Warmth of the Welcome

Description

The allure of Atlantic Canada has been widely publicized to assorted, targeted groups alongside colourful pictures of stunning seascapes. Communities in Atlantic Canada have promoted the region’s purportedly high quality of life, contrasting it with the challenges of “big city” life. In the pitch to newcomers, healthy and safe communities and a lower cost of living, including lower housing prices, are featured in the hope that these considerations will entice immigrants to move to, and make new homes in the region. But for immigrants especially, how much of this is rhetoric, and how much of this is reality? Is Atlantic Canada truly welcoming, and what really makes it a home away from home for newcomers in the region? 

The chapters in this volume underscore that a welcoming environment consists not simply of ordinary people’s reception of, and encounters with, newcomers and immigrants in everyday life. Beyond this human “warmth of the welcome” in official literature and by the general public, there are also several institutional and structural layers that constitute and frame such a welcoming environment: favourable political economic conditions; receptive community relations including inter-ethnic group relations; the existence of local, national and transnational family networks; and the presence of policies and practices that not only concern immigration, settlement and integration, but also around such issues as adequate, accessible, affordable housing or childcare. These layers of welcome for immigrants and newcomers ultimately lead and correspond to the dimensions of a broadly defined notion of encompassing the intertwined and interrelated economic, social, political and emotional dimensions and processes of citizenship.

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