You are now in the main content area

Panacea or placebo? Two-step migration trajectories and immigrant integration outcomes

Date
June 19, 2023
Time
1:00 PM EDT - 2:00 PM EDT
Location
Online via Zoom
Rupa Banerjee portrait over a banner for her Panacea or Placebo? talk

As educational institutions and employers increasingly apply a strategy of internationalization to remain competitive, international students and temporary foreign workers have become important contributors to the Canadian economy. At the same time, the Canadian immigration system has shifted from a ‘one-step’ process admitting immigrants directly from their source country to a ‘two-step’ process, in which prospective immigrants first arrive as international students and/or temporary foreign workers before applying for permanent resident (PR) status.

A host of new immigration streams have enabled employers and post-secondary institutions to play a critical role in selecting the next generation of permanent immigrants. Some empirical studies have suggested that by prioritizing employer preferences, two-step migration can mitigate the labour market disparities that newcomers have long faced in Canada. However, there is also growing concern that the proliferation of temporary permits and the promise of two-step migration may be exploitative and lead to greater vulnerability for both newcomers and Canadian workers.

This lecture by Professor and Canada Research Chair Rupa Banerjee (Toronto Metropolitan University) was presented by Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques. Banerjee shared her recent research which draws from the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) to shed light on how temporary resident streams and two-step migration have been shifting over the past decades. Her work promises to help close the significant knowledge gap in our understanding of the migration trajectories of temporary residents, and to identify areas for further investigation and policy direction.

Rupa Banerjee is the Canada Research Chair in Economic inclusion, Employment and Entrepreneurship of Canada’s Immigrants and Associate Professor of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour. Her primary research interest lies in the employment integration of new immigrants to Canada. She is particularly interested in the institutional barriers facing new immigrants in the Canadian labour market. In addition, she is interested in workplace diversity and ethno-racial discrimination, particularly as it applies to second-generation immigrants.

The event is sponsored by CERC Migration & Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN)

CERC Migration logo, Canadian Research Data Centre Network logo, Canadian Public Policy logo

About the presenter and co-sponsor:

Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques is Canada’s foremost journal examining economic and social policy. It is directed at a wide readership including decision makers and advisers in business organizations and governments, and policy researchers in private institutions and universities.

The Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) is a premier research and training platform for over 2,000 researchers in the quantitative social and health sciences in Canada. The Network provides unique access to Statistics Canada data on 33 campuses across the country to advance knowledge and inform public policy. It is funded by SSHRC, CIHR, CFI, the FRQ, Statistics Canada and our 42 primary and affiliated partner universities. CRDCN is recognized as one of Canada’s Major Science Initiatives.