As a leading country in global refugee resettlement, Canada operates a
unique program that allows private groups and individuals to sponsor
refugees. This innovative approach has received growing international
attention, but there remains a need for a more expansive understanding
of the sponsorship framework and its potential implications within
Canada and across the world. Strangers to Neighbours explains the
origins and development of refugee sponsorship, paying particular
attention to the unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas it
produces for refugee policy. The contributors to this collection draw
upon law, social science, and philosophy to bring a more robust and
objective perspective on Canada's historical experience with sponsorship
into wider conversations about the refugee crisis and resettlement.
Together, they present recent cases that exemplify how the model has
been applied and how it functions, while also analyzing the challenges
that emerge in host-sponsor relations. This volume further examines how
sponsorship has been implemented differently in countries such as the
United States and Australia. The first dedicated study of refugee
sponsorship policy, Strangers to Neighbours assembles leading scholars
from a range of disciplines to consider whether Canada's system is
indeed a sustainable model for the world.
