Two Queen’s researchers are contributing to a $1-million province-wide study to improve services for new immigrants and to promote positive, inclusive communities in small and medium-sized cities and towns across Ontario.

Geography Professor Audrey Kobayashi is a co-Principal Investigator and Sociology Professor Cynthia Levine-Rasky is a co-investigator in the Welcoming Communities Initiative, which partners 16 Ontario universities with local leaders and community organizations, municipal governments, school boards, and provincial and federal leaders.

"This initiative is especially important in a city such as Kingston, where we are working on the services and cultural competency to deal with population change as a result of immigration," says Dr. Kobayashi, whose research focuses on the process of human differentiation through race, class, gender, ability and national identity.

In addition to organizing research across the province, the Kingston team will work closely with community partners that include the City of Kingston and the Kingston Community Health Centre, which has recently been awarded a Local Initiatives Program (LIP) grant to address the challenges of service provision for recent immigrants.

Led jointly by Western, Queen’s and the University of Ottawa, the project also includes researchers from Brock, Carleton, Huron University College, Lakehead, Laurentian, McMaster, Trent, Universite du Quebec en Outaouais, Guelph, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, University of Waterloo, University of Windsor, and Wilfrid Laurier. It is funded by the Community-University Research Alliance program from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).