the production, negotiation and implications of precarious status in the Canadian context, and to contribute to and inform Canadian and international debates on immigration, citizenship, social inclusion and rights.

“I think the research will highlight the vulnerability of people with precarious status,” says Goldring, co-organizer of the workshop with Professor Patricia Landolt of the University of Toronto. “There’s a tendency to think about people with precarious status as somehow different, but they’re not. People hire them all the time; they are part of our society. It’s time to start thinking about them and paying attention to these issues.”

People with precarious status encompass both legal and unauthorized status, but all are vulnerable. Goldring uses the example of temporary workers: if they complain about poor working conditions, they risk being fired and falling out of status or not being rehired. If that happens, they have limited recourse. Yet, employers are looking to hire people with precarious status.

Researchers from various disciplines from Ontario, including several from 91��ɫ, will analyze the production of precarious status in Canada, including temporary workers, failed refugee claimants and non-status. They will address the everyday experiences of people living with various forms of precarious status and analyze the negotiation of migratory status in specific institutional settings and sectors, including schooling, health care, social service provision and academic research. Invited commentators will present the key points and discuss the papers, followed by brief author responses and an open discussion.

The event’s co-sponsors include 91��ɫ’s Office of the Vice-President of Research & Innovation, , the International Network on Migration & Development, as well as 91��ɫ’s Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean, Centre for Refugee Studies and Graduate Program in Sociology.

For more information, including speakers and topics, click here.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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