immigrantchildren.ca

The Canadian Association of Family Resource Programs (FRP) sponsors National Family Week. This year’s theme is Strengthening Ties Through Family Traditions. Visit the FRP website for information and resources.

Second Generation Research Dialogues: Comparative Perspectives on Children of Immigrants

Papers are being requested for a two-day workshop on children of immigrants, held at the Center for Metropolitan Studies in Berlin, Jan 16-17/09. Work on second generation immigrants will be discussed along two themes: the second generation and the city & the second generation in school. 

For more information, including the full call description, contact secondgeneration@metropolitanstudies.de or visit the Center for Metropolitan Studies website.

A useful resource from the Centre of Excellence on Early Child Development, and their Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development on 2nd Language acquisition in young children.

An overview or synthesis on second language, including:

2nd-language learning acquisition and bilingualism at an early age and the impact on early cognitive development by Ellen Bialystok

2nd language/bilingualism at an early age with emphasis on impact on early socio-cognitive and socio-emotional development by Elena Nicolaids, Monique Charbonnier and Anamaria Ppescu

Learning to read in a second language: Research, implications and recommendations for services by Esther Geva.

The Globe and Mail published today a story on Immigrants Face Growing Mobility Gap, by their immigration reporter, Marina Jiminez. In the story, Jiminez quotes historian Jack Jedwab, Association for Canadian Studies, who calls for a rethinking of the vertical mosaic in a report he wrote based on findings released last week by Statistics Canada. Jedwab’s report, The Changing Vertical Mosaic: Intergenerational Comparisons in Income on the Basis of Visible Minority Status in Canada, 2006 is listed on the ACS website, but the report is not (yet) posted.

US-based National Black Child Development Institute will hold their 38th annual conference “Our Future: Children in a Global Village” Oct 25-28 in Atlanta, Georgia. Sessions of interest to immigrantchildren.ca readers may include a series of workshops under the category of Cultural Diversity and Culturally Relevant Competence. From the conference website, this description:

As a nation with increasing cultural and linguistic diversity, successfully addressing these issues in the context of our work with children and families, our organizations, and our interactions with colleagues and other professionals, is an important element of quality.  Workshop presentations will address issues that seek to improve our understanding, knowledge, and skills related to cultural diversity and culturally competent practice, including such topics as:

- Bilingual education for early childhood & K-8
- Anti-bias education and anti-racism training
- Culturally-based education
- Teacher preparation for a culturally diverse society
- Effective parental involvement
- Language and literacy for english language learners
- Appropriate assessment for culturally diverse children
- Family values in diverse families.

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

 Call for Papers

What is the relationship between racism, immigration and the privilege and practice of citizenship? How might our understanding of the interactions between these independent yet overlapping processes enable scholars and governments to better comprehend political and cultural pluralism in contemporary societies?

These are the motivating questions undergirding the first international conference of the project on Racism, Immigration and Citizenship (RIC). RIC is a cross-regional, comparative research effort that seeks to identify both general and anomalous forms of interaction between immigration and racism, and their combined effect upon how groups and states shape citizenship laws and practices.

Some of the common questions we seek to address across cases are:

1) How salient are somatic differences within racial classification and codification across societies?

2) What is the role of citizenship criteria and privilege in perpetuating or eliminating racial hierarchy?

3) Do societies with jus soli citizenship policies exhibit fewer indicators of racial inequality than those with jus sanguinis policies?

We seek paper proposals from scholars interested in these and other related questions.  Proposals should include the paper title, the author’s contact information, and an abstract of no more than 300 words. The deadline for proposal submission is December 15, 2008.  Send proposals to: ricconference@gmail.com.

Two recent research reports on immigrant women are:

Metropolis Canada releases Providing Services to Immigrant Women in Atlantic Canada: From the Abstract: “Immigrant women, like women everywhere, suffer violence and look for support to help them deal with it. This article describes some of the findings of research conducted in 2005 and 2006, which found that being an immigrant was a factor not only in immigrant women’s experiences of violence in Atlantic Canada, but also in their access to support services. Immigrant women and the professionals who provide services to them describe some of the barriers they face and conclude that fully funded and coordinated prevention and intervention programs and services to immigrant women are needed in Atlantic Canada”.

Atlantic Metropolis releases Integration Outcomes for Immigrant Women in Canada: A Review of the Literature 2000-2007” From the summary: “…a common thread throughout the literature is the centrality of care-giving or kin work in immigrant women’s lives. The majority of women come to Canada with their spouse or family, as family class or spouses or dependents of economic class immigrants and this has a direct impact on how to best understand immigrant women’s settlement experiences. The authors suggest that this experience is best understood from the perspective of their role and relationships within the family and that make her needs and barriers to integration uniquely gendered. They also suggest that literature about women’s integration should be examined from the perspective of care-giving or kin work as this provides for a more comprehensive picture of why immigrant women’s integration outcomes may be different from that of immigrant men…”.

The Childminding, Monitoring and Advisory Support (CMAS) is holding their annual conference from Nov 13-14/08 in downtown Toronto. The theme this year is Tools for Growth: Supporting the Newcomer Family. The conference will address the resources, practices, activities and connections that build programs and the profession, while facilitating the healthy development of the children cared for in LINC programs.

The conference is funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and jointly sponsored by the Learning Enrichment Foundation and the Toronto District School Board.