Identity negotiation of Chinese international students in Canada: A study on cosmopolitan post-graduation settlement

This study focuses on analyzing the acculturation of Chinese international students in Canada, emphasizing students' post-graduation settlement in China, Canada, or in other countries. Chinese international students commonly experience a multilayered acculturative adjustment when they are challenged by a new culture. In this process, they develop an identity negotiation that impacts their settlement into a new country. This study mobilizes four notions of acculturation (e.g., assimilation, integration, marginalization, and separation), to evaluate Chinese international students’ identity negotiation after university. This research uses 17 semi-structured interviews to understand how participants' identities were negotiated through their acculturative adjustment. First, the findings highlight the importance of career factors and family values in participants' settlement decisions. Second, the balance between Chinese identity and Canadian identity has some impact on student’s migration plans.

The Subtlety of Subtitles: A Closer Look at Institutions, the Study of Religion, and Canada

In this brief review, I organize my comments around the subtitle of Hughes’s book and take up the themes of Institution, Study of Religion, and Canada. In doing so, I highlight the ways that Hughes’s history provides insight into: 1) the roles of institutions qua institutions (albeit with social actors now) in the establishment of religious studies; 2) the distinctly Canadian elements of religious studies as it emerged in the midst of particular political, social, and cultural contexts; and 3) where the book takes us when thinking about the elastic boundaries that make up Canadian identity.

Arenas of Solitude: Social Forms and Textures of Togetherness in Hockey

Hockey and hockey arenas are often touted as pillars of Canadian identity and community. However, recent debates over inclusion in the sport question the game’s ability to facilitate social and cultural integration. This paper analyzes different forms of social interaction in hockey and hockey arenas in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In doing so, the paper identifies three social forms that hockey players and parents produce and reproduce in arenas. These are “friendliness without friendship,” “ritual togetherness,” and “transactional relationships.” Each form has textures of solitude embedded within the social form and has different social boundaries that separate in-and out-group members. We consider our findings in relation to literature on friendliness, solitude, and socio-cultural integration, as well as Atlantic Canadian and Canadian studies.

Loyalty to the Regime: Prominent Men, Militia and French-Canadian Identity through the 1812 War

In the North American British colonies, the 1812 war led to a great mobilization of militia corps to protect the Empire’s possessions. For colonial authorities, such context represented an opportunity to measure local militia officers’ loyalty to the Crown, particularly those who resided in the French traditional countryside. What can we understand of the French-Canadian involvement in the War of 1812 as officers? What is the impact of their relation to the Crown on their capacity to hold on to positions in their respective communities? By bringing to life a few case studies, this paper wishes to examine the formation of the French-Canadian identity through the involvement of local elites in the militia. This study is based on an analysis of the correspondence of the principal officers of the battalions with the central authorities and prosopographical research of those same officers in the rural regions of Lower Canada. The analysis of the strategies, values and interests of the militia officers, will serve to enlighten the parameters of the collaboration between the local elite and the colonial elite.

Waiting for Asian Canada

While the scholarly narrative of Asian Canadian identity is often one of belatedness with regard to its American counterpart, the poetry of Fred Wah reveals a dynamic, diasporic context for Asian Canadian expression. While Wah’s poetry has often been read through its American avant-garde influences, his work from the mid-1980s onward focuses increasingly on biography under the influence of Asian Canadian activism. Wah’s book Waiting For Saskatchewan stitches together the techniques of American avant-garde poetry with Japanese poetic forms and the theme of diasporic return to China, creating a pan-ethnic, transnational aesthetic that is in conversation with Asian American models but distinct from its Canadian context.

Situating hybridity and searching for authenticity in Canadian hip-hop : how do we "keep it real"?

This project explores the language and discourse around hip-hop in Canada. Through ethnographic interviews, I contemplate the narrative of an indigenized Canadian hip-hop, how that narrative is reflective of national and regional identities, the use of slang vernacular and resistance rhetoric, and, how female hip-hop community members articulate the genre's need for authentication. Through the use of critical content/textual analysis, I also explore the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and identity in the lyrics of five of Canada's mainstream rappers to illustrate how the rhetoric of hip-hop and that of the media influences the way we talk about, and consume, hip-hop culture. Ultimately, I draw conclusions related to the current status of hip-hop in Canada, and suggest that the genre's dominant contestations are centred on the lack of definition of the Black, White and Native Canadian identity, ownership, and how corporate annexation impedes the genre's ability to transcend.

Situating hybridity and searching for authenticity in Canadian hip-hop : how do we "keep it real"?

This project explores the language and discourse around hip-hop in Canada. Through ethnographic interviews, I contemplate the narrative of an indigenized Canadian hip-hop, how that narrative is reflective of national and regional identities, the use of slang vernacular and resistance rhetoric, and, how female hip-hop community members articulate the genre's need for authentication. Through the use of critical content/textual analysis, I also explore the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and identity in the lyrics of five of Canada's mainstream rappers to illustrate how the rhetoric of hip-hop and that of the media influences the way we talk about, and consume, hip-hop culture. Ultimately, I draw conclusions related to the current status of hip-hop in Canada, and suggest that the genre's dominant contestations are centred on the lack of definition of the Black, White and Native Canadian identity, ownership, and how corporate annexation impedes the genre's ability to transcend.

Second generation Somali origin children's understanding and organization of their multiple identities

The younger generation of the Somali community has faced certain hardships, in part, as a result the contradiction between their identities at home and their identities in public. The focus of this research was on the saliency of second generation Somali origin children's multiple identities. The 10 children between the ages of 5-10 that were interviewed indicated that they considered their Muslim identity their strongest identity, followed by their Somali identity, then their Black identity and lastly their Canadian identity. Their reasons for choosing the Muslim identity first were due to culture and religion. Their reasons for choosing the Somali identity second was due to the fact that Somalia is their parent's birth place. As for the black identity some of the participants stated reasons related to skin colour as to why they chose this identity while others considered this an identity that did not apply to them. Lastly, they chose the Canadian identity because Canada is their birth place and place of residence. The implications of this study are that both parents and teachers need to be actively encouraging the formation of children's racial and national identity.