Refugees and religious institutions in a mid‐size Canadian city

Abstract

Canada is a leading refugee-settlement nation with a highly developed private refugee sponsorship programme involving many community and religious institutions. This study explored how religious institutions affect refugee settlement in Kelowna, a mid-size city in British Columbia. Kelowna has had a significant increase in refugee sponsorship since the 2015 Syrian crisis, and most private sponsorship has involved churches and the local mosque, in collaboration with governmentfunded settlement services and community partners. We collected data through a questionnaire distributed among former refugees and semi-structured interviews with key informants including clergy, refugee-sponsorship groups, and service providers. The results reveal that religious institutions help refugees cope with barriers and challenges in Kelowna in three main ways: bridging language barriers between newcomers, service providers, and sponsorship providers; helping newcomers establish new lives in Kelowna and move toward integration; and helping newcomers move away from precarity toward prosperity as they re-establish themselves and their families.