Over the last three decades, there have been numerous indications that a large part of the sponsorships in the PSR Program are so-called “family-linked sponsorships”. These sponsorships are often initiated by recently arrived newcomers and members of diaspora communities, who seek to sponsor their relatives. Despite their importance for the PSR program, little is known about this type of sponsors: they rarely feature in academic research, policy publications, training materials, or public discourse. In this episode, we focus on the contribution of these "invisible" sponsors to the PSR program and on the challenges they face. Our guest speakers are Biftu Yousuf (PhD candidate at the Centre for Refugee Studies of York University) and Sabine Lehr (Private Sponsorship of Refugees Manager at the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria).

The book chapter of Sabine Lehr and Brian Dyck mentioned in the podcast is titled "'Naming' refugees in the Canadian Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program: diverse intentions and consequences". You can find it in the edited volume "Strangers to Neighbours: Refugee Sponsorship in Context" or watch Sabine's presentation at the book launch event.

See here an article co-authored by Biftu Yousuf, which discusses family-linked sponsorships (Hyndman, J., Reynolds, J., Yousuf, B., Purkey, A., Demoz, D., & Sherrell, K. (2021). Sustaining the private sponsorship of resettled refugees in Canada. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 3, 625358).