COMPARING THE GERMAN AND CANADIAN EXPERIENCES OF RESETTLING REFUGEES - A 21st Century Response

Canada financially sup- the letter and spirit of the international instruments for the ported the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection of refugees, the act of acceding will denote official 7 acceptance of the international standards for the protection with decision-making by the Minister of Immigration. [...] 8 Unfortunately, the most negative aspect of the legisla- It was within the context of these arrivals and the promotion tive package was that the many positive resettlement of private sponsorship that the government announced an initiatives were presented as a counter to some of expansion of Canada’s resettlement program and introduced the more punitive actions the government planned Bill C-11, th. [...] It is truly emblematic of the character of Migrants, to announce a joint project with the UNHCR and Canadians and the fabric of our great country” (Immigration, the Open Society Foundations to export the Canadian sponsor- Refugees and Citizenship Canada 2019). [...] Our analysis of the representations of Syrian refugees in the German Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Canadian Globe and Mail in the fall of 2015 confirms that both newspapers reflect the national traditions of their respective countries, i.e. [...] In September 2015, the story of the drowned Alan Kurdi cata- Inspired by the work of Bauder (2011), this paper explores pulted the “refugee crisis” into the centre of the Canadian representations of refugees as potential members of the federal election (Ramos 2016).