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For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies by email moninder_lalli@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.
Essay
Start Your Research Here - This page gives you an overview of the research process and steps to take to find resources for your essay.
Selected encyclopedias and handbooks
Get overviews, summaries, key authors, debates and ideas from encyclopedias, handbooks or textbooks.
- Encyclopedia of Political Science
- Handbook of culture and migration
- Handbook of Migration and Globalisation
- Handbook of research on global Impact of media on migration issues
- Handbook on human security, borders and migration
- Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies
- Oxford handbook of migration crises
- Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development: Critical Engagements in Feminist Theory and Practice
- Palgrave Handbook of International Labour Migration Law and Policy Perspectives
- Research handbook on the law and politics of migration
- Routledge handbook of immigration and refugee studies
- Routledge international handbook of colorism
- Routledge international handbook of Islamophobia
- Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies
- Sage eReference
For more, try Background information
Find journal articles
Start with the "Proquest Sociology Collection" database and then move on to other databases. Limit your search to "academic", "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed." For articles not available in fulltext within the database, use the "Get@SFU" link to find it or to initiate an inter-library loan request.
- ProQuest Sociology Collection - for issues related to class, gender, racism, sexuality and sexism and theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science.
- Social Sciences Full Text Covers social science journals
- GEOBASE "Human geography" discipline studies issues related to "refugees" and "migration."
- Political Science Complete - scholarly articles related to labour, migration, unions, policies and remittances
- Women's Studies International Key database for issues related to women or gender.
For Canadian topics, also try
- CBCA Complete Canadian scholarly journal articles, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and and magazines.
- Canada Commons (formerly, Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris) - contains the full text of public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.
- The "Boolean operators" (AND, OR) must be in capital letters.
- If you don't want variations of a term then put the term in quotation marks ("term")
- Advanced search engine:
- Canadian Newsstream covers the major Canadian daily newspapers.
- Canadian Research Index Includes all depository publications of research value issued by both the federal government and the ten provinces and three territories; hard to find non-depository publications issued by hundreds of Canadian government agencies and departments
Find books in the Library
Library Catalogue search guide
Search the SFU Library Catalogue, using either the Basic or the Advanced search
You can further limit the search results (below) by "subject" or "resource type"
Sample research question:
"What is the effect of the Anti-terrorism Act and how is it used for national security"
Keywords for additional topics:
- immigr* AND (law OR legislat* OR regulat* OR policy OR policies) AND canad*
- multicultural* AND (debate* OR policy OR policies) AND canad*
- (immigr* OR foreign) AND (skills OR credentials OR qualifications OR training) AND canad*
- (immigr* OR foreign) AND (labour market OR labor market) AND canad*
- commodif* AND (women OR gender OR female) AND (labor OR labour) AND canad*
- (raci* OR discrim* OR stereotyp*) AND (employ* OR jobs OR labour OR labor) AND canad*
- (islamophob* OR islamaphob* OR racis* OR anti-islam* OR anti-asian* OR anti-muslim* OR anti-black) AND canad*
- (nannies OR domestic work*) AND (employ* OR jobs OR labour OR labor) AND canad*
- immigr* AND (deport* OR detention OR detain OR border) AND canad*
- immigra* AND (diversity OR intercultural OR cross-cultural) AND canad*
- immigr* AND (experience* OR narrat* OR stories) AND canad*
Combine different concepts using AND
Combine same concepts using OR
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
Use brackets for synonyms
Use asterisk (*) for different endings of words
Use pulldown menu and select, "Source Types" as "Books"
Note: For Catalogue Search, when combining concepts, use CAPITAL letters ( "OR", "AND")
Use the "subject headings" within the library record for a relevant book to find more books on that topic.
Selected books
- A space for race : decoding racism, multiculturalism, and post-colonialism in the quest for belonging in Canada and beyond [print]
- Africans in Canada blending Canadian and African lifestyles?
- Are the Gaps in Labour Market Outcomes Between Immigrants and Their Canadian-Born Counterparts Starting to Close? (Statistics Canada)
- Asian Canadian studies reader
- Asian immigrants in "Two Canadas" : racialization, marginalization and deregulated work [print]
- Asian women as transnational domestic workers [print]
- Asylum-seekers at Canada's border : report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration
- Border & rule : global migration, capitalism, and the rise of racist nationalism [print]
- Border frictions : gender, generation and technology on the frontline
- Borders and Migration : The Canadian Experience in Comparative Perspective
- Breaking the iron wall : decommodification and immigrant women's labor in Canada [print]
- Canadian Perspectives on Immigration in Small Cities
- Citizenship, race, and nationalism in contemporary English-Canadian newspaper representations of Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians
- Containing Diversity : Canada and the Politics of Immigration in the 21st Century
- Cultural diversity in Canada : the social construction of racial differences
- Downwardly Global: Women, Work, and Citizenship in the Pakistani Diaspora
- Enslaving temporary migrant women : Canada's shifting immigration policies [print]
- Ethics of state responses to refugees
- Families apart : migrant mothers and the conflicts of labor and love [print]
- A family matter : citizenship, conjugal relationships, and Canadian immigration policy
- Farm workers in Western Canada : injustices and activism [print]
- Gendering struggles against informal and precarious work
- Health inequities in Canada : intersectional frameworks and practices [print]
- Health worker migration in Canada : histories, geographies, and ethics
- Identifying as Arab in Canada : a century of immigration history [print]
- Immigrant care workers in aging societies : the Canadian context and experience
- Immigrant Muslim women and the hijab : sites of struggle in crafting and negotiating identities in Canada
- Immigrant settlement policy in Canadian municipalities
- Immigrant women
- Immigration Detention and Social Harm: the collateral impacts of migrant incarceration
- Immigration, racial and ethnic studies in 150 years of Canada : retrospects and prospects [print]
- Indefinite, arbitrary and unfair : the truth about immigration detention in Canada
- Legislated inequality: temporary labour migration in Canada
- Making critical sense of immigrant experience : a case study of Hong Kong Chinese in Canada
- Migration, gender and care economy
- Modernization and global restructuring of women’s work : border-crossing stories of Iranian women
- Overhauling the temporary foreign worker program : putting Canadians first
- Points of Entry: How Canada's Immigration Officers Decide Who Gets in
- Politics and poetics of migration : narratives of Iranian women from the diaspora [print]
- Presumed incompetent : the intersections of race and class for women in academia [print]
- "Race" and ethnicity in Canada : a critical introduction [print]
- Racialized bodies, disabling worlds : storied lives of immigrant Muslim women [print]
- Racism, Eh? : a critical inter-disciplinary anthology of race and racism in Canada [print]
- Refugees Are (Not) Welcome Here : The Paradox of Protection in Canada
- Security of freedom : essays on Canada's anti-terrorism bill
- Sisters or strangers? : immigrant, ethnic and racialized women in Canadian history [print]
- Strangers at our gates : Canadian immigration and immigration policy, 1540-2015 [print]
- Thinking globally : a global studies reader
- Trans-Pacific mobilities : the Chinese and Canada
- Twenty-first-century immigration to North America : newcomers in turbulent times
- Under-served : health determinants of Indigenous, inner-city, and migrant populations in Canada
- Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter Canada
- When care work goes global : locating the social relations of domestic work
Browse by subject
Change "Title" to "Subject" and enter:
- Black Canadians
- Canada -- Emigration and immigration -- Government policy
- Canada - Race relations
- Chinese -- Canada
- East Indian Canadians
- Foreign workers -- Canada
- Foreign Workers -- Canada -- Social Conditions
- Immigrant Women
- Immigrants -- Canada
- Immigrants -- Canada -- Economic conditions
- Immigrants -- Government policy -- Canada
- Immigrants employment
- Muslims -- Canada
- Race discrimination in Canada
- Race relations -- Canada
- Racism -- Canada
- Refugees Canada
- Transnational migration
- Transnationalism
- Women foreign workers -- Canada
- Women immigrants
- Women Immigrants -- Employment -- Canada
Government information
Immigration and refugees
- Citizenship and Immigration Canada
- Research and Statistics - Find the latest research and statistical information on citizenship and immigration trends,
- Pubilcations and Manuals, -- including annual report to the Parliament
- House of Commons - Scroll down on the page. Choose "Full website" tab and search for your topics. E.g.: refugees
- Parliament. Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration - look for publications under "immigration and citizenship"
- Department of Justice Canada
Statistics
- Statistics Canada - the major statistical gathering agency of the federal government. It publishes the "whole range of statistics on the economic and social activities of the Canadian people". There are daily, weekly, quarterly, annual and irregular publications. They also publishes the Census of Canada at five year intervals.
- Pre-tabulated data tables under "statistics by subject."
- This data can be downloaded (CSV format) into Excel.
- In addition to "data", check out the "Analysis" and other reports (see tabs at the top of the data tables).
- Publications by subject
- BC Statistics Check out the tabs at the top
Citing Government documents, Canadian -- APA style | MLA style | Chicago style
- Statista A statistics portal that integrates statistics from thousands of sources and provides simple exports of both data and charts in multiple formats. Look for the "source" for each table or graph.
International
- World Factbook: U.S. government profiles of countries and territories around the world. Information on geography, people, government, transportation, economy, communications, etc.
- International Organization for Migration (IOM)
- undata Provides selected series from 30 specialized international data sources for all available countries and areas.
- Search results for keywords:
- Statistics
- SourceOECD .
- Choose: Statistics
- Choose: Trade Unions --> Employment and Labour Market Statistics
- E.g. Union Members and Employees (international comparison chart)
- Choose: Trade Unions --> Employment and Labour Market Statistics
- Choose: Statistics
- SourceOECD .
Doing interviews
- Cross-cultural interviewing : feminist experiences and reflections
- Doing interviews
- How do I ask well-worded interview questions?
- How to plan and conduct interviews in a research project
For more books, browse the following subjects:
Library guides
- Findind and evaluating resources on the web
- Avoiding plagiarism
- What is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal?
- How to write an annotated bibliography
- More Tutorials (interactive)
- Citation or reference management tools collect your journal article, book, or other document citations together in one place, and help you create properly formatted bibliographies in almost any style — in seconds.
Presentation skills
- Resources on developing your participation skills
- Resources to help you improve your presentation skills
Writing help
Student Learning Commons provides assistance and numerous, helpful guides.