Call for abstracts — Migration, integration, and citizenship in Canadian smaller cities and rural areas
Workshop in Toronto, June 6, 2025
As immigration to smaller cities and rural areas has increased, scholarship is expanding beyond the prevalent focus on larger cities and metropolitan areas. As the political salience of immigration and integration is increasing in Canada, the federal government is responding with various policy changes including reducing the international student quota, limiting renewals of temporary visas, and restricting transitions from temporary to permanent residence. At the same time, targeted government programs such as the Atlantic Immigration Program and various Provincial Nominee Program pathways characterize immigration as the solution to labour shortages and declining populations in smaller centres. Our goal is to study these contradictions by way of a workshop (in-person in Toronto, June 6, 2025) that will examine migration, integration, and citizenship in smaller cities (metro population under about 250,000) and rural areas in Canada. We will seek travel funding but this is not guaranteed. Depending on the contributions, the workshop organizers will explore the possibility of co-editing a Special Issue featuring selected workshop papers in a reputable journal.
We invite 250-300 word abstracts on themes including...
- The local politics of migration
- Community stakeholder perspectives on migration and integration
- Temporary to permanent status transitions
- Discourses and narratives concerning migration and integration
- The impacts of changing immigration policies, including on the lived experiences of migrants
...in smaller cities and rural areas in Canada.
Please submit abstracts by October 7, 2024 to Kathryn Barber (barkat@yorku.ca), Melissa Kelly (melissa.kelly@torontomu.ca), and Willem Maas (maas@yorku.ca).