SUMMARY
Organizer:
Yvonne Hébert
University of Calgary
CANADA
yhebert@ucalgary.ca
Description :
Today, globalization augments, complexifies and intensifies networks of interconnections and interdependencies characterizing modern social life. As part of global migration patterns, youth are required to live with others as strangers on a daily basis, while keeping their distances, establishing networks and multiplying contacts. Immigrant youth face unfamiliar languages, spaces, and interaction patterns in unfamiliar schools and cities, while trying to make a place for themselves. The goals of this interdisciplinary workshop are : (1) to examine various corpora of data on the processes, strategies and theories of immigrant youth's identity formation; (2) to consider the concept of connectivity as central to the socio-cultural practices among immigrant youth; and (3) to develop an insightful theoretical framework which holds explanatory power, thus moving beyond descriptive adequacy. Workshop participants consider how adolescents make connections between 'here' and 'there'; how they practice and overcome liminality; how time and space can be extended and compressed; how social relations stretch across distances; how distant connections become immediate and nearby; and whether the mutuality and reflexivity of social and familial relations are essential to making connections in global/local contexts. These concepts are examined as possible bases for a renewed theory of identity and ethnic relations based upon connectivity. This workshop invites international participation from practitioners in the field and researchers with current research projects on identity formation of immigrant youth. Relevant to educational, settlement and citizenship policies, this four-hour workshop is expected to provide insight into the strategic practices of immigrant youth settling into a new country.
Presenters
Morton Beiser, University of Toronto, CANADA Abstract Paper
Victor Glickman, British Columbia Ministry of Education, CANADA (discussant)
Yvonne Hébert, University of Calgary, CANADA (chair) Abstract
Barbara Herzog-Punzenberger, International Centre for Migration Policy Development, AUSTRIA Abstract Paper
Jeanne Kariyo Musuku, École francophone, CANADA Abstract
Nazilla Khanlou, University of Toronto, CANADA Abstract Paper
Yngve G. Lithman, University of Bergen, NORWAYAbstract
Christine Racicot, University of Calgary, CANADA Abstract
Helen Ralston, St. Mary's University, CANADA Abstract
