About the Chair
In 2018, international immigration rose to an all-time high of 258 million people. According to the United Nations, it has increased 49% since 2000 and will keep on growing. Beyond economic and environmental factors, this number reflects a global displacement crisis and the associated closures of permanent settlement opportunities for asylum seekers. It also coexists with changing political dynamics which now favours immigrant exclusion and expanded enforcement of borders as well as of discourses of suspicions about immigrants’ capacity to integrate into their new societies. Paradoxically, this increase is also the result of a growing reliance on skilled migration for economic development and population renewal in countries like Canada and Australia, as well as of the ever-growing contribution of immigrant remittances to the several emerging national economies. Now more than ever, international migration creates challenges to states while also representing opportunities for growth and transformation. The sheer size of the human movement, the instability of the international political context and the need to ensure social cohesion in the face of growing diversity demands that government renew their interventions when it comes to immigration.
The Concordia University Research Chair on the Politics of Immigration (CPI) is concerned with policy innovations and changes that emerge out of this rapidly evolving immigration global context. To do so, our team pursues a scientific agenda focused on three elements: 1) the evolution of global migration patterns; 2) the emergence of new actors in the governance of immigration; and 3) the establishment of new immigration policies and practices.
Our research and collective reflections aim to identify, develop and disseminate innovative policy solutions to the new global and local contexts of immigration management in Quebec, Canada and abroad. Moreover, building on the multidisciplinary approach of comparative migration studies data, providing venues for collective research and train immigration researchers and professionals to respond to the new social and political context that in which the politics of immigration unfolds.
