York University Professors Valerie Preston, Michaela Hynie, Jelena Zikic, along with other renowned researchers, community leaders, policy makers and immigrants themselves, will showcase settlement practices that promote newcomers’ resilience in Quebec and Ontario cities at a conference on June 5.
“Newcomers, Resilience and Settlement: Knowledge Exchange” is a conference organized by the Building Migrant Resilience in Cities (BMRC), a research partnership and a multi- sector collaboration located at York University. The planning committee includes John Shields from Ryerson University, Zikic from York University and Rupaleem Buhyan from the University of Toronto.
Participants of the conference will include academics from all three universities in Toronto and as well as others from universities in Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo and Montreal.
The day will be organized into three panels that examine the topics:
• What did we learn from settling Syrian refugees?
• Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPS) for planning immigrant integration: Reality vs. aspirations
• Sanctuary cities: What are they good for?
This event is organized by the BMRC partnership, a community-academic collaboration funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
The BMRC project explores the concept of social resilience to examine how institutions can facilitate migrant settlement in urban areas across Quebec and Ontario. It works to generate new knowledge for academic debate and discussion that will be made readily available to decision-makers and practitioners who strive to enhance migrant settlement.
The conference will take place on June 5 at the Ralph Thornton Community Centre, 765 Queen St. E., Toronto. Registration is free.