Syrian Refugees in Canada and Transculturalism: Relationship between Media, Integration and Identity

Abstract

The process of integration of Syrian newcomers into Canada is multifaceted. The Canadian government, in its efforts to welcome refugees, has provided services that smooth this process over on many fronts. While financial and support services are essential to feelings of comfort, safety and security, feelings of identity and belonging constitute a never-ending process. In a globalized world, country of residence can easily change, but attachment to issues in the country of origin enlists a much more complex relationship. This article seeks to explore Syrian newcomers’ pre-migration and post-migration experiences and the influence of such experiences on their sense of belonging and identification. This article also seeks to understand their media-consumption habits. In doing so, the level of involvement of Syrian refugees in issues of host society versus issues in Syria or the Arab world becomes apparent. Through highlighting their level of involvement, this research hopes to uncover the feelings of responsibility to democratic change and the revolutionary process in Syria.

Life Stories of Syrian Refugees: A Qualitative Study

“…Overall, participants' narratives in our study seem to deconstruct the common portrayal of refugees as a-historical subjects, helpless, passive dependants with limited ability for agency (Ghorashi, 2005;Malkki, 1996;Mcmahon et al, 2016), as well as the "deficit model" which emphasizes vulnerability and trauma (Bogic et al, 2015;Papadopoulos, 2002) at the expense of positive adaptation, coping strengths and resilience in refugee lives (Mohamed & Bastug, 2021;Hutchinson & Dorsett;Shneikat & Ryan, 2017). Biographical interviews facilitated Syrian refugees who found temporary refuge in Greece to articulate their life stories, socio historical circumstances and specific needs, as active responsible, competent, selfdetermined agents.…”

“…Papadopoulos (2002) emphasized that the usual conceptualisation of refugees is in terms of trauma theories and within a "pathology, symptom-based or deficit model", which articulates a medicalised "trauma discourse" vis-a-vis their mental health. A greater focus on resilience and positive factors of adaptation among refugee people is thus necessary both in theoretical conceptualizations, related research and practice (Mohamed & Bastug, 2021;Hutchinson & Dorsett, 2012).…”

Rethinking Audience Fragmentation Using a Theory of News Reading Publics: Online India as a Case Study

“…Studies have also demonstrated this by showing how people's preference for media can be closely associated with their ethnolinguistic identity (Harwood & Vincze, 2015), racial identity (Schieferdecker, 2017), partisan identity (Wischnewski & Krämer, 2020), and national identity (Wojcieszak & Garrett, 2018). Social identity theory has been particularly useful for understanding media choice in minority populations such as Latinos in the United States (Salzman, 2014) and Syrian refugees in Canada (Mohamed & Bastug, 2020). Recent research has also demonstrated links between self-A THEORY OF NEWS READING PUBLICS 14 identity and perception of the media people consume (Schulz et al, 2020) which in turn could influence their media consumption patterns For many Indian citizens, who also strongly identify with their respective states by virtue of their cultural upbringing, it is easy to see why they would take on two roles as news consumers: the first being a consumer of regional news, and the second, being a consumer of national news.…”

Framing Syrian refugees: US local news and the politics of immigration

“…Since the Civil War, more than 5 million Syrians have been resettled in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq, and around 1 million Syrians sought asylum in European countries (Connor, 2018). Canada has accepted approximately 52,000 Syrian refugees (Connor, 2018) and implemented more inclusive policies (Mohamed and Bastug, 2020), while this number in the US remained around 22,000 (Refugee Processing Center, 2020). In the US, the top States that accepted Syrian refugees are California (n = 2,487), Michigan (n = 2,323), and Texas (n = 1,649) (see Table 1 for the numbers in all States; Refugee Processing Center, 2020).…”