Maggie Perzyna
Maggie Perzyna has an LLB from Osgoode Hall and an MA in Immigration & Settlement Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University (2020). She is interested in the ways that policies impact the lived experience of migrants. Maggie led the COVID-19 Immigration Policy Tracker (external link) project which cataloged the federal government’s policy innovations during the pandemic through an online database. She also spearheaded a retrospective Working Paper on pandemic immigration policymaking with her CERC Migration colleagues based on the data collected. Maggie’s 'Pandemic Kitchens' research project leverages her work experience in Toronto’s restaurant industry to study the impact of COVID-19 on immigrants working in hospitality.
When she isn’t thinking about policy, Maggie is working on her second passion: mobilizing the knowledge produced at CERC Migration beyond the walls of the university. She was the co-lead on Migrant Lives in Pandemic Times (external link) , a digital-storytelling project that captured the experience of migrant workers during the pandemic and is the host of Borders & Belonging, a CERC Migration podcast that aims to elevate discourse about migration based on academic research. Maggie is also the Interim Coordinator for the Migrant Integration in the Mid-21st Century: Bridging Divides research program, the prestigious CFREF grant recently awarded to Toronto Metropolitan University.
Recent publications
With Dimanche, F. (2023). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Management in the Canadian Hospitality Industry (external link) , The Routledge Handbook of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Management in the Hospitality Industry (1st ed.).
With Akbar, M., Ellis, C., Monteiro, S., Nalbandian, L., & Smith, C. D (2022). (PDF file) Immigration policy ‘on the fly’: A critical review of pandemic policymaking in Canada. Working paper.
With Agrawal, S. (2022). Making the Match: Understanding the Destining Process of Government-Assisted Refugees in Canada (external link) , Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies.
(2022). It’s not just that Canadian restaurant workers have left — many have yet to arrive. (external link) The Conversation.
With Bauder, H. (2022). Threats from within and threats from without: Wet’suwet’en protesters, irregular asylum seekers and on-going settler colonialism in Canada. (external link) Settler Colonial Studies, 1-25.