ABSTRACT
After the resettlement of more than 40,000 Syrian refugees in Canada (Government of Canada Immigration and Citizenship, 2019), the bureaucratic matrix of settlement politics continues to unfold. There is an underlying assumption that organizations can quickly respond to worldviews converging and colliding in host communities. Although the mainstream media have highlighted Canada’s inclusive immigration policies, the securitization of forced migration tends to be problematized before the social imagination is catalyzed. A series of candid conversations with frontline settlement colleagues brought the immediacies of the Syrian crisis into the forefront. These exchanges quickly led to the formation of a facilitation team with professional expertise in refugee resettlement, primary health care, and community arts.
