RISE TEAM AT UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Basma Omar’s Grade 8 Presentation on RISE Team

4/23/2021

Basma Omar is a Grade 8 student who attends the French school Lycée Claudel in Ottawa, Ontario. She is also the little sister of RISE Team PhD student Laila Omar! In her geography class, students studied a chapter on international migration, where they discussed different types of migrants as well as the various reasons why individuals and families migrate. In the process of learning, students reviewed specific case studies. Knowing that her sister, Laila, focuses on immigrants and refugees in Canada as part of RISE Team, Basma volunteered to do a presentation in her class about RISE Team, connecting it to the chapter that the students were currently learning.

In her presentation, Basma discussed the main goals of RISE Team, why conducting research with refugee mothers and children is particularly important, and she presented some of the main findings from our interviews. This also generated a discussion among her peers and her teacher about the differences between refugees and immigrants, Canada’s sponsorship programs, as well as some of the challenges that migrants face upon arrival in Canada.

Below are slides from Basma’s presentation in French!

Amazing work, Basma! Thank you for sharing our project with your class. – Laila and Maleeha

RISE Team Data Out In The World!

4/23/2021

It’s been a while.

As our third wave of interviews with newcomer families gradually come to an end, we wanted to share some of the work team members have done inside and outside the classroom using RISE Team interview data. Below, I present some highlights:

Mohammed Nabilsi

Last semester, Mohammed completed a TED Talk-style video assignment for his third-year Criminology and Immigration class. For this assignment, he analyzed and discussed private sponsorship and Syrian refugees in the Canadian context. Mohammed specifically focused on the significance of private sponsors to help newcomers form social connections and navigate a new social, cultural, and economic system. What a cool assignment!

Fatima Al Saadie

During the year 2020-21, Fatima entered a year-long independent study with Professor Maghbouleh where she reviewed all wave 1 RISE transcripts for mentions of illness. Fatima was particularly interested in the experiences of families that have children with developmental disabilities. In a different year-long research course, she wrote a paper which focused on the schooling experiences of Syrian refugee teens. Fatima’s abstracts were accepted to a disability studies panel and undergraduate roundtable at the 2020 CSA.

Mohamed Afify

Meanwhile, Afify was busy writing a paper using RISE data for his own research course. This paper focused on young Syrian refugee men’s acculturation in Canada and was published in the fifth volume of The Society: Sociology & Criminology Undergraduate Review. Afify also presented a guest lecture based on RISE Team’s methods and research design for his advanced qualitative methods course. He described the importance of cultural knowledge when conducting interviews as well as the challenges of conducting interviews (e.g., differences in dialect or parents in the room). This was Afify’s second time presenting on his experiences conducting RISE interviews; his first presentation was to tri-campus Sociology faculty members at St George campus.

Laila Omar

Laila has been theorizing from RISE Team data since the earliest days of the project. Her paper “Foreclosed Futures and Scrambled Timelines: Conceptualization of the ‘Future’ Among Syrian Newcomer Mothers in Canada” is under revise and resubmit at the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. She has also been invited to contribute to the “Race & Ethnicity” chapter of an introduction to sociology textbook. Each chapter of this textbook includes a feature box that highlights how the work of sociologists has shaped debates about a social issue related to that chapter’s topic. In Laila’s feature box, she’ll discuss RISE Team’s main objectives, findings, and contributions to academia and beyond.

In addition to her writing, Laila has also presented RISE Team data at several conferences and conducted many guest lectures in the classroom. Most recently, Laila’s papers have been accepted for presentation at the International Migration, Integration, and Social Cohesion (IMISCOE) Annual Conference as well as the Princeton University Migration Lab’s “Language and Migration: Experience and Memory” Symposium. In the classroom at U of T, Laila has conducted guest lectures on RISE Team-related topics like ethical issues around conducting research with immigrants and refugees; Syrian refugee mothers’ parental strains during early resettlement; and Syrian refugee mothers’ conceptualization of the future.

Maleeha Iqbal

As for me, during my MA program, I had the wonderful experience of co-authoring a paper with Laila and Professor Maghbouleh titled “The Fragile Obligation: Gratitude, Discontent, and Dissent with Syrian Refugees in Canada.” This paper – which is forthcoming in Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies – analyzes the emotional lives of Syrian refugee mothers in their first year of resettlement in Canada. In August 2021, Laila, Professor Maghbouleh, and I will present findings from this stream of our project at the 2021 ASA conference in a panel session on Emotions hosted by the International Migration section.

In March 2021, I was a guest speaker in Professor Fidan Elcioglu’s fourth-year seminar called “Immigrant Scarborough.” During the 2-hour period, I presented our paper’s major findings and discussed how our findings complicated media portrayals of the experiences of refugees in Canada. In addition, I elaborated on the process of producing a peer-review article. Students asked questions about challenges in data collection, building rapport with participants, policy implications of our findings, translating interviews, public speaking advice, the benefits of using focus groups, as well as how my background affects my positionality as a researcher.

As we complete our final wave of interviews, I want to express how proud I am of my fellow RISE members. Great work, everyone!

We hope to add more blog posts during the next few weeks. So, stick around! – Maleeha

Slides & Takeaways from our 2020 CSA Presentations

7/6/2020

Members of RISE Team were set to give 8 (!) research presentations at the 2020 Canadian Sociological Association meeting this past June.

Sadly, the conference was canceled due to COVID19 but we are so happy to be able to share slides and takeaways from our research here on the blog and via Twitter under the #RISETeam hashtag.

Click through the slideshow below to see information about all 8 presentations!

We eagerly await the day when we can attend conferences again -- til then, the biggest thank you goes to RISE Team member Maleeha Iqbal, a graduate student in Sociology at UofT, for designing these incredible visuals! -- Neda

My collaborators on #RISETeam were slated to give 8 (!) research presentations at COVID19-canceled @csa_sociology meeting this past month. As UofT undergrads, grad students, & a postdoc this would have been the 1st conference for most. All were understandably sad to miss out! (1) pic.twitter.com/FFaCj51dBu
— Neda Maghbouleh ندا مقبوله (@nedasoc) June 30, 2020

This is the last tweet in the thread! Thanks so much for reading. More info about our project & the 9 incredible #RISETeam student collaborators is at https://t.co/u9aAt9vjH7. & we are always excited to connect, learn from, & signal boost others doing related work! Yalla! (20/20) pic.twitter.com/VQCFpLPfFl
— Neda Maghbouleh ندا مقبوله (@nedasoc) July 2, 2020

RISE Team has Published its First Research Paper!

6/4/2020

Hello there! This is Fatima, writing to you at the end of Spring 2020. Things have been hectic these past couple of months and we regret not having updated this blog in a while. Since our last post, RISE Team’s band of overachievers (just kidding) have been hard at work publishing some of our first findings on Syrian refugee resettlement. In December 2019, we published our first methods paper--"Listening in Arabic: Feminist Research with Syrian Refugee Mothers”—in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. In the article, Neda Maghbouleh, Laila Omar, Melissa A. Milkie, and Ito Peng explore the benefits and challenges of using a feminist approach to research with Syrian refugees in the Greater Toronto Area.

Here’s the backstory: in 2015, the federal Ministry of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship (IRCC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) announced a joint initiative to fund peer-reviewed research on Syrian refugee resettlement through the “Targeted Research: Syrian Refugee Arrival, Resettlement, and Integration” program (483). We proposed a one-year study to investigate forty-one Syrian newcomer mothers’ wellness and mental health. The study consisted of two waves of interviews: one, within the first months of participants’ arrival and the second shortly before “Month Thirteen,” which represented the end of government or public-private sponsorship of the family (483). Although the call for research proposals did not identify gender as a phenomenon of interest, we proposed a project that centered Syrian refugee women’s accounts because the majority of government-sponsored Syrian newcomers were women and children and because, from a feminist epistemological logic, it allowed us to understand processes like globalization and migration from a gender perspective (484). In short, by centering Syrian refugee women’s accounts, we hoped to be better able to understand core migration and resettlement-related issues identified by IRCC-SSHRC like social integration and employment.

Ultimately, a feminist approach shaped the project in three ways. First, to empirically center the accounts of Syrian newcomer mothers, the co-investigators assembled a multi-generational team of researchers that had the necessary cultural and linguistic expertise to productively engage with and interpret interlocuters’ narratives. The inclusion of Arabic-speaking scholars of Syrian and Arab heritage allowed our team to overcome challenges in recruiting participants and eliciting their narratives. By drawing on their own vulnerabilities, identities and experiences our research assistants were able to quickly build rapport with participants, empowering them to share theirs. This was especially the case during the first wave of interviews where women were still processing war- and migration-related trauma and loss (493).

The second way a feminist approach shaped the research involved centering mothers’ language (493). RISE Team’s pilot study was one of the few studies funded by IRCC-SSHRC that engage directly with Arabic-speaking refugees in their native language (486). Interlocuters’ narratives, therefore, had to be translated into English for circulation among ourselves, scholarly and governmental bodies, and for feminist academics and activists who do and do not speak Arabic (486). Our RAs focused on “account” as opposed to “art form” when translating to keep the mothers’ voices “alive”, convey their emotion state by, for example, noting any crying/pauses, and to accurately convey their narratives and meanings (494). However, translating from Arabic to English had its challenges. There is always the risk of losing some idioms, expressions, and ideas in translation (494). Challenges may also arise when translating different dialects, figurative language, and colloquial Arabic expressions. Below, is an excerpt in Arabic and English of a mother’s narrative that illustrates the nuances of translating a passage from Arabic to English when participants code-switch or alternate between languages (496). The hotlink will take you to an audio recording of the excerpt, read by members of our team:

The above excerpt showcases how the meaning of some local expressions (i.e. “nakol [eat] el English”) may be lost in translation, the use of italics to flag how mothers code switch, and how mothers may alternate between languages to ensure certain ideas are communicated accurately. The excerpt also introduces some of the complicated dynamics of eliciting and then transcribing narratives where a participant may express racism against nonwhite Canadians in her criticism of resettlement services (496).

The third way a feminist approach shaped our project was through the involvement of Syrian newcomer mothers in a range of participatory-action activities, driven by their desires, voices, and ongoing consent. Two participants, for example, joined the team as conference panelists at a major Canadian conference. There, they participated in an open Q&A format with the audience where they shared about their involvement in the study, the message they want to convey to Canadians, and why they wanted to participate in the study. We hope that the inclusion of participants in dissemination activities can help destabilize taken-for-granted power dynamics and inequalities in academia (501).

We are grateful for Meridans allowing us to include excerpts of mothers’ narratives in Arabic and for enabling us to record these excerpts. Doing so helped the authors further center Syrian refugee mothers’ accounts and work to destabilize monolingual dominance of English in academic publishing. A huge thank you to IRCC-SSHRC for funding this important research and to our amazing participants for sharing their successes and hardships with us.

Dr. Kahil's UTM Lecture Me Talk at Mississauga Central Library

11/22/2019

Hello all,

On Tuesday, November 5th, 2019, RISE Team and I had the pleasure of attending Rula's Lecture Me talk, entitled "Grandmothers Behind The Scenes".

Dr. Kahil opened the discussion with a brief overview of her academic trajectory and her role on Rise Team. She then discussed how her interest in Syrian refugee mothers and grandmothers stems from her experiences and identity as a mother, (grand)daughter, and immigrant. Importantly, Dr. Kahil's interest in Syrian refuge grandmothers was sparked by how understudied this group is, despite their roles as kinkeepers and how essential they are to the resettlement process. Throughout the presentation, Dr. Kahil explored the role of grandmothers in the emotional resettlement and adjustment of Syrian refugee mothers and children.

Dr. Kahil presented a captivating case study that explored the life of Tayze, a Syrian refugee grandmother, who, in many ways, exemplifies the resilience of refugee (grand)mothers. When Tayze's home in Syria was bombed, she sought refuge in Turkey. However, when she heard that her mother in Syria had broken her back and pelvis and needed care, she knew she had to do something. That's when Tayze decided to smuggle her mother across the Syrian border and into Turkey. At first, she carried her mother on her back but that didn't work. She didn't give up. She then tried, a number of times, to pull her mother on the mattress across the border but that too did not work. Determined to get her mother across the border, Tayze tried again. This time, an officer at the border made her an offer: pull the string of the mattress with your teeth and we will allow you both to pass. Tayze agreed and six of her teeth fell right there. She persevered and succeeded in her mission to get her mother to safety and medical care. Tayze, a cancer survivor, remains resilient to this day. She lives in Canada with her mother, daughter (and her husband), and grandchildren. She inspires her daughter to learn English and to be hopeful for the future. She continues to advocate for her family members abroad, including her son who was unable to come to Canada. As Dr. Kahil said, Tayze is a woman with a mission. She remains hopeful for her future in Canada and hopes to learn English and open a grocery store in the future!

During the question and answer period, Dr. Kahil was asked about the role of social media and the internet in the lives of Syrian refugees. She believes that apps like WhatsApp help sustain family ties across borders and can ease resettlement in a foreign country with limited social networks. She did, however, discuss how differences in time zones can hinder communication. Another attendee inquired about the purpose and benefits of conducting this research. Dr Kahil and Dr. Neda Maghbouleh, the principal investigator on Rise Team, discussed how refugees, and especially Syrian refugees, are understudied and how scholars have collapsed refugee and immigrant categories, thereby ignoring their unique needs and experiences. Dr. Kahil, and Rise Team member Laila, also touched on how they, along with other members on the research team, have helped participants with translation, homework, and legal matters. The goal of this study, according to Dr. Kahil, is to highlight the needs of the community, how they are faring in Canadian society, and to develop policy recommendations to smoothen the resettlement process. Equally important, the aim of this study is to convey an empathetic understanding of Syrian refugee (grand)mothers, showcase their resilience/autonomy/agency, and their ability to adapt.

RISE Team and I are extremely proud of Dr. Kahil! Her presentation was outstanding and we look forward to hearing more about her research in the near future!

-- Fatima

RISE Team at GATE-Rotman's 4th annual research roundtable

11/19/2019

We were honoured to present some takeaways on stress and mothering from our 2017 pilot study to colleagues at UofT's Rotman School of Management last week. Many thanks to the organizers at GATE for including us in an event that centered research on gender and the economy. We're excited to come back in the near future and share what we're learning about housing precarity, entrepreneurship, and other emergent issues that are especially salient in the medium to long-term for resettled refugee newcomers in our local area. An awesome day with great folks across campus! -- Neda

RISE Team Hosts Dr. Heba Gowayed’s Book Talk on ‘Refuge’

11/10/2019

Hi readers, Maleeha here! I’m in my third month of MA studies at U of T Sociology, and I’ve already met so many wonderful and brilliant people through RISE such as Dr. Heba Gowayed, Moorman-Simon Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University. I feel so honoured to be able to write about Dr. Gowayed today and provide you with all the details surrounding her book talk (“Refuge: Syrian Refugees and the Production of Human Capital”) this past Friday.

On November 8, Dr. Gowayed spoke about her forthcoming book, Refuge, under contract with Princeton University Press. During her book talk, Dr. Gowayed shared with us the findings of an international comparative ethnography that followed Syrian refugees as they began their lives in three countries that offered them resettlement and asylum: the United States, Canada, and Germany. In particular, she focused on the experiences of refugees who arrived at each of these countries between 2015 and 2016, and who are skilled or semi-skilled but not highly educated. Dr. Gowayed examined refuge and asylum as “durable solutions” to the problem of displacement. She discussed how the resettlement experiences of Syrian refugees in the United States differ from the experiences of refugees in Canada and Germany. Dr. Gowayed further examined each country’s resettlement policies, and how they vary in producing ethnic and racial minorities. She also provided us with a background on how these men and women ended up in the countries studied, and used affecting quotes from her study participants to reveal their personal thoughts and experiences of resettlement. In the midst of the current largest refugee crisis since World War II which has displaced over 25 million refugees—of which at least 5.6 million are Syrian refugees--Refuge provides a critical examination of some of the global ramifications of this crisis. The publication is expected to be released in summer 2021.

Before the book talk, RISE Team took Dr. Gowayed out to lunch. We chatted about Dr. Gowayed’s years in Egypt, her career trajectory, and the inspiration for Refuge. It was wonderful getting to know Dr. Gowayed and introducing ourselves to her after hearing so much about her from Dr. Maghbouleh. The book talk which followed ran for a full two hours! Audience members included graduate and undergraduate students as well as professors from the tri-campus (Mississauga, Scarborough, and St. George), and Dr. Claudia Diehl, the 2019-2020 Hannah Arendt Visiting Chair in German and European Studies. RISE Team is grateful for everyone who was able to attend the event.

Thank you for flying out to Toronto and speaking to us about Refuge, Professor Gowayed. I and the rest of RISE Team hope to see you again very soon, Inshallah. – Maleeha

RISE Team attends Fifth SD Clark Symposium at Hart House

11/3/2019

Hi all, this is Mohammed Nabilsi writing my first blog post for RISE Team!

This past Friday, RISE Team attended the fifth SD Clark Symposium on the Future of Canadian Society, at the East Common Room in Hart House, downtown Toronto. Topics included Racism, Islamophobia and Antisemitism.

Robert Brym, SD Clark professor of sociology at the University of Toronto gave an introduction about the event first. University of Calgary Professor Abdie Kazemipur presented after that on “Between Populism and Political Correctness: Islamophobia in Canada”. Then University of Toronto professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah's presentation was on “Race and Incarceration: The African Canadian Experience”. University of McGill professor Morton Weinfeld presented on “Antisemitism in Canada: Past and Future”. Following that, our own Professor Neda Maghbouleh provided “critical comments” and tied all three presentations together while providing an outlook on the future of Canadian society.

A focus of the event was to investigate legal facilitators and obstructions to racism, Islamophobia, and Antisemitism.
The floor was open to the audience to ask questions to the panel after each presentation and talk about what needs to be done to limit these institutional obstructions. Proceedings from the event will be published in 2020.

Rula Kahil's Upcoming Presentation On "Grandmothers Behind The Scenes"

10/16/2019

Hello all,

Fatima here! I have some exciting news to share! Our very own Dr. Rula Kahil will be presenting at the UTM "Lecture Me" talk!

Brief Description:Based on RISE Team research with Syrian newcomer families, Dr. Kahil's presentation will draw attention to an understudied population: Syrian refugee grandmothers. Drawing from interviews with Syrian newcomer mothers and grandmothers in the GTA and Peel region, Dr. Kahil will discuss how essential grandmothers are in the settlement process. Dr. Kahil will also provide insight into the influence grandmothers have on the emotional well-being of their daughters and granddaughters. She will further discuss a unique case study of a four generation Syrian newcomer family.

The event will be hosted at the Mississauga Central library, located at 301 Burnhamthrope Road West on Tuesday, November 5th, 2019 from 7:00 PM- 8:30 PM.

No registration is required. All are welcome to attend!

RISE Team and I are all very excited to attend! We hope to see you there!

--Fatima

Welcome New RAs!

10/1/2019

Hello all, this Mohamed Afify here, writing my first blog post for RISE! I have been working on this study for quite some time now (one summer ROP and one year RA) and I’m eager to be working on it again this year. As we start off the new year at RISE it dawned on me how much the team has changed and grown, so I wanted to take this time to introduce new team members and bid a farewell to former ones:

Anmul Shafiq has finished her BA in criminology and political science at UTM. She is now pursuing her MA at in public service at the University of Waterloo.

Dalal Badawi recently completed her MA in social work at UofT this past fall and is now working at Kid’s Help Phone.

On behalf of RISE team, I wish you both best of luck in your future pursuits!

We also have four new additions to RISE team:

Maleeha Iqbal who is currently completing an MA in sociology at UofT. Maleeha has worked closely with professor Maghbouleh in the past through graduate level, independent research courses as well as a published book review (http://readingreligion.org/books/securitized-citizens). Maleeha has a ton of other research experience, both qualitative and quantitative. She has conducted interviews and focus-groups with professor Jayne Baker (UTM) in a project which focused on promoting literacy and active learning in the classroom. She has also conducted her own research study where she interviewed university professors to gain an understanding of their views and experiences on student incivility. For this project, she received the Dean’s Writing Excellence Award and the Excellence in Undergraduate Research Award!

Fatema Isam, who graduated from UofT with a background in sociology, English literature and education. She has completed an MA at OISE in education bringing a unique, interdisciplinary perspective to the team. She's interested in interdisciplinary research that applied qualitative and mixed-methods approaches in investigating the challenges, well-being, and lived experiences of immigrants and refugees in Canada. She has done extensive research on the topics of intersectionality; well-being; disability studies; educational psychology; exploring inclusive and culturally-responsive pedagogy applied in and outside of classrooms.

Mohammed Nabilsi who is a 3rd year undergraduate student majoring in criminology and psychology. Mohammed also brings an interdisciplinary perspective onto the team with special interests in abnormal psychology. Currently, he works for student housing at UTM as a Residence Service Assistant (RSA) where he helps students with day-to-day enquires and other residence related services. He initially applied for a RISE ROP, but was not able to participate. Mohammed demonstrated a passion for this work as he persisted on finding information on the study despite no previous involvement. He took initiative and contacted Professor Maghbouleh then was hired onto the team this fall.

Ascil Domloge who is currently completing her BA at UTM in criminology and minoring in French and sociology. She has impressive language capabilities as she speaks (or is in the process of mastering) five different languages! Ascil heard about RISE team from former RA, Anmul Shafiq. Anmul was eager to refer Ascil as her replacement. So far, Ascil has been energetic in our meeting and seems excited to learn more about the project.

The rest of RISE team and I are very much so looking forward to working with all of you in this new stage of the project! -- Afify

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