Invisibilized Providers: The Role of Racialized Diasporas in Refugee Sponsorship

For more than 40 years, civil society groups have volunteered their personal time, energy, and finances to resettle more than 370,000 refugees through Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR) program. Much of this sponsorship is done and supported by former refugees themselves, who are defined in this research as racialized diaspora sponsors. The PSR program is a public-private partnership between the federal government and Canadian residents, who have joined together to provide protection to refugees in need. Private sponsorships are commonly arranged by local communities, faith-based organizations, or private citizens who have entered into agreements with the federal government. The existing literature underrepresents the crucial role and work of sponsors who are part of racialized diasporas engaged in refugee sponsorship.

This dissertation probes the invisibilized sponsorship role of racialized diasporas made up of former refugees and asylum seekers to Canada. Based on testimony from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with sponsors and key informants triangulated with ‘born digital’ material, the research analyzes the motivations, activities, and contributions of Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Oromo diasporas in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario. A ‘study up’ technique is used to examine the complexities of power at multiple sites and scales. It engages with feminist geopolitics/politics of security to develop analyses of refugee protection that go beyond state-centric perspectives. Sponsorship is reframed as a community initiative driven by individuals affected by displacement.

The findings reveal that racialized sponsors who were themselves resettled to Canada undertake most of the heavy lifting in sponsorship circles, but their work is largely invisible. The findings also indicate that key issues, such as naming and monitoring, have implications for the equitable distribution of refugee protection spaces across more racialized geographies in sub-Saharan Africa. Empirically, this dissertation fills an important knowledge gap that passively references the participation of racialized diaspora sponsors. As Canada’s refugee protection efforts continue to garner global attention, this research has important implications for policy transfer and programming as it relates to sustainability, scalability, and diversification over the longue durée. Such findings are vital to Canadian public policy goals and practices of social inclusion and cohesion, and more specifically, to the global implications of Canadian policies and practices concerning refugee protection.