CRS Seminar: Refugee Pathways to Freedom and Peace
November 19, 2025
1:00pm-2:30pm (Toronto)
This is a hybrid event
In person: 626 Kaneff Tower, Keele Campus, York University
Zoom: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/INwS7L4xS3esfhyWo7skZw
Guest speaker: Janet Billson, Director, Group Dimensions International / Editor, Skywood Press, CRS Affiliated Scholar
Abstract:
Janet Billson will present on two recent publications:
Refugee Pathways to Freedom: Escaping Persecution and Statelessness, London: Bloomsbury, 2024. Individual and focus group interviews with Russian Doukhobors, Rohingya, Nepali-speaking Bhutanese (Lhotshampa), and Kurds. Focus on the marginalizing impacts of refugee status, flight, refugee camps, and Canada-U.S. resettlement policies.
Refugee Pathways to Peace: Escaping the Chaos of War, London: Bloomsbury, 2025. Individual and focus group interviews with Syrian, DR Congolese, Liberian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese refugees. Focus on refugee integration and resettlement policies, and the future of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and relevant global frameworks.
Bio:
Janet Mancini Billson, PhD, CCS, is former Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Rhode Island College and The George Washington University. She received her graduate degrees in Sociology from Brandeis University, and has lectured widely on women in development, female well-being, Inuit resettlement, and the Millennium/Sustainable Development Goals.
Janet is the author of several books on identity, marginality, refugees/resettlement in Canada, and social change, including Refugee Pathways to Freedom: Escaping Persecution and Statelessness (forthcoming 2023); Refugee Pathways to Peace: Escaping the Chaos of War (forthcoming 2024); People of Peace: The Doukhobor Search for Freedom in Canada (forthcoming, 2023); and Keepers of the Culture: The Power of Tradition in Women's Lives (1995), based on eight years of interviews with indigenous, immigrant, and religious minority women in Canada. She is co-author of Female Well-Being: Towards a Global Theory of Social Change with Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (2006); Inuit Women: Their Powerful Spirit in A Century of Change with Kyra Mancini (2007, based on twelve years of ethnographic research on Baffin Island); and Cool Pose: Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America with Richard Majors (1992/1993).
As founder and Director of Group Dimensions International, Janet has consulted since 1981 in organizational development, international development, and social policy. Her clients include foundations, hospitals, universities, and government agencies in Canada and the U.S; the World Bank Group, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the African Development Bank; research organizations such as IDRC, Canada, and several United Nations agencies. She recently conducted the qualitative research to evaluate the World Bank’s Group’s Global Gender Strategy and the IFC’s investment role in private education in developing countries.
