Newcomer Retention Research

Community-specific insights to strengthen attraction and retention.

Building Communities Where Newcomers Stay

Your community is investing time and resources to attract newcomers through programs like the Rural Community Immigration Pilot (RCIP), but attraction is only half the battle. Are people choosing to stay? Do residents feel the changes are positive? Are services meeting their unique needs? Without community-based data, it’s hard to prioritize what really works in retaining them and the real factors that are supporting successful integration.

Our research shows that ensuring newcomers feel welcome and safe in their community is just as essential to their integration as providing accessible, approachable supports that set them up for success.

Our Approach

We’ve designed a customizable research package, providing your decision-makers with a 360° view of what’s helping or hindering newcomer integration, straight from those living in the community, including:

Surveys
Short, accessible surveys for residents and newcomers, which can be offered in your community’s top five spoken languages.
Pre-consultations
Interviews with municipal leaders and city stakeholders who can provide context to the research objectives at hand, including the decisions driving future strategy and policy building.
Consultative interviews
Conversations with settlement advisors, community advocates, social workers and other on-the-ground community network-builders who may have insights to barriers and obstacles to community integration.
Community conversations
In the form of interviews, roundtables, or focus groups that provide a deeper, real-life understanding of the lived experiences of those integrating into the community, focused on key areas of interest.
Consulting
Actionable recommendations tailored to your local context.

Key Areas of Interest

Recent research in smaller communities has focused on housing, healthcare, public transit, community services, and childcare. We will work directly with your team to identify the areas of interest that are most relevant, reflective, and prioritized for your community. This consultative research can speak to:

New Resident Perceptions of Belonging & Inclusion

Community readiness

Broader Community Consultation or Visioning

Public Education & Anti-Racism Research

Key Drivers and Barriers to Integration and Retention

Employer Readiness and Workforce Integration

Youth & Family-Focused Research

Featured Case Study

Thunder Bay: Welcoming Communities Analysis

At a time when the city is experiencing one of its largest waves of immigration, Environics conducted a Welcoming Communities Analysis on behalf of the Thunder Bay CEDC, City of Thunder Bay and Thunder Bay Multicultural Association to help municipal leaders and settlement organizations understand what is working well – and where gaps remain – in supporting newcomer settlement and retention.

Read Case Study

How This Research Can Help Your Community and Why It Matters

It gives Municipal leaders, employers, and service providers evidence and data to:

Improve retention and community building and satisfaction

Strengthen relationships between long-term residents and newcomers

Make smarter investments in events, services, and communication strategies

Build a long-term strategy that reflects the voices of all residents and reflects the unique needs for qualities of your community

Understanding both the need and the opportunity to make Thunder Bay a more welcoming place will help build a stronger community for everyone. Thunder Bay is already an incredible place to live, but by becoming more attractive and supportive to newcomers, we strengthen our workforce and gain a competitive advantage in attracting industry, businesses, and new residents.

Jamie Taylor

CEO, Thunder Bay CEDC

Recommendations Based on Community Insights

Our approach brings together multiple lenses – community assets, resident perspectives, newcomer experiences, and system-level realities – to create a holistic understanding of integration. Our asset-mapping design and community-wide consultations uncover residents’ hopes and concerns about immigration, helping anticipate friction points and uncover shared aspirations. Surveys, interviews, and consultations with service leaders reveal how newcomers experience areas like housing, healthcare, employment, education, and belonging, pinpointing both satisfaction and access barriers. Finally, retention mapping helps identify the key moments when newcomers consider leaving, allowing communities to intervene early.

Together, this research provides a 360-degree picture that supports practical, community-driven strategies for long-term retention and successful integration. This research is more than just black and white data, its direction, weaving it through every layer of a thriving community.

Maysa Husseini

Senior Research Associate – Corporate and Public Affairs

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Connect with Our Experts

Maysa Husseini is a Senior Researcher at Environics Research, specializing in public opinion research for municipal, provincial, and federal governments, as well as non-profit organizations. Her work focuses on the “grey areas” – the fears, ideas, and language people use when talking about what matters to them – uncovering insights that strengthen communications and support policy design grounded in real human nuance. She brings forward both the differences and shared experiences within audiences, helping clients design strategies that are aligned with the needs and realities of the people they are intended to serve.