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
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