Regionalization of Immigrant Settlement in Ontario : Exploring Experiences of Small and Medium Sized Reception Centres

This paper explores the regionalization of immigrant settlement in Canada’s smaller cities which has not been sufficiently addressed in Canada’s largest province, Ontario. The paper investigates this through a comprehensive review of the existing Canadian literature and research into the changing volume of immigrant settlement and the social geography of Ontario’s smaller cities from 1996 to 2015. This research is conducted through the development of a categorization system which orders Ontario’s CMAs into tiers based on total immigrant population. Two tiers are then compared to reveal any general trends or anomalies which could contribute to the understanding of regionalization in Ontario. A lack of evidence for significant regionalization was found, however, growth in the visible minority populations of some CMAs suggested the development of new international migration pathways. The findings of this paper reaffirm the need for further research in immigrant settlement in smaller Canadian cities.