Panel 1: Law, criminality, and the narratives of the State around refugee issues (Friday, April 27 9:30-10:50 a.m., Room: Accolade West 303)
Carly Gordyn, Deakin University
The international refugee regime between Australia and Indonesia: Criminalising asylum seekers for the purpose of national interest
The international refugee regime was designed by states to manage the problem of refugees. There are three essential elements to this regime: the body of law, the definitions embedded in the law, and actors. These actors, especially states, are able to manipulate the body of law in order to serve their own interests. Consequently, the very states that created the international refugee regime have hindered the protection of refugees. This article investigates the ways in which states use domestic and regional policies in order to subvert the international refugee regime, and proposes a theory for reform to ensure refugees receive protection. It uses the state of the Refugee Convention in Australia and Indonesia as a case study. Australia and Indonesia’s bilateral efforts to control asylum flows have focused on people-smuggling, effectively criminalising asylum seekers. Their focus on how asylum seekers cross borders, and not on the protection needs of the people, enables Australia and Indonesia to maintain strict asylum policies such as mandatory detention. This case study illustrates how signatory states can breach the Refugee Convention to suit domestic political ends, and how policies can be transferred between states. First, this article describes the international refugee regime and its key principles. Second, it evaluates the extent to which these goals are met in Australia and Indonesia. Finally, it offers an explanation as to why this is the case, and a normative theory for reform.
Carly Nyst, Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute
Demonised and detained: the “people smuggler” in Australian media and courts
For the past decade, the arrival by boat of people seeking asylum in Australia has dominated the political discourse, saturated headlines, and captured public fears , highlighting the prevailing anti-Islam attitudes in Australian society. Feeding off and fuelling public hysteria, the media has supported a government rhetoric which overstates the extent of the issue and casts asylum seekers arriving by boat – “boat people” in the Australian psyche – as “queue jumpers” and potential threats to security. The refugee status determination process sees thousands of asylum seekers detained for years at a time. Particularly vitriolic attitudes have been reserved for the fishermen and crew, labeled “people smugglers,” who ferry asylum seekers to boat from Indonesia. Former Prime Minister Kevin called these young men, most of whom hail from impoverished communities, “the absolute scum of the earth,” with public opinion and political discourse following suit. The result is the Deterring People Smuggling Act 2011 (Cth), passed in December 2011, which amended migration legislation to, inter alia, impose a five year mandatory term of imprisonment for those found guilty of aggravated people smuggling (which offence involves smuggling five or more people into Australian territory). The legislation completely disregards the dominant international conceptualization of people smuggling, which involves a system of institutionalization networks with complex profit and loss accounts that facilitates movement of people between origin and destination countries, and instead targets the disadvantaged fishermen and boat crews, many of whom received as little as $15.00 as payment for their services. This paper will seek to argue that the regulatory system which polices and punishes “people smugglers” – and the media which sustains their stigmatization – completely ignores the reality of asylum, and the stories of the men and children who, with little compensation or knowledge of the implications of their actions, facilitate asylum arrivals by boat. Young, disadvantaged, exploited Indonesian fishermen are being cast as highly organized transnational criminals, and courts are stripped of their discretion to recognize the circumstances of those that they are forced to sentence for people smuggling offences. This paper will expand upon the role that the narratives of people smugglers play in the media and in the courts in the context of the people smuggling legislation and the public attitudes which support it.
Jessica Anderson, York University
State cooperation and conflict on mainstreaming two different constructions of refugee issues into the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council: 2006-2012
The existence of refugees as persons with a well-founded fear of persecution is, by definition, linked to violations of various human rights. The question has often been raised of how international human rights mechanisms can be used to complement other modes of refugee protection and how the two should be streamlined. This question is particularly pertinent because, although the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is mandated in Article 35 to supervise the implementation of the 1951 Convention by states parties, this treaty differs from most other international human rights treaties in that it has no formal oversight mechanism or international complaints procedure. Therefore, it can become a matter of last resort to use the UN human rights mechanisms as an attempt to ensure states’ compliance with their obligations to protect refugees both under the 1951 Convention and under other human rights treaties. Beginning in the 1990s, the UN human rights machinery began to acknowledge more explicitly that it had a role to play in refugee protection and in cooperation with the UNHCR. Since 1993, the UNHCR has been advocating mainstreaming human rights principles in all areas of its work and engaging with UN human rights mechanisms to promote the systematic inclusion of refugee issues on their agendas. Of course, even the UN human rights mechanisms are often subject to the dilemmas of conflicting political interests and legal obligations. It is in order to explore these political dimensions of human rights enforcement that I have decided to examine the Human Rights Council, a political body, and whether it has made progress in promoting compliance with refugee protection obligations. In this essay, I will first discuss key conceptual debates surrounding the interplay between refugee protection and human rights, including the evolving construction of ‘refugee issues’ and of the accompanying UNHCR mandate, beginning from traditional asilic dilemmas to current holistic prevention approaches, and how this transformation fits with realist and functionalist theories of international cooperation. I will then offer a brief overview of the Human Rights Council mechanisms, followed by three case studies of how different refugee issues have been addressed therein. For each of these case studies I will examine the interaction between states and other participants that took place during the process and the results and response in terms of action taken on the refugee issue at stake. Finally, I will suggest that when examining ‘expanded,’ country-of-origin refugee issues, such as prevention of root causes or promotion of safe return, states tend to behave in a more cooperative, functionalist manner, perhaps because their common interest is to avoid responsibility for potential refugee flows. However, when dealing with traditional, Convention-oriented refugee issues of asylum, states react in a realist attempt to protect their directly threatened sovereignty. The main question I wish to answer in this paper is whether the comprehensive mainstreaming of both these types of refugee issues into HRC procedures is, in fact, an effective way to offer realistic protection solutions to refugees.
Panel 3: The narratives of humanitarianism, charity, and the displaced (Friday, April 27, 2:00pm.-3:45 p.m., Room: Accolade West 303)
Silas W. Allard, Independent Scholar
Reimagining the asylum narrative: Travelling from charity to duty through stories from the desert
The narrative that grounds the asylum policy of the United States portrays refugees as passive objects of external forces. This narrative emerges from the complex interplay of exceptionality and victimization that characterizes the legal status and media imagery of the refugee.It isthen read back onto the asylum seeker through a supererogatory asylum policy that isunable to recognize the moral demand made by the refugee Other. This paper seeks to challenge the policy of asylum as charity by interrogating alternative narratives grounded in religious traditions. In these narratives–drawn from the Hebrew Bible story of the Exodus and the Qu’ranic story of the Hijra–flight from oppression is conceived as an act of moral agency. In these alternative narratives, the refugee’s capacity as Other to make a moral demand on the Self emerges. An asylum policy informed by these alternative narratives needs must question its supererogatory assumptions. This paper seeks to pose those questions. To this end, part one explores the failure of the dominant narrative by examining how the norms and conditions it imposes on the asylum seeker’s subjectivity limit the possibility of moral agency and encourage the notion of asylum as charity. Part two addresses the possibility of alternative narratives, by engaging the Exodus and Hijra stories, and the implications for rethinking asylum policy. Woven through the paper is a conversation about the constraints on political imagination in secular democracies and whether there is a need or possibility of exploring new political landscapes.
Chizuru Nobe Ghelani, York University
In/justice in refugee advocacy
Refugee advocates have long used the power of narratives by, around and about refugees in order to fight for human rights of refugees and people who are forcibly displaced. While their humanitarian efforts have indeed made positive changes in the lives of people who are forcibly displaced, they have also constructed the particular knowledge of refugees through multiple discursive practices. This paper will critically examine the power dynamics within the discursive practices of the refugee advocacy in Canada, with particular attention to the identity formation. Using my own experiences as a refugee advocate, I will examine how refugee advocacy becomes complicit in reproducing refugees as the Other and argue that refugee advocacy is a contested site for both justice and injustice. In conclusion, possible directions and challenges for future refugee advocacy are discussed.
Anh Ngo, York University
Contestations played out along lines of available discourses of good refugees, multiculturalism and community tolerance within the Vietnamese Diaspora
The proposed topic of this paper is to reveal the contested identities and representations of a former refugee group in Toronto. I wish to contribute to the disruption of the colonial and cold war epistemology used in viewing the relations of a refugee group within a host nation, specifically the Vietnamese in Canada. To do so, I will review the site of contested relations of power in friction as played out in the planning of the annual Mid Autumn Festival as a case illustration, using the participant observations of planning meetings and committee memos as my data. I will explore the discourses utilized by the organizing committee in this difficult negotiation utilizing what is available as articulated by the works of postcolonial scholars on the making of good Vietnamese refugees, immigration in Canada with respect to the white colonial settler imaginations of multiculturalism and tolerance, and discourses on tolerance of inter-community oppressions for the sake of overall community cohesion and presented image. This case study is one that reveals the complicated narratives of a particular group in Toronto – complicated by their identities as former refugees and immigrants; as former allies and enemies to a Cold War to Canada as they work to contest and perpetuate power and dominance in their representation and identity in Canada.
Akintunde Smith Adebayo, Independent Scholar
Awareness and intervention of human trafficking in Malaysia
Panel 4: Securitization, refugee determination, discourse, and the narratives of the displaced (Saturday, April 28th, 9:40 a.m.-11:10 a.m., Room:Accolade West 303)
Harini Sivalingam, York University
Canadian humanitarianism and the construct of the good refugee: A case study of the Tamil boat arrivals
This paper will explore how national narratives of protectionism and humanitarianism imbedded in Canadian refugee policy contribute to the construction of the “good refugee” and the “bad refugee”. Canada’s image as a safe haven for refugees, produces the image of the deserving refugee in contrast to the undeserving refugee. This narrative casts the Canadian state as the hero (or protector) and the refugee must fit a pre-determined script of what it means to be a refugee. The refugee’s narrative must conform to what is expected by Western definition of refugee (at the initial processing state through the Personal Information Form, as well as at the IRB hearings during oral examination, and if necessary at the various levels of court during appeals). According to this narrative script, the refugee is also subjected to expectations of how they should respond to crisis and trauma in their homeland (i.e. wait at a refugee camp for the UNHCR to rescue them, rather than take proactive measures to leave their homeland). This analysis also reveals gendered roles, as the nation state is seen as the protector and hero (masculinized role), while the good refugee is seen as the damsel in distress (the feminized role of a woman in need of protection). Thus, refugees that are proactive in trying to leave their homeland (i.e. using human smugglers to escape their circumstances) are seen as outside the conception of the “good refugee” in need of protection. This analysis will primarily draw from the discourse around the arrival of Tamil migrants via the MV Ocean Lady (2009) and the MV Sun Sea (2010).
Tanya Aberman, York University
Unwelcomed: Gendered pathways to precarious status in the Canadian refugee determination system
(Im)migrants are all too often associated with misconceptions and metonymic associations; and narratives have been increasingly circulated which construct “irregular” arrivals as opposed to the citizen, as an “affront to state sovereignty” (De Genova, 2010; 39). Asylum seekers in particular have been marked as threatening and undesirable Others in recent Canadian policy discourse, creating a false dichotomy between “bogus” and “genuine” refugees. Articulation of what a “genuine” refugee is, and how refugeeness should be performed, has relied on strictly Western notions of femininity, masculinity and victimhood. Failure to conform in these ways has had important consequences in producing pathways to precarious status and marking certain bodies as “bogus”. This paper will problematize the category of (im)migrant and provide a focus on the Canadian refugee determination process, which will enable a clear understanding of one highly politicized and debated pathway to citizenship, or just as likely, the loss of status. It is a highly gendered, racialized and classed process, with intersecting sites of oppression experienced from the initial persecution, through the migratory route, to the claim of asylum. Within the determination process, the preconceived ideas about the racialized and orientalized ways asylum seekers should perform their gender and their fear within their narratives can have significant impacts on the adjudication of their claim. Moreover, the current political climate and expected changes to the system will make this process even more difficult, creating barriers to arrival and obstacles within the determination, and thus making the likelihood of loss of status ever-present.
Ifrah Abdillahi, York University
Somali Refugees and the War on Terror
Knowledge and power are first and foremost important in determining which narratives will dominate and in the case of Somalia this has real implications for the lived realities of those caught in the crossfires of power relations. Between the attacks by the Al-Shabaab militia group (regardless of whether their ties to Al-Qaeda are real or exaggerated) and the U.S participation in exacerbating the 20-year long conflict, the cause and effect of this regions instability cannot be understood outside of the new world orders investment in policing and punishing people worldwide. The work of this paper will be through an anti-imperialist feminist lens, which makes visible the role the war on terror has played in policing and criminalizing the Somali refugee population in Kenya. In her anthology Global Lockdown, Julia Sudbury extends an understanding of lockdown to connect transnational practices of empire-building and neoliberalism. Her theory on Lockdown, offers us a way of examining the Somalia refugee situation in Dadaab through an argument which connects spaces of confinement such as prisons and jails to refugee camps. This paper will examine the war on terror in relation to US intervention into Somalia and the affect this continues to have on enlarging the number of forcibly replaced Somalis.
Panel 5: Agency, resiliency and alternative narratives of the displaced
(Saturday, April 28th, 11:20 a.m.-12:15 p.m., Room: Accolade West 305)
Jonathan Porter, University of Toronto
Just we look for peaceful life: Refugee decision making in the transit experience
The concept of agency with respect to forced migrants is a disputed topic. Specifically, the degree to which migrants have an ability to choose migration routes, travel methods or destinations has formed a critical debate informing refugee status determination procedures. This qualitative study is based on thirty six interviews held with refugees and asylum seekers residing in Botswana, seeking to add the voice of forced migrants into debates concerning refugee agency. It presents narratives of the circumstances in which refugees fled and chronicles their subsequent journeys seeking to identify key factors that influence, restrict or facilitate decision making during transit. The spontaneity of events that propel migrants out from their homes and the resulting lack of preparedness preclude the ability to make informed decisions on travel routes. The narratives specifically articulate the monetary costs of forced migration, underlining the importance of access to financial capital in securing immediate needs in transit. Ultimately, access to cash allowed the use of smugglers who facilitated the crossing of dangerous borders or long distances. Asylum seekers often ceded a significant amount of agency to smugglers who proved to be critical agents for paving migration paths and ultimate destinations. Narratives also illustrate the meaning of refugee status in Botswana and other countries of asylum with similar, unfriendly refugee policies. The study suggests that decisions in transit are made to guarantee immediate physical protection but that, upon receiving refugee status in severely restrictive host countries, goals for livelihoods dominate refugee decision making and future migration decisions.
Lauren Spring, Extant Jesters
“Yes, and…”: Transcending the ‘incredible’ through humour after torture. A case study with refugees at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture
Proponents and critics of alternative and post-development perspectives have, over the past three decades, offered significant and fiery critiques of the modernist development project. Their views have helped shape both the methodology and the structure of this study. Bringing together the fields of theatre and development, this arts-based, participatory research seeks to explore the relationship between humour and resilience in the lives of refugees who have experienced torture. This research is theoretical, empirical and
participatory in nature and is based in large part on a case study conducted with refugees at the Canadian Centre For Victims of Torture in Toronto, who, for 10 weeks in the summer of 2011, participated in improv theatre workshops centered around the principle of ‘Yes, And…’(acceptance and advancement). This study is exploratory; thus, it seeks to discover if, and if so in what ways, the themes introduced and practiced in these improv workshops would be considered by participants to be relevant or applicable to their everyday lives. The findings are promising: the majority of participants not only claimed to appreciate and take pleasure in these weekly workshops but could also cite direct (and often surprising) ways in which they applied the principle of ‘Yes, And…’ and other skills practiced in these workshops to their everyday lives. The implications of this research are varied and far-reaching for both refugees themselves and professionals involved in post-trauma treatment in both the Canadian context and elsewhere in the world. The case study itself also offers the development community an example of an arts-based participatory research project that is process—not product—based (lest participants and their lived experiences become a commodity) and which seeks to challenge the traditional development paradigm by ‘unmaking’ representations of “oppressed” people (in this case victims of torture) through humour.
Shanny Rann, York University
Liberation upon dancing: Perpetuating a millennial tradition in exile
Tibetan sacred dance (‘Cham) in its original form dictates a transcendental experience where dancing and observing the dance is elevated beyond the senses to the point it liberates the mind. For many years now, the sanctity of this 1300-year-old dance has been encroached upon by the dwindling of realized masters, dispersion of Tibetans and particularly by intrusion of the foreign gaze. Since the eighties ‘Cham has penetrated the cultural marketplace for the eager consumption of world culture. In many instances, the ritual has degenerated into a spectacle stripped of its religious purpose for tourists, sponsors as well as dignitaries. The author claims such secularization as the case for most, if not all commodification of culture in a transplanted setting, where the audience usually encounters the performance as alien and pays for the experience to be enthralled. Authenticity begs to be redefined for a performance that is meant to be experienced equally without the role of the distanced spectator. In the religious context, such reenactment can even be harmful as it deceives the audience instead of benefitting them through divine inspirations. In consideration of perpetuating ‘Cham as an endangered 1300-year-old dance tradition in exile, what needs to be re-challenged are notions of preservation and the myth of performance as ritual. This presentation focuses mainly on a preliminary research done prior to revisiting the field in in Himachal Pradesh, Northwestern India.
Panels 7a: Long-term strategies for dealing with displacement (Saturday, April 28, 3:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m., Room: Accolade West 303)
Yasmin J. Mattox, Independent Scholar
“The right to rise”: How West African refugees in the US can achieve economic and political empowerment through re-instituting and re-working pre-colonial indigenous entrepreneurial strategies
West African refugees, particularly, Nigerians and Liberians, have increasingly immigrated to the United States over the past few decades. They are largely young, have global world perspectives, are more educated than other refugees but also poorer. At a time when they should have an easier time acclimating to U.S. society than in the past and finding economic success, society has in many ways held them back, preventing them from rising to their potentials and becoming prosperous and productive. Draconian immigration policies that have limited access to economic opportunity partly by limiting access to higher than entry-level jobs, even for those qualified; stagnant economic growth; de facto discrimination by non-immigrants in workplace hiring; and a lack of effective government assistance for refugees to navigate their new economic and political environments, has hindered West African refugees’ progress. Thus, innovation is needed to address how best to assist them with being able to achieve their potential. In that regard, my presentation will provide a deep assessment of the current conditions that are hindering progress on this matter. Following this assessment I will provide an analysis of select pre-Colonial indigenous free market institutions and entrepreneurial strategies from Nigeria, Liberia, and Ghana that West African and other African refugees can incorporate into their new socio-economic environments in order to achieve economic prosperity and subsequently, empowerment. I will also present practical non-governmental organization-based solutions to remedy the society-driven prevention of West Africans’ “right to rise,” highlighting possible positive implications for Africans in the U.S. and Canada.
Sarah Freeman, Northwestern University
The “post-conflict” problem: Transitional failures from emergency relief to long-term development for internally displaced persons and the need for solutions
Internally displaced persons (IDPs) require a reconceptualization of the refugee-based framework that currently informs the existing assistance structures in operation for such populations. Within such a framework, the transition from relief to development assistance is based on distinct understandings of conflict, specifically when such a conflict and displacement (and therefore the needs of the people) end. The implicit assumption that informs this paradigm – that there is a direct correlation between conflict, displacement, and needs that informs this temporal shift – is no longer valid for situations of internal displacement, perpetuating the division between humanitarian aid and development. As opposed to refugees, IDPs present a much more complex context by never crossing international borders, there being no consensus as to whether displacement ends, and the incredible variance of contextual needs within displaced communities. The flow of aid within such assistance structures demonstrates the failure of such assumptions through the (re)production of a broken “relief-development continuum.” To demonstrate the continued use (and failure) of such a model at the micro-level, I conducted 42 interviews with both aid organizations and residents of former-IDP camps on the ground in Gulu, Uganda, allowing me to map the organizational network in the region over time. Through this analysis, I will demonstrate that the continuum utilized in practice is no longer adequate for the complexity of protracted IDP situations, preventing the long-term needs of such populations from being adequately addressed.
Danielle Huot, University of Waterloo
Refugee rights, social capital and economic livelihoods in an urban environment: A look at Nairobi’s refugee community
Due to ongoing humanitarian and political crises in neighbouring countries, since the early 1990’s Kenya has been a major receiving area for refugees from the horn of Africa and currently stands among the top ten refugee hosting countries in the world. In practice Kenya has long operated under an unsanctioned encampment policy, limiting a refugee’s freedom of movement and forcing him or her to reside in designated camp areas. Despite this, there are a number of different conduits that can be taken to leave a camp setting. Hence, a growing proportion of Kenya’s refugee population is now to be found in urban areas, particularly Nairobi. However, the legal state of an urban refugee is highly ambiguous. There is a general lack of clear policy around obtaining legal refugee status, leaving many unable to access employment, public education and formal structures of support and protection. The purpose of this paper is to present preliminary results of a study conducted in Eastleigh and Pangani, two prominent refugee districts in Nairobi regarding: a. the major barriers facing Nairobi’s urban refugee community and, b. the level of integration of urban refugees as based on involvement with the formal economy, access to public services, and personal experiences of security and acceptance. This study also examined, from a policy perspective, the roles of the two key organizations claiming responsibility for the country’s refugee affairs – the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Government of Kenya – in providing formalized support to refugees in Nairobi.
Catherine Dines, Independent Scholar
Deaf refugees in Western New York: Exploring barriers and opportunities
The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework in which a deaf/hard-of-hearing refugee in the United States must negotiate. Development of the framework will be accomplished through the application of Marie Dugan’s nested model (1996) to a recent exploratory research project, Deaf Refugees in Western New York: Exploring Barriers and Opportunities. The aforementioned research project collected data by conducting semi-structured interviews with deaf/hard-of-hearing refugees and their family members in Western New York, actors involved in the settlement and integration process of deaf refugees, and experts in the fields of deaf multiculturalism and refugee settlement and integration. Using data collected during the project, factors affecting deaf/hard-of-hearing refugees during the settlement and integration process in the United States will be identified and analyzed on four levels outlined by Dugan (1996): (1) issue-specific, (2) relational, (3) sub-systemic, and (4) systemic. Narratives of the deaf/hard-of-hearing refugees and parties involved in the deaf/hard-of-hearing refugee settlement and integration process will be illustrated through discussion of conducted interviews. Multi-level analysis will allow factors affecting the deaf/hard-of-hearing refugee settlement and integration process to be explored and the challenges faced by involved parties throughout the settlement and integration process to be indentified. Analysis will also provide insight on the ways in which factors on one level transcend other aspects of the settlement and integration process of deaf refugees. Furthermore, this paper will ensure that the voices of parties involved in deaf/hard-of-hearing refugee settlement can be shared, understood, and contextualized.
Concurrent Panels 7b: Gender, refugee women and narratives (Saturday, April 28, 3:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m., Room: Accolade West 305)
Regina P. Akok, University of Regina/ Saskatchewan
Speaking power: Dinka women’s voices about war and displacement
History is often written by men with little consideration for the perspectives of women. Consequently female narratives about war, notions of nationhood, the state, identity and marginalization may be absent from the historical record. The absence of women’s voices has meant that there is an inability to define their needs and to provide the appropriate assistance. Silence also denies women a public voice and reduces their ability to contribute to discussion about conflict. This thesis uses the recent conflict in Sudan as a model to illustrate the unique insights of women in historical reportage. Specifically, the oral narrative of South Sudanese Dinka women is used to document the perspectives, challenges, and insights of women concerning war and displacement. The oral narrative approach was selected because it provides a significant process to gather knowledge about people’s lives and worldview, and is a powerful tool for the reclamations of women’s voices in history and literature. By collecting and recording black African women’s war and refuge narratives, this research will contribute to increased understanding of issues of war and gender, not only in Sudan but also on an international level. These narratives will bring to light experiences specific to women of the Sudan but also illuminate similar experiences shared by women living and working in conflict zones. Finally, by comparing historical accounts with and without the female perspective, the study will help quantify how male bias in historical reporting may influence our perception of past, present and future events.
Snezana Ratkovic, Brock University
The location of refugee female teachers in the Canadian context: “Not just a refugee woman!”
This paper explores intersectionality of oppression in refugee narratives of four female teachers from Yugoslavia who immigrated to Ontario and Quebec between 1994 and 1998. These narratives reveal a number of internal barriers to settlement such as lack of language proficiency, perception of being “too old” at the time of arrival to Canada, pressing family commitments and personal characteristics. In addition to these internal barriers, the women also identified lack of information, lack of coordination between immigration and settlement services, ignorant education authorities, systemic discrimination and ethnicity as external barriers to their integration in the Canadian society. The paper expands the definition of the refugee woman by exposing the ways in which race, class, gender, age, ethnicity, and professional status, in addition to refugeehood, shape the oppression and the privilege of refugee women in the Canadian context.
Nimo Bokore, York University
Suffering in silence: A Canadian-Somali case study
The Horn of Africa, and specifically Somalia, is now being recognized as one of the worst places for women to live (Abdi, 2005 and The Guardian, 2011). Somali women refugees, particularly those living in the South of Somalia, face heightened possibility of rape and sexual humiliation, and are subject to ever-changing religious restrictions and punishments (Abdi, 2005, and The New York Times, 2011). Some of the latest religious restrictions are that bras are forbidden and women must purchase specific clothing from stores owned by religious leaders. Also, pregnancy out of wedlock, which includes pregnancy as a result of rape, is forbidden and punishable by stoning (BBC, 2009). A recent 2011 Sharia law bans unrelated men and women from shaking hands, walking or talking together in public. The consequence of disobeying is punishment by public flogging (BBC, 2011) After settling in Canada, these past traumas intersect with the resettlement challenges faced by Somali women refugees. This often produces health-related issues that women struggle to overcome — within a monocultural medical system that is not always responsive to their needs (Bokore, 2009; Danso, 2002; Galabuzi, 2002). This paper explores the connections between trauma and resettlement in the lives of Somali Canadian women, and how this can in turn effect the next generation via ‘intergenerational trauma’. Through personal experience, community-based conversations, and existent trauma research, I will then outline how social workers can respond to this unique nexus of needs.
Centre for Refugee Studies Students Caucus 