Strangers to Neighbours

Evaluating private refugee sponsorship and its potential for global refugee policy.

As a leading country in global refugee resettlement, Canada operates a unique program that allows private groups and individuals to sponsor refugees. This innovative approach has received growing international attention, but there remains a need for a more expansive understanding of the sponsorship framework and its potential implications within Canada and across the world.

Strangers to Neighbours explains the origins and development of refugee sponsorship, paying particular attention to the unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas it produces for refugee policy. The contributors to this collection draw upon law, social science, and philosophy to bring a more robust and objective perspective on Canada's historical experience with sponsorship into wider conversations about the refugee crisis and resettlement. Together, they present recent cases that exemplify how the model has been applied and how it functions, while also analyzing the challenges that emerge in host-sponsor relations. This volume further examines how sponsorship has been implemented differently in countries such as the United States and Australia.

The first dedicated study of refugee sponsorship policy, Strangers to Neighbours assembles leading scholars from a range of disciplines to consider whether Canada's system is indeed a sustainable model for the world.

Details

Part of the McGill-Queen's Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Series (number 3 in series)

400 Pages, 6 x 9

5 tables

ISBN 9780228001362

September 2020

Formats: Cloth, Paperback, eBook

"There is both a hunger and a need for a book of this depth and breadth on the topic of private sponsorship given the current global interest in the role of community sponsors in resettlement. The chapters in Strangers to Neighbours provide a rich and varied overview of private sponsorship from numerous perspectives, making a significant contribution to our surprisingly shallow understanding on the subject." Michaela Hynie, York University

"The contributors to this edited collection-scholars and practitioners with expertise in law, social science, and philosophy-provide a rich and varied overview and assessment of the success and sustainability of PRS. In 15 relatively short chapters, these authors tackle a number of topics: the legislative framework and historical trajectory of PRS; the relationship between private sponsors and government; the integration and relationship-building aspects of refugee sponsorship; and the risks and unintended consequences of resettlement, including ethical dilemmas that PRS creates with respect to broader/global refugee protection goals." Choice

Shauna Labman is associate professor of human rights in the Global College at the University of Winnipeg.

Geoffrey Cameron is research associate with the Global Migration Lab in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

Figure and Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Private Refugee Sponsorship: An Evolving Framework for Refugee Resettlement 3
Geoffrey Cameron and Shauna Labman

Part One Context

1 Reluctant Partnership: A Political History of Private Sponsorship in Canada (1947-1980) 19
Geoffrey Cameron

2 “Naming” Refugees in the Canadian Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program: Diverse Intentions and Consequences 42
Sabine Lehr and Brian Dyck

3 How Should We Think about Private Sponsorship of Refugees? 61
Patti Tamara Lenard

4 A Port in the Storm: Resettlement and Private Sponsorship in the Broader Context of the Refugee Regime 74
Megan Bradley and Cate Duin

Part Two Cases

5 Religious Heritage, Institutionalized Ethos, and Synergies: The Mennonite Central Committee and Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program 95
Thea Enns, Luann Good Gingrich, and Kaylee Perez

6 Operation Ezra: A New Way Forward 112
Madison Pearlman

7 The Blended Visa Office-Referred Program: Perspectives and Experiences from Rural Nova Scotia 134
Rachel McNally

8 Refugee Sponsorship in the Age of Social Media: Canada and the Syrian Refugee Program 152
Elizabeth Coffin-Karlin

Part Three Challenges

9 Kindred Spirits? Links between Refugee Sponsorship and Family Sponsorship 177
Audrey Macklin, Kathryn Barber, Luin Goldring, Jennifer Hyndman, Anna Korteweg, and Jona Zyfi

10 Transactions of Worth in Refugee-Host Relations 198
Christopher Kyriakides, Arthur McLuhan, Karen Anderson, and Lubna Bajjali

11 Mobilization of the Legal Community to Support PSR Applications through the Refugee Sponsorship Support Program 212
Kelsey Lange

12 Judicial Review in Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program 227
Pierre-André Thériault

Part Four Comparison

13 “Doing Something to Fight Injustice”: Voluntarism and Refugee Resettlement as Political Engagement in the United States 247
Scott Harding and Kathryn Libal

14 Private Humanitarian Sponsorship: Searching for the Community in Australia’s Community Refugee Sponsorship Program 264
Anthea Vogl, Khanh Hoang, and Asher Hirsch

15 A Model for the World? Policy Transfer Theory and the Challenges to “Exporting” Private Sponsorship to Europe 286
Craig Damian Smith

Conclusion: Sponsorship’s Success and Sustainability? 303
Shauna Labman

Contributors 319
Index 325