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Jennifer M Hyndman

Jennifer M Hyndman

Professor, FRSC

Credentials

PhD Geography, University of British Columbia
MA Sociology, Lancaster University
BA Sociology & English, University of Alberta

Research Keywords

Geographies Of Violence; Forced Migration; Humanitarian Emergencies; Migration Politics; Refugee Settlement In Canada.

Contact Information

4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

416 736 2100

jhyndman@yorku.ca 

https://jhyndman.info.yorku.ca/

Research Interests

My research traverses political, economic, urban, cultural and feminist dimensions of migration, focusing on people’s mobility, displacement, and security. I am particularly concerned with the dynamics of conflict and disaster that create refugee-migrants, as well as international humanitarian responses to such crises. The books I’ve published examine, for example, the highly spatialized power relations of managing human displacement; dual disasters – or the intersection of conflict with the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka and Aceh, Indonesia, the ways in which violence is gendered, racialized, and sexualized in war zones; and the embodied geopolitics of containment that characterizes human displacement across world regions. My work connects these globalized and usually urban landscapes of displacement with their local expression through geographies of refugee settlement (and exclusion) in the global North. Specifically, I contribute to critical policy studies of refugee-migrant research and immigration policy in Canada.

Research Projects

2024-2028 “Refugee dreams, small town realities: Interrogating the ruralization of refugee resettlement to smaller centres in Canada”; P.I. Hyndman on SSHRC Insight $238K;

2023-2025 “Slaughterhouse Geographies: Comparing the integration experiences of refugee workers in Canadian Meatpacking Towns”, Insight Development Grant, Hyndman co-app; PI B. Bragg, $69K.

2018-2025 “Civil Society and the Global Refugee Regime,” SSHRC Partnership Grant, Hyndman co-applicant; J. Milner P.I. $2.5M.

2020-2022 “COVID-19 Among Meatpacking Workers: Documenting Migration Status and Employment Conditions in Southern Alberta”, SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant, $24,990. 

2020-2022    “Global Approaches to Private Refugee Sponsorship”, SSHRC Connections Grant, P.I. Bond (UOttawa), Co-App Hyndman, $25,000.

2017-2021    “Probing private refugee resettlement in Canada”, SSHRC Insight Grant, Hyndman P.I.; $181,198.

2016-2021 “Refugee integration and long-term health outcomes in Canada”; CIHR Hyndman co-applicant; PI M. Hynie $1.35M.

2019-2021 “Bordering Mistrust: The Impact of Refugee Reception Discourses”, SSHRC Insight, P.I. Kyriakides, Collaborator J. Hyndman, $165,000.

2016-2020 “The sponsor’s perspective: motivations, expectations and experiences of private sponsors”, SSHRC Rapid Response co-app; PI A. Macklin $25,000.

2019-2020 “Interrogating Integration”, SSHRC Connections Grant, P.I. Hynie, Co-App Hyndman, $25,000.

2018-2019 “Alternative Solutions to Refugee Protection”, SSHRC Connections Grant, P.I. Hyndman, $24,720

2016-2017 “Ethical guidelines for research with Syrian refugees”, SSHRC Rapid Response Grant, collaborator; PI C. Clark-Kazak $20,000.

2015-2017 “Building Bridges across Social and Computational Sciences: Using Big Data for Humanitarian Aims” SSHRC PDG, S. McGrath P.I., J. Hyndman co-app, $199,500.

2013-2014 “Refugee Knowledge Framework”, Citizenship and Immigration Canada contract, P.I. A. Turegan; JH one of 5 co-investigators, $136,000.

2013-2019 “Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) Consortium”, CIDA/DFATD/Global Affairs grant, $4.4M. P.I. W. Giles, J. Hyndman
(co-investigator).

2011-2016 “Geographies of Migrant Politics, Identity, and Belonging”, SSHRC Standard Research Grant, P.I. Hyndman, G. Pratt co-investigator, $147,000.

Research Output

Hyndman, J. and W. Giles. Living on the Edge: Refugees in Extended Exile, Routledge 2017.

Hyndman, J. Dual Disasters: Humanitarian Aid after the 2004 Tsunami. Sterling VA: Kumarian Press, 2011.

Giles, W. and J. Hyndman (eds.) Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones Berkeley/Los Angeles CA: University of California Press, 2004.

Hyndman, J. Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism Minneapolis MN: Minnesota University Press, 2000.

Articles

Bragg, B. and J. Hyndman (2024) “‘There is no safe place in this plant:’ Refugee workers in the Canadian meatpacking industry and the limits of legal status” Refuge, 40(1): 1-19.

Hyndman, J. (2024) “The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Humanitarian Nationalism in Canada”, Canadian Foreign Policy 30(1): 93-113 DOI: 10.1080/11926422.2023.2219786.

Bragg, B. and J. Hyndman (2023) “Family Matters: Navigating the intentional precarity of racialized migrant and refugee workers in Canadian meatpacking”, Canadian Ethnic Studies 54(3): 9-31. Available at https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/78/article/882879

Hyndman, J., A. Amarasingam, G. Naganathan (2022) “Diaspora Geopolitics in Toronto: Tamil Nationalism and the Aftermath of War in Sri Lanka,” Geopolitics 27 (2): 424-443. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2020.1819248 (Reprinted same title in 2023 in K. Dempsey and O. Myadar (eds.) Making and Unmaking Refugees: Geopolitics of Social Ordering and Struggle within the Global Refugee Regime, Routledge.)

Hyndman, J. (2022) “Geo-scripts and Refugee Resettlement in Canada: Designations and Destinations”, The Canadian Geographer. Available online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cag.12785

Hyndman, J., J. Reynolds, B. Yousuf, D. Demoz, A. Purkey, K. Sherrell (2021) “Sustaining the private sponsorship of resettled refugees in Canada” in Frontiers in Human Dynamics, https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2021.625358

Hyndman, J. and J. Reynolds (2020) “Beyond the Global Compacts: Re-imagining Protection”, Refuge 36(1): 66-74. Available at https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/view/40768/36573

Hynie, M., S. McGrath, J. Bridekirk, A. Oda, N. Ives, J. Hyndman, N. Arya, Y. B. Shakya, J. Hanley, K. McKenzie (2019) “What Role Does Type of Sponsorship Play in Early Integration Outcomes? Syrian Refugees Resettled in Six Canadian Cities”, Refuge 35(2): 36-52.

Hyndman, J. “Unsettling Feminist Geopolitics: Forging Feminist Political Geographies of Violence” Gender, Place and Culture, 26(1): 3-29, 2019.

Macklin, A., K. Barber, L. Goldring, J. Hyndman, A. Korteweg, S. Labman, J. Zfyi “Preliminary Investigation into Refugee Sponsors” Canadian Ethnic Studies 50 (2): 35-58, 2018.

Amarasingam, A., G. Naganathan, and J. Hyndman. “Canadian Multiculturalism as Banal Nationalism”, Canadian Ethnic Studies 48 (2): 119-142, 2016.

Reynolds, J. and J. Hyndman. “A Turn in Canadian Refugee Policy and Practice”, Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 16 (2): 41-55, 2015.

Khan, A. and J. Hyndman. “Navigating Civil War Through Youth Migration, Education, and Family Separation,” Refuge 31(2): 75-84, 2015.

Mountz, A., A. Bonds, B. Mansfield, J. Loyd, J. Hyndman, M. Walton-Roberts, R. Basu, R. Whitson, R. Hawkins, T. Hamilton, W. Curran. “For slow scholarship.” ACME, International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(4):1235-1259, 2015.

Hyndman, J. “‘War Without Sound’: The Securitization of Development in the Absence of Peace,” Stability: Intl. J. of Security & Dev. 4(1): 14, 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.fa

Khan, A. and J. Hyndman. “Navigating Civil War Through Youth Migration, Education, and Family Separation,” Refuge 31(2): 75-84, 2015.

Hyndman, J. and A. Amarasingam. “Touring ‘Terrorism’: Landscapes of Memory in Post-War Sri Lanka,” Geography Compass, 8 (8): 560-575, 2014.

Brunner, L. R., J. Hyndman, and A. Mountz. “’Waiting for a Wife’: Transnational Marriages and the Social Integration of Refugees”, Refuge 30 (1): 81-92, 2014.

Hyndman, J. (submitted) “Vaccine Geopolitics: in COVID-19 and Similar Futures: Pandemic Geographies (eds.) G.Andrews, V. Crooks, J. Pearce & J. Messina, Springer.

Book Chapters

Biorklund, L. and J. Hyndman (2024) “Decolonizing geopolitics, political economy and embodied violence” in DeGruyter Handbook of Feminist Political Geography, DeGruyter Press.

Amarasingam, A., J. Hyndman, and G. Naganathan (submitted) “Critical Security Studies Meets Intergenerational Transnationalism Beyond the War Zone: The LTTE, Tamil Eelam, and the Tamil Diaspora in Canada” in K. Hörschelmann & A. K. Schlieh (eds.) Edward Elgar.

Reynolds, J. and J. Hyndman (accepted) “Dear Canadian State, What happened to your pledge to keep extended families together in refugee resettlement?”, for D. Nakache, N. Benson and J. Milner (eds.), Canada in the World: Critical Refugee Politics and Policy. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.

Dowler, L., J. Hyndman, J. Sharp (2024) “Feminist Geopolitics”, chapter in Political Geographies in Practice: methods, theories and methodologies. Palgrave, pp. 53-67.

Hyndman, J. (2023) “Thinking without ‘fixing’: towards a critical and feminist political geography,” Northampton, MA: Elgar Forced Migration Handbook, 67-76.

Hynie, M. and J. Hyndman (with Syria Long Term Health Team) (accepted) “Arriving in Canada: Sponsorship and Syrian Settlement after Operation Syrian Refugee”, Operation Syrian Refugees, University of Calgary Press.

Yousuf, B. and J. Hyndman (2023) “Gender, nation, and location: Understanding transnational families in the face of violence” for J. Waters and B. Yeoh (eds). Handbook of Family and Migration, Edward Elgar, pp. 51-67.

Biorklund, L. and J. Hyndman (2023) “Refugee Studies Has Always Been Critical” (Ch. 35) in A. Triandafyllidou (ed) Handbook of Immigration and Refugee Studies Routledge 348-357.

Hyndman, J. (2022) “Re-imagining ‘Refugee’ Protection: Beyond Improving the Status Quo”, in Displacement, Belonging, and Migrant Agency in the Face of Power. (Eds.) T. Mayer and T. T. Tan. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 62-77.

Hyndman, J. (2021) “Vaccine Geopolitics: in COVID-19 and Similar Futures: Pandemic Geographies (eds.) G. Andrews, V. Crooks, J. Pearce & J. Messina, Springer Publishing, pp. 193-196.

Hyndman, J. (2021) “Chapter 2: Global Compacts or Containment? Geopolitics by Design” in H. Al-Harithy (ed.) City Debates: Displacement and Humanitarian Responses, London/New York: Routledge, 15-34.

Reynolds, J. and J. Hyndman (2021) “Chapter 1: Shifting Grounds of Asylum in Canadian Public Discourse and Policy”, (eds.) T. Phu & V. Nguyen, Critical Refugee Studies, U of Toronto Press, 23-54.

Macklin, A., K. Barber, L. Goldring, J. Hyndman, A. Korteweg, S. Labman, J. Zfyi (2020) “Kindred Spirits? Links Between Refugee and Family Sponsorship” in S. Labman & G. Cameron (eds.) Private Sponsorship in Canada (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queens Press), 177-197.

Hyndman, J. and A. Mountz (2020) “Chapter 6 – Seeking Safe Haven in Canada: Geopolitics and Border Crossings after the Safe Third Country Agreement” in (ed.) J. Morrissey, Haven: The Mediterranean Crisis and Human Security (Edward Elgar), 110-128.

Weima, Y. and J. Hyndman (2019) “Humanitarian Government, Refugee Governance and Pushback: global and local approaches”, in K. Mitchell et al. (eds.) Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration. Edward Elgar Press, 30-44.

Hynie, M. and J. Hyndman (with Syria.lth Team) (accepted) “Arriving in Canada: Sponsorship and Syrian Settlement after Operation Syrian Refugee”, Operation Syrian Refugees, Uof C Press.

Hyndman, J. (accepted) “Global Compacts or Containment? Geopolitics by Design”
in H. Al-Harithy (ed.) City Debates: Displacement and Humanitarian Responses.

J. Morrissey, Haven: The Mediterranean Crisis and Human Security (Edward Elgar), chapter 6.

Weima, Y. and J. Hyndman (2019) “Humanitarian Government, Refugee Governance and Pushback: global and local approaches”, in K. Mitchell et al. (eds.) Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration. Edward Elgar Press, 30-44. 

Hyndman, J. (2018) “To Help or Not to Help? Humanitarian Spaces, Power and Government,” in M. Coleman and J. Agnew (eds.) Geographies of Power. Edward Elgar, pp. 380-392.

Hyndman, J. and W. Giles (2018) “Protracted Displacement: Living on the Edge” (eds.) A. Bloch and G. Dona. Forced Migration: Current Issues and Debates. London/NY: Routledge, pp. 74-87.

Hyndman, J. & A. Mountz (2018) “Place, power, metaphor, & geometries of migration”, in M. Werner et al. (eds.) Doreen Massey: Critical Dialogues. Agenda Publishing, pp. 355-366.

Hyndman, J. “‘No More Tears Sister’: Feminist Politics in Sri Lanka,” in Unravelling Marginalisation, Voicing Change: Alternative Visions and Paths of Development, M. Jones, P. Blaikie & C. Brun (eds). Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2014, pp. 155-167.

Hyndman, J. “Human Security and Dual Disasters”, in Hobson, C., P. Bacon, & R. Cameron (eds). Human Security & Natural Disasters. London: Routledge, 2014, 111-126. 

Hyndman, J. “Intersecting Disasters: Eschewing Models, Embracing Geopolitics,” in M. Acuto (ed.) Negotiating Relief: the dialectics of humanitarian space, London: Hurst & Co. and New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, pp. 221-230.

Courses

Course CodeTitle
GEOG 2310Introduction to Refugee and Migration Studies
GEOG 4880Spaces of Conflict, Violence and Power
GEOG 3370Critical Perspectives on International Development
GEOG 3130The Global Economy
GEOG 6060Graduate Seminar: Directed Readings
SOSC 4600Advanced Seminar in Development Studies
DVST 5123/GEOGForced Migration and Refugee Issues
DVST 5120Research Methods for Development