Some challenges of contemporary research on ethnic and race relations in Canadian universities

The climate for research funding in Canada has, over the years, shifted from one which supported critical analysis of social institutions, including state funded legal challenges based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and on Aboriginal Land Claims to a climate which has, to be generous, become chilly toward critical social research. There has also been an important shift to the (money saving) promotion – even requirement - of partnerships between researchers and their private and not-for-profit partners, partnerships which are often more viable for profit-making entities than for non-profits, whose resources are already severely stretched. A further shift is toward the favoring of service provision at the expense of research. This paper will examine some of the broad trends within research funding in Canada, with a particular emphasis on how these have impacted on research on ethnic and race relations. It will also consider the impacts on such research of a growing emphasis on targeted research by granting councils, and of the definitions of ‘research productivity’ and ‘quality research’ which are increasingly adopted by universities. While some of these trends are not new, the neoliberal political and economic climate has exacerbated the challenges of doing critical research within ethnic and race relations, particularly to the extent that such research is conceived of and executed with community partners, addressing researchable issues that they have identified as salient.