The Department of Law and Legal Studies is very proud to announce that Dr. Melanie Adrian and
Dr. Megan Gaucher have each been awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant. Congratulations!
Dr. Melanie Adrian will be working on a project entitled “Young and Muslim in Canada: Dancing the Poetics of Belonging”.
Project description:
Muslim youth have been simultaneously called objects, agents and victims on the world stage, continuously navigating their personal and public identities vis-à-vis debates on integration and multiculturalism. This project asks how Canadian Muslim youth navigate personal and collective identity in the face of these debates. Using ethnography as a method of investigation, this project looks at the complex relationships Muslim Youth have with belonging and nationhood. The project’s subtitle, “dancing the poetics of belonging,” aptly describes the constant movement of actors and their sympathies as they negotiate their everyday realities.
Based on four years of research in two private Islamic day schools in Ontario, this project seeks to: 1. understand what factors shape the continuities and discontinuities of national belonging amongst Muslim youth aged 13-16 in Canada; 2. collect and cross analyze quantitative and qualitative data on Muslim youth in Canada; 3. contribute to the body of burgeoning literature on Islam and Muslims in Canada and finally; 4. broaden two interrelated set of theoretical considerations: theories that look at the notion of nationalism and those that develop understandings of multiculturalism.
Dr. Megan Gaucher’s project is entitled “Temporary Migrant Workers, Canadian Citizenship and the Construction of “Foreign” Families”.
Project description:
Family reunification continues to be identified as a policy priority by all Canadian governments; however, the state’s continued privileging of certain immigrant families over others suggests that not all families are considered “fit” for Canadian citizenship. This project addresses the role of family as an access point for Canadian citizenship and the legal, political and social implications this presents for temporary foreign workers-turned-permanent residents seeking family reunification. In situating migrant workers in broader debates on the legislative parameters of the family class, this project will explore how the state actively relies on a particular definition of family as a tool of migration management; ultimately creating socio-legal distinctions not only between families living within Canadian borders and immigrant families seeking reunification, but also among immigrant families themselves.