Ebook: The Warmth of the Welcome: Is Atlantic Canada a Home Away from Home for Immigrants?

"Atlantic Canada is renowned for its lengthy coastlines, rural expanses, a slower pace and its welcoming, warm and friendly people. But is it truly welcoming? For immigrants especially, how much is rhetoric, and how much is reality? 'The warmth of the welcome' underscores that the 'welcome' is comprised not simply of people's reception of, and encounters with, newcomers and immigrants in everday life. Beyond the 'warm welcome' mentioned in official literature, or individuals' friendliness and good intentions vis-à-vis newcomers, the substantive engagement of multiple institutional and structural layers is needed to produce a more meaningful welcoming environment for immigrants to settle in Atlantic Canada. These wider and deeper layers of welcome include, but are not limited to: favourable political and economic conditions; fully-funded and more extensive community supports; the presence of policies and practices that concern not only immigration, settlement and integration, but also such issues as accessible and affordable housing and childcare; and policy interventions and supports for immigrant women survivors of violence. All of these, in turn, require that attnetion be paid to gender, race, ethnicity and class, and their intersections. Ultimately, making Atlantic Canada a 'home away from home' for immigrants, is about much more than the drive for attraction and retention; it rather encompasses the higly interrelated economic, social, political and emotional dimensions and processes of citizenship. In 'The warmth of the welcome,' scholars and practitioners from across Atlantic Canada share their grounded, context-specific research and the compelling experiences of immigrants to ask: 'What does it take to make Atlantic Canada a home away from home for newcomers'?" --