CARFMS 2021: Meaningful Refugee Participation and Canada’s Role in the Global Refugee Regime

More people and organizations are starting to acknowledge the importance of refugee participation in research, policy, and programming. However, putting refugee participation into practice and making it meaningful comes with challenges. Masa Kateb shared about the exciting work of the new Refugee Advisory Network of Canada. She emphasized the importance of taking one step in the direction of refugee participation since these little steps can lead to major shifts in direction. For her, meaningful refugee participation is about being at different decision-making tables and having the potential to influence the decisions made at those tables. James Milner emphasized that refugee participation is about challenging asymmetries of power. As his recent paper shows, it is highly political. It goes beyond just having refugees present and means that refugees actually have the power to change the outcomes and decisions. In other words, it is not about “legitimizing the status quo” but about creating a legitimate process to imagine the future. As Mohamed Duale found in his working paper on refugee participation, based on research he conducted with LERRN in Kakuma Refugee Camp and Nairobi, refugee participation means different things to different people. Refugee leaders desire partnership and power to self-organize. In terms of research, Amanda Klassen highlighted the value of including refugees in designing and doing research, not just as research participants later in the process. Including refugees in program design can lead to solutions that are context-appropriate and effective at meeting goals. Refugee studies can also learn from conversations about meaningful participation currently happening in many different fields. While there continue to be barriers – such access to registration for refugee-led organizations, or barriers related to language and policy lingo – the work of meaningful refugee participation will be critical to reimagine with refugees the future of solutions in global and local contexts.

This panel discussed chapters that will be part of a future edited volume on Canada’s role in the global refugee regime. While scholars have written about refugee policies within Canada, there has been much less attention paid to Canada’s international role. In the context of a global refugee regime that is failing to reliably provide protection and solutions for refugees, it is important to understand how states – including Canada – engage in this regime. Although Canada is geographically isolated from refugee countries of origin, and over 85% of refugees are hosted in the global South, Canada has played an important role and can still play an important role through funding, asylum, resettlement, and diplomacy.

Adèle Garnier and Shauna Labman began with a discussion of the role of resettlement in Quebec and in Canada more broadly. Including Quebec is important because the government of Quebec has a unique role in controlling immigration policy and the province is often excluded when talking about resettlement in Canada. Unlike the international legal obligation of granting asylum to refugees who arrive on your territory, resettlement is a voluntary commitment by states. In recent decades, Canada has resettled thousands of refugees directly and has encouraged other states to resettle refugees. At the moment, the focus within Canada and internationally is on private sponsorship, in part because of the advocacy of refugee sponsors. However, Garnier and Labman argued for expanding the Government-Assisted Refugees program to refocus Canadian resettlement on refugees who experience various vulnerabilities and protection needs. As Nathan Benson pointed out, each stream of resettlement in Canada serves different goals. Next, Kiran Banerjee talked about how Canada’s role in the refugee regime fits in with its foreign policy more broadly. While Canada has been a leader in resettlement and in other aspects of the refugee regime, it has a mixed record on asylum and other issues. It has also mostly reacted to refugee situations rather than proactively addressing displacement issues. James Milner followed by discussing refugee diplomacy: how Canada engages with decision-making processes in Geneva. Drawing on two case studies of times Canada got its way – the 2009 UNHCR Executive Committee Conclusion on Protracted Refugee Situations and the inclusion of gender considerations in the Global Compact on Refugees – he showed that the refugee regime is a competitive and contested political space, where different actors navigate political opportunities. Since within the refugee regime “there’s no one whose job description is to reimagine the refugee regime” academics can play a role in thinking through what the refugee regime could be. Stay tuned for the edited volume and related workshops coming next year!