In the present age of migration, the influx of immigrants from distant lands leads inevitably to the spatial and social restructuring of cities and regions. It is often accompanied by fears of and hostility towards the newcomers. Nevertheless, in Europe, North America and Japan this influx of immigrants is essential to economic growth. How can immigrants become accepted members of the society of their adopted country? How can strangers become neighbours? What alchemies of political and social imagination are required to achieve peaceful coexistence in the mongrel cities of the 21st century? What philosophies and policies have made integration successful in Canada and how can it be translated into European context? The book tackles an important contemporary issue – the social integration of immigrants in a large metropolis – by way of the detailed case study of one Canadian city. The book provides a large political and legal context which makes this case study comprehensible and inspiring to readers outside Canada.

This book explores social cohesion in rural settlements in western Europe from 700–1050, asking to what extent settlements, or districts, constituted units of social organisation. It focuses on the interactions, interconnections and networks of people who lived side by side – neighbours. Drawing evidence from most of the current western European countries, the book plots and interrogates the very different practices of this wide range of regions in a systematically comparative framework. It considers the variety of local responses to the supra-local agents of landlords and rulers and the impact, such as it was, of those agents on the small-scale residential group. It also assesses the impact on local societies of the values, instructions and demands of the wider literate world of Christianity, as delivered by local priests.

Top World Guild Awards Best Nonfiction Book of the Year What if our neighbors were our friends? When Lynda MacGibbon moved from a small city in eastern Canada to a high-rise apartment in Toronto, she decided to follow Jesus' famous commandment to "love your neighbor" a bit more literally. In the past, she would have looked first for friends at her new job or her new church. This time, though, she decided to look for friends among the strangers who shared her apartment building—her actual neighbors in her new "vertical neighborhood." In this charming and relatable memoir, MacGibbon tells the story of the community that took shape as neighbors said yes to weekly dinners and a writing group, Christmas morning brunch and even a Bible study. It's a story of the simple, everyday risk of reaching out with love to those around us, and of the beauty and messiness of real human relationships. It's a story of the risks—and rewards—of taking Jesus at his word.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year: A deliciously entertaining account of expatriate life in a small village just outside Verona, Italy. Tim Parks is anything but a gentleman in Verona. So after ten years of living with his Italian wife, Rita, in a typical provincial Italian neighborhood, the novelist found that he had inadvertently collected a gallery full of splendid characters. In this wittily observed account, Parks introduces readers to his home town, with a statue of the Virgin at one end of the street, a derelict bottle factory at the other, and a wealth of exotic flora and fauna in between. Via Colombare, the village’s main street, offers an exemplary hodgepodge of all that is new and old in the bel paese, a point of collision between invading suburbia and diehard peasant tradition. It is a world of creeping vines, stuccoed walls, shotguns, security cameras, hypochondria, and expensive sports cars. More than a mere travelogue, Italian Neighbors is a vivid portrait of the real Italy and a compelling story of how even the most foreign people and places gradually assume the familiarity of home. “One of the most delightful travelogues imaginable . . . so vivid, so packed with delectable details.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Explores how medieval towns and cities received newcomers, and the process by which these 'strangers' became 'neighbours' between 1000 and 1500.

A reclusive woman opens up her home to her neighbors in the wake of a devastating earthquake, setting off events that reveal secrets, break relationships apart, and bring strangers together to forge powerful new bonds.

As a leading country in global refugee resettlement, Canada operates a unique program that allows private groups and individuals to sponsor refugees. This innovative approach has received growing international attention, but there remains a need for a more expansive understanding of the sponsorship framework and its potential implications within Canada and across the world. Strangers to Neighbours explains the origins and development of refugee sponsorship, paying particular attention to the unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas it produces for refugee policy. The contributors to this collection draw upon law, social science, and philosophy to bring a more robust and objective perspective on Canada's historical experience with sponsorship into wider conversations about the refugee crisis and resettlement. Together, they present recent cases that exemplify how the model has been applied and how it functions, while also analyzing the challenges that emerge in host-sponsor relations. This volume further examines how sponsorship has been implemented differently in countries such as the United States and Australia. The first dedicated study of refugee sponsorship policy, Strangers to Neighbours assembles leading scholars from a range of disciplines to consider whether Canada's system is indeed a sustainable model for the world.