Public Legal Education Podcasting for Newcomers in Ontario: Affective Interventions in Participatory Action Research

Due to the high cost of legal advice, language barriers, and other matters of social inequality, newcomers to Canada often have difficulty accessing legal information and resolving their legal problems. My Participatory Action Research (PAR) project aims to better understand the barriers newcomers face to accessing their legal rights, as well as to improve access to workers’ and tenants’ rights through the creation of Rights Bites, a legal rights audio podcast. Each podcast episode features interviews with newcomers, community workers, and lawyers, who share personal experiences and practical legal rights information about common housing and employment law problems. By applying affect theory as a lens for examining the podcast interviews, as well as the PAR process more broadly I argue that the complex expressions of anger, fear, distress, and pleasure displayed by my immigrant interviewees is a form of cultural citizenship, which reimagines belonging as a contested and ongoing project.