The Lived Experience Of South Asian Immigrant Women In Atlantic Canada

This study has made use of historical records, census data, and in-depth interviews with 120 first-generation women to generate a detailed portrayal of the demographics of South Asian women immigrants and their lived experiences. The text begins with a discussion of the major theoretical issues in studying South Asian women in Canada and the impact of Canadian immigration policy on this group of women. It goes on to provide a profile of these women and their socio-demographic context of their everyday lives in three domains: work in the home; work outside the home; and participation in community organizations, notably religious and cultural organizations.

Race and Racism brings together critical contributions from the academic and government sectors that analyse the nature and extent of racism in Canada. The broad spectrum of social scientific approaches represented here - sociology, cultural anthropology, demography, and psychology - and an equal emphasis on quantitative and qualitative methods make this study a particularly rich source for scholars and policy makers alike. Discussion unfolds along four main themes: concepts and theories relating to race (including some treatment of measurement questions), economic and social factors pertaining to race, racism, and discrimination (as represented in opinion and popular perception, measured in various ways), and the dimensions of minority coping in major urban areas. Race and Racism fills in many wavering lines on our cultural landscape and provides an important perspective on social policy for the twenty-first century.

The South Asian population in Canada, encompassing diverse national, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, has in recent years become the largest visible minority in the country. As this community grows, it encounters challenges in settlement, integration, and development. Accounting for only 1 per cent of the population in Quebec, the South Asian community has received limited attention in comparison with other minority groups. The Invisible Community uses recent data from a variety of fields to explore who these immigrants are and what they and their families require to become members of an inclusive society. Experts from Canadian and international universities and governmental and community agencies describe how South Asian immigrants experience life in French-speaking Canada. They look at how members of the community integrate into the job market, how they manage socially and emotionally, how their religious values are affected, and how their children adapt to French-speaking and English-speaking schools. The Invisible Community shares lived experiences of different subgroups of the South Asian population in Quebec in order to better understand wider social, political, and educational contexts of immigration in Canada.

At last, an in-depth exploration of immigrant women's experiences in the labour force, family, and broader community in Atlantic Canada. Highlighting feminist research on women and gender-based analyses, the collection focuses on the intersections of gender with race, ethnicity, and class.

This book examines the social organization of recent immigrant South Asian women’s mothering work. It explicates the processes that contribute to those belonging to this social group making changes to their mothering work after immigrating to Canada despite having reservations about doing so. The book draws its findings from interviews with 20 South Asian immigrant mothers who were raising school aged children in Canada and had been in the country for less than five years. Government policies, websites and newspaper reports also form important data sources for this study. Using institutional ethnography, the book shows the disjuncture between the mothering work of the South Asian immigrant woman and institutionally backed neoliberal discourses in Canada around mothering, schooling and immigrant employment. It highlights the manner in which the settlement experiences for South Asian immigrant women can become stressful and complicated by the changes that these women are required to make in line with these institutional discourses. The study explicates how the work of immigrant mother in the settlement process changes over time as she participates in social relations that require her to raise her children as autonomous responsible citizens who can participate in a neoliberal economy characterised by precarious work. The research that informs this book has implications for the social work profession, which is connected in many ways to the settlement experiences of immigrant women.

The purpose of this book is to provide an outlet for original research articles examining the role and value of religious and spiritual constructs across the social sciences. The aim of the series is to include an international and interfaith voice to this research dialogue. An effort is made to be interdisciplinary and academically eclectic. The articles in each volume represent a wide array of perspectives and research projects. Most of the articles report the findings of quantitative or qualitative investigations, but some deal with methodology, theory, or applications of social science studies in the field of religion, and some are applied, demonstrating the relevance of the social sciences to religious organizations and their clergy. The value of the volume is that it gives to researchers in this area a broad perspective on the issues and methods of religious research across a spectrum of academic disciplines. The aim of the book is to stimulate a creative, integrative dialogue that will enhance interdisciplinary research.

With large numbers of people migrating to other countries after World War II, a substantial amount of scholarship has focused on the status, problems, and successes of women immigrants since 1945. The first comprehensive compilation of the international literature on these women, this bibliography--with over 5,100 entries--reveals the breadth of scholarship on feminist immigration issues. Focusing particularly on sources from North America and Western Europe, where most immigrant women settled, the book includes feminist analyses, bibliographies, demographic studies, economic comparisons, educational research, health and medical reports, legal discussions, biographies and autobiographies, psychological case studies, religious reports, sociological investigations, and publications dealing with general aspects of female immigration. The book covers such legal issues as citizenship, international conventions on contract workers, the traffic in women, and services and government benefits to immigrants. Medical entries include such topics as female genital mutilation, comparative obstetric results, and equity of treatment. Education entries cover such subjects as adult education and the second-language programs necessary for assimilation. With entries in several languages, the bibliography includes books, journal articles, essays and chapters in books, dissertations, ERIC reports, national and international government documents, and statistical sources. With immigration a major political and social issue in most countries today, the book provides an important research tool.