immigrantchildren.ca

Here’s one of my tweets made during the first (and only) English language debate between the four main party leaders on April 12, 2011:

@immigranttalk ZS Worotynec

Harper doesn’t understand difference between #multiculturalism and Quebec’s #interculturalism & Duceppe not good at explaining #exln41 #db8

12 Apr via web Favorite Reply Delete

Which is odd: Harper’s own Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister, The Honourable Jason Kenney, has been advocating for interculturalism over multiculturalism his entire time in the portfolio, I think.

In any case, it got me thinking: Do I know enough about the difference between interculturalism and multiculturaism? So, I looked for and found some useful resources.

immigrantchildren.ca visitors may already know about an upcoming conference exploring this issue: The International Symposium on Interculturalism/Symposium international sur l’interculturalisme ~ Dialogue Québéc Europe will be held May 25-27 in  Québéc. A description of the symposium:

Under the aegis of Gérard Bouchard, Professor at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and with the support of an array of Québec organizations, and the special contribution from experts of the Council of Europe, this Symposium will be an important forum for participants from Québec and Europe. The main purpose will be to report progress on interculturalism as a model for integration, and specifically for managing ethno-cultural diversity in democratic societies. The interculturalist model already has a long history in Québec, and it attracts growing interest in Europe. Thus, the Symposium will be a dialogue between Québec and Europe on the situation and future of interculturalism.

On the conference website, you’ll find the following – all PDFs:

1. Bouchard, Gérard & Charles Taylor (2008). Building the Future. A Time for Reconciliation. Report. Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles.
2. Council Of Europe (2008). White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue. “Living together as equals in dignity”.
3. Council Of Europe & European Commission (2010). Intercultural cities – Towards a model for intercultural integration.

The steering paper, which provides rationale for the symposium discusses the term “interculturalism” and introduces a new term “integrationism” to avoid having integration (good) associated with assimilation (bad). Fascinating stuff! If anyone goes, please share thoughts, etc.

“In accordance with North American tradition, the concept of integration is used to refer to those mechanisms and processes (of articulation or insertion) through which social bonds are created, including their symbolic and functional foundations. Such mechanisms and processes are of concern to all citizens (whether new or old), and they operate at various levels (individual, community, institutional and State) and on many dimensions (economic, social, cultural, etc.). In terms of culture, it should be noted that the concept of integration, thus defined, is exempt from any assimilationist overtone. In order to avoid confusion, the term integrationism will be used here, when referring to those forms of integration that are not respectful of diversity”.

From The Future of Children listserv:

Nearly a quarter of schoolchildren in the United States are immigrants or the children of immigrants. A substantial percentage of these children, especially those from Latin America, are falling behind in school and as a result, face a bleak economic future.

On April 20, The Future of Children, a joint project of Princeton University and the Brookings Institution, will host an event: Immigrant children falling behind: Implications and policy prescriptions and release the latest issue of its journal. The issue is devoted entirely to several aspects of the status and well-being of immigrant children. An accompanying policy brief proposes a set of policy recommendations that could improve their attainment, including expanding preschool programs, improved English Language Learner instruction, and congressional passage of the DREAM Act to allow undocumented students to attend college.

The event will begin with an overview of the journal and the policy brief by the editors, Marta Tienda of Princeton and Ron Haskins of Brookings. Following the overview, a panel of experts will present arguments for and against the DREAM Act and comment on how the educational achievement of immigrant children can be improved.

After the program, the speakers will take questions from the audience.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 9am -11am, The Brookings Institution, Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC. Info: events@brookings.edu or 202.797.6105.

CUExpo is a conference about how community and university partnerships collaborate together to develop innovative solutions to strengthen communities.

CUExpo2011 will be held May 10-14, 2011 in Waterloo, Ontario Canada. It is expected to draw about 600 people from Canada and around the world who are passionate about the power of community-university partnerships as a vehicle for social change. Students, community leaders, researchers, educators, funders, policy makers and others invested in community-building will be in attendance.

The CU Expo movement began in Canada as a response to individuals involved in community-university partnerships needing a forum to share experiences, strategies and ideas. CUExpo2011 includes several sessions related to immigration, settlement, diversity, multiculturalism and integration (all links open as PDFs):

Wed May 11th ~ Community Voice and Relevance

It takes a village: Training community health workers in the Burundian refugee population using a community-based participatory service learning model.

Training immigrant peer researchers for CBPR on HIV/AIDS in Germany.

Tuberculosis amongst immigrants and refugees at an adult education centre: A community-based participatory research approach.

CBR within an immigrant community.

Cross-cultural lessons of engaging immigrant and refugee families in research and evaluation.

Growing community through urban agriculture: A community-university project involving senior immigrants.

Immigrant cultural values and language barriers as communication class lessons.

Settling, working, and belonging: An innovative and collaborative approach to integrating newcomers.

Churches responding to the immigrant reality in Canada: A national participatory action research project.

Thurs May 12th ~ Partnerships & Collaboration

Building multi-cultural and multi-health system partnership to conduct health research.

Recruiting low-income families into community programmes: Exploring differences in engagement strategies among ethnic groups.

Fri May 13th ~ Action and Change

Immigrant peer researchers and HIV prevention in Germany: The PaKoMi video.

Register now!

immigrantchildren.ca has a birthday coming up! On November 3, 2010, the blog turns three!  And, like most three-year-olds, we like to celebrate with presents! <Update Nov 5th: The only one to enter the contest – DoreenatDMS – wins a copy of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. The other gifts will be presented to the Kitchener Multicultural Centre>.

To reward readers who have participated on the blog, I’m announcing a series of prizes. If you have ever left a comment on this blog and if you can answer 3 questions on immigration and settlement in Canada, three of you will be randomly selected to win one of the following gifts.

The Gifts

1. A copy of a soon to be published book by consultant Dr. Judith Colbert, entitled “Welcoming Newcomer Children: The Settlement Needs of Young Immigrants and Refugees”.

2. A copy of Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival”, a graphic picture book for adults and children about a family’s migration journey (see my post on this outstanding book here).

3. Memorabilia from Pier 21, Canada’s Immigration Museum. Items vary from books, bags and other ephemera.

Eligibility – 3 criteria to meet:

1. You must have posted a comment somewhere on the immigrantchildren.ca blog. NB This means you still have time to be eligible. Get your comments in!

2. You must identify (by full name, government and party affiliation) the last 3 federal ministers of immigration up to, but not including the current Minister, The Honourable Jason Kenney.

3. Finally, name one other website, blog or other social media tool that examines, addresses, advocates for or supports newcomer children and families in Canada.

The contest has now officially launched ~ leave your answers by comment here and be sure you’ve got a comment somewhere else too. The winner will be determined by random draw and announced by end of Nov 5th. All prizes will be shipped by Canada Post. In the event there are no winners, prizes will be donated to the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre.

Promised Land is a series of radio programs profiling “escape” stories of families who came to Canada in search of a better life. Produced by Natasha Fatah, the series includes stories of escapes from Argentina, Checkoslovakia, Eritrea, Honduras, Iran, Uganda, USA, and Vietnam.

In an op-ed on the CBC News website “Coming to Canada: The price that children pay”, Fatah reflects on the issues that immigrant and refugee children face:

“Some children who escape even to a country as seemingly embracing as Canada, are left deeply disturbed from the experience of having to uproot their lives and by the impact on their families”. (Source: CBC News website).

CBC Radio One runs the Promised Land series Mondays, 7:30pm, EDT and Fridays, 9:30am, EDT. You can also watch the series or download podcasts of it at the program website. A worthwhile series overall and immigrantchildren.ca is pleased to see children and youth issues highlighted by Fatah today.

Canada has declared 2010 Year of the British Home Child to acknowledge the child emigration scheme that brought over 100,000 children from Britain to Canada from 1826 to 1939. Under the guise of providing a welcoming home for poor, abandoned and orphaned children, a great many of these children came to Canada and served as farm labourers and domestic servants and endured lives of abuse from the people who acquired them.

On Sept 1, 2010, Canada Post will issue a stamp in recognition of the British Home Child. From the Canada Post catalogue: “The stamp features an image of the SS Sardinian (a ship that carried children from Liverpool to Quebec), a map symbolizing their cross-Atlantic journey, a photograph of a child at work on a farm and one of a rewly arrived Home Child, standing beside a suitcase while en route to a distributing home in Hamilton, Ontario”.

June 21 is National Aboriginal Day

June 24 is Saint-Jean-Baptiste ou fête nationale

June 27 is Canadian Multiculturalism Day

July 1 is Canada Day

It looks like Ryerson University is working to launch a research institute devoted to immigration and settlement issues. Good luck to them. As part of this initiative, they are calling for proposals for a conference entitled “Migration and the Global City”. The conference, a launch to the proposed research centre, tentatively called the Ryerson Institute on Immigration and Settlement (RISS), will be held on the Ryerson campus from October 29-31, 2010.

A call for papers has been released here. Of particular interest to immigrantchildren.ca, conference themes include; Children and Youth; Citizenship, Migration and Identity; Precarious and Temporary Status; and Settlement Services.

The conference will feature a range of activities, including day-trips to local immigrant/settlement locations, a film-documentary screening and art-show, and a possible “CIHR-funded pre-conference on immigrant and refugee children and youth” (Source: Ryerson website). Ryerson – do let us know at immigrantchildren.ca how we can support this important inclusion!

Deadline for abstract submission is June 15, 2010.

The Best Start Resource Centre, Ontario’s Maternal, Newborn and Early Child Development Resource Centre (part of Health Nexus Santé) is holding an event to announce a new series of multilingual resources in eight languages developed for newcomers to Canada who are planning a pregnancy, are pregnant or are new parents.

The event will be held 6-7:30pm on Thurs May 13, 2010 at Oakham House in Toronto. For more information and to rsvp, please contact Ronald Dieleman, 416.408.6910 or r.dieleman@healthnexus.ca.

The eight languages are: Arabic, Filipino, Hindi, Punjabi, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Tamil and Urdu.

Canadian-based researchers working on issues related to age and/or generational relations in the context of migration are invited to join the Refugee Research Network‘s (RRN) working group.

The working group will complement other ongoing initiatives, including the Metropolis Canada priority on Family, Children and Youth.

Some of the activities of the proposed working group include:

• A database of Canada-based researchers
• As part of the RRN website, an online discussion forum and links to other related and relevant online sites, etc.
• Information exchange, through meetings and collaborative research projects
• A 2011 seminar/roundtable, culminating in a working paper series or journal or edited volume(s).

First meeting is scheduled for Wed May 5, 2010 in Hamilton at McMaster University (one day before the CARFMS conference). Details TBD. For more information, contact Christina Clark-Kazak, International Studies, York University, 416.736.2100 x 88106.

Among the showings at Toronto’s annual Hot Docs film festival, running from April 29-May 9, 2010 are:

In the Name of the Family ~ about Aqsa Parvez and her so-called honour killing

Listen to This ~ Pianist Thompson Egbo-Egbo starts a music program at his former school in Toronto’s Jane-Finch community

Babies ~ just babies in settings around the world (also see film website)

Grace, Milly, Lucy … Child Soldiers ~ the lives of Ugandan child soldiers

The Day I Will Never Forget ~ about female genital mutilation in Kenya

Made in India ~ about tourist surrogacy and the reproductive industry in developing countries.

Select sites on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination:

United Nations

United Nations CyberSchool Bus (site for children and youth)

Racism, Stop it! (Canadian federal government site for youth)