Are BC's settlement service agencies meeting the needs of Middle Eastern refugees

Between April 2023 to April 2024, British Columbia became home to approximately 17,000 refugees and refugee claimants (British Columbia Chamber of Commerce, n.d.). Many of these refugees come from the Middle East/North Africa region, namely, Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan. Refugees are serviced alongside other newcomers by various independent settlement service nonprofits, the largest of these being the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia (ISSofBC). There is very little research, however, on how effective settlement services are as a whole, let alone within a Canadian context and especially so this specific population. Due to the current state of the literature not being in alignment with the patterns we are seeing with Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the growing amount of asylum seekers from this region, the author aims to understand how effective ISSofBC’s settlement service programs are for middle eastern asylum seekers. The author hypothesizes a mixed answer, in that the ISSofBC model works well for some asylum seekers, but not all. This study will be mixed-methods, and will employ semi-structured interviews and financial data analysis as its primary data, in that order. Poster submission was sponsored by Dr. Cal Oliver, (Applied Community Studies Department) for course SOWK 4160 and was presented at the Coquitlam campus on April 8, 2025, for Student Research Days 2025.