Defying Higher Education Borders with Migrant Students in Canada: Building Counterstories and Sanctuary Universities

(Hardback)

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This book explores migrant students struggles for equitable access to higher education in Canada, focusing on a first-of-its-kind bridging program at York University.
Through the concepts of bordering and countering, Villegas and Aberman examine how students excluded due to immigration status resisted systemic barriers by forming supportive classroom communities and challenging dominant narratives. Providing essential insights for educators, policymakers, and advocates seeking to build more inclusive and just higher education systems, this book reveals how everyday acts of resistance can transform exclusion into opportunity and reimagine universities as sanctuaries.

Reviews

This book shines a critical light on migrant youth access to higher education, shifting the discussion away from complementary pathways, to explore this issue through the lives of migrants already living within the Canadian border. Young people at the centre of this study are not defined by their immigration status, but as students with lives and dreams that can be both recognised and met by Canadian universities. The book effectively translates research grounded in practice, into a ready-made agenda for universities to pick up and run with. -- Rebecca Murray, University of Sheffield and Universities of Sanctuary

Author Bio

Paloma E. Villegas is associate professor of critical migration studies in the Department of Sociology at California State University, San Bernardino.
Tanya Aberman is the coordinator of the Sanctuary Scholars programs at York University and Toronto Metropolitan University.