RSVP
Date:
Mon Oct 21, 2024
11am – 1pm
Location:
PCN 2012
6445 University Blvd, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Speaker:
Kashif Raza
About the event:
Despite recognizing integration as a complex phenomenon and a contested construct, reductionist approaches to its understanding and measurement are common in research and policymaking. Such approaches often focus on specific indicators (e.g., linguistic, economic, or political) or evaluate them in isolation from other interrelated dimensions. Consequently, a narrowed focus towards integration is viewed in policy, programs, resources, and research. Scholars (e.g., Macleod, 2021) that adopt non-reductionist perspectives to integration see it as multi-directional (i.e., a two-way process contributed to by newcomers and host communities), multi-dimensional (i.e., role of economic, social, political, and health factors), and context-specific (i.e., impacted by ethnic community and shared linguistic capital). Problematizing Canadian Index for Measuring Integration (CIMI) and its reductionist approach to measuring integration, I will discuss how the index fails to evaluate dynamic integration practices of skilled immigrants across the four dimensions (economic, social, political, and health) by ignoring the interrelationship between the dimensions as well as how they are achieved by immigrants. For an inclusive approach to measuring integration, the inclusion of language (as a dynamic practice) and ethnic networking are proposed as additional variables to develop a broader understanding of the complexity, multidimensionality, multidirectionality, and context-specificity of skilled immigrants’ socio-politico-economic and health integration (Raza, 2023). This presentation will have implications for research, policy, and practice that are intended to improve integration practices of skilled immigrants in Canada and beyond.
Bio:
Kashif Raza is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Educational Studies, UBC. His Postdoctoral research focuses on the work-integrated learning of skilled immigrants in Alberta and Canada. With a multidisciplinary background in education, law, and applied linguistics, Kashif’s research interests include education law, educational leadership in changing times, language policy, multilingualism in TESOL, transnational migration, and South Asian diaspora in Canada.