Reports & Publications

Esses, V.M., Hamilton, L.K., Aslam, A., & Barros, P.R.P. (2023). Measuring welcoming
communities: A toolkit for communities and those who support them. Refugees and Citizenship
Canada.

Vaswani, M., Eloulabi, R. Dhillon, S., Villalba, Z.A., Waseem, H., Bandauko, E., Jackson, J., &
Esses, V.M. (2023). An in-depth look at the discrimination experienced by immigrants and
racialized individuals in London and Middlesex, and strategies for combatting this
discrimination. City of London.

Buzzelli, M. and E. Asafo-Adjei (2022). Experiential learning and the university’s host community: rapid growth, contested mission and policy challenge. Higher Education.

Buzzelli, M. and E. Songsore (2022). Differentiated visions: how Ontario universities see and represent their futures. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 198, 111- 23.

Kelly, M., Brown, N., & Esses, V.M. (2022). Improving the attraction and retention of internationally educated healthcare professionals in small and rural communities. CERC Migration Policy Brief.

Sadika, B., Eloulabi, R. Esses, V., Hussein, H., & Eldik, L. (2022). London and Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership: Community capacity and perceptions of the LMLIP. City of London.

Taylor, Zack, Susan Mowers, Julien Doris, Shannon Leitch, and Leanne Trimble. 2022. Disseminating Census Data: Learning from Experience. Canadian Census Data Discovery Partnership Consultation Report No. 2. Published in French as Diffuser les données du recensement : L’apprentissage par l’expérience. Rapport de consultation du Le Partenariat de découverte des données du recensement du Canada no 2. 

Vaswani. M., & Esses, V.M. (2022). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in Grey Bruce. The Grey Bruce Local Immigration Partnership. 

Alcantara, C., Anderson, C., Benson A., Block P., Bouchard, J., Choi K., Denice, P., Esses, V., Gilliland, J., Goode, M., Holm, A., Horak, M., Lawlor, A., Lebo, M., Turgeon, M., Stephenson, L. B., Zajacova, A. (2021). Recovery and resilience: COVID 19. Scholars Portal Dataverse.

Esses, V., McRae, J., Alboim, N., Brown, N., Friesen, C., Hamilton, L., Lacassagne, A., Macklin, A., & Walton-Roberts, M. (2021). Supporting Canada’s COVID-19 resilience and recovery through robust immigration policy and programs. FACETS, 6, 686–759.

Lapshina, N., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in Huron-Perth. The Huron County Immigration Partnership.

Lapshina, N., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in Wellington County. The Guelph-Wellington Local Immigration Partnership.

Sutter, A., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in Sarnia-Lambton. The Sarnia-Lambton Local Immigration Partnership.

Sutter, A., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in St. Thomas – Elgin County. The St-Thomas-Elgin Local Immigration Partnership.

Sutter, A., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in Hamilton. The Hamilton Immigration Partnership Council.

Sutter, A., & Esses, V.M. (2021). A qualitative look at serious legal problems facing immigrants in London and Toronto, Ontario. The Department of Justice of the Government of Canada.

Sutter, A., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Women, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in leadership positions in London, Ontario and in Ontario’s agencies, boards and commissions. Pillar Nonprofit Network.

Taylor, Zack and Jonathan Taylor. 2021. Representative Regionalization: Toward More Equitable, Democratic, Responsive, and Efficient Local Government in New Brunswick. Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance Research Report 4. London: Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance, Western University. Research report. Published in French as Régionalisation représentative : Vers un gouvernement local plus équitable, démocratique, réactif et efficace au Nouveau-Brunswick. Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance Research Report 5. London: Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance, Western University. 

Vaswani, M., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in London and Middlesex. The London & Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership.

Vaswani, M., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in Niagara Region. The Niagara Local Immigration Partnership.

Vaswani, M., & Esses, V.M. (2021). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, visible minorities, and indigenous peoples in Oxford County. The Oxford Local Immigration Partnership.

Harell, A., Loewen, P. J., Rubenson, D., & Stephenson, L. B. (2020). 2019 Canadian election study – online survey. Harvard Dataverse.

Harell, A., Loewen, P. J., Rubenson, D., & Stephenson, L. B. (2020). 2019 Canadian election study – phone survey. Harvard Dataverse.

Taylor, Zack. 2020. Theme and Variations: Metropolitan Governance Innovation in Canada. IMFG Papers on Municipal Finance and Governance 49. Toronto: Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. 

Taylor, Zack and Alec Dobson. 2020. Power and Purpose: Canadian Municipal Law in Transition. IMFG Papers on Municipal Finance and Governance 47. 

Bozheva, A., & Esses, V.M. (2019). IMDB analysis of immigrant settlement geography and retention rates for CMAs and CAs in Ontario, 2002-2016. Public Policy Forum.

Esses, V., & Carter, C. (2019). Beyond the big city: How small communities across Canada can attract and retain newcomers. Public Policy Forum.

Palma, P., Balakrishnan, A., Esses, V.M., Hussein, H., Eldik, L., & Walsh, C. (2019). London and Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership: Community capacity and perceptions of the LMLIP. City of London.

Sutter, A., & Esses, V. (2019). Evaluation of the Skills to Work program. Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Vanhooren, S., & Esses, V. (2019). Beyond the big city: Jurisdictional scan. Public Policy Forum.

Uygur, M. R., Eser, H. B., Çoksan, S., & Sarıdağ, S. (2024). Multiculturalism, social distance, and xenophobia among non-WEIRD individuals toward Syrian refugees: positive and negative emotions as moderators. Current Psychology,  00, 1–13.  

Türkiye, the country hosting the most refugees in the world, hosted millions of refugees due to the Syrian civil war, the Taliban coup, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Among these communities, Syrian refugees are the majority in number and have been mainly influencing Türkiye’s agenda for the last decade. This unexpected and sudden contact elevated intergroup tension and conflict between host and Syrian refugee communities. We aimed to examine the association between multiculturalism, positive and negative emotions, perceived outgroup threat, social distance, and xenophobia toward refugees among non-WEIRD participants in the prejudice-intense intergroup context through two correlational studies (Ntotal = 898) to shed light on possible remedies for these conflicts. Study 1 revealed that multiculturalism negatively predicted social distance toward Syrian refugees. This association was mediated by positive and negative emotions. Study 2, which focused on xenophobia as an outcome, found that multiculturalism negatively predicted xenophobia, and positive and negative emotions had a mediator role on the association between these variables. We also found that participants with higher social distancing towards Syrian refugees had lower and poorer intergroup contact quality and perceived more outgroup threat than those with lower social distancing. The findings indicated that greater multiculturalism and positive emotions were associated with low social distance and xenophobia in the prejudice-intense context. We discussed the findings in terms of the potential benefits of multiculturalism and the positive emotions for attitudes towards refugees in prejudice-intense relationships between hosts and refugees.

Bloemraad, I., Esses, V.M., Kymlicka, W., & Zhou, Y.-Y. (2023). Unpacking immigrant integration: Concepts, mechanisms, and context. Background chapter for the World Development Report. World Bank.

Much opposition to migration centers on worries that migrants are too culturally and socially different from the host population, that they will fail to integrate, or that they will change the demographics and culture of a destination society too dramatically. In both public and academic discourse, there is a tendency to assume that the “problem” of sociocultural integration is one of “cultural distance,” understood as an objective and measurable fact, and hence that the “solution” is to reduce cultural distance. This paper offers an alternative diagnosis and prescription. Whether an immigrant group is perceived as culturally close or culturally distant is not a product of objective differences. Rather, such perceptions arise out of complex boundary-making processes in which certain points of commonality and difference are highlighted while other points of similarity and difference are ignored or denied. These boundary-making processes are historically contingent, institutionally mediated, and politically constructed in ways that open up paths for certain immigrant groups while putting up barriers to others. The paper also argues that insofar as there are cultural differences, they are not always a “problem” for integration; successful integration does not require cultural assimilation or cultural convergence. There are a wide range of models of integration that involve various forms and combinations of cultural maintenance, cultural adaptation, and cultural convergence. The paper concludes by discussing a few strategies for improving migrant integration, including interpersonal interventions aimed at changing the attitudes and beliefs of members of destination societies, recasting national narratives to be more inclusive, and promoting policies or programs to enhance migrant minorities’ ability to exercise political agency and voice.

Choi, K.H., & Ramaj, S. (2023). Ethno-racial and nativity differences in the likelihood of living in affordable housing in Canada. Housing Studies. 

Canadians are experiencing a housing affordability crisis, but little attention has been paid to its ethno-racial and nativity disparities. Using data from the 2016 Canadian Census, we assess whether the likelihood of living in unaffordable housing (i.e. spending 30% or more of pretax income on housing costs) varies by ethno-race and nativity status, and identify the social factors contributing to these differences. We show that Middle Eastern and North Africans (MENAs) are most, and Whites are least, likely to live in unaffordable housing. Results from decomposition analyses suggest that MENA individuals’ high unaffordable housing rates are largely attributable to their high unemployment rates. The high unaffordable housing rates of East and South Asians are mainly associated with their higher propensity to live in urban areas with expensive housing. Immigrants are generally more likely than Canadian-born co-ethnics to live in unaffordable housing. Blacks and Southeast Asians are exceptions. As many governments take steps to address housing affordability crises, they should curtail the influence of structural barriers that preclude ethno-racial minorities from living in affordable housing.

Choi, K., & Denice, P. (2023). Racial/Ethnic Variation in the Relationship Between Educational Assortative Mating and Wives' Income Trajectories. Demography 60(1), 227-254. 

Prior work has examined the relationship between educational assortative mating and wives' labor market participation but has not assessed how this relationship varies by race/ethnicity. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we estimate group-based developmental trajectories to investigate whether the association between educational assortative mating and wives' income trajectories varies by race/ethnicity. The presence, prevalence, and shapes of prototypical long-term income trajectories vary markedly across racial/ethnic groups. Whites are more likely than Blacks and Hispanics to follow income trajectories consistent with a traditional gender division of labor. The association between educational assortative mating is also stronger for Whites than for Blacks and Hispanics. White wives in educationally hypogamous unions make the greatest contribution to the couple's total income, followed by those in homogamous and hypergamous unions. Black and Hispanic wives in hypogamous unions are less likely than their peers in other unions to be secondary earners. These findings underscore the need for studies of the consequences of educational assortative mating to pay closer attention to heterogeneity across and within racial/ethnic groups.

Choi, K. & S. Ramaj. (2023). Multigenerational living and children’s risk of living in unaffordable housing: differences by ethnicity and parents’ marital status. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 49(13), 3267-3288.

A growing share of Canadian households are living in unaffordable housing (i.e. spending 30% or more of their pre-tax income on housing costs). During this time, the prevalence of multigenerational living has also increased. Ethnic minority families are more likely than White families to live in multigenerational households. These trends raise the questions: (a) is multigenerational living a strategy for families to navigate the housing affordability crisis? (b) do ethnic minority children benefit more from multigenerational living than their White peers? Using confidential data from the 2016 Canadian Census, we examine how multigenerational living shapes the housing experiences of children under the age of 16. Multigenerational living is associated with consistent reductions in children’s odds of living in unaffordable housing. Yet, for those in single-parent families, this protective association is largest among White children. For those in dual-parent families, this protective association is largest among Black children. Socioeconomic disadvantage and a greater propensity for three-generation families to reside in metropolitan areas with expensive housing appear to suppress the benefits emerging from multigenerational living.

Çoksan, S., & Yilmaz, A. D. (2023). Focusing on fake news’ contents: The association between ingroup identification, perceived outgroup threat, analytical-intuitive thinking and detecting fake news. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 21(1), 102-132. 

This study aims to reveal the fake news content in the context of the social identity approach and to examine the mediating role of perceived outgroup on the association between ingroup identification and detecting fake news blaming ingroup, outgroup, or fictional groups. Study 1 found that fake news could be gathered under six themes: contacted-outgroup blaming, represented-outgroup blaming, outgroup derogation, outgroup appreciation, ingroup glorification, and phantom-mastermind blaming. In preregistered Study 2 with representative non-weird participants (N = 216), we examined the mediating role of perceived outgroup threat on the association between ingroup identification and detecting fake news revealed in Study 1. Perceived outgroup threat was only mediating for detecting outgroup-blaming fake news when intuitive and analytical thinking styles were controlled. Detecting ingroup-blaming fake news was associated with ingroup identification. Analytical thinking predicted only detecting phantom-mastermind-blaming fake news. Findings demonstrated that the contents of fake news play a vital role in detecting them, and variables pointing to content (i.e., ingroup identification for ingroup-blaming fake news, and perceived outgroup threat for outgroup-blaming fake news) are predictive for detecting fake news.

Çoksan, S. & Üzümçeker, E. (2023). Nitel verinin elde edilme sürecinde temel nitelikler [Fundamental characteristics in the process of obtaining qualitative data]. In H. Peker-Dural & M. Karasu (Eds.), Nitel araştırma yöntemleri psikoloji uygulama örnekleriyle [Qualitative research methods with examples of psychology applications] (pp. 54-86). Nobel Publishing. 

El-Masri, S. (2023). The Influence of Clientelism on the Lebanese Civil Society, Ethnopolitics.

The article looks at civil society as an entity that often reflects a country’s contextual realities. More specifically, it focuses on socio-political structures, showing how weak institutions, consociational principles, as well as formal and informal elite dynamics in Lebanon have created a perfect atmosphere for sectarian leaders to expand their clientelistic networks into civil society. By creating their own service-providing sectarian organizations; indirectly pushing civic organizations to become players in the system; and infiltrating interest groups that may pose a threat, sectarian leaders have been able to neutralize the impact of civil society in the country.

Horak, M., & Vanhooren, S. (2023). Somebody to Lean On: Community Ties, Social Exchange, and Practical Help during the COVID-19 Pandemic. City & Community, 0(0). 

During a community-wide crisis, practical help from others in the community can allow individuals to manage a variety of extraordinary household needs. In this article, we synthesize insights from research on disaster resilience, social support, social networks, and social exchange into a theoretical model of factors that shape individual access to help beyond the family. We suggest that community ties—local neighborhood, associational, and friend relationships—are significant avenues for accessing help and that helping behaviors in the community are structured by social exchange. We test this model in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on a survey of 4,234 Canadians and Americans. We find that all three kinds of community ties significantly increase the likelihood of receiving and giving help; that there is a strong, positive two-way correlation between giving help and receiving help; that relationships between community ties and helping behaviors are mediated by social exchange; and that individuals in extraordinary need tend to both receive and give more help than others. Our findings provide broad-based evidence for the importance of local social ties and social exchange processes in structuring access to practical help in times of extraordinary need.

Kiernan, B., Lemos, T. M., & Taylor, T. S. (Eds.). (2023). The Cambridge World History of Genocide (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press. 

Korycki, K. (2023). Weaponizing the Past: Collective Memory and Jews, Poles and Communists in Twenty-First Century Poland. Berghahn Books.

“Weaponizing the Past” explains why and how political elites in post-regime transition spaces narrate the past for political gain and what effects are produced by their preoccupation with collective remembering. First presenting a new theory of politicized memory and then telling the story of post-transition Poland, in which many different political actors narrate communism as evil and connected with Jewishness, “Weaponizing the Past” shows how democracy, progressive ideals, and notions of national belonging are narrowed and constricted. By exploring the contours of present-day anti-communism the book traces the operation of contemporary antisemitism, as well as its most recent implication with right-wing populism. The book is deliberately divided into parts appealing to different audiences: Part I and III will be of interest to scholars of collective memory seeing as it theorizes politicized remembering and as it articulates and elaborates collective memory's filed contribution to populism studies. The empirical Part II localizes the theory and presents materials from and on Poland – it will be of interest to all studying contemporary politics of Eastern Europe, or indeed all post-regime transition spaces. The book as a whole will be of interest to those who study party politics on the one hand and nationalism and national identity on the other.

Lemos, T. M., Blackhawk, N., & Richardson, S. (2023). In B. Kiernan, T. S. Taylor, & T. M. Lemos (Eds.), The Cambridge World History of Genocide (Vol. 1, pp. 209–234). Cambridge University Press. 

Lemos, T. M., & Taylor, T. S. (2023). Genocide in ancient Israelite and early Jewish sources. In B. Kiernan (Ed.), The Cambridge World History of Genocide (Vol. 1, pp. 185–208). Cambridge University Press. 

Maloney, K. M., O’Brien, M., & Oosterveld, V. (2023). Forced marriage as the crime against humanity of ‘other inhumane acts’ in the International Criminal Court’s Ongwen case. International Criminal Law Review, 1–26.

The Ongwen case, concluded in December 2022 at the International Criminal Court (ICC), convicted the defendant of a gender-based act that had never been litigated by the ICC: forced marriage. This article argues that the judicial consideration of forced marriage in Ongwen has settled the international jurisprudence in three important ways. First, it clarified the classification of forced marriage as an ‘other inhumane act’. Second, it recognised and solidified the conduct and harms captured by the term ‘forced marriage’, distinguishing it from other crimes against humanity. Finally, it confirmed that prosecution of forced marriage does not contravene nullum crimen sine lege principles. These outcomes will play a key role in future recognition and prosecutions of forced marriage in international criminal law. This article suggests that the logical next step is to explicitly list forced marriage as a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute of the ICC and the draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention. 

Vaswani, M., Sutter, A., Lapshina, N., & Esses, V.M. (2023). Discrimination experienced by immigrants, racialized individuals, and Indigenous peoples in small- and mid-sized communities in Southwestern Ontario. Canadian Review of Sociology, 60, 92-113.

We investigate discrimination experiences of (1) immigrants and racialized individuals, (2) Indigenous peoples, and (3) comparison White non-immigrants in nine regions of Southwestern Ontario containing small- and mid-sized communities. For each region, representative samples of the three groups were recruited to complete online surveys. In most regions, over 80 percent of Indigenous peoples reported experiencing discrimination in the past 3 years, and in more than half of the regions, over 60 percent of immigrants and racialized individuals did so. Indigenous peoples, immigrants and racialized individuals were most likely to experience discrimination in employment settings and in a variety of public settings, and were most likely to attribute this discrimination to racial and ethnocultural factors, and for Indigenous peoples also their Indigenous identity. Immigrants and racialized individuals who had experienced discrimination generally reported a lower sense of belonging and welcome in their communities. This association was weaker for Indigenous peoples. The findings provide new insight into discrimination experienced by Indigenous peoples, immigrants and racialized individuals in small and mid-sized Canadian communities, and are critical to creating and implementing effective anti-racism and anti-discrimination strategies.

Werner, K. (2023). Who is Indigenous in Africa? The Concept of Indigeneity, its Impacts, and Progression. Millennium, 0(0).

The notion of indigeneity has risen to political prominence as Indigenous peoples have fought for recognition of their rights. When the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was passed in 2007, it represented a transformative moment, despite its flaws. The meaning of the term Indigenous has been transformed by these international events and identifying as Indigenous is increasingly seen as positive. However, Indigenous peoples in certain regions of the world, specifically Africa and Asia, were late to the conversation. As a result, how the term Indigenous is understood and utilised in these regions remains a work in progress. This article explores the progression and impact of the term in Africa specifically, highlighting its unique effects, importance, and the ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples on the continent.

Anderson, C. D., & Stephenson, L. B. (2022). Language and (not) voting: 2017 municipal elections in Quebec. In É. Bélanger, C. D. Anderson, & R. M. McGregor (Eds.), Voting in Quebec municipal elections: A tale of two cities. University of Toronto Press.

Armstrong, D., Lucas, J. & Taylor Z. (2022). The Urban-Rural Divide in Canadian Federal Elections, 1896–2019. Canadian Journal of Political Science 55(1). 84–106.

Using a new measure of urbanity for every federal electoral district in Canada from 1896 to the present, this article describes the long-term development of the urban-rural divide in Canadian federal elections. We focus on three questions: (1) when the urban-rural divide has existed in Canada, identifying three main periods—the 1920s, the 1960s and 1993–present—in which the urban-rural cleavage has been especially important in federal elections; (2) where the urban-rural divide has existed, finding that in the postwar period the urban-rural cleavage is a pan-Canadian phenomenon; and (3) how well urbanity predicts district-level election outcomes. We argue that the urban-rural divide is important for understanding election outcomes during several periods of Canadian political development, and never more so than in recent decades. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on urban-rural cleavages, Canadian electoral politics and Canadian political development.

Bélanger, É., & Stephenson, L. B. (2022). Understanding municipal partisanship. In É. Bélanger, C. D. Anderson, & R. M. McGregor (Eds.), Voting in Quebec municipal elections: A tale of two cities. University of Toronto Press.

Breton, C., Lucas, J. & Taylor, Z. (2022). On-Line. Local Autonomy: Unconditional Elites and Conditional Publics. Local Government Studies.

This paper investigates elite and mass attitudes towards local autonomy. Using surveys of more than 1,200 elected municipal politicians and 5,800 citizens in Canada, we ask three questions: Do citizens agree with their elected representatives about the need for increased power for local authorities? Are predictors of support for expanded local power similar among elites and the public? Finally, do elected politicians understand their constituents’ attitudes on local autonomy? We find that elites and citizens differ substantially in their attitudes towards local autonomy: politicians overwhelmingly support increased power for local governments, while citizens’ preferences are conditional on their support for the current provincial government, level of education, and ideological alignment with their local community. Moreover, politicians display no knowledge of citizens’ preferences regarding local autonomy. We explain the implications of our findings for theoretical debates about citizen support for local autonomy and for practical debates regarding the empowerment of local governments.

Choi, K. H., & Wagner, B. G. (2022). Mate selection behavior of GED recipients. Journal of Family Issues, 0(0), 1-22.

The General Educational Development (GED) degree is designed to be a credential equivalent to the high school diploma. However, growing evidence indicates that GED recipients have worse outcomes than high school graduates. Such findings raise the question: is the GED socially equivalent to the high school diploma? Although educational assortative mating patterns have long been used as a barometer of the social distance across educational groups, there has not been a study that has addressed this question by examining the marital sorting patterns of GED recipients. Using log-linear models, our study shows that the odds of intermarriage between GED recipients and high school graduates resemble those between GED recipients and those without a secondary degree. Racial/ethnic minorities had greater difficulty crossing the GED/high school graduate boundary when they married. Our findings detract from the purported view that the GED degree is equivalent to a traditional high school diploma.

Dyczok, M. (2022). “5 areas where Canada needs to step up on the war in Ukraine.” The Conversation.

Dyczok, M. (2022). “A former journalist recalls Ukraine’s 1991 vote for independence — and how its resilience endures.” The Conversation.

Dyczok, M., & Chung, Y. (2022). “Zelens′kyi uses his communication skills as a weapon of war.” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, 64(2-3), 146-161.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelens′kyi’s communication skills have proven to be a powerful weapon against Russia’s disinformation war towards Ukraine. When Russia launched its full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he began recording daily messages to Ukrainian society and reaching out to international audiences through live addresses. This paper analyzes Zelens′kyi’s speeches during the first 50 days of the intensified war. It examines the agenda-setting and framing methods, honed by his television experience, that he used to reach audiences, as well as their content. It suggests that these speeches made Ukraine’s narrative dominant in international media, dispersing the information fog Russia was trying to create whereby Ukraine needed to be “de-Nazified,” neutralized, and kept in Russia’s sphere of influence. They also helped consolidate Ukrainian society and strengthen international assistance.

Dyczok, M. (2022). Normalizing corruption: Failures of accountability in Ukraine. by Erik S. Herron. University of Michigan Press. Perspectives on Politics, 20(4), 1486–1487.

Esses, V.M., & Adegbembo, B.F. (2022). Immigration to smaller urban and rural communities: Challenges and opportunities. In F. Moghaddam & M. Hendricks (Eds.), Contemporary immigration: Psychological perspectives to address challenges and inform solutions (pp. 23–44). Washington: American Psychological Association. 

Immigrants bring new ideas and innovations to receiving nations. Yet the benefits of immigration are generally not distributed evenly across a country, with immigrants often landing and remaining in the large metropolises, where their skills and population contributions may be less needed. This chapter describes the uneven distribution of immigrants within Western receiving nations and their propensity to be concentrated in large urban centers. It discusses the advantages of a more even distribution of immigrants across communities, and particularly the benefits of attracting and retaining immigrants in smaller urban and rural centers. The chapter also discusses the factors that influence the attraction and retention of immigrants to smaller communities, and considers strategies that take advantage of these factors to support growing immigrant populations in these communities. It concludes by discussing gaps in the literature that should be addressed and the role that psychologists can play.

Hamilton, L. K., Esses, V. M., & Walton-Roberts, M. (2022). Borders, boundaries, and the impact of COVID-19 on immigration to Canada. Studies in Social Justice, 16(1), 1-8.

Long, J., Ertorer, S., & Esses, V.M. (2022). Canadian workplace culture: Mono- or multi-cultural? In J. Jean-Pierre, V. Watts, C.E. James, P. Albanese, X. Chen, & M. Graydon (Eds.), Reading sociology, 4^th Ed.: Decolonizing Canada. Oxford University Press.

Mansell, J; Gatto, M. (2022). Insecurity and Self-Esteem: Elucidating the Psychological Foundations of Negative Attitudes toward Women. Politics and Gender. Cambridge University Press. 

Political scientists recognize discriminatory attitudes as key to understanding a range of political preferences. Sexism is associated with both explicitly and non-explicitly gendered attitudes. But why do certain individuals display discriminatory attitudes, while others do not? Drawing from psychology, we examine the potential power of an underexplored set of personality traits—secure versus fragile self-esteem—in explaining gendered attitudes and preferences. With an online sample of (N = 487) U.S.-based participants, we find that fragile self-esteem is an important trait underlying individuals’ attitudes: individuals who display a discordant view of self—explicitly positive but implicitly negative—are more likely to hold hostile sexist attitudes and prefer men in leadership; these individuals are also more likely to support the Republican Party and former U.S. president Donald Trump. While present in only a fraction of the population, our results suggest that this trait may be important for understanding the development of discriminatory attitudes toward out-groups.

Mansell, J., Bang Petersen, M. (2022). Political Ideologies as Social Strategies: Does Ideological Variation Predict Behavioral Variation in Cooperative Dilemmas? Current Psychology.

Ideological research links liberal and conservative orientations to variations in genetic, psychological, and physiological factors. Yet, while a knowledge of the mechanistic causes of ideologies are advancing quickly, we know less about their potential functional causality. Here, we ask what the social functions of ideologies are and investigate whether the behaviors associated with different ideological orientations are consistent with different strategies for social interactions. We recruit an American sample of (N = 454) liberals and conservatives to complete two rounds of an iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Using a three-wave design, we obtain a sample of each ideological group that is comparable on multiple demographic factors. We hypothesize that a liberal orientation is underpinned by an approach-oriented social strategy that is directed towards pursuing cooperative opportunities, while a conservative orientation is underpinned by a social strategy directed towards avoiding loss. On multiple measures of ideology, we find evidence that liberals and conservatives differ in their: (1) initial cooperativeness; (2) overall cooperation; and, (3) forgiveness.

Rabiah-Mohammed, F., Hamilton, L., Oudshoorn, A., Bakhash, M.Z., Tarraf, R., Arnout, E., Brown, C., Benbow, S., Elnihum, S., El Hazzouri, M., Esses, V., & Theriault, L. (2022). Syrian refugees’ experiences of housing stability during the COVID-19 pandemic: Barriers to integration and just solutions. Studies in Social Justice, 16(1), 9-32.

Research has shown high levels of housing precarity among government-assisted refugees (GARs) connected to difficult housing markets, limited social benefits, and other social and structural barriers to positive settlement (Lumley-Sapanski, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has likely exacerbated this precarity. Research to date demonstrates the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for refugees and low-income households, including both health-related issues and economic challenges, that may exacerbate their ability to obtain affordable, suitable housing (Jones & Grigsby-Toussaint, 2020; Shields & Alrob, 2020). In this context, we examined Syrian government-assisted refugees’ experiences during the pandemic, asking: how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Syrian refugees’ experiences of housing stability. To examine this issue, we interviewed 38 families in Calgary, London, and Fredericton. Using a qualitative descriptive methodology for analysis and interpretation (Thorne et al., 1997), we found the liminality of settling as a GAR has been compounded by isolation, further economic loss, and new anxieties during the pandemic. Ultimately, for many participants, the pandemic has thwarted their housing stability goals and decreased their likelihood of improving their housing conditions. Based on our findings, we discuss potential policy and practice relevant solutions to the challenges faced by refugees in Canada during the pandemic and likely beyond.

Rosenthal, I., Oosterveld, V., & SáCouto, S (Eds.). (2022). In Gender and International Criminal Law (pp. 442). Oxford University Press.

Sutter, A., Vaswani, M., Denice, P., Choi, K., Bouchard,, J., & Esses, V.M. (2022). Ageism toward older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: Intergenerational conflict and support. Journal of Social Issues, 78, 815-841.

A cross‐national representative survey in Canada and the U.S. examined ageism toward older individuals during the first year of the COVID‐19 pandemic, including ageist consumption stereotypes and perceptions of older people's competence and warmth. We also investigated predictors of ageism, including economic and health threat, social dominance orientation, individualism and collectivism, social distancing beliefs, and demographics. In both countries, younger adults were more likely to hold ageist consumption stereotypes, demonstrating intergenerational conflict about the resources being used by older people. Similarly, young adults provided older people with the lowest competence and warmth scores, though adults of all ages rated older individuals as more warm than competent. Particularly among younger individuals, beliefs about group‐based dominance hierarchies, the importance of competition, and the costs of social distancing predicted greater endorsement, whereas beliefs about interdependence and the importance of sacrificing for the collective good predicted lower endorsement of ageist consumption stereotypes. Support for group‐based inequality predicted lower perceived competence and warmth of older individuals, whereas beliefs about interdependence and the importance of sacrificing for the collective good predicted higher perceived competence and warmth of older individuals. Implications for policies and practices to reduce intergenerational conflict and ageist perceptions of older individuals are discussed.

TM. Lemos., & Ribeiro, L.G. (2022). “With Breath and Bludgeon: Violence, Weaponry, and the Limits of Resistance in Isaiah,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology,76(3), 203-214.

This article explores the way Isaiah's passages that resist violence are neutralized by the numerous passages in the book that promote it. More specifically, the article maintains that the book presents an ambivalent relationship in relation to the personality of domination, a type of personality that is dependent on dehumanizing violence. The dissemination of images of violence and weapons in Isaiah is linked to the problematic relationship of the book with the personality of domination. However, if employed as part of a larger strategy of seeking justice, the passages of Isaiah can be used as instruments of resistance.

Taylor, Z. (2022). Regionalism from Above: Intergovernmental Relations in Canadian Metropolitan Governance. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance 26. 139–159. Special section on metropolitan governance.

Robust metropolitan governance is increasingly viewed as necessary to address important economic, social and environmental problems. In this context, this article surveys recent developments in Canadian metropolitan governance. Canada was admired in the post-war period for the effectiveness of its two-tier and unitary metropolitan governments; however, few survive today as urbanisation patterns have become increasingly polycentric and intergovernmental relations more conflictual. Three models have emerged in Canada, sometimes in combination with one another: the multi-purpose regional intergovernmental organisation, the single-purpose metropolitan agency, and the provincial metropolitan policy overlay. Examples of each are discussed, with an emphasis on the interplay of horizontal (intermunicipal) and vertical (provincial–municipal) intergovernmental relations. Ultimately, provincial governments are by virtue of their constitutional authority and spending power the only actors capable of establishing and maintaining durable institutions and policies of metropolitan scope, and they have chosen to do so in Canada’s largest and most urbanised provinces.

Vaswani, M., Esses, V. M., Newby-Clark, I. R., & Giguère, B. (2022). Cultural differences in fear of negative evaluation after social norm transgressions and the impact on mental health. Frontiers in Psychology, 13:804841. 

Social norm transgressions are assumed to be at the root of numerous substantial negative outcomes for transgressors. There is a prevailing notion among lay people and scholars that transgressing social norms can negatively impact one’s mental health. The present research aimed to examine this assumption, focusing on clinically relevant outcomes such as anxiety and depression. The present research further aimed to examine a social cognitive process for these outcomes in the form of fear of negative evaluations as a result of one’s norm transgressing behavior. Specifically, it examined whether it is negative evaluations about ourselves or about those close to us that mediates the effect of social norm transgressions, and whether those may vary as a function of culture. Results of the present research, including a study with a community sample (N = 410), suggest a positive association between social norm transgressions and psychological distress. Results also suggest that increased fear of negative evaluation mediates that association but does so differently for people from more collectivistic cultures and people from less collectivistic cultures. For people from more collectivistic cultures increased fear of negative evaluation of close others may mediate the association between social norm transgressions and psychological distress. However, for people from less collectivistic cultures that association may be mediated by increased fear of negative evaluation of oneself. Implications for research on consequences of social norm transgressions and cross-cultural differences in perceptions of such consequences are discussed as are practical implications for motivating social norm adherence and the maintenance of constructive social norms.

Andersen, R., & Armstrong II, D. A. (2021). Presenting statistical results effectively. SAGE.

Anderson, C. D., McGregor, R. M., & Stephenson, L. B. (2021). Us versus them: Do the rules of the game encourage negative partisanship?. European Journal of Political Research.

Party identification is a well-documented force in political behaviour. However, the vast majority of work on partisanship considers only its positive side, rather than recognizing that partisan identities may also have a negative component. Recent work has shown that negative partisanship has important effects, such as reinforcing partisan leanings, directing strategic behaviour and increasing the rate of straight-ticket voting. This study takes a step back to explore the sources of such orientations, rather than the effects. Specifically, it considers whether the electoral system context contributes to the presence of negative affective orientations towards parties. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we examine the influence of factors related to electoral system features and consider whether their influence is moderated by voter sophistication. Data reveal significant variation in the rate of negative partisanship across countries, and that these differences are related to the electoral system context in which voters are making decisions. We also find some evidence that these effects are moderated by sophistication. This work adds to our understanding of the role of affect in political behaviour, as well as the impact that country-level institutional factors can have upon the relationship between voters and parties.

Anderson, C. D., & Stephenson, L. B. (2021). London: October 22, 2018. In J. Lucas & R. M. McGregor (Eds.), Big city elections in Canada. University of Toronto Press.

Anderson, C. D., & Stephenson, L. B. (2021). What is democracy and how do we study it?. University of Toronto Press.

There are many different ways to do political science research. This book takes a core question that motivates research in political science – what is democracy? – and presents, in a single volume, original research demonstrating a variety of approaches to studying it. The approaches and related methods covered by the chapters in this book include normative political theory, positivist quantitative analysis, behaviouralism, critical theory, post-structuralism, historical institutionalism, process tracing, case studies, and literature reviews. Readers are confronted with the different assumptions that researchers make when entering the research process and can compare and contrast the many different ways that a single question can be studied. This book will be enlightening for students of democracy as well as those interested in research design and methodological approaches.

Armstrong, D. A., Alcantara, C., & Kennedy, J. (2021). Exploring the effects of electorate size on indigenous voter turnout. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 1–10.

A growing body of scholarship suggests that Indigenous peoples abstain from voting in national and subnational elections because of colonialism and so classic determinants of turnout do not apply. We investigate this argument by examining the relationship between electorate size and voter turnout in federal, provincial and regional elections in five Inuit communities in Canada, leveraging the fact that these communities are mostly similar across a range of factors. Given that these communities negotiated and established their own regional government in 2005 and given the colonial and settler nature of the federal and provincial governments, we expect classic determinants of turnout, such as electorate size, to apply only at the regional level. Surprisingly, however, we find that electorate size influences turnout at the federal and regional levels but not at the provincial level.

Armstrong, D. A., Lucas, J., & Taylor, Z. (2021). The urban-rural divide in Canadian federal elections, 1896–2019. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 1–23.

Using a new measure of urbanity for every federal electoral district in Canada from 1896 to the present, this article describes the long-term development of the urban-rural divide in Canadian federal elections. We focus on three questions: (1) when the urban-rural divide has existed in Canada, identifying three main periods—the 1920s, the 1960s and 1993–present—in which the urban-rural cleavage has been especially important in federal elections; (2) where the urban-rural divide has existed, finding that in the postwar period the urban-rural cleavage is a pan-Canadian phenomenon; and (3) how well urbanity predicts district-level election outcomes. We argue that the urban-rural divide is important for understanding election outcomes during several periods of Canadian political development, and never more so than in recent decades. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on urban-rural cleavages, Canadian electoral politics and Canadian political development.

Choi, K. H., Denice, P., Haan, M., & Zajacova, A. (2021). Studying the social determinants of COVID-19 in a data vacuum. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 58(2), 146–164.

Race-based and other demographic information on COVID-19 patients is not being collected consistently across provinces in Canada. Therefore, whether the burden of COVID-19 is falling disproportionately on the shoulders of particular demographic groups is relatively unknown. In this article, we first provide an overview of the available geographic and demographic data related to COVID-19. We then make creative use of these existing data to fill the vacuum and identify key demographic risk factors for COVID-19 across Canada's health regions. Drawing on COVID-19 counts and tabular census data, we examine the association between communities’ demographic composition and the number of COVID-19 infections. COVID-19 infections are higher in communities with larger shares of Black and low-income residents. Our approach offers a way for researchers and policymakers to use existing data to identify communities nationwide that are vulnerable to the pandemic in the absence of more detailed demographic and more granular geographic data.

Choi, K. H., & Goldberg, R. E. (2021). Multiracial children’s experiences of family instability. Journal of Marriage and Family, 83(3), 627–643.

Choi, K. H., Ramaj, S., & Haan, M. (2021). Age of the oldest child and internal migration of immigrant families: A study using administrative data from immigrant landing and tax files. Population, Space and Place, 27(4), e2409.

Immigrant parents report better opportunities for their children as the rationale for moving internationally. Residential mobility is associated with poorer outcomes for school-age children. Many immigrant families prioritise child opportunities in their mobility decisions, especially those with school-age children. These families may refrain from moving within the destination country to avoid such outcomes. Whether or not this is true is unknown because researchers have not examined how children's age shapes immigrant families' decisions to move within the host country. We link administrative immigration and income tax files with census data to examine how the age of the oldest child influences immigrant families' decisions to move after they immigrate. Immigrant families with school-age children are less likely to move than those with younger children. Although the presence of older children deters migration for all immigrant families, those in immigrant gateways are more likely to move relative to those living in nongateways.

Dhima, K., Golder, S. N., Stephenson, L. B., & Van der Straeten, K. (2021). Permissive electoral systems and descriptive representation. Electoral Studies, 73, 102381.

Existing research about the effects of electoral systems on descriptive representation is mixed. In this paper, we test implications of theoretical arguments about the impact of electoral rules on voters’ propensity to vote for women candidates. We conducted a survey experiment during the 2017 provincial election in British Columbia, Canada, using actual candidates in both real and hypothetical electoral districts. We find that more permissive, or candidate-centered, forms of proportional representation do not improve descriptive representation of women; if anything, they diminish it. We interpret these results as being driven by the supply of candidates – voters tend to vote for incumbent, well-known candidates who happen to be predominantly men. Our findings provide a cautionary note about how electoral rules can interact with real-world experiences and conditions.

Dyczok, M. (2022). “Ukraine’s Information Warriors”. Journal of Democracy

Esses, V. M. (2021). Prejudice and discrimination toward immigrants. Annual Review of Psychology, 72(1), 503–531.

Prejudice and discrimination toward immigrants, and the consequences of these negative attitudes and behavior, are key determinants of the economic, sociocultural, and civic-political future of receiving societies and of the individuals who seek to make these societies their new home. In this article I review and organize the existing literature on the determinants and nature of prejudice and discrimination toward immigrants, summarizing what we know to date and the challenges in attributing effects to immigrant status per se. I also discuss the consequences of discrimination against immigrants for immigrants themselves, their families, and the societies in which they settle. I conclude by presenting key research questions and topics in this domain that should be at the top of the research agenda for those interested in intergroup relations in this age of mass migration.

Esses, V. M., & Hamilton, L. K. (2021). Xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes in the time of COVID-19. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(2), 253–259.

The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nations and individuals has almost certainly led to increased feelings of threat and competition, heightened uncertainty, lack of control, and a rise in authoritarianism. In this paper we use social psychological and sociological theories to explore the anticipated effects on xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes worldwide. Based on our analysis, we discuss recommendations for further research required during the ups and downs of the pandemic, as well as during recovery. We also discuss the need for research to address how to best counteract this expected surge in xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes. As the pandemic persists, it will be important to systematically examine its effects on xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes, and to develop and implement strategies that keep these negative attitudes at bay.

Esses, V., McRae, J., Alboim, N., Brown, N., Friesen, C., Hamilton, L., Lacassagne, A., Macklin, A., & Walton-Roberts, M. (2021). Supporting Canada’s COVID-19 resilience and recovery through robust immigration policy and programs. FACETS, 6, 686-759.

Canada has been seen globally as a leader in immigration and integration policies and programs and as an attractive and welcoming country for immigrants, refugees, temporary foreign workers, and international students. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed some of the strengths of Canada’s immigration system, as well as some of the fault lines that have been developing over the last few years. In this article we provide an overview of Canada’s immigration system prior to the pandemic, discuss the system’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities revealed by the pandemic, and explore a post-COVID-19 immigration vision. Over the next three years, the Government of Canada intends to bring over 1.2 million new permanent residents to Canada. In addition, Canada will continue to accept many international students, refugee claimants, and temporary foreign workers for temporary residence here. The importance of immigration for Canada will continue to grow and be an integral component of the country’s post-COVID-19 recovery. To succeed, it is essential to take stock, to re-evaluate Canada’s immigration and integration policies and programs, and to expand Canada’s global leadership in this area. The authors offer insights and over 80 recommendations to reinvigorate and optimize Canada’s immigration program over the next decade and beyond.

Esses, V. M., Medianu S., & Sutter A. (2021). The dehumanization and rehumanization of refugees. In Maria Kronfeldner (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (pp. 275-292). Routledge.

Victoria M. Esses, Stelian Medianu, and Alina Sutter are concerned with the fact that refugees tend to be the targets of dehumanization, which may function to justify the poor treatment and exclusion that they face. In their chapter, they discuss the refugee situation worldwide and the need for global involvement in refugee protection. They link this focus on refugees to the concept of dehumanization and discuss how common media portrayals of refugees—including their depiction as bogus claimants who cheat to gain entry to Western countries, and as terrorists who are a threat to receiving nations—may lead to the dehumanization of these individuals, which may, in turn, lead to their negative treatment and rejection. They then discuss the potential for the rehumanization of refugees, and the role of humanization in promoting fair treatment. This includes work on how system-sanctioned positive messages from political leaders can support the rehumanization of refugees and their asylum in Western nations. They conclude by discussing the implications of this work, and the need for further research in this area as a contribution to ameliorating the “refugee crisis.

Esses, V. M., Sutter, A., Bouchard, J., Choi, K. H., & Denice, P. (2021). North American attitudes toward immigrants and immigration in the time of COVID-19: The role of national attachment and threat. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 697(1), 148–173.

Using a cross-national representative survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine predictors of attitudes toward immigrants and immigration in Canada and the United States, including general and COVID-related nationalism, patriotism, and perceived personal and national economic and health threats. In both countries, nationalism, particularly COVID-related nationalism, predicted perceptions that immigration levels were too high and negative attitudes toward immigrants. Patriotism predicted negative immigration attitudes in the United States but not in Canada, where support for immigration and multiculturalism are part of national identity. Conversely, personal and national economic threat predicted negative immigration attitudes in Canada more than in the United States. In both countries, national health threat predicted more favorable views of immigration levels and attitudes toward immigrants, perhaps because many immigrants have provided frontline health care during the pandemic. Country-level cognition in context drives immigration attitudes and informs strategies for supporting more positive views of immigrants and immigration.

Harell, A., Hinckley, R., & Mansell, J. (2021). Valuing liberty or equality? Empathetic personality and political intolerance of harmful speech. Frontiers in Political Science, 3, 663858.

Kennedy, J., Alcantara, C., & A Armstrong, D. (2021). Do governments keep their promises? An analysis of speeches from the throne. Governance, 34(3), 917–934.

Political parties regularly make promises to the public about what they hope to accomplish if and when they are elected to office. Once in office, the winning party, usually via the executive branch, announces its agenda by delivering a “speech from the throne” or a “state of the union/nation” address in the legislature. To what extent are governments able to fulfill the promises they make in these speeches? To answer this question, we investigate the impact of three structural constraints on promise fulfillment over time—procedural (e.g., majority vs. minority configurations); informational (e.g., new vs. incumbent governments); and economic (economic recession)—using an original dataset drawn from Canadian speeches from the throne between 1962 and 2013. Our findings, which both challenge and confirm the findings of existing literature on promise fulfillment, suggest that only procedural and economic constraints matter.

Kochanski, A., & Quinn, J. R. (2021). Letting the state off the hook? Dilemmas of holding the state to account in times of transition. Peacebuilding, 9(2), 103–113.

Transitional justice has become a key component of the larger peacebuilding project. State responsibility for wrongful acts has been recognised; it is expected that justice, truth, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition will be addressed after conflict or political unrest. However, governments routinely flout these responsibilities, because either their resources are depleted, or they are reluctant to enact potentially disadvantageous policies. In these cases, other actors – both global and local, state and non-state – step in to fill the resulting implementation gap, assuming, and oftentimes absolving, the state of its obligations. The contributions to this special issue on Cambodia, Colombia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Tunisia, and Uganda dissect the ethical, normative, and political implications of letting the state off the hook – or, alternatively, how local actions are getting it on the hook – and point to dilemmas of scaling and the legitimacy of actors, timing and sequencing, and navigating a hostile political environment.

Lucas, J., & Armstrong, D. A. (2021). Policy ideology and local ideological representation in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 54, 959–976.

To enable new research on local ideology and representation in Canada, we construct a latent measure of the policy ideology of 37,500 Canadian Election Study respondents using 56 policy-relevant questions and then use multilevel regression and poststratification to estimate the average ideological position of each of Canada's 338 federal electoral districts and 250 largest municipalities. We use these local ideology estimates to examine ideological representation in Canadian municipal politics. Combining our municipal ideology estimates with elite survey data from more than 900 Canadian municipal politicians, we find evidence of a strong relationship between mass and elite ideology. This relationship is consistent across differing municipal population sizes and institutional structures. We conclude with additional detail on our publicly available individual and aggregate measures and describe their potential uses for future research on ideology and representation in Canadian politics at all levels.

Lucas, J., Merrill, R., Blidook, K., Breux, S., Conrad, L., Eidelman, G., Koop, R., Marciano, D., Taylor, Z. & Vallette S. (2021). Women’s Municipal Electoral Performance: An Introduction to the Canadian Municipal Elections Database. Canadian Journal of Political Science. 54(1), 125–133.

This research note describes the Canadian Municipal Elections Database (CMED), a new publicly available and actively maintained dataset of more than 24,000 municipal elections in Canada. We describe the need for high-quality election results data for municipal politics research and describe the content, sources and construction of the CMED. To illustrate the value of the CMED, we estimate gender differences in municipal electoral performance for the first time, finding that women are, on average, more likely than men to win municipal elections in Canada.

Mansell, J., Harell, A., Gidengil, E., & Stewart, P. A. (2021). Psychophysiology, cognition, and political differences: Guest editors’ introduction to the special issue. Politics and the Life Sciences, 40(2), 137-141.

Mansell, J., Harell, A., Thomas, M., & Gosselin, T. (2021). Competitive loss, gendered backlash and sexism in politics. Political Behavior, 1-22.

Mansell, J., Mock, S., Rhea, C., Tecza, A., & Piereder, J. (2021). Measuring attitudes as a complex system: Structured thinking and support for the Canadian carbon tax. Politics and the Life Sciences, 40(2), 179-201.

Mansell, J., Reuter, L., Rhea, C., & Kiesel, A. (2021). A novel network approach to capture cognition and affect: COVID-19 experiences in Canada and Germany. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 2082.

Matthews, J. S., McGregor, R. M., & Stephenson, L. B. (2021). Levels of conceptualization and municipal politics: Replication in a new context. Frontiers in Political Science, 3, 738569.

Since Angus Campbell and colleagues introduced the Levels of Conceptualization (LoC) framework as a measure of political sophistication, only a very small number of scholars have applied this approach to understanding how electors view political actors. In 2008, Michael Lewis-Beck and colleagues replicated this foundational study and found similar results using much more recent data on American national elections. In this brief research report, we replicate the work of Lewis-Beck and colleagues in the Canadian municipal context. Using survey data from the Canadian Municipal Election Study, we make use of open-ended responses about attitudes towards mayoral candidates to conduct a qualitative examination of the manner in which survey respondents from eight Canadian cities view mayoral candidates. Despite the relative dearth of ideological cues at the local level, we nevertheless find that a noteworthy portion of the electorate views candidates in ideological terms. Like previous work on the subject, we find that high levels of conceptualization are positively associated with turnout, education, political knowledge, and ‘political involvement’.

Matthews, J. S., McGregor, R. M., & Stephenson, L. B. (2021). Conceptualizing municipal elections: The case of Toronto 2018. Urban Affairs Review, 0(0), 1-28.

McGregor, R. M., Anderson, C. D., Bélanger, É., Breux, S., Lucas, J., Matthews, J. S., Mévellec, A., Moore, A. A., Pruysers, S., & Stephenson, L. B. (2021). The Canadian municipal election study. Frontiers in Political Science, 3, 74331.

McGregor, R. M., Moore, A. A., & Stephenson, L. B. (2021). Electing a mega-mayor: Toronto 2014. University of Toronto Press.

Electing a Mega-Mayor represents the first-ever comprehensive, survey-based examination of a Canadian mayoral race and provides a unique, detailed account of the 2014 mayoral election in Toronto. After making the case that local elections deserve more attention from scholars of political behaviour, this book offers readers an understanding of Toronto politics at the time of the 2014 election and presents relevant background on the major candidates. It considers the importance that Torontonians attached to policy concerns and identifies the bases of support for the outgoing, scandal-ridden mayor, Rob Ford, and his brother Doug.

Osa, M. L., Siegel, J., Meadows, A., Elbe, C., & Calogero, R. M. (2021). Stigmatizing effects of weight status on lay perceptions of eating disorder-related distress. Eating Disorders, 1-11.

Pownall, M., Talbot, C. V., Henschel, A., Lautarescu, A., Lloyd, K. E., Hartmann, H., & Siegel, J. A. (2021). Navigating open science as early career feminist researchers. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 45(4), 526-539.

Quinn, J. R. (2021). The impact of state abdication on transitional justice: When non-state actors and other states fill the post-transition gap. Peacebuilding, 9(2), 114–128.

When the state fails to carry out the duties it would normally fulfil in the post-conflict period, non-state actors eventually step in to fill the gaps. Such processes ultimately come to stand in for official state response. While this seems like a fairly innocuous turn of events, there are consequences to the substitution of civil society-run post-conflict rebuilding that are rarely unpacked. The literature has so far not taken up what is a fairly serious issue: By letting the state off the hook, citizens’ needs are never appropriately met; governments are able to continue with other areas of foci – including carrying on with acts of war and human rights abuses and official responsibility is never taken.

Quinn, J. R. (2021). Thin sympathy: A strategy to thicken transitional justice. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Joanna R. Quinn spent twenty years working in Uganda and uses its particular case as a lens through which she examines the failure of deeply divided societies to acknowledge the past. She proposes that the needed remedy is the development of a very rudimentary understanding—what she calls "thin sympathy"—among individuals in each of the different factions and groups of the other's suffering prior to establishing any transitional justice process. Based on 440 extensive interviews with elites and other thought leaders in government, traditional institutions, faith groups, and NGOs, as well as with women and children throughout the country, Thin Sympathy argues that the acquisition of a basic understanding of what has taken place in the past will enable the development of a more durable transitional justice process.

Reuter, L., Mansell, J., Rhea, C., & Kiesel, A. (2021). Direct assessment of individual connotation and experience: An introduction to cognitive-affective mapping. Politics and the Life Sciences, 1-21.

Rhea, C., Mansell, J., & Murray, G. (2021). Novel application in machine learning: Predicting the issuance of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in Africa. Where the Earth meets the Sky, 3.

Siegel, J. A., Anderson, R. A., Silver, K. E., & Mitchell, T. L. (2021). Yes, (most) men know what rape is: A mixed-methods investigation into college men’s definitions of rape. Psychology of Men & Masculinities.

Siegel, J., Arenson, M., Mikytuck, A., & Woolard, J. (2021). Engaging public policy with psychological science. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 7(1), 1.

Siegel, J. A., & Calogero, R. M. (2021). Measurement of feminist identity and attitudes over the past half century: A critical review and call for further research. Sex Roles, 85(5), 248-270.

Siegel, J. A., Calogero, R. M., Eaton, A. A., & Roberts, T. A. (2021). Identifying gaps and building bridges between feminist psychology and open science. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 45(4), 407-411.

Siegel, J. A., Huellemann, K. L., Calogero, R. M., & Roberts, T. A. (2021). Psychometric properties and validation of the Phenomenological Body Shame Scale–Revised (PBSS-R). Body Image, 39, 90-102.

Slakoff, D., & Siegel, J. A. (2021). Barriers to reporting, barriers to services: Challenges for transgender survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual victimization. In C. L. Buist & L. Kahle (Eds.). Queering criminology in theory and praxis: Re-Imaging justice in the criminal legal system and beyond. Bristol University Press.

Stephenson, L. B., Harell, A., Rubenson, D., & Loewen, P. J. (2021). Measuring preferences and behaviours in the 2019 Canadian election study. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 54(1), 118–124.

The 2019 Canadian Election Study (CES) consists of two separate surveys with campaign-period rolling cross-sections and post-election follow-ups. The parallel studies were conducted online and through a random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone survey. Both continue the long tradition of gathering information about the attitudes, opinions, preferences and behaviours of the Canadian public. The online survey, in particular, introduces some important innovations that open up the potential for exciting new research on subgroups in the electorate.

Suárez, J.L., & Giraldo, J (Eds.). (2021). Civil Wars and Peace Building. Co-Herencia, 18 (34).

This issue of Co-herencia magazine wants to invite a humanistic reflection on the way in which certain phenomena affect existing peacebuilding practices, create scenarios in which peace has to be imagined in relation to different violence and internal conflicts and develop a new language to legitimize the exercise of violence.

 Suárez, J.-L., & Lizama-Mué, Y. (2021). “Why language matters? Colombia’s passing theory of pace.” Peacebuilding, 9(4), 409-424.

In 2016 the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC) signed a final peace agreement after almost five years of the public phase of negotiations in Havana, Cuba. The set of documents released by the Negotiation Table offers a reading on the points agreed by the parties for the termination of the conflict, describes the process of the conversations, and creates the foundational language for the construction of peace in the country. Following Donald Davidson’s passing theory of language, applying natural language processing (NLP) techniques and performing a close reading of key documents, we aim to understand this language of peace, how it is used and what it can tell us about the concept of peace both politically, and socially within the context of Colombia.

Taylor, Z. (2021). The Political Geography of Immigration: Party Competition for Immigrants’ Votes in Canada, 1997–2019. American Review of Canadian Studies 51(1). Special Issue on Canadian Exceptionalism and Canadian Immigration Policy. 18–40.

Why has the Conservative Party of Canada largely supported high immigration rates and multiculturalism, and put considerable effort into recruiting New Canadians into its electoral coalition? More generally, why is Canada perhaps the only Western democracy without a major, consistently anti-immigrant or nativist party? I argue that none of Canada’s major national parties have adopted an anti-immigration or nativist platform because of incentives established by the interaction of the concentrated metropolitan geography of immigrant settlement, the geography of representation under the single-member plurality electoral system, and the regionalization of parties’ support bases. I demonstrate that Canada’s national parties have a strong incentive to reduce the cost of assembling electoral coalitions by appealing to densely institutionalized cultural communities, principally in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

Taylor, Z. & Vanhooren, S. (2021). Local Election Campaign Finance Regimes in Canada: Toward a Research Agenda. Canadian Public Administration 64(1). 99–121.

The regulation of election campaign donation, fundraising, expenditure, and advertising is an enduring object of study and reform. Compared to the federal and provincial levels, virtually no attention has been paid to Canadian municipal campaign finance regimes. This is surprising given the urban political economy literature’s focus on business influence on local politics and policy and evidence of corruption in Canadian local government. We take stock of Canadian campaign finance rules for municipal elections in light of Canadian and American research findings, which reveals considerable interprovincial variation in their sophistication and stringency. We then propose a research agenda to investigate aspects of Canadian local campaign finance regimes.

Triadafilopoulos, T. & Taylor, Z. (2022). Canada: The Quintessential Migration State? In James F. Hollifield and Neil Foley, eds., Understanding Global Migration. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. 269–293.

Understanding Global Migration offers scholars a groundbreaking account of emerging migration states around the globe, especially in the Global South.

Leading scholars of migration have collaborated to provide a birds-eye view of migration interdependence. Understanding Global Migration proposes a new typology of migration states, identifying multiple ideal types beyond the classical liberal type. Much of the world's migration has been to countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. The authors assembled here account for diverse histories of colonialism, development, and identity in shaping migration policy.

This book provides a truly global look at the dilemmas of migration governance: Will migration be destabilizing, or will it lead to greater openness and human development? The answer depends on the capacity of states to manage migration, especially their willingness to respect the rights of the ever-growing portion of the world's population that is on the move.

Triadafilopoulos, T. & Taylor, Z. (2021). The Political Foundations of Canadian Exceptionalism in Immigration Policy. Chapter 2 in Yiagadeesen Samy and Howard Duncan, eds., International Affairs and Canadian Migration Policy. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Vaswani, M., Safdar, S., Newby-Clark, I. R., & Giguère, B. (2021). Canadian identity attenuates the negative impact of familial rejection on psychological distress. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 81, 142-153.

Werner, K. (2021). Filling the gap: customary institutions as governance actors. Peacebuilding, 9(2), 222-236.

Armstrong D., Bakker, R., Carroll, R., Hare, C., Poole, K. T., & Rosenthal, H. (2020). Analyzing spatial models of choice and judgement. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Armstrong, D. A., Davenport, C., & Stam, A. (2020). Casualty estimates in the Rwandan genocide. Journal of Genocide Research, 22(1), 104-111.

Armstrong, D. A., Lebo, M. J., & Lucas, J. (2020). Do COVID-19 policies affect mobility behaviour? Evidence from 75 Canadian and American cities. Canadian Public Policy, 46(S2), S127-S144.

Armstrong, D. A., & Lucas, J. (2020). Measuring and comparing municipal policy responses to COVID-19. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 53(2), 227-238.

Armstrong, D., Reuter, O. J., & Robertson, G. B. (2020). Getting the opposition together: Protest coordination in authoritarian regimes. Post-Soviet Affairs, 36(1), 1-19.

Ashaba I., & Werner K. (2020). Uganda. In F. Reyntiens (Ed.). Political chronicles of the African Great Lakes region 2019 (pp. 83-104). University Press Antwerp.

Benesh, S. C., Armstrong, D. A., & Wallander, Z. (2020). Advisors to elites: untangling their effect. Journal of Law and Courts, 8(1), 51-73.

Bourgeois, L. F., Harell, A., & Stephenson, L. B. (2020). To follow or not to follow: Social norms and civic duty during a pandemic. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 53(2), 273-278.

Buzzelli M. (2020). Modifiable areal unit problem. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 169–173.

Calogero, R. M., Tylka, T. L., Siegel, J. A., Pina, A., & Roberts, T.-A. (2021). Smile pretty and watch your back: Personal safety anxiety and vigilance in objectification theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(6), 1195–1222.

Chartash, D., Caruana, N. J., Dickinson, M., & Stephenson, L. B. (2020). When the team’s jersey is what matters: Network analysis of party cohesion and structure in the Canadian House of Commons. Party Politics, 26(5), 555-569.

Choi, K. H., & Goldberg, R. E. (2020). The social significance of interracial cohabitation: Inferences based on fertility behavior. Demography, 57(5), 1727-1751.

Cooper, M., Reilly, E. E., Siegel, J. A., Coniglio, K., Sadeh-Sharvit, S., Pisetsky, E. M., & Anderson, L. M. (2020). Eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine: an overview of risks and recommendations for treatment and early intervention. Eating Disorders, 1-23.

Denice, P., Choi, K. H., Haan, M., & Zajacova, A. (2020). Visualizing the geographic and demographic distribution of COVID-19. Socius, 6, 1-3.

Doering, J., Silver, D. & Taylor, Z. (2020). The Spatial Articulation of Urban Political Cleavages. Urban Affairs Review57(4). 911–951.

Synthesizing and extending multiple literatures, this article develops a new approach for exploring the spatial articulation of urban political cleavages. We pursue three questions: (1) To what extent does electoral conflict materialize between rather than within neighborhoods? (2) How salient are group, place, and location in defining urban cleavages? (3) How do these sources inflect one another? To answer these questions, the article analyzes a novel longitudinal database of neighborhood-scale mayoral voting in Chicago, Toronto, and London. We find strong evidence of spatially articulated cleavages: in each city, voting patterns are equally or more geographically concentrated than the non-White population, income, and poverty. While group-based interests define Chicago’s cleavage structure, place and location are paramount in Toronto and London. We conclude by proposing a research agenda for investigating the spatiality of urban politics and advancing a preliminary typology of urban political cleavages and the conditions under which they may arise.

El-Masri, S., Lambert, T., & Quinn, J. R. (Eds.). (2020). Transitional justice in comparative perspective: Preconditions for success. Springer Nature.

El-Masri, S., Lambert T., & Quinn, J.R. (2020). Moving forward: Strengthening transitional justice through pre-existing conditions and ameliorating factors. In S. El-Masri, T. Lambert, & J. R. Quinn, Transitional justice in comparative perspective: Preconditions for success (pp. 217-228). Palgrave Macmillan.

Ertorer, S., Long, J., Fellin, M., & Esses, V. (2020). Immigrant perceptions of integration in the Canadian workplace. Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: An International Journal.

Esses, V.M., Hamilton, L.K., el Hazzouri, M., Sutter, S., McCafferty, B., & Pyati, A. (2020). The right information at the right time: Optimizing the provision of information to facilitate the settlement and integration of refugees in Canada. In L. Hamilton, L. Veronis, & M. Walton-Roberts (Eds.), A national project: Canada’s Syrian refugee resettlement experience (pp. 43-64). Montreal: McGill-Queens.

Hoogenboom, D. A., & Quinn, J. R. (2020). Transitional justice and the diaspora: Examining the impact of the Haitian diaspora on the Haitian truth commission. Griffith Law Review, 29(1), 134-149.

Kennedy, J., Anderson, C. D., & Stephenson, L. B. (2020). The Canada-US relationship: An updated evaluation of public opinion. American Review of Canadian Studies, 50(1), 9-31.

Mansell, J. (2020). Causation and behavior: The necessity and benefits of incorporating evolutionary thinking into political science. Social Science Quarterly, 101(5), 1677-1698.

Mansell, J. (2020). Ideology and social cognition: Are liberals and conservatives differentially affected by social cues about group inequality?. Politics and the Life Sciences, 39(1), 9-25.

McMahon, N., Alcantara, C., & Stephenson, L. B. (2020). The qualifying field exam: What is it good for?. PS: Political Science & Politics, 53(1), 94-99.

Murray, G. R., Beall, A., Fletcher, A., Grillo, M. C., Senior, C., & Mansell, J. (2020). Politics and the life sciences: The rise of a new framework. Politics and the Life Sciences, 39(1), 1-3.

Oudshoorn, A., Benbow, S., Esses, V., Baker, L., Annor, B., Coplan, I., Shantz, J. & Ezukuse, V. (2020). Homelessness prevention for refugees: Results from an analysis of pathways to shelter. European Journal of Homelessness, 14, 189-205.

Quinn, J. R. (2020). The role and influence of the diaspora on the thin sympathetic response. In M. Koinova, & D. Karabegovic (Eds.), Diaspora mobilizations for transitional justice. Routledge.

Quinn, J. R. (2020). Tractionless transitional justice in Uganda: The potential for thin sympathetic intervention as ameliorating factor. In S. El-Masri, T. Lambert, & J. R. Quinn, Transitional justice in comparative perspective: Preconditions for success (pp. 19-48) . Palgrave Macmillan.

Siegel, J. A., Huellemann, K. L., Hillier, C. C., & Campbell, L. (2020). The protective role of self-compassion for women’s positive body image: An open replication and extension. Body Image, 32, 136-144.

Siegel, J. A., Winter, V. R., & Cook, M. (2021). “It really presents a struggle for females, especially my little girl”: Exploring fathers’ experiences discussing body image with their young daughters. Body Image, 36, 84-94.

Silver, D., Taylor, Z. & Calderón-Figueroa, F. (2020). Populism in the City: The Case of Ford Nation. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 33, pp, 1–21.

Populism is often viewed as a national-level phenomenon that pits a declining periphery against a cosmopolitan, economically successful metropolis. Our analysis of Rob Ford’s 2010 campaign and mayoralty in Toronto reveals the potential for the emergence of populist politics within the metropolis. To comprehend his appeal, principally within the city’s ethnically diverse postwar peripheral areas, we apply Brubaker’s conceptualization of populism as a discursive repertoire. Drawing on qualitative information and analysis of survey research, we first describe how Ford constructed electorally salient protagonists and antagonists. Second, we discuss how his emergence was enabled by institutional, economic, and demographic change. Finally, we explain Ford’s appeal to a diverse electorate in terms of the sincerity and coherence of his performance as the collective representation of suburban grievance. We conclude by arguing that populism may emerge in metropolitan settings with strong, spatially manifest internal social, economic, and cultural divisions.

Suárez, J.- L, & Lizama-Mué, Y. (2020). Victims of Language: Language as a Pre-condition of Transitional Justice in Colombia’s Peace Agreement. In S. El-Masri, T. Lambert, & J. Quinn (Eds.), Transitional Justice in Comparative Perspective (pp. 97–127). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 

The Colombian peace agreement, signed in 2016 between the government and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), claimed to put the victims in the center by building a comprehensive system of transitional justice, a Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-repetition. To evaluate the declared centrality of victims, we aim to understand the language around them used during the negotiations that took place from 2012 to 2016, by analyzing all documents published in Havana using combined natural language processing techniques and a close reading of some key documents. Our argument is that, in order for language to become an ameliorating factor of the transitional justice process, language around victims included in the peace agreement needs to pass the language test that guarantees its effectiveness even beyond the end of the conflict. However, in the case of Colombia, results show a small statistical presence of victims in the conversations that contrast with the expressed statement about making them the focus of the agreement and the attempt to expand its description including the diversity of identities underneath this condition. We recommend that peace processes use data analysis techniques to ensure that the discourse really reflects the intention of the parties. This would avoid any gap between goals and semantics, facilitating the deployment of the post-agreement legislation in a fashion that closely reflects the parties’ intentions and the victims’ rights.

Taylor, Z. (2020). “Toronto.” In Richardson Dilworth, ed., Oxford Bibliography of Urban Studies. 

Taylor, Z. & Bradford, N. (2020). Governing Canadian Cities. In Markus Moos, Ryan Walker, and Tara Vinodrai, eds., Canadian Cities in Transition, 6th ed., Toronto: Oxford University Press. pp. 33–50.

Taylor, Z., Fitzgibbons, J. & Mitchell, C. (2020). Finding the Future in Public Policy: An Analysis of 100 Resilient Cities Plans. Regional Studies 55(5): 831–843.

Managing future uncertainty is the essence of planning. How planners conceptualize the future therefore has important practical and normative implications as contemporary decisions have long-term impacts that may be irreversible and distribute costs and benefits across society. A discourse analysis of strategies prepared under the 100 Resilient Cities programme reveals that while they are ostensibly forward-looking and cognizant of uncertainty, most presume a knowable future (epistemic certainty) and focus on well-understood or recently experienced risks. Few acknowledge the future’s inherent unknowability (ontic uncertainty). Those that do emphasize community self-help; others describe top-down, government-led initiatives. Most strategies also present an image of societal consensus, downplaying the potential for legitimate disagreement over means and ends (discursive uncertainty). These findings suggest that new conceptualizations of future uncertainty have had limited impacts on planning practice.

Vaswani, M., Alviar, L., & Giguère, B. (2020). Can cultural identity clarity protect the well-being of Latino/a Canadians from the negative impact of race-based rejection sensitivity?. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 26(3), 347.

Wagner, B. G., Choi, K. H., & Cohen, P. N. (2020). Decline in marriage associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Socius, 6, 1-8.

Wright, J., Agterberg, S., & Esses, V.M. (2020). Aggression in response to threatening individuals’ religious versus national identity in a live instant messaging paradigm. International Journal for Psychology of Religion, 30, 265-274.

Zajacova, A., Jehn, A., Stackhouse, M., Choi, K. H., Denice, P., Haan, M., & Ramos, H. (2020). Mental health and economic concerns from March to May during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada: Insights from an analysis of repeated cross-sectional surveys. SSM - Population Health, 12, 100704.

Aldrich, J., & Stephenson, L. B. (2019). When do voters act strategically? Institutional and individual variation in the incidence of strategic voting in democracies. In P. J. Loewen & D. Rubenson (Eds). Duty and choice: The evolution of the study of voting and voters (pp. 257-273). University of Toronto Press.

Devoted to exploring elections as the central act in a democracy, Duty and Choice: The Evolution of the Study of Voting and Voters is animated by a set of three overarching questions: Why do some citizens vote while others do not? How do voters decide to cast their ballots for one candidate and not another? How does the context in which citizens live influence the choices they make? Organized into three sections focused on turnout, vote choice, and electoral systems, the volume seeks to provide novel insights into the most pressing questions for scholars of vote choice and voting behaviour. In addition to featuring several prominent Canadian scholars, the collection includes chapters by leading scholars from the United States and Europe.

Atuoye, K. N., Luginaah, I., Hambati, H., & Campbell, G. (2019). Politics, economics, how about our health? Impacts of large-scale land acquisitions on therapeutic spaces and wellbeing in coastal Tanzania. Social Science & Medicine, 220, 283-291.

One question that has remained unexplored in the global land rush debate is how large-scale land acquisitions affect health and wellbeing of local populations. As part of a larger study, this study advances our understanding in this area by applying the concept of therapeutic landscapes to analyze interviews conducted in two coastal communities in Tanzania where land investments have been prevalent. Our analysis found that local populations perceived traditional lands with sacred sites as therapeutic spaces, which embodied cultural values, and promoted health and wellbeing when protected. Intrusion into these spaces through large-scale land investment is believed to remove their therapeutic attributes, thereby turning them into unhealthy landscapes. Dispossession of these spaces is perceived to heighten community distress resulting in poor psychosocial health. Based on our findings, we suggest that health consequences of land investments should move to the center of the large-scale land acquisition discourse. Health policy should refocus on the psychosocial health impacts of global land investments in Tanzania and other low-income countries. Ultimately local participation in land governance should be strengthened through land reforms in Tanzania and similar contexts, as this may provide a buffer to poor psychosocial health.

Blais, A., Cross, W. P., Gidengil, E., Lawlor, A., & Stephenson, L. B. (2019). Provincial battles, national prize? Elections in a federal state. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

A far-reaching analysis of the 2015 Canadian federal election through three different provincial lenses, drawing upon polls and candidate, media, and voter data.

Choi, K. H., & Reichman, N. E. (2019). The health of biracial children in two-parent families in the United States. Demographic Research, 41, 197-230.

Over the past few decades, the United States has experienced a dramatic rise in the number of multiracial individuals. The health of this population is vastly understudied because most population-based health surveys do not adequately identify multiracial individuals. We compare the health of black/white biracial children with that of single-race white and black children and assess the extent to which differences in characteristics of parents who select into the distinct unions and children’s socioeconomic backgrounds explain the observed differences. Using information about the race of coresident mothers and fathers, we classify children into four racial groups – single-race whites (WW), biracial children with white mothers and black fathers (WB), biracial children with black mothers and white fathers (BW), and single-race blacks (BB). We estimate logistic regression models to document variations in rates of poor overall health and disability by children’s racial background. WW children are less likely than BB children to have poor overall health, but more likely to be diagnosed with a disability. WB children are less likely than BB children, but more likely than WW children, to have poorer health. The disability rates of WB children are similar to those of BB children. Selection and socioeconomic differences explain some of the differences in poor overall health, but suppress differences in disability, between WB and WW children. This study underscores the importance of considering both maternal and paternal race when studying racial disparities in child health.

Davenport, C., Mokleiv Nygård, H., Fjelde, H., & Armstrong, D. (2019). The consequences of contention: understanding the aftereffects of political conflict and violence. Annual Review of Political Science, 22, 361-377.

What are the political and economic consequences of contention (i.e., genocide, civil war, state repression/human rights violation, terrorism, and protest)? Despite a significant amount of interest as well as quantitative research, the literature on this subject remains underdeveloped and imbalanced across topic areas. To date, investigations have been focused on particular forms of contention and specific consequences. While this research has led to some important insights, substantial limitations—as well as opportunities for future development—remain. In particular, there is a need for simultaneously investigating a wider range of consequences (beyond democracy and economic development), a wider range of contentious activity (beyond civil war, protest, and terrorism), a wider range of units of analysis (beyond the nation year), and a wider range of empirical approaches in order to handle particular difficulties confronting this type of inquiry (beyond ordinary least-squares regression). Only then will we have a better and more comprehensive understanding of what contention does and does not do politically and economically. This review takes stock of existing research and lays out an approach for looking at the problem using a more comprehensive perspective.

Echterhoff, G., Hellmann, J. H., Back, M., Esses, V., & Wagner, U. (2019). Special issue on “The social psychology of forced migration and refugee integration” in the European Journal of Social Psychology. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49(7), 1337-1343.

Forced migration has reached an unprecedented magnitude. By the end of 2018, there were 70.8 million so-called persons of concern for the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR, 2019). The large-scale displacement of refugees1 creates significant and urgent challenges not only for the refugees themselves, but also for governments and residents of the receiving societies. The analysis of and solutions to these challenges can greatly benefit from psychological science, and social psychology in particular. The main aim of the present Special Issue is to provide empirically supported contributions to this ongoing and timely enterprise, and to promote interest and commitment in the social psychology community to participate in these efforts.

Esses, V.M., Hamilton, L. K., & Gaucher, D. (2019). The role of attitudes in migration. In D. Albarracin & B. Johnson (Eds.), Handbook of attitudes (pp. 455-487). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

The Handbook of Attitudes provide authoritative, critical surveys of theory and research about attitudes, beliefs, persuasion, and behavior from key authors in these areas. This second volume covers applications to measurement, behavior prediction, and interventions in the areas of cancer, HIV, substance use, diet, and exercise, as well as in politics, intergroup relations, aggression, migrations, advertising, accounting, education, and the environment.

Kansanga, M. M., Asumah Braimah, J., Antabe, R., Sano, Y., Kyeremeh, E., & Luginaah, I. (2018). Examining the association between exposure to mass media and health insurance enrolment in Ghana. The International journal of health planning and management, 33(2), e531-e540.

Although previous studies have explored the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Ghana, very little attention is paid to the influence of mass media exposure on NHIS enrolment. Yet, understanding this linkage is important, particularly due to the critical role of mass media in disseminating health information and shaping people's health perceptions and choices. Using data from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we employed logistic regression analysis to understand the relationship between NHIS enrolment and exposure to print media, radio, and television. Our findings indicate that women with more exposure to radio (OR = 1.23, P < 0.01) and television (OR = 1.24, P < 0.01) were more likely to enroll in the NHIS than those with no exposure. For men, more exposure to print media was associated with higher odds of enrolling in the NHIS (OR = 1.41, P < 0.01). In conclusion, all 3 types of media may be helpful in promoting NHIS enrolment in Ghana. However, given that the relationship between media exposure and enrolment in the NHIS was gendered, we recommend that policymakers should pay attention to these dynamics to ensure effective targeting in NHIS media campaigns for increased enrolment into the scheme.

Kansanga, M. M., & Luginaah, I. (2019). Agrarian livelihoods under siege: Carbon forestry, tenure constraints and the rise of capitalist forest enclosures in Ghana. World Development, 113, 131-142.

Drawing on theoretical insights from agrarian political economy, and based on empirical research in the High Forest Zone of Ghana using in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper examined the context-specific but often less highlighted impacts of REDD+-based carbon forest development activities on local agrarian livelihoods. We find that although REDD+ intends to align local communities to benefit financially for contributions to carbon forestry, its uptake in the Ghanaian context has created entry points for the displacement of smallholder farmers through unregulated profit-driven and restrictive plantation-style carbon forest activities. This yields landless smallholder farmers whose labour is craftily integrated into a capitalist carbon forestry regime as tree planters, with many others striving to reproduce themselves through exploitative sharecropping arrangements and corrupt ‘backdoor’ land deals. We emphasize that, ‘more than carbon’ accumulation engendered by REDD+ is fast moving beyond land grabs to a more complex dimension in which the labour and financial resources of marginalized groups are further appropriated by forest investors, and their relatively powerful counterparts in what we term intimate exploitation. Given the ongoing plight of smallholder farmers, particularly the multitude of ‘hungry’ migrant farmers who seek ‘salvation’ in the High Forest Zone, it is obvious that REDD+ is pushed at the expense of ensuring food security. To sustainably address current land-related agricultural production bottlenecks and empower local communities to directly benefit from REDD+, we recommend that rather than centralizing both carbon rights and land rights in the hands of the state and a few private investors, community forestlands should be returned to local people under community-led forest management approaches. Local control of both land and carbon stocks will promote sustainable coexistence of smallholder agriculture and carbon forestry.

Konkor, I., Kansanga, M., Sano, Y., Atuoye, K., & Luginaah, I. (2019). Risk-taking behaviours and timing to first motorbike collision in the Upper West Region of Ghana. Journal of Transport & Health, 12, 105-114.

Road traffic collisions kill more than many diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa with the youth, particularly those between 15–29 years, being the most vulnerable group due to their risk-taking behaviours. In Ghana, about six people die daily from road traffic collisions. This study examines the relationship between risky behaviours and time to first motorbike collision in northern Ghana with the aim of informing policy and contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Lamont, C., Quinn, J. R., & Wiebelhaus-Brahm, E. (2019). The ministerialization of transitional justice. Human Rights Review, 20(1), 103-122.

In recent years, countries have begun to establish ministries of transitional justice (TJ) as part of political transitions from authoritarianism to democracy or from conflict to peace. This may reflect a broader historical trend in the administration of TJ, which has evolved from isolated offices within a particular ministry to ad hoc cross-ministry coordinating bodies to the establishment of dedicated ministries. The reasons for the establishment of specific ministries to pursue TJ, what we call ministerialization, have not attracted scholarly attention. This article explores the causes and likely consequences of this development. In particular, it applies international relations, comparative politics, and public policy theories to explain the phenomenon. Contrary to some TJ literature that is concerned about hegemonic transnational (largely Western) discourse, international actors have played little to no role in shaping how TJ is bureaucratically managed. Rather, based upon fieldwork in Solomon Islands and Tunisia, the article concludes that ministerialization has been the result of domestic policy entrepreneurship. For TJ ministries to become a norm, however, more transnational actors will need to be convinced of the benefits of such an institutional arrangement.

Martinson, M. L., & Choi, K. H. (2019). Low birth weight and childhood health: the role of maternal education. Annals of Epidemiology, 39, 39-45.

Low birth weight (LBW) is associated with myriad health and developmental problems in childhood and later in life. Less well-documented is the variation in the relationship between LBW status and subsequent child health by socioeconomic status—such as education levels and income. This article examines whether differences exist in the relationship between LBW and subsequent child health by maternal education. We used data from the 1998–2017 National Health Interview Survey to estimate multivariate logistic regression models to determine whether the association between LBW and subsequent child health as measured by general health status, developmental disability, and asthma diagnosis differed by maternal education, net of differences in children's sociodemographic factors, family background, and medical access. The negative association between LBW and subsequent health was typically weaker for children of mothers with less than high school education than it was for children of mothers with higher levels of education. The findings on the enduring impact of LBW status on child health for all children, especially those born to mothers with higher levels of education, suggest that all children born LBW should be provided appropriate medical and support services to reduce the lifelong repercussions of poor health at birth.

Mastrobuoni, G., & Rivers, D. A. (2019). Optimizing criminal behavior and the disutility of prison. The Economic Journal, 129(619), 1364-1399.

We use rich microdata on bank robberies to estimate individual-level disutilities of imprisonment. The identification rests on the money versus apprehension trade-off that robbers face inside the bank when deciding whether to leave or collect money for an additional minute. The distribution of the disutility of prison is not degenerate, generating heterogeneity in behaviour. Our results show that unobserved heterogeneity in robber ability is important for explaining outcomes in terms of haul and arrest. Furthermore, higher ability robbers are found to have larger disutilities, suggesting that increased sentence lengths might effectively target these more harmful criminals.

Mkandawire, P., Atari, O., Kangmennaang, J., Arku, G., Luginaah, I., & Etowa, J. (2019). Pregnancy intention and gestational age at first antenatal care (ANC) visit in Rwanda. Midwifery, 68, 30-38.

With antenatal care (ANC) coverage now widely seen as a success story in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA), attention has begun to shift towards exploring the full life-saving potential that ANC holds. This study examines association between pregnancy intention and gestational age at first antenatal care (ANC) visit in Rwanda, where ANC coverage is nearly universal. We use survival analysis and apply the lognormal model in Stata SE 15 to compute time ratios (TR) that provide a direct metric for time to first ANC check-up. Despite nearly universal coverage, only 25% of pregnant mothers start ANC within the timeframe recommended by WHO. Women with unintended pregnancies are even more likely to delay ANC (TR = 11.4%, Z = 2.48, p < 0.05) than women with intended pregnancies. The effect of pregnancy intention on time to first ANC accentuates when we control for parity in the hazard models. There is also educational divide, with early start of ANC limited to pregnant women with secondary education or higher. Interaction effects suggest significant interaction between parity (≥ 4) and unintended pregnancy (TR = 11.1%, Z = -2.07, p < 0.05) on gestational age at first ANC. Other predictors of time to first ANC are contact with health care provider and perceived barriers. With near universal coverage, the next big challenge to harness the full life-saving potential of ANC in Rwanda would be ramping up prompt start of prenatal care, timeliness of successive checkup intervals, and adherence to recommended number of visits, as opposed to simply increasing attendance. Preventing unwanted pregnancies in multiparous mothers through family planning would also significantly to the goal of universal ANC coverage in Rwanda.

Palma, P. A., Sinclair, V. M., & Esses, V. M. (2019). Facts versus feelings: Objective and subjective experiences of diversity differentially impact attitudes towards the European Union. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 23(5), 726-743.

This research used secondary data sources to examine how objective and subjective experiences of diversity and immigration are associated with voting and attitudes toward the European Union. Using objective measures of diversity and migration, England’s electorate regions with the most diversity and highest levels of projected migration had the lowest proportion of “Leave” voters in the 2016 Brexit vote (Study 1). Using subjective assessments of intergroup contact and immigration attitudes (Study 2), higher perceived immigrant population size was associated with greater perceived competition with immigrants and Euroscepticism, whereas intergroup contact had the opposite effect. Surprisingly, the explicit desire to reduce immigration was not associated with anti-EU attitudes. This research highlights the importance of combining objective and subjective measures of diversity and immigration in analyzing political motivations, as objective measures suggested immigration did not adversely affect Brexit votes (Study 1), whereas some subjective perceptions of immigration led to greater anti-EU attitudes.

Quinn, J. R. (2019). The prospects for customary law in transitional justice: The case of Fiji. Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, 36, 249-262.

The use of customary law shows real promise in addressing the challenges that arise when confronting the legacies of past human rights abuses and atrocities.  Unlike typical transitional justice mechanisms like trials, truth commissions, and reparations programs, customary practices are community-based and well-known to the people who use them.  Indeed, customary practices could be used in transitional societies in place of “foreign” practices to bring about the same objectives.  This paper considers the role that customary law plays in Fiji.  It further assesses the prospects for the use of customary, traditional law in situations where transitional justice is called for.

Quinn, J. R. (2019). The role and influence of the diaspora on the thin sympathetic response. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(11), 1830-1849.

Thin sympathetic engagement is a basic, cognitive understanding of the needs of the other. It played an important role in how elites from the Montreal Haitian diaspora were able to influence an NGO in their adopted country, Canada, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, to work with the diaspora to secure a truth commission in Haiti. That commission ultimately became the Commission Nationale de Vérité et de Justice. The aims of the diaspora were advanced by its engagement with neutral outsider groups in their adopted country and their ability to persuade these groups toward a thin sympathetic response.

Taylor, Zack and Sandra McEleney. 2019. Do Institutions and Rules Influence Electoral Accessibility and Competitiveness? Considering the 2014 Toronto Ward Elections. Urban Affairs Review 55(1), pp. 210–230.

Electoral and campaign finance reforms are believed to improve the competitiveness of elections and the accessibility of the electoral process; however, the interaction between electoral institutions and competitiveness and accessibility in nonpartisan municipal elections remains understudied. This article examines the City of Toronto, which exemplifies many of the reforms proposed in the American context, including a strict campaign finance regime and low barriers to candidate entry. Analysis of campaign finance disclosure data and candidate characteristics for Toronto’s 2014 ward elections reveals that electoral and campaign finance rules increase electoral accessibility while doing little to limit incumbency advantage. We argue that crowded nonpartisan races are low-information environments in which candidates, donors, and voters cannot assess challenger quality, which reinforces incumbent name recognition and access to campaign resources. The Toronto case highlights the limits of institutional and regulatory change as a means of increasing local electoral competitiveness and accessibility.

Werner, K. (2019). Fragile-to-Fragile Cooperation: An example of a new trend in South-South Cooperation? In G. Besada, L. M. Polonenko, & M. E. Tok (Eds), Innovating South-South Cooperation: Policies, challenges and prospects, (pp. 119-138). University of Ottawa Press.

South-South Cooperation (SSC) has evolved substantially over the years. Its focus on sharing knowledge, technology transfer, training, and economic cooperation has become the hallmark of SSC. It highlights the strengths of states in the Global South and their ability to collaborate and help each other in furthering their development goals. But while formally SSC encompasses non-fragile and fragile nations in the South, thus far there has been little evidence that the unique circumstances of fragile and conflict-affected states have prompted special consideration within the SSC framework. It is with this in mind that the Fragile-to-Fragile (F2F) Cooperation framework emerged.

Wright, J. D., & Esses, V. M. (2019). It’s security, stupid! Voters’ perceptions of immigrants as a security risk predicted support for Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 49(1), 36-49.

We analyzed two datasets to determine the predictive validity of four explanations of support for Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election: (a) security concerns regarding immigrants, (b) economic concerns regarding immigrants, (c) cultural concerns regarding immigrants, and (d) social dominance orientation. Results of a two-phase study (N = 354) suggested that perceiving immigrants as a security concern was predictive of increased support for and greater odds of voting for Donald Trump three weeks later. Perceiving immigrants as an economic threat predicted odds of voting for Donald Trump, but only among liberals and there was no evidence of cultural concern or social dominance orientation (SDO) predicting support for Donald Trump or odds of voting for Trump. A follow-up analysis of the cross-sectional ANES survey corroborated that security concerns were an important correlate of voting for Trump, but also that SDO was correlated with having previously voted for Donald Trump. While our two-phase study has the benefit of prediction, the cross-sectional ANES data does not—“predictors” in these data were collected up to two months post-election.