Named Sponsorship and Newcomer Settlement: Insights from Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program

Named sponsorship allows sponsors to identify the specific refugees they wish to welcome and support, yet very little is known about the human links underpinning naming or how these impact newcomer settlement. Drawing on interviews with sponsors and other stakeholders in Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program, this article offers two contributions. First, it shows that named sponsorship is used by a range of sponsors with diverse relationships to the refugees they name, challenging prevalent assumptions that named sponsorship is used exclusively by family members seeking reunification. Second, within this heterogeneity, we identify four types of named sponsorship and map the distinct impact that each type has on the settlement journey of sponsored newcomers.