ImmigrantChildren.ca Archive

Author: marcocampana

  • Everybody's children, Toronto film event

    CERIS (Joint Centre of Excellence for Research in Immigration Studies) hosts a screening of the National Film Board documentary, Everybody’s Children (directed by Monika Delmos, produced by Anita Lee) on Friday, May 29/09, 12pm-2pm at the CERIS office in Toronto.

    From the flyer: A year in the lives of two African youth seeking asylum in Ontario arrive under age and alone, often traumatized and seeking asylum in a country completely alien to their own. … these unaccompanied refugee minors have surprisingly no government system in place for their care after arriving. This documentary is a cinematic portrait of a year in the life.

    Dr. Francis Hare, CERIS Domain Leader, Family, Children and Youth, will moderate a forum on unaccompanied children with Anne Woolger-Bell, Matthew House. 
    RSVP to ceris.reception@utoronto.ca or call 416-946-3110.

  • Using international literature to build intercultural understanding: The IBBY Conference

    “Children’s Books: Where Worlds Meet” is the theme for the 8th International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) conference, to be held in St. Charles, Illinois Oct 2-4/09.

    From the conference brochure: “Stimulating and thought-provoking book discussions and small group sessions will provide opportunities to network with concerned professionals and to think about issues related to the use of international literature to build intercultural understanding”.

    Featured at the conference will be An Imaginary Library: Children’s Books That Don’t Exist (Yet). Seventy-two artists from over 30 countries create book covers for books not (yet) in existence. The exhibit invites delegates to consider what the book content might be from the cover. Fun!
    Among the speakers is Canada’s Patsy Aldana, president of IBBY, founder of Groundwood Books and on the founding board of The Canadian Children’s Book Centre.

  • 'Waiting for my children' art exhibit

    Settlement Arts, a new Toronto-based organization established to raise awareness and increase education on immigration and settlement issues presents their first exhibit “Waiting for My Children”, a collaboration between Curator Lisa Wyndels, Photographer Anna  Hill and Editor, Sally Dundas.
    From the description:

    There are parents in our community who are forced to wait for many years to be joined by their children, after they first arrived in Canada as immigrants or refugees.
    The impact of the separation of children from parents is profound, and increasingly so as the period of waiting becomes prolonged.  A period of separation of many years creates risks of children being exposed to multiple harms, including severe psychological damage. We know of instances of depression, suicide attempt, and even death.  Children who arrive in Canada after years of separation from a parent are often at real risk of not integrating well, either into family or into society.

    The show runs from May 13-23 at 1080 Queen St. W. For more info, visit the website.

  • Diversity fund, Children's Aid Foundation

    Announced today the Children’s Aid Foundation, in partnership with RBC, has launched a Diversity Fund that will provide social service agencies with resources to support their work with a diverse population. Information will be made available on such topics as helping families dealing with Canadian winters and coping with trauma and post-traumatic stress for refugee families, as two examples. 
    Read the news release.

  • Mirrors, windows & doors: Multicultural children's literature

    Recently released text: Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature: Mirrors, Windows, and Doors.
    From the foreward:

    “Children’s literature is a contested terrain, as is multicultural education. Taken together, they pose a formidable challenge to both classroom teachers and academics. Rather than deny the inherent conflicts in the field, in (the text), Maria Jose Botelho and Masha Kabakow Rudman confront, deconstruct, and reconstruct these terrains by proposing a reframing of the field. Surely all of us – children, teachers, and academics – can benefit from this more expansive understanding of what it means to read books”.
    Sonia Nieto.

    Canadian connection: co-author Maria Jose Botelho was with the University of Toronto. Lots of Canadian references in the text, as well as Canadian context. How refreshing!
    Let’s discuss.

  • Senate report on early learning and child care in Canada

    Following the release of the OECD report Starting Strong II (Sept 2006) the Senate of Canada requested its Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology to examine the state of early learning and child care in Canada and report on the finding of the OECD that found Canada last in industrialized nations in terms of their funding and commitment to supporting the early years of children in Canada.
    immigrantchildren.ca is pleased that the April 2009 Senate Report, Early Childhood Education and Care: Next Steps examined the importance of high quality early learning and care for newcomer families and young children, however briefly, including:

    • A paragraph on pg. 61 on “Immigrants and Refugees” about the child care component of the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program.
    • In the section on accessibility, it is recognized that: “immigrant children may experience additional barriers if local child care programming is not culturally relevant or delivered in a familiar language“.

    The committee made several recommendations in its report, including that the Prime Minister appoint a Minister of State of Children and Youth; that the Minister for Human Resources and Social Development appoint a National Advisory Council on Children, to advise the Minister of State for Children and Youth and through the Minister of State, other Ministers on how best to support parents and to advance quality early learning and child care (calling for the Council to include Parliamentarians, a range of stakeholders, parents and appropriate representation from Aboriginal communities).
    immigrantchildren.ca hopes that, should the Government of Canada respond favourably and strike a Council that it will ensure that immigrant and refugee children’s interests will be addressed and that the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism serve on the Council. And, given Minister Kenney’s recent remarks on the need for increased attention to immigrant children, we’ve little doubt to the importance of his inclusion. 
    The Government of Canada, through the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, must respond to the Senate report within 150 days of the tabling of the report. Watch this space for responses.

  • Maclean's interview with Minister Jason Kenney

    Last week’s Maclean’s featured an interview with federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, the Honoourable Jason Kenney.
    Kenney reiterated his position favouring interculturalism over multiculturalism and suggests that 2nd generation immigrants – the children of immigrants – are particularly vulnerable to cultural segregation. Quoting Tony Blair, Kenney says “…in our liberal society everyone has a right to be different but a duty to integrate“.
    The editorial this week responds to Kenney’s comments in “Our weak identity isn’t an immigration problem“.
    Related posts on immigrantchildren.ca:

  • Mothering and migration: (Trans)nationalism, globalization & displacement

    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.

  • "They don't like us"

    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.

  • Sick Kids Hospital receives settlement funding

    The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has received over 9 million in settlement funding to establish an “immigrant support network“. 
    The network will provide translations of 45 “core patient health education” articles into languages spoken by newcomer patients and their families, including Chinese, French, Tamil, Spanish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Vietnamese and Arabic. Articles will be posted on sickkids.ca and aboutkidshealth.ca.