Date/Time
Date(s) - 12/02/2025
10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Location
LRW 3001

Political Science | Winter 2025 RIPS Seminar Series

Research in Progress Seminar hosted by the Department of Political Science presents:

The Immigration Consensus? An Examination of the Saliency and Politicization of Immigration by Canadian Political Parties in National Elections (1980-2021)

DATE:        Wednesday, February 12^th, 2025
TIME:         10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. EST
WHERE:     LRW 3001

This seminar welcomes Dr. Salar Asadolahi, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science.

Canada has often been regarded as a country in which the consensus around the issue of immigration has remained positive among the political parties that have sought power at the national level. This paper examines the saliency of immigration for political parties and the ways in which they have politicized the issue over the 1980-2021 period. To do so, it replicates the analysis of the Immigration in Party Manifestos (IPM) dataset (Dancygier & Margalit 2020) for the Canadian case. The paper relies on qualitative textual analysis of sixty-two election manifestos of all federal political parties that have competed in national elections over the 1980-2021 period in order to investigate the degree to which parties have prioritized immigration and the extent to which the issue has been politicized over time. In so doing, the paper situates the Canadian case in the comparative context relative to the twelve European countries included in the original IPM dataset. The paper examines two key dimensions of politicization when it comes to the issue of immigration: a cultural axis and an economic axis. It examines the extent to which parties have engaged in positive and negative characterizations of the cultural and economic implications of immigration for the country over the past four decades.

All are welcome to attend. No registration required.