Scholars of Excellence Workshop – The future of immigration attitudes in Canada: Illuminating blind spots and exploring interventions

Since the year 2000, public attitudes toward immigration and immigrants in Canada have been comparatively positive and stable. But the country is experiencing new tests of this high degree of social approval. Canada is experiencing historically high volumes of the number of temporary migrants (now at over two million), permanent residents (projected to include 500,000 admissions per year by 2025) and asylum claimants (including an unknown number of permits granted to Ukrainians affected by war); and, now, government is exploring the possibility of regularizing the status of undocumented residents.

This workshop explores and forecasts the future of immigration attitudes in a changing Canada through a dialogue between academics and government officials working on this issue. Speakers will consider whether the factors thought to explain the specificity of Canadians’ attitudes toward immigration, which have been seen as robust, remain valid. Participants will evaluate different methods to measure changing perceptions of immigration in Canada and how to best capture the feelings of different publics. The relationship between public communication on the part of government, and public attitudes, will also be considered. Participants will further explore how the experiences of other countries can be leveraged to expand our understanding of immigration attitudes in Canada.