Co-Designing Anti-Racist Futures
Our research objectives are as follows:
1. To establish a framework for anti-racist futures in Canadian immigration and resettlement processes through centring voices and experiences of newcomer youth of colour.
2.. To support capacity building for SPOs (Service Providing Organizations) to further develop anti-racist, youth-centred programming.
Our approach to designing anti-racist futures for Canada’s immigration and resettlement policies is grounded in collaborative design with newcomer youth.
Newcomer youth have been working with researchers in our team, led by Drs. Banerjee and Sengupta, to engage in creative storytelling about their experiences of migration and implications for Canada’s immigration and resettlement processes. Together, the youth and researchers have co-created computational media (simulations, games), stop-motion animations, sketch animations, and musical compositions and recordings that make visible feelings of hope, loss and pain tied to their experiences of becoming refugees, and subsequent migration to and resettlement in Canada.
Our approach is rooted in scholarship on southern imaginaries and intersectional perspectives in Sociology and Learning Sciences that seek to centre marginalisations related to colonialism, race, class, caste, colour, gender, sexualities, and immigration status and histories.
We are grateful to our SPO partners for working alongside our team to make this work possible. Through ongoing engagement during focus group sessions and regular meetings, they help us understand how anti-racist approaches can possibly re-orient the implementation of resettlement policies from institutional perspectives.
Image above: Youth co-designers Adiman and Esnith (in black hoodies) are explaining their computer game to UNHCR Rep. Rema Jamous and Yasmine Saker.
L-R: Rema Jamous, Yasmine Saker, Basak Helvaci Ozacar, Adiman & Esnith
Image above: Youth co-designers Yasra and Asra are demonstrating their computer simulation to UNHCR Rep. Rema Jamous and Yasmine Saker.
L-R: Asra, Yasra, Rep. Rema Jamous & Yasmine Saker