2. Conceptual Idea

I got the idea for my project after a visit to the "Immigrant Services Society" ( ISS ) in Downtown Vancouver, where I went with one of my geography classes. We were introduced to how the ISS helps refugees to resettle and integrate from the day they arrive in Canada, e.g with English-language training and employment services. So I thought about creating an index for cities, due to which their suitability for providing a place for refugees can be measured ...

This turned out to be more complicated than I expected it to be. First of all I had to decide for a group of refugees, since different groups need different facilities and environments. I decided to focus on the refugees from Kosovo/ar for my project. Looking at their average age, educational background and former employment should give me an idea about the profile their new community should have, so these are the first 3 factors for my analysis. Also important are housing costs, unemployment rate and the percentage of "visible minorities", which could make refugees feel more comfortable in a more diverse and multicultural commuity. The refugees from Kosovo/ar were Kosovo/ar-Albanians and due to the conflict they searched refuge from, it would also be important to look at the percentage of Serbian population in the cities.
But most important for a city to be taken into consideration is, whether it has an office for immigration services, so this would be the constraint for my analysis.

So I came up with 7 factors:

• Average Age
• Average Level of Education
• Industrial Profile
• Average Rent
  
• Unemployment Rate
• Visible Minorities
• Serbians Population

and one constraint:

• Immigrant Services Office

In order to be able to weigh the factors due to their importance for the refugees in my analysis, a Multi-Criteria-Evaluation, I wanted to look at some of the places where they actually have been resettled. The information about the cities relating to the factors I decided on, would give me a better impression, if for example they were resettled in a certain city, because of the low rents, rather than because of the percentage of visible minorities, or the opposite way. I chose to pick out the following cities:                ...Why? -see under data collection

• Abbotsford
• Burnaby
• Chilliwack
• Surrey

My final analysis would then provide information about the three cities Port Hardy, Prince George and Kelowna, regarding their suitability for the resettlement of Kosovo/ar refugees. I chose these three cities, because of their geographic distribution (East, North and West) in British Columbia.
Now, let's see which city fits best.....