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Building Bridges: Research and Activism Along the Canada–U.S. Border
From May 12–14, 2026, Haven: the Asylum Lab at the University of Toronto Scarborough hosted Building Bridges: Research and Activism Along the Canada–U.S. Border, a three-day workshop that brought together scholars, legal practitioners, frontline workers, activists, students, and community organizations from across Canada and beyond to engage with some of the most pressing questions surrounding…
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Profit Behind the Walls: How Immigration Detention Became a Business
By: Ali Castillo Armijos The United States runs the largest immigration detention system in the world: roughly 246 facilities, over 60,000 people held as of early 2026, and a price tag that grew from $3.4 billion annually in 2024 to $45 billion allocated through 2029. The numbers reveal that these policies are not under pressure; they are part of a system being actively expanded. …
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By Accident of Geography: The Privilege and Responsibility of Care
By: Solène Korah “We’re living through a disease, and the disease is that we’ve forgotten how to care.” When Dr Caulford, co-founder and Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Refugee and Immigrant Healthcare, opened his presentation through the analogy of the selfishness epidemic, something inside of me broke. As I sat through the remaining presentations at…
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Resettled and Unsettled: Hope for Refugees and Asylum Seekers
By: Nyx Zhu A reflection on Dr. Pablo Bose’s presentation at the Building Bridges Conference The United States has become a country that is no longer safe or welcoming to refugees and asylum seekers under Trump’s second term. However, did you know the same trend is emerging in Canada? An Unsettled Time Refugees are facing repeated unsettlement…
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Intimacy Beyond Romance: Women, Refuge, and Community
By: Rachel Marcelline In 2025, hotels across the Niagara region were being used to house asylum claimants. Learning that hotels are used as places for refugees was surprising, but what came as even more of a surprise was discovering that hotel reviews in the Niagara region are starting to become extremely racist due to this.…
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In Niagara Hotels, Refugees Wait Between Past and Future
By: Ellie Liu “What were you thinking when you crossed the border?” is a question people often ask asylum seekers, but after three days at the Building Bridges workshop in May 2026, I found myself thinking about a different question: What does it actually feel like to live inside the policies people debate so much?…