Welcoming Initiatives and Immigrant Attachment: The Case of Windsor

Welcoming Initiatives have been introduced across Canada together with federally funded local immigration partnerships to attract and foster long-term settlement of immigrants in smaller cities. This paper examines the context in which immigrant newcomers are welcomed to Windsor, Ontario. Through a multi-method approach that included interviews and focus groups with newcomer immigrants, interviews with key sector stakeholders, a local media analysis, and a survey of local organizations, we foreground the local ways in which immigrants are viewed as being part of the city and identify the social, cultural, and economic features that might support immigrant attachment. We argue that newcomers’ capacity to engage in and attach to various spheres of urban life is non-linear and varied: newcomers formed shifting and precarious attachments relative to their social, economic, familial, and migratory experiences. We argue that welcoming initiatives can be enhanced by more organic connections that reach beyond the settlement sector. Our conclusion calls for a place-based lens to foreground the wider local context in which welcoming initiatives are instituted to cultivate immigrant ties.