Experts argue that governments rely on private and community sponsors to meet their humanitarian objectives, but do not provide adequate support to ensure their success. In Quebec, civil society organizations (CSOs) receive support from the government, but also critique the government’s approach to migration. Quebec’s sponsorship program is different from other provinces due to its relative autonomy over immigrant admissions and complete control over integration funding. The program is referred to as ‘collective sponsorship’, reflecting its reliance on more than just private resources. Migration, including refugee sponsorship, has become a salient issue in Quebec politics.

Finding stable housing is a pivotal step in the resettlement process. However, the rental market is elusive and expensive and the welfare system cannot adequately fill this gap. Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP) housing staff skills combined with community’s goodwill helped overcome this challenge in the Syrian resettlement experience, however, this is unsustainable. What is needed is incentivising/requiring rehabilitation and new construction rental projects in all income segments to incorporate wider variety of housing units.

This report is an executive summary that presents the key findings from the Middle East Portion of the project “Evaluation of Refugee-led Organisations in East Africa and the Middle East.” The project examines refugee-led responses to COVID-19 pandemic and associated challenges and the role that refugees have been playing in their host states of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

The authors investigate the short-, medium- and long-term employment-related outcomes of resettled refugees from three admission programmes in Canada. After explaining the recent research on refugee economic integration, the authors analyze the 2019 version of the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) to compare the short- to long-term labour market outcomes of privately sponsored refugees (PSRs) and government-assisted refugees (GARs) and Blended Visa Office-Referred Refugees (BVORs).

Drawing on empirical research in Lebanon, this article offers an account of the ways in which—and which not—meaningful refugee participation and empowerment are achieved through representative committees. Spotlighting the case of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)-supported Sudanese refugee committee in Beirut 2014–2015, it focuses on three intricate and interrelated concerns—refugee participation, representation, and autonomy. The article finds that the design and function of the committee made it difficult for refugees to share authority with UNHCR over decisions that impact their lives.

This article explores perspectives and opinions from 35 Venezuelan community leaders and nonprofit representatives regarding the needs and challenges of the Venezuelan newcomer and refugee population in five Canadian cities as well as their struggle for community engagement and political participation in the domestic context. The analysis sheds light on how Venezuelan immigrants have navigated the complexities of migration in North America and how they have faced the difficulties of coming from a country with an immigration rather than an emigration history.

This chapter sets out the legal and policy framework of Canadian refugee resettlement programs and highlights where there are tensions between and within the different resettlement programs. It argues that the private sponsorship program and government-assisted program are meant to operate complementarily, while BVOR program situates in the middle. According to the author, while all programs focus on protection needs, the differing selection processes influence where that protection response is targeted. Whereas government sponsorship responds to the protection prioritizations of UNHCR, private sponsors often provide protection to those outside of UNHCR’s submission categories.

This chapter reviews how global and local policies affect the social conditions of health for refugees resettled in Canada, with a brief introduction to social determinants of health, and Canadian health and settlement policies. A social determinants of health lens is particularly valuable in considering the relationship between policies and experiences of resettled refugees, as it points to ways in which policies can be strengthened to create equitable conditions for these newcomers.

Using nationally representative cross-sectional survey data from 2019, this article reports that Canadians generally overestimate the number of refugees and asylum-seekers coming into the country but are comparatively less prone to overestimating the overall number of immigrants. Canadians also rely on mental images about the reasons for immigrating to Canada that diverge from the realities of Canada's immigration program. The authors document how reliance on these numbers and images is driven by the type of media consumed, feelings of threat, and individual-level characteristics of Canadians. In doing so, this article demonstrates that mental images strongly influence Canadians’ attitudes toward immigration; numerical estimates also matter, but less so.