(FEM7b) Refugee Practices: Intersectional, Feminist & Other Decolonial Approaches

This session will explore the global dimensions of refugee experiences to counter the western-centric discourses on refugee labels and identities. It will challenge and depart from the hegemonic meanings of refugee identity and foreground the colonial and racial continuities embedded in the refugee discourse. Although the intersectionality lens is already being used by scholars to recognize diverse identities of refugees, intersectionality theories often reflect a western epistemological gaze. While not denying their theoretical contributions, this session proposes expanding the existing intersectionality debates and enriching them with alternative epistemologies and paradigms - emerging from multiple global geo-political scenarios, refugee movements, gendered experiences, asylum policies, refugee politics and subjectivities. Tags: Feminism, Gender, Migration and Immigration

Organizers: Mohita Bhatia, Saint Mary's University, Evangelia Tastsoglou, Saint Mary's University; Chair: Mohita Bhatia, Saint Mary's University

Presentations

Evangelia Tastsoglou, Saint Mary's University

Beyond Western Gaze: Locating Subjectivities of Asylum-Seeking Women in the Eastern Mediterranean

This paper derives from an empirical study of asylum-seeking women survivors of gender-based violence arriving through the Eastern Mediterranean route to Greece in the second decade of the 21st century. Through qualitative in-depth interviews of 20 key informants and 35 women arriving from diverse African and Middle-Eastern countries, the journeys to “safety” in the EU are being focused to investigate and interrogate the ways in which the agency and resilience of these women defies stereotypical Western assumptions about gender and refugees from generalized or gender-based violence. Non-conventional narratives, with unexpected twists in harrowing journeys, camps and transit spaces or “settlement” in urban jungles are foregrounded and analyzed to reveal the humanity and subjectivities of these women who are neither passive victims nor heroic survivors, as the Western gaze portrays them. Using feminist, intersectional and de-colonial perspectives we present the GBV asylum-seeking women in Greece as human beings, sometimes fighting and resisting, but also aquiescing, negotiating, connecting with others and recruiting allies, making strategic choices under highly constraining circumstances and limited options, adapting and changing themselves in the process. Instances of racism and legal status discrimination are considered from the viewpoint, experiences and identities of women while their intersections with gender and social class are discussed.

Safia Amiry, McGill University; Narjes Hashemi, McGill University

Journey of Resilience: Afghan Women's Educational Mobility Amid Forced Migration

Following the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban regime in 2021, Afghans, particularly Afghan women, were compelled to migrate. Upon arriving in their host countries, Afghan women demonstrated unwavering determination to assimilate into their new environments. Their commitment to education became evident as they actively pursued academic opportunities. However, this journey has proven to be far more challenging than anticipated. Similar to many of their other international student counterparts, Afghan women confront significant challenges, heightened by their countrys war and suffering. Cultural adaptation to a new environment, gender-based barriers, linguistic and communication roadblocks, and financial constraints are only a few examples. Afghan womens experiences are notably diverse, marked by intersectional complexities. Therefore, it is imperative to investigate how these experiences may shape and reshape thier identities within international education mobility, aiming to create a more inclusive and equal environment for all students. This qualitative research investigates the educational mobility of Afghan women in diaspora, particularly those who have experienced forced migration following the Talibans takeover of Afghanistan in 2021. The study delves into how their intersectional identities, including gender, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status, shape their educational experiences. These Afghan womens educational journeys are further complicated by the challenges posed by political and economic conditions in refugee communities/host countries, which limit their access to education and employment opportunities while increasing the risk of discrimination and violence. Using an autoethnographic approach, we leverage our personal experiences as Afghan women who immigrated to Canada during two distinct Taliban occupation eras. Through self-reflection, journaling, and daily life observation, we provide nuanced insights into the multifaceted challenges faced by Afghan women during their forced displacement and migration. The findings offer a nuanced understanding of the experiences of Afghan women in the diaspora and their challenges within international education. These insights contribute to fostering a more diverse and inclusive discourse on international education.

Adela Kabiri, Memorial University

Afghan Refugee Women's Struggles of Adaptation in their Everyday Lives in the Canadian Context

This research seeks to determine how Afghan women newcomer refugees in Canada navigate their experience of the change of cultural context from Afghanistan to the new host environment. The structure of Afghan families privileges the dominance of men and elders. Even before the 2021 crisis, Afghan women had already been facing pressures due to the prevailing laws in families that forced them to respect patriarchal decisions. Connell claimed that those benefiting from inequalities have an interest in defending them. Those who bear the costs are interested in ending them. Considering the context of the Afghan family and Connells claim, potentially, the cultural adaptation of Afghan women in the context of Canada may conflict with the interests of other family members. So, there is a possibility of cultural resistance in this case, when a family may create limitations for Afghan women in their social interactions in the Canadian context. Reconciling the new cultural context with expectations from their families can keep them in a long-term cultural shock that includes a flurry of emotions, including excitement, anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty. The U-curve theoretical model for cultural adaptation shows that migrants go through fairly predictable phases—anticipation, cultural shock, and adjustment—in adapting to a new cultural situation. However, the duration of passing each stage and how to pass it can be different among groups. Based on these strong cultural differences between Afghanistan and Canada. The cultural adaptation of Afghan women in Canada requires a reconceptualization of values, including gender stereotypes. Gender theorists demonstrate that gender constructs and performances are constituted in concrete, historically changing, and unequal social relationships. There are reasons for resistance and tangible barriers to the redefinition of concepts and cultural adaptation of Afghan women in Canada, which can put these women in particularly difficult situations that they must navigate in their daily lives. Newly arrived Afghan women in Canada faced strong patriarchy and traditionalism in their cultural experience. These limitations and inequalities existed not only at home but also in the social organizations they faced (such as school, medical care, and so on). Patriarchy and traditionalism may have been institutionalized in their own beliefs, too. They may be surprised to find judgment from their female Canadian counterparts despite the clear gender disparities that still exist in Canada. All these conflicting experiences make the process of cultural adaptation difficult for them and intensify and extend the cultural shock. Therefore, this research seeks to know how these women navigate the differences between their past cultural context and the host environment in Canada. Based on a qualitative approach, I will conduct semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 60 Afghan women newcomers to Canada (who arrived after August 2021) in the four biggest Canadian cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary) to understand how newly-arrived Afghan immigrant and refugee women in Canada navigate their cultural adaptation to a completely different context. The findings of this research will show the position of their collectivist, patriarchal, traditionalist, and religious culture in the adaptation process to the individualist, diverse, secular, and modern host environment.

Riann Lognon, University of Calgary

Co-designing and Documenting a Community Garden with Newcomer Youth

In this paper, we present how a community garden co-designed with 15 newcomer youth of color became a site for anti-racist storywork, and reimaginings of homes and gardens left behind as part of a community-engaged research initiative - the Youth Anti-Racism Integration (YARI)-Collective. YARI-Collective is a critical intersectional collaborative research project dedicated to centering the lived experiences of immigrant and refugee newcomer youth to re-imagine pathways towards more equitable futures in their resettlement journeys. Applying a Southern theoretical framework that acknowledges the geopolitical and social histories shaping the circumstances of the youths’ migration (Espiritu and Duong, 2018), this paper seeks to push beyond the paradigm of ‘culturally appropriate’ programming in community organizations and examine the potential decolonial and non-neoliberal aspects of community gardening with newcomers by creating a co-designed land-based project as a conduit for anti-racist and generative storytelling (Banerjee and Connell 2018, Banerjee et al., 2022). Throughout the season, we engaged in co-design as a methodology, in which participating newcomer youths’ voices were centered as we co-generated a gardening space. The co-design process fostered equitable participation among researchers and newcomer youth through iterative designing that is meaningful for all collaborators within their lifeworlds, expertise, and disciplinary focus. Centering a Southern feminist ethics of care (Banerjee et al., 2022), namely through the framework of deep care, we envisioned gardening work and the garden space as a site to express and negotiate individual and collective experiences. Banerjee et al. (2022) ground the concept of deep care in the care ethics and care labor taken on by marginalized communities in India because of the majoritarian oppression and disenfranchisement they experience. Deep care then is a praxis that orients care towards social and political action to center the voices and concerns of those who are invisibilised through majoritarianism. As research-facilitators, we attended closely to the youth narratives of forced migration and transnational displacement, iteratively generating ideas of “what works” for the youth participants and then collaborating on embodied engagements (for example, watering plants, sowing seeds and herbs, harvesting) and representational activities (for example, creation of artworks, creative re-imagination of the physical space) in and about the garden space. In the process of creating a garden together, the lives of the newcomer youth were reflected in the garden as it grew into a living representation of their stories of migration, their memories of homes and gardens in their homelands, and their hopes for our shared futures. To demonstrate how co-designing facilitated this storywork, we will present an analysis of the documentary film “Days in Shade and Sun”, shot in the garden throughout the season by team members in collaboration with newcomer youth, that capture the newcomer youths’ profound explorations of migration, identity, and belonging through stories shared during designing and growing of the garden. The explorations offer axiological re-orientations (Bang et al., 2016) from the perspectives of newcomer immigrant and refugee youth of color to what it means to belong to a community garden in the Global North. As explicated through the framework of deep care, these re-orientations demonstrate ways in which the various embodied engagements, representational activities and the storywork associated with the garden counter systematic erasures of subjectivities of the marginalized youth of color and center dignity and solidarity in spaces typically associated with a sense of othering.

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Non-presenting authors: Megha Sanyal, University of Calgary; Santanu Dutta, University of Calgary; Pallavi Banerjee, University of Calgary; Pratim Sengupta, University of Calgary; Newcomer Youth Research Team, University of Calgary