immigrantchildren.ca

This spring, the Social Planning Council of Ottawa concluded work on “Immigrant children, youth and families: A Qualitative analysis of the challenges of integration”, as part of their Families in Community project.

The report addresses the disconnect when newcomer families feel their parenting and child-rearing methods are not acknowledged/respected and the tension service providers feel about some newcomers who they perceive demonstrate a lack of commitment to early child development.

Next stages in the SPCO Families in Community project will result in:

An analysis of best/good practices for culturally-based family supports by ethno-cultural organizations.

Supports to good/best practices within 8 pilot projects with small ethno-cultural organizations.

A resource kit for mainstream family services based on good practices serving new immigrant families.

The report will be launched at the annual Social Planning Council of Ottawa AGM, May 26, 2011 in Ottawa. For information, contact Helene by May 15 at 613-236-9300 ext. 300 office@spcottawa.on.ca.  Free admission, but donations are welcome.

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 Canadian Association of Family Resource Centres (FRP Canada) has released a special edition of their journal, Perspectives in Family Support with a focus on immigrant families:

In “The Participation of Immigrant Families in the Activities of Family Resource Programs”, Marie Rhéaume reports on a research study conducted in Québéc that examined the issues and “distances” between immigrant mothers and Québécois mothers and found that, overall, family resource centres because of the “values that underlie the work of these community-based organizations, particularly the climate of respect, help build bridges between the two groups”. For more on the study, see here.

In “Taking an Advocacy With Approach”, as opposed to an advocacy for approach, Lianne Fisher argues for the importance of self-reflection of family resource practitioners who work with newcomers to recognize and resolve possible stigmatizing and marginalizing that may occur when practitioners seek to help newcomers.

An excerpt of “Phase 2 of FRP Canada’s Welcome Here Project: A Summary Report of Lessons Learned”, also available on the FRP Canada website welcomehere.ca.

The issue of cultural adaptation and/or interpretation v. simple translation is covered by Betsy Mann in “Reflecting on Issues of Translation and Interpretation”.

Researcher Dr. Judith K. Bernhard writes on “What are the Essential Elements of Valid Research? The Problem of ‘Data’ and their Collection in Cross-Cultural Contexts” from a personal viewpoint as both an immigrant to Canada and now a practicing academic in immigrant-family related studies.

The theme for the 2010 NAME (National Association for Multicultural Education) conference is “Empowering Children and Youth: Equity, Multiculturally Responsive Teaching and Achievement Gaps”. The international conference runs from Nov 4-6, 2010 in Las Vegas NV.

Deadline is April 17, 2010. For more information and to access the online submission form, see the conference website.

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)

The Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) has launched a toolkit on the child’s right to non-discrimination. The toolkit/website provides information, resources, and ideas for advocacy to promote children’s right to non-discrimination. While the focus is age-based discrimination, other forms of discrimination (racism, migration status, etc.) are also addressed.

Call for papers for a conference from the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), as posted on the mnchp-l listserv: Mothering and Migration: (Trans)nationalisms, Globalization, and Displacment. The conference will be held February 18-20, 2010 at the University of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico.

Submissions are welcome from scholars, students, activists, government agencies and workers, artists, mothers, and others who work or research in the area. Cross-cultural, historical and comparative work is encouraged. Topics can include (but not limited to):

Representations/images of mothers and migration and (trans)national issues; globalization of motherhood; empowering migrant mothers; reproduction and movement of mother workers; migrant and (trans)national mothers and capitalism; migrant and (trans)national mothers and activism; public policy issues.

For more information, contact the ARM at arm@yorku.ca or 416.736.2100 ext 60366. Or visit the ARM website. Abstract and bio deadline is Sept 1/09.

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Vol. 10, No. 1 includes the article “They Don’t Like Us”: Reflections of Turkish Children in a German Preschool, by Fikriye Kurban and Joseph Tobin, Arizona State University. From the abstract:

In this article, the authors present multiple interpretations of a transcript of a discussion with a group of Turkish-German girls in a kindergarten in Berlin, Germany. These five-year-old girls make statements suggesting they experience alienation from their non-Turkish classmates and teachers, and the wider German society. The authors argue that the meanings of these statements should not be taken at face value. Instead, they employ interpretive strategies borrowed mostly from Mikhail Bakhtin and interpretive frameworks taken from Judith Butler, and post-colonial theory and Critical Race Theory to suggest that the girls’ utterances can be usefully seen as having a performative dimension and as expressing tensions around immigration that can be found in the larger society.

The Joint Learning Initiative on Children and Ethnic Diversity presents Early Childhood Education in Contexts of Racial and Ethnic Divisions Conference, April 29/09 at Ghent University, Belgium.

“The conference will consist of three to four round table discussions with the experts on common strands about delivering programs of early childhood education in contexts of ethnic division. The experts will meet two days prior to the conference to discuss these strands and will continue their discussion with the audience. Consequently, there will be no programm with distinct individual key-note speeches. Rather, participants will be able to follow in-depth discussions and participate in them”.

Some of the invited experts include representatives from Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, Hebrew University, UNICEF/OSI/REF, University of Melbourne and the Bernard van Leer Foundation.

The US-based Society for the History of Children and Youth is holding an online discussion through their listserv, H-Childhood. Responses will help shape the next Society for the History of Children and Youth newsletter.

Facilitators have posted two general questions that they hope will spark a good discussion. Here are the questions:

1. What role did race and ethnicity in particular (along with class, gender, age, and region) play in the lives of children and youth of color in history? More pointedly, did race and ethnicity make for or lead to fundamentally different experiences of childhood for children and youth of color as compared to their white counterparts?
2. Why is it important (if you think it is) to study children and youth of color in history? Will this work change our understanding of the history of childhood and youth in fundamental ways? If so, how so?

Discussion ends April 3rd.

March 21 is International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. A few key resources for this initiative are:

United Nations/UNICEFs Cyberbus

UNESCO

Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Multiculturalism Program