In Canada, many refugees and other migrants settle in a small number of large metropolitan areas. For this reason, most research and policy focus on the needs in such settings. However, secondary cities and non-traditional regional hubs might be more efficient in integrating newcomers because of their smaller scale and demographic needs. Settlement practices and contextual factors of secondary cities might differ in meaningful ways from those of larger metropolitan areas.

Research on migrants in Canada’s secondary regions, however, is hampered by researchers’ ability to find migrants. Traditional sampling frames often miss migrants to secondary and smaller regions because traditional survey sampling frames skew to bigger centres and because migrants, especially refugees or those who might be undocumented, tend to be harder to enumerate and often cluster in larger hub areas.

The ERYF-HAS project employs an innovative sampling method using targeted advertising on social networking sites to see how they can be used as a tool to access and communicated with newcomers in secondary regions or hard-to-reach places. The project also aims to narrow the mentioned research gap by using multidimensional operationalization of integration to study integration of refugees in cities and municipalities of different sizes. It, furthermore, investigates the specific experiences faced by the target groups and will examine refugees’ family and living situations and the opportunity structure provided by settlement communities which are important in determining successful integration.

Project funding
Child and Youth Refugee Research Coalition (CYRRC)
Meta Platforms Inc.

Website of the external project partner
Prof. Dr. Howard Ramos, Western University, Canada