Community development: Local Immigration Partnerships in Canada and implications for Slovenia

Abstract

Canada is perceived as a strongly desired final destination for many refugees and immigrants due to its socio-economic advantages. The author assesses the Canadian praxis of the immigrant settlement from the community development standpoint, with a specific interest to present how successful Canadian immigration policy has been on the local level by using the established Local Immigration Partnerships model. On the other hand, by adopting the so-called restricted model of immigrant integration Slovenia has not developed a consistent model of integration, specifically leaving aside the potential of local areas in resolving these complex issues. The paper is confirming that due to institutionalized multilevel partnership Canada has been more successful in immigrant integration than Slovenia. In both countries, however, integration into the health system has been evidently the most acute problem. In order to obtain more relevant results, a mixed-methods research was used combining interviews and integration indexes. In the majority of integration parameters, Canada shows significantly better results than Slovenia.