Since its beginnings in 1996, the Metropolis Project has created a formidable network of policy professionals and scientific researchers drawn from governments, universities, inter-governmental organizations, think tanks, and non-governmental agencies here in Canada and in over twenty other countries. This network has greatly enlarged the body of knowledge and expertise available to policy and program development experts, has increased sensitivity amongst academics to the needs of government and inter-governmental bodies, and has led to more productive relations with NGOs.

With the maturation of the Project, we are now able to deploy a more powerful policy-research "tool" in our efforts to improve the management of the profound changes wrought by migration and growing diversity. We intend to increase the power of our debates and our discussions through a series of small and highly focused conference workshops. Our experience leads us to believe that the Metropolis Conversation Series will prove to be of significant value, especially to those grappling with policy challenges of immediate concern.

Eschewing traditional means of transferring knowledge from researcher to decision-maker, Metropolis, in this new series of events, creates settings in which senior policy makers and leading researchers can, in complete confidence, engage one another, explore situations or problems, challenge assumptions and probe each others’ expertise, all to advance the policy process and to create the basis for solutions in practice.

The gatherings are small, in the order of fifteen to twenty people, with the participants carefully chosen with the client to effectively meet the task at hand, be it managing the pressures of immigration on social services; managing the public’s acceptance of immigrants and persons of diverse ethnic origins; determining the impact of immigration on social cohesion, on education, on national or local job markets, on housing and neighbourhood development, on trade, on local development, on crime, and so on. Each Conversation is a closed and highly focused meeting promoting candid face-to-face exchanges among individuals who share common interests.

Through the Conversation Series, we are able to bring together a body of expertise that can address strategic interests and discuss issues of importance from a variety of vantage points. Academics from the five Metropolis Centres of Excellence in Canada and from research institutes around the world specializing in migration and ethnic studies can be brought to the discussions, as can policy makers from all levels in Canada and abroad. The Metropolis Conversation Series is a powerful and easy way to take advantage of the network that the Metropolis Project has created. Not only will participants will be able to work intensively with members of this network drawn from fifteen of Canada’s leading universities, from organizations such as the Migration Policy Institute, UNESCO, the European Commission, the Asia-Pacific Migration Research Network, and the International Organization for Migration, but they will be able to develop lasting relations with these organizations for the future.