Middle Eastern Transnational Families and Ethnic Networks: a Story of Immigrant Mobilities to and from Atlantic Canada

Middle Eastern immigrants have long been coming to Atlantic Canada and establishing communities which constitute the largest immigrant and ethnic communities in the region. This paper, deriving from a Metropolis-funded qualitative study, examines the role of transnational familial and ethnic networks of immigrants from the Middle East in facilitating mobility and settlement in this region. While acknowledging Canadian immigration, settlement and integration policies and services, diverse and ever-changing geo-political contexts, and other macro- and meso-structures, we argue that Middle Eastern transnational family and ethnic networks have been important “drivers” and a part of immigrants’ “mobility capital” that facilitated not only their immigration to Atlantic Canada but also their secondary migration, that is immigrants’ leaving the Atlantic provinces and relocating elsewhere in Canada, in the case of limited/tenuous employment opportunities or other dissatisfaction. While Atlantic Canada has historically played the role of an immigration gateway as a result of its geo-political position, this role of family and ethnic-based networks, in the context of its political economy, has contributed to also rendering it a “revolving door” for immigrants to Canada.