As a leading country in global refugee resettlement, Canada operates a unique program that allows private groups and individuals to sponsor refugees. This innovative approach has received growing international attention, but there remains a need for a more expansive understanding of the sponsorship framework and its potential implications within Canada and across the world. Strangers to Neighbours explains the origins and development of refugee sponsorship, paying particular attention to the unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas it produces for refugee policy. The contributors to this collection draw upon law, social science, and philosophy to bring a more robust and objective perspective on Canada's historical experience with sponsorship into wider conversations about the refugee crisis and resettlement. Together, they present recent cases that exemplify how the model has been applied and how it functions, while also analyzing the challenges that emerge in host-sponsor relations. This volume further examines how sponsorship has been implemented differently in countries such as the United States and Australia. The first dedicated study of refugee sponsorship policy, Strangers to Neighbours assembles leading scholars from a range of disciplines to consider whether Canada's system is indeed a sustainable model for the world.

Shauna Labman is associate professor of human rights in the Global College at the University of Winnipeg.

Shauna Labman's profile page

Geoffrey Cameron is a PhD candidate and Trudeau Scholar at the University of Toronto. He has degrees from Trent and Oxford Universities, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He is the co-author of Exceptional People: How Migration Changed the World and Will Define Our Future (2012).

Geoffrey Cameron's profile page

"There is both a hunger and a need for a book of this depth and breadth on the topic of private sponsorship given the current global interest in the role of community sponsors in resettlement. The chapters in Strangers to Neighbours provide a rich and varied overview of private sponsorship from numerous perspectives, making a significant contribution to our surprisingly shallow understanding on the subject." Michaela Hynie, York University

"The contributors to this edited collection—scholars and practitioners with expertise in law, social science, and philosophy—provide a rich and varied overview and assessment of the success and sustainability of PRS. In 15 relatively short chapters, these authors tackle a number of topics: the legislative framework and historical trajectory of PRS; the relationship between private sponsors and government; the integration and relationship-building aspects of refugee sponsorship; and the risks and unintended consequences of resettlement, including ethical dilemmas that PRS creates with respect to broader/global refugee protection goals." Choice