In Search of Home: Housing Crisis in Ottawa and its Effects on Government-Assisted Refugees

Abstract

In this thesis, I examine how Government-Assisted Refugees (GARs) from different countries, who arrived in Canada under the Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP), have resettled in Ottawa amidst an unprecedented housing crisis. Drawing on two bodies of scholarship, political anthropology and Critical Refugee Studies (CRS), and anthropological fieldwork conducted between July 2023 and January 2025, I trace the effects of this crisis on GARs' experience of resettlement.

Drawing upon my participant observation at the Catholic Center for Immigrants (CCI), interviews with GARs, CCI and RAP employees, and community volunteers, I argue that Canada's resettlement process generates new forms of displacement and food precarity by enforcing an unrealistic one-year timeline for independence. The thesis develops this argument across three chapters: the first chapter traces housing and resettlement policies from the perspective of CCI and RAP employees. I examine GARs' experiences from their initial arrival to their move to more permanent housing. By focusing on GARs' agency, I demonstrate how they engage with regulations to find their desired homes. Finally, the last chapter delineates the hidden effects of the housing crisis, including food insecurity.

By following GARs' resettlement process, from their first step at CCI to their permanent housing, I examine policies, welfare programs, benefits, the housing market, and state-led institutions as assemblages. Through this exploration, I document how some GARs manage to find their desired home in Canada, while others experience ongoing displacement and precarity. Additionally, I attempt to shed light on CCI and RAP employees' experiences of working in the midst of a housing crisis and policy ruptures to facilitate GARs' resettlement. Their recommendations and insights are intertwined with GARs' narratives in this thesis's chapters. Finally, I focus on GARs' agency and homemaking strategies among the obstacles that they face from their first day of arrival in Ottawa.