The Metropolis Project was established in 1996 by a funding partnership that included a consortium of federal ministries and SSHRC. Five Centres of Excellence have been created across the country to pursue research on international migration and cultural diversity. Normally, large SSHRC projects are limited to two terms of funding but Metropolis has recently been awarded an unprecedented third term, for the 2007-2012 period. This decision was made after several extensive reviews of the project, and was announced almost a year ago. This set in motion a competition for individual centres to bid for renewal.
In October, SSHRC announced that the Vancouver Metropolis centre, which brings together researchers from UBC, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Victoria, has been renewed, with a base grant of $1.5 million for the five-year term. In addition, the Ministry of Attorney General, of the British Columbia government, has agreed to provide an additional $100,000 per year to the centre, which has been renamed Metropolis British Columbia in recognition of this new relationship.
Metropolis British Columbia (MBC) is managed by two Co-Directors, Krishna Pendakur, an Economist at Simon Fraser University, and Daniel Hiebert, a Geographer at UBC. UBC is the lead financial institution for MBC. The centre is housed in the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC and in the Economics Department at SFU.
MBC's task is to provide databases, analyses, and findings from a multidisciplinary academic team that address a wide range of issues in the fields of immigration, integration, and cultural diversity. MBC's main objective is to generate research that will aid rational discussion on Canada's emerging immigration policy issues. Five major themes are emphasized: Citizenship and Social, Cultural and Civic Integration; Economic and Labour Market Integration; Housing and Neighbourhoods; Justice, Policing and Security; and Settlement, Integration, and Welcoming Communities.
In Canada, each centre is required to work collaboratively with government ministries and non-government organizations. Metropolis fosters interaction between academics and these other relevant sectors. This is done through several mechanisms that include: working papers generated from research projects (now numbering some 250 at MBC); symposia that bring academics and other stakeholders together for small-group discussion; large annual conferences; and a variety of other types of events and meetings. In addition, there is a Metropolis Secretariat in the federal government that coordinates activities across the five centres and, most importantly, facilitates productive conversation between researchers and government policy analysts. As a result, Metropolis has a much higher degree of engagement with government than most research projects.
The Canadian Metropolis centres are also linked to an extensive international Metropolis network that includes researchers, government policy analysts, and representatives from non-government organizations from over 20 countries. Interaction across this network is focused around annual conferences that emphasize comparative issues. The last three have been held in Melbourne, Lisbon, and Toronto, and the next two will be in Bonn and Copenhagen.
For more information, please consult the websites of Metropolis British Columbia, the Canadian Secretariat, and the international Metropolis project.
