INFOFMATIVE POSSIBILITIES OF CANADIAN IMMIGRATION POLICY STUDIES AT THE PRESENT STAGE

Abstract

Immigration is very important in modern society. Different countries and their governments are faced with challenges caused by waves of immigration. Thousands of refugees and immigrants with different backgrounds are looking for their new home. As a result, a number of European states are going through a crisis of multiculturalism and tolerance. Therefore processes of the mass relocation need to be studied. Both practices of successful and unsuccessful immigration policy are important for researchers. The same is true of studying the policy of diversity and multiculturalism. Thus, there were failures of the politics of “Melting pot” in the former socialistic states. For instance, there was the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with the idea of “Yugoslavian people”. Similarly, there was the idea of creating “Soviet people” in the USSR. In contrast, there was also successful immigration and multicultural policy. Besides, researchers should explore the regions where thousands and millions of immigrants and refugees have created a multi-ethnic society with different cultural, religious, linguistic traditions etc. But the diversity in these countries did not lead to conflicts within the society. Studying successful experience could give us an opportunity to understand the way of reaching tolerance in this multicultural world. One of the regions with successful experience is the Canadian Federation. Owing to the development of its own immigration policy in the 1960s, the Canada gave a new life to immigrants and refugees from different regions. In this paper the attention is paid to the review of the informative possibilities for researching Canada’s state policy in the fields of immigration and constructing of multicultural society in 1976-2012. It was made an attempt to classify the main groups of sources which help to research basic signs and features of the formation and implementation of the Canadian state policy in both fields. The article is mainly focused on the materials which are available on various Web-sites. The informative possibilities of materials for studying of Canadian policy towards immigrants and refugees are indicated.