Search

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed crucial flaws in Canada's immigration systems. While the majority of newcomers to Canada reside in urban centres, a substantial minority work and live in rural areas and small towns where crucial immigrant services are far less developed and greater geographical distances hinder efforts to support immigrants. Rural immigrants face distinct challenges, including increased social isolation and economic marginalization, which have only been amplified by the pandemic. Furthermore, the inaccurate perception of immigration as an exclusively urban issue hinders efforts to combat these problems. Building on rural immigration literature, this paper examines the ways in which the pandemic has impacted rural immigrants, including newcomers, refugees, and temporary foreign workers. Findings highlighted include the difficulty of providing immigrant support services in rural areas, the vulnerability of migrant farm workers to illness and isolation, and the lack of awareness and funding for immigration issues in rural areas relative to their urban counterparts. The paper draws on journalism and academic literature from the past year into these issues. In doing so, it demonstrates the need for renewed academic, policy, and rural development practice interests in rural immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 global pandemic has disrupted economies around the world, and rural Canada is no exception. In this paper, we explore the economic development impacts of the pandemic on rural communities across Canada. We seek to provide a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of how rural communities have responded to this crisis and the extent to which they are able to build long-term rural resilience through their responses and plans for recovery. To do so, we draw upon novel data derived from a survey of rural economic development practitioners from across Canada. Our findings are structured around three main themes: economic development and business impacts, economic development responses, and resources needed for recovery. The study highlights the geographic unevenness of impacts, responses, and resource needs to address the challenges introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, our research underscores the importance of capacity and context as rural economic development practitioners and other rural leaders have responded to these challenges. Finally, this research provides important insights into the tools and strategies that could build long-term rural resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural communities are often portrayed in the research literature and popular media as being disadvantaged and 'vulnerable'. This paper examines the extent to which rural health regions in Canada are more vulnerable than other health regions in terms of contracting COVID-19 and developing serious illness from this virus that leads to death. Data include published numbers of cases of and deaths from COVID-19 in each health region across Canada. Other data from Statistics Canada's Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) documents the higher rates of 'vulnerability' in rural health regions, according to (a) their socio-demographic conditions (income, education, age), and (b) the rates of 'underlying health conditions' which would make individuals more susceptible to serious illness from COVID-19. Despite these vulnerabilities, which are consistent with other research on rural areas in Canada, COVID-19 rates are found to be higher in metropolitan areas--although there is some variation in this pattern by province. In no provinces is the rate of death per case of COVID-19 highest in rural areas. Overall, in Canada, deaths per case from COVID-19 are higher in metropolitan than in rural health regions, challenging the notion of rural areas being only and always disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working without fixity, while historically prevalent, has been on the rise in Canada and throughout the world due to processes associated with advanced capitalism. Moreover, it implies mobility to, from, and within work, which in a time of COVID-19, is problematic for workers and communities alike. In this paper, we argue that our pre-COVID statistical knowledge of workers without a fixed place of work in Canada is inadequate. Using the best source of available data--the 2016 Census--we provide a thorough account of these workers as compared to those with a set place of work. We find that most individuals without a fixed workplace are male, have low income, are likely to be self-employed, have a higher proportion of employment insurance (EI) and self-employment income, and have college or on-the-job training skill levels. They are also likely to live in rural areas, and work in the construction or transportation industry. We argue that documenting which workers are most likely to be working without fixity is necessary to understand how a COVID-19 world will play out for these workers and their communities as the pandemic continues and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]