Symposium on Containing Diversity: Canada and the Politics of Immigration in the 21st Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023).

In this Symposium, scholars across disciplines discuss the key themes of the volume and questions that arise from Containing Diversity: Canada and the Politics of Immigration in the 21st Century. The book’s authors, Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Ethel Tungohan and Christina Gabriel document and analyze the shifts that marked Canadian immigration, citizenship and multiculturalism in the period 2001- 2021. They argue that these policy changes can be understood through the dynamic of containing diversity – a process involving the racialization and control of specific groups, alongside contradictory impulses exhibited in all these policies between closure to threatening outsiders and openness to valued workers and citizens. This symposium further advances the discussion of shifts within immigration, citizenship and multiculturalism policy by featuring the responses of Alexandra Dobrowolsky, Shanti Fernando, Shibao Guo, J. Adam Perry, and Lyubov Zhyznomirska to key contentions of the volume. Dobrowolsky questions whether neoliberalism and securitization are the only dynamics at play. She also invites a further consideration of whether and how interactions existed between migrants and Indigenous peoples historically. Fernando asks the authors to consider the degree to which the state can move beyond the neoliberal logics that characterize current policies and embrace the authors’ call for an ethics of migration grounded in care and relationality. In a similar vein, J. Adam Perry focuses on the role of an ethics of care approach within grassroots mobilizations. Guo’s contribution invites the authors to consider how the process of containing diversity is linked to the increase in the growth of racism and xenophobia and what actions can be taken to achieve racial justice. In her intervention, Zhyznomirska comments on the rise of populism and questions to what extent this development may lead to a more restrictive immigration system. The symposium concludes with the authors’ responses to some of these questions and in doing so, the symposium prompts a call for a broader conversation about the future of these policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]