“Engaging the Canadian Diaspora, Youth Social Identities in a Canadian Border City” in McGill Journal of Education, 44 (3)
Abstract This paper is based on qualitative interviews undertaken with immigrant youth of African descent in Windsor, Ontario; it describes their sojourner lives across geographic borders and their final settlement in Windsor. The paper also offers narrations of the activities that enabled them to formulate friendships and the barriers and facilitators to the development of friendships across races. Critical findings reported in this paper reveal the ways that youth use resources in their travels to construct and negotiate their identities and to formulate new friendships. An important resource used by the majority of the youth was that of an imagined homeland, which consequently impacted on how they viewed and acted on the racial boundary critical in the formation of friendships in the Diaspora.
Uzo Anucha is an Associate Professor in York University’s Department of Social Work and the founding director of the Applied Social Welfare Research and Evaluation Group. Her work and research interests include homelessness and under-housing; immigration and diversity; community-based research; critical positive youth development; social work; international social work.
Other publications from this author include:
- “Growing New Roots: The Housing Experiences of Racialized Newcomers in a Second -Tier Canadian City” in Canadian Social Work– Special Issue on the Settlement and Integration of Newcomers to Canada (2014)
- “Negotiated challenges in the workplace: Immigrant women’s views and experiences of employment in Canada”: Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 27 (4), 420-434 (2012)
- “Housed but Homeless? Negotiating Everyday Life in a Shared Housing Program for Homeless People” in Families in Society – A Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 91 (1), 67-75 (2010)
- “The Challenges and Possibilities of Re-visioning Social Work Education in Africa” in New Directions in African Education: Issues in Curriculum, Pedagogy, Policy and Access (2009)
- “Increased racial group breast cancer care and survival differentials in America: Historical evidence consistent with a health insurance hypothesis, 1975 to 2001” in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, 113, 595-600 (2009)
- “Trans-nationalism, social identities and African youth in the Canadian diaspora” in Social Identities, 15 (2), 227-242 (2009)
- “Exploring a New Direction for Social Work Education and Training in Nigeria”, Social Work Education – The International Journal, 27 (3), 229-242 (2007)
- “When a Bed is Home: The Challenges and Paradoxes of Community Development in a Shared Housing Program for Homeless People” in Canadian Review of Social Policy (58) – Special Edition on Canadian Homelessness, 62-83 (2006)