Setting the course for cultural and religious diversity

The Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration presents a special instalment of the Migration Working Group.

Governing cultural and religious diversity today is a complex task, given the rise of aggressive nationalism, the persistence of ethnic, racial and socio-economic inequality, and the diffusion of extremist views, particularly through the social media. How can we know if the complex strategies and policies put in place in many countries to address polarisation and extremism and build plural and cohesive societies are having the desired impact?

Governance indicators can be important tools for governments and civil society actors to monitor and assess the impact of policies and practices and to gauge public perceptions and attitudes towards diversity and inclusion.

On September 29, CERC Migration hosted a workshop to review two sets of indicators on the governance of cultural and religious diversity and explored the broader application of indicators, covering themes such as:

• the role of indicators in identifying trends over time in a given country,
• the degree of consistency among different types of indicators,
• the ability of indicators to compare experiences among very different countries or cities,
• the implementation at the national and sub-national -- state, province or city level,
• the responsibility of researchers in producing and disseminating single country assessments, and 
• the related role of communicating ‘numbers’ or ‘marks’ as assessments versus accompanying the ‘numbers’ with ‘stories’.

Speakers:

• Keith Banting, Queen’s University, Kingston
• Enrico del Castello, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Ottawa
• Rositsa Dzhekova, Center for the Study of Democracy, Sofia 
• Thomas Huddleston, Migration Policy Group, Brussels
• Will Kymlicka, Queen’s University, Kingston
• Kundan Mishra, Global Centre for Pluralism, Ottawa
• Giacomo Solano, Migration Policy Group, Brussels
• Anna Triandafyllidou, CERC Migration, Ryerson University, Toronto 
• Andrea Wagner, BAK Economics AG, Council of Europe, Intercultural Cities Network, Strasbourg
• Lily Yakova, Center for the Study of Democracy, Sofia