Welcome word from the host institution
On behalf of the Global Migration Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University, we are delighted to welcome you to the 2027 IMISCOE Spring Conference in Toronto, Canada.
At Toronto Metropolitan University, we have been thinking about the relationship between technology and migration for many years. In 2023, TMU was awarded the lead of Bridging Divides: Migrant Integration in the 21st Century, a major multidisciplinary and inter-institutional research initiative funded through the Government of Canada’s Canada First Research Excellence Fund. Long before artificial intelligence became as commonplace as the pen with which we write our papers, there was a recognition that digital technologies would have profound implications for migration, integration and the ways we understand and study them.
TMU was entrusted with leading this work because of its longstanding strength in migration research. The Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration (CERC Migration) established a strong foundation of interdisciplinary migration scholarship, while the Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement (TMCIS) brought decades of community-focused research and engagement. Today, these legacies come together under the Global Migration Institute, TMU’s hub for migration and integration research, alongside Bridging Divides as a core research program.
We are therefore particularly excited to host this conference and to welcome an international community to Toronto to explore how digital technologies are transforming migration governance, migrant lives and the practice of migration research itself. We look forward to learning from the many perspectives that participants will bring to these conversations, and to thinking together about the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities that accompany these transformations.
We are equally honoured to welcome IMISCOE to North America for the first time. Canada, with its long history of immigration and integration, and Toronto in particular, offers a fitting setting for this conversation. More than half of Toronto’s population was born outside Canada, and the city is home to communities from around the world. We hope you will take the opportunity to experience the city beyond the conference and discover some of the places, communities and cultures that make Toronto such a special place for migration scholars and practitioners.
We cannot wait to welcome you, to learn from the perspectives you will bring to these conversations, and to continue thinking together about how technology is transforming migration and the field of migration research itself.
Welcome to Toronto, and enjoy the 2027 IMISCOE Spring Conference!
The Global Migration Institute Team
