Multicultural Meanings of Social Support among Immigrants and Refugees
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Canada continues to be a prominent immigrant and refugee‐receiving country in worldwide migration, resettlement, and search for refuge, yet there is a gap in our understanding of these newcomers’ views of the specific meanings of social support and their support needs and resources. The purpose of this study was to understand the meanings of social support for immigrants and refugees in Canada, and to explore the types and adequacy of formal supports. Individual interviews were conducted with 60 service providers and policymakers initially (Phase 1), and 120 immigrants and refugees (60 Chinese, 60 Somali) in the second phase. The implications of these findings were elicited in group interviews (Phase 3) of policy decision‐makers, advocates, service providers, and managers. This investigation revealed many interrelated challenges facing refugees and immigrants such as language difficulties, inadequate information on services, poor health, racism, needs for retraining, rejection of foreign qualifications, unemployment, social isolation, social insecurity, dwindling social networks, and family conflicts. The study also illuminated culturally and socio‐economically determined perceptions of social support and support‐seeking strategies. Limited personal resources and dwindling social networks are an impediment to coping with integration and settlement challenges. In many cases, newcomers’ efforts to seek help are thwarted by systemic obstacles. Newcomers experienced extensive unmet support needs, which service providers cannot adequately meet due to bureaucratic and resource constraints. Policies in various sectors that affect the lives of immigrants and refugees are inadequate for bridging their support deficiencies. These support gaps hinder the successful settlement and integration of newcomers. Policies and programs fostering culturally relevant support, and inter‐sectoral collaboration among organizations addressing the support needs of immigrants and refugees are timely.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".