Links and Documents

The EMPIRICAL Initiative

EMPIRICAL is a broad public education initiative that marries Canada's leading role in scholarship on migration issues with Internet technologies. The acronym EMPIRICAL, stands for the "Educational and Media Partnership on Immigration and Refugee Issues for Computer-Assisted Learning."

Originally conceived as a project with several parallel components, the vision behind EMPIRICAL is to use new technology to create:

• A comprehensive academic programme on migration issues
• A shared virtual library
• A training curriculum of courses for policy makers, practitioners and front-line staff
• Various public awareness initiatives

This web site is a portal to 11 academic resource packages designed by leading academics in the immigration field. The web site also provides links to a virtual library and information on the EMPIRICAL project.

EMPIRICAL academic courses currently consist of eleven course offerings. The "Introduction to Immigration and Refugee Studies" course is equivalent to a 26-week full year course while the remaining ten course are equivalent to 13-week half year courses.

The 11 courses are:

• Globalization and International Migration

• Canadian Immigration Legal Framework: Past, Present & Future

• The Receiving Society: Perceptions, Attitudes, and Behaviours

• The Receiving Society: Institutional Responses

• The Immigrant and Refugee Experience

• The Economic Aspects of Immigration

• Immigrant Communities

• Membership and Multiculturalism

• The Arts and Culture: Expression, Diversity, Belonging

• Immigration and Dilemmas of Enforcement

• Introduction to Immigration and Refugee Studies

Visit the EMPIRICAL web site for more information, including starting a self-paced course now.