Since the end of the Second World War, Canada has been accepting refugees as part of its humanitarian obligation to the international community. The 1976 Immigration Act reinforces this obligation and identifies refugees as a special immigrant category. More recently, the 1997 report of the Immigration Legislative Review Advisory Group, Not Just Numbers: A Canadian Framework for Future Immigration, goes as far as to recommend the creation of a separate Protection Act focusing solely on those seeking protection (i.e., refugees) (Recommendation 2), thereby reinforcing Canada’s humanitarian obligation on a global scale. In a similar vein, a subsequent Citizenship and Immigration Canada document, entitled Building on a Strong Foundation for the 21st Century: New Directions for Immigration and Refugee Policy and Legislation (Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada 1998), upholds Canada’s humanitarian tradition of resettling refugees from abroad and seeks to strengthen the resettlement program. Given past and recent trends in the admission of refugees, as well as Canada’s commitment to improve on its past record in this area, the flow of refugees to Canada is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.
"Refugees are people fleeing persecution and seeking Canada’s protection, sponsored by the government, private groups, or who have claimed refugee status upon arrival and whose claims have been determined to be valid" (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, November 1994). As such, refugees are a special kind of immigrant and their settlement in Canada must take account of the special circumstances surrounding their existence prior to their arrival in Canada as well as their unique social, economic and psychological needs.
In 1950, the Canadian government established the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to facilitate the development of settlement services for immigrants and refugees (M. Lanphier and Oleh Lukomskyj, Chapter 1, in Adelman et al., Vol. 2, 1994, p. 341). Over the years, the service providers (e.g., federal government, provincial and municipal governments, and/or NGOs) shifted and recombined, as did the specific services involved. In general, however, the range of main services provided included language classes, instruction in citizenship, reception, family and employment counselling, and under certain conditions, skills upgrading. Typically, the beneficiaries of these settlement services were the principal immigrants or refugees and not their spouses. It is important to note that neither the elderly nor the children were part of these settlement services. With reference to the latter group, schools and/or school boards developed their own language and other services for immigrant children within their existing budgets (i.e. with no federal funding).
This review focuses largely on the recent research literature (1980-1998) dealing with the settlement and integration of refugees in Canada. Cognate studies or reports that focus solely on immigrants, rather than refugees, or that have been carried out in countries other than Canada are included in the attached bibliography, only to the extent that they may enhance our understanding of the settlement experiences of refugees.
A great deal has been written about refugees in Canada, both in terms of focus on specific groups and their unique needs as well as more general questions pertaining to their integration into Canadian society. The discussion to follow highlights aspects of uniqueness of selected refugee groups that have been studied more frequently than others, documents the actual experiences of refugees in the receiving communities, and identifies factors which may facilitate or impede the successful integration of refugees. The insights derived from this review have been utilized in the development of the interview schedule used here in the settlement experience of refugees in Alberta.
The present discussion is organized around six major areas which more or less summarize the current literature on resettlement of refugees. These areas are:
Each of these areas will be discussed in turn.