"You have to stand up for yourself"

To navigate these challenges African teens in this research learned to ‘fi t in’ with their peers while ‘standing up’ for themselves in relation to peers and teachers while drawing on parental supports and African cultural values to develop gendered strategies to overcome diffi culties. [...] We focus less on the barriers and service gaps encountered by African immigrant and refugee youth, patterns that have recently been documented in other Metropolis research (Francis 2010), and more on the ways in which teen migrants from sub-Saharan Africa navigate the multiple and complex transitions encountered as part of settling in Metro Vancouver. [...] In this paper, we are particularly interested in exploring these issues from the point of view of teen migrants to better understand the strengths and strategies drawn on to address the challenges faced. [...] In this context of small numbers and hyper- visibility in a diverse population that is largely European and Asian in origin, the new African diaspora in Metro Vancouver has begun to self-identify as a diverse pan-‘African community’; a community that experiences signifi cant marginalization and racism, while simultaneously building new spaces of be- longing (Creese 2010; 2011; Creese and Weibe, in [...] A recent study of programs and services for African youth in Metro Vancouver identifi es a series of “missing links” between the needs of African immigrant and refugee youth and access to information and services, particularly re- lated to employment, education, and social adjustments that lead to “negative forms of integration, or social exclusion” (Francis 2010,85).