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Christian Churches and Immigrant Support in Canada: An Organizational Ecology Perspective

Review of Religious Research

Abstract

Canada receives roughly 250,000 immigrants each year, and the government spends considerable resources on assisting them to settle and integrate into Canadian society through the agencies they support. Most of these new immigrants settle in Canada’s largest cities, where churches meet specific needs that extend beyond the capacities of government agencies. In smaller centers, churches cover a wide range of services because few government supports are available. Little is known about the work of churches in Canada in spite of their importance to immigrant settlement and integration. In this study, we examine the services offered to immigrants by Canadian Christian churches. We show how the service provision of Christian churches is constrained by other organizations and groups in their environment, in ways consonant with the organizational ecology framework. Specifically, churches service the needs of immigrants by adapting to specific niche needs and by filling in gaps left by other service providers.

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Notes

  1. These data are from the 2006 Canadian census, available at http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/9762/pages/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo=CMA&Code=01&Table=1&Data=Count&StartRec=1&Sort=2&Display=Page.

  2. (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/newcomers/map/services.asp).

  3. Unfortunately, we have no data on the numbers of organizations in each city/town that provide service to immigrants without CIC funding.

  4. Note that organizational ecology framework and the terms (e.g., niche, competition, organizations, etc.) are not terms used by the churches to describe themselves. While we find the framework helpful to understanding immigrant support, we are not suggesting that churches do or should orient themselves according to this framework.

  5. Religious ecologies are also “multi-layered,”,”in that the interconnection between a congregation and its environment occurs at the level of the demography of people, other organizations, and culture (Eiesland and Stephen Warner 1998:41–42). Here we focus primarily on a church’s interaction with other organizations that also serve immigrants.

  6. Individual face-to-face interviews were added since some church leaders were not able to attend group interviews. These interviews were important because they reinforced the themes from the group interviews. For example, the theme of cooperation was not simply because of the presence of other service providers in the group interviews. Cooperation was emphasized in our one-on-one interviews as well. The content or emphases in the individual interviews closely matched that of the group interviews.

  7. For example, some large churches in Toronto are able to combine both needs based and long-term support services. One Toronto church started a welcome centre that, in addition to providing a casual space to meet, includes an office for use by a settlement worker from outside the church.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Kevin Dougherty and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on previous drafts of this manuscript. The study reported in this article was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Development Grant. More information about the research partnership (including participating partners) can be found at http://www.communitybasedresearch.ca/Page/View/PDG.

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Reimer, S., Chapman, M., Janzen, R. et al. Christian Churches and Immigrant Support in Canada: An Organizational Ecology Perspective. Rev Relig Res 58, 495–513 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-016-0252-7

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