Marshia Akbar
Marshia Akbar is Senior Research Associate at the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Ryerson University. Her research broadly encompasses economic and social integration of migrants in Canada, with a particular focus on analyzing how migration and settlement policies shape the labour market integration of migrants across Canadian cities. Akbar completed her PhD at York University with a focus on how identities (such as gender and race) influence the social and economic opportunities and challenges facing migrants. Through her PhD research, she has developed an expertise in qualitative data analysis using NVivo and large quantitative data sets using SPSS and STATA. As a post-doctoral research fellow at York University, she contributed to the SSHRC partnership titled ‘Building Migrant resilience in Cities in Canada (BMRC)’, which included analysis of settlement policies and integration challenges in Ontario and Quebec, collaborative research, knowledge mobilization and project management. Akbar's doctoral and postdoctoral research findings have been published as journal articles and web-based reports. Working with settlement agencies in major urban areas, she aims to assess the policies about eligibility for permanent residency and settlement services and their impacts on the employment outcomes of different categories of temporary residents, such as international students, foreign workers and refugee claimants. The research will advance knowledge of location-specific labour market challenges for temporary residents and help identify required policy interventions.