cover image: I am Canadian" : Challenging stereotypes about young Somali Canadians

Premium

20.500.12592/fbw24s

I am Canadian" : Challenging stereotypes about young Somali Canadians

11 Jan 2013

But integration is a two-way street: it entails the willingness of new Canadians to embrace their new home and — equally signifi cantly — the willingness of the wider society to lower the barriers to their becoming active and productive members of their adopted home. [...] The perception exists that the Somali Canadian community has failed to integrate into the wider soci- ety to an unusual degree; that this is the fault of the community itself; and, moreover, that this failure represents an alarming and growing threat to Canadian security in the form of young people who have been lured to the radical extremism of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab movement in southern [...] It relies on both the willingness of new Canadians to embrace their new home and — equally signifi cantly — the willing- ness of the wider society to lower barriers to participation and to ease the process of becoming a pro- ductive member of one’s adopted home. [...] Rather, I consider these interviews — every one about inte- gration into the wider society — to be windows through which to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Canada as an adoptive home and diasporic space.2 The questions that I asked and the way I formulated them were informed by classes that I teach in di- aspora studies at the University of Toronto and by my interactions with hundreds o [...] The fi rst, which I call “internal integration,” involves an individual’s weaving of a belief set acquired in the birth country or parental household with that of the adoptive home in an ongoing rene- gotiation of identity and reevaluation of beliefs, attitudes and perspectives on everything from food to clothing to friendship to religion.
education politics school somalia discrimination canada culture islam law racism religion somalis further education society religion and belief maher arar al-shabaab al-shabaab (militant group) hijab children of immigrants immigrant children teenage immigrants mujahideen islamic courts union transitional federal government harakat al-shabaab

Authors

Berns-McGown, Rima

ISBN
9780886452964 9780886452957
Pages
32
Published in
Canada

Related Topics

All