Making home and making welcome: An oral history of the New Canadians Centre and immigration to Peterborough, Ontario from 1979 to 1997
- Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Building: Kerr House
Room: Wilson Reading Room
The Frost Centre is pleased to announce the upcoming Master of Arts in Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies thesis defence of Maddy Macnab
Title: Making home and making welcome: An oral history of the New Canadians Centre and immigration to Peterborough, Ontario from 1979 to 1997
Committee:
Prof. Joan Sangster(Co-supervisor)
Prof. May Chazan (Co-supervisor)
Prof. Winnie Lem
Prof. Sedef Arat-Koc (external examiner)
Chair: Prof. Janet Miron
This academic event is open to the public, but seating is limited.
Abstract: While the immigrant settlement sector in Canada has grown exponentially since the 1960s, it remains understudied in migration scholarship. In this thesis, I document an oral history of the New Canadians Centre, the first and only immigrant-serving organization in Peterborough, Ontario. I build on scholarship that examines power dynamics in immigrant settlement work, presenting this case study to offer insights into the politics of immigrant welcome in white settler society. Drawing on interviews and archival research, and employing the analytical concept of home, I investigate the relationship between how differently-located actors have understood and practiced home in Peterborough since the 1970s, and how they have understood and practiced welcome in the context of settlement work. My findings demonstrate that efforts to welcome new immigrants to Peterborough have consolidated as well as challenged normative discourses of home in settler Canada that disadvantage racialized new immigrants and privilege white settlers often represented as “host.” I argue that this false binary between immigrant and host is harmful, inadequate in accounting for the embeddedness of people’s lives and relationships in complex constellations of power, and easily reinforced in immigrant settlement work without deliberate efforts to challenge it. I conclude that accountability to power dynamics in immigrant settlement work is crucial in working toward more equitable practices of welcome and more just visions of home in Peterborough and in Canada.
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Posted on January 19, 2018