Thursday, April 14, 2016 at 2:00 p.m.
Neville Scarfe Building, Room 2415
Title: Adjusting to the Debris: A Phenomenology of Exile
Supervisor: Dr. Barbara Weber (HDLC)
Supervisory committee: Dr. Steven Taubeneck (Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies)
External examiner: Dr. William Pinar (EDCP)
ABSTRACT
This thesis will address the difficulties children of newcomer families face as they transition to life in a multicultural country like Canada. As immigrant families represented about 39 percent of total immigrant landings in British Columbia in 2013, there is an increasing need to cumulate knowledge about the development and adjustment of the children from this population. The lives of First Generation immigrant children are marked by dramatic adjustments due to difficulties with language, family dislocation and culture shock. The following will examine the current approach of the BC Ministry of Education in its aim to make newcomer students feel at home- and thus, adjusted.
The underlying question of this research investigates whether adjustment should, in fact, be the end goal of newcomers? And what critical aspects of the lifeworld of newcomers are neglected when the aim is to cultivate acculturated individuals? It will be illustrated that the majority of studies dedicated to immigrant children has overlooked the emotional experiences in navigating the education system, and have instead opted to measure proficiency in the English language as a marker of adjustment. Yet the struggles of newcomer children run much deeper. In a phenomenological exploration of adjustment and critiquing its necessity as an aim for both policymakers and newcomers, the ideas of three authors, Søren Kierkegaard, Mikhail Bakhtin and Homi Bhabha will shed light on the lifeworld of immigrant children in order to propose a new approach to the accommodation of this group.