Refugees

U of T student, author and activist reflects on his incredible journey as a Rohingya refugee

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 20:18:58 +0000

U of T student, author and activist reflects on his incredible journey as a Rohingya refugee

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 06/15/2023 - 16:18

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U of T student Jaivet Ealom, a member of the persecuted Rohingya minority, recounts his harrowing escape to Canada at an alumni event June 15 (photo by Luis Mora)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Global Lens

Alumni

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Myanmar

Political Science

Refugees

Rotman School of Management

On his first day in class at the ��Ƶ, Jaivet Ealom felt completely overwhelmed by his environment.

He sat at the back of the room and tried to absorb all the noise, technology and people. Nobody had any inkling of the harrowing journey he’d taken to get there.

A member of the persecuted Rohingya minority, Ealom had fled Myanmar in 2013. Before arriving at U of T, he had travelled through six countries and three continents seeking asylum – surviving a near-drowning and multiple detentions along the way.

“I essentially gave up everything overnight – all the support I had,” he says. “I was a lone stranger in this vast land without any safety net to fall back on.”

In those early years in Canada, Ealom – who is speaking at an alumni event on June 15 – was trying to fly under the radar. He was worried about being deported to Myanmar or sent back to a detention centre.

(Photo by Luis Mora)

Stephen Watt, who works at U of T’s Rotman School of Management and volunteers his time doing refugee advocacy, met Ealom about six months after he arrived in Toronto. Watt remembers how reserved Ealom was in the beginning.

“He’s not somebody who enjoys attention,” Watt says.

But the pair became good friends and now work together to support refugees and asylum seekers. Ealom, who plans to graduate from U of T in the fall with a double major in economics and politics, co-founded the Rohingya Centre of Canada as well as a non-profit called Northern Lights Canada with Watt. He is a member of the Refugee Advisory Network of Canada and recently attended an annual forum for the UN Refugee Agency on resettlement.

He also wrote his first book: Escape from Manus Prison: One Man’s Daring Quest for Freedom. Published by Penguin Random House Canada, it details his unimaginable story of trying to become a refugee in another country.

Ealom was first hesitant to revisit painful memories and share his story publicly. But he felt assured when he received his permanent residence status and wanted to be a voice for his friends who were still suffering in the detention centre

“He [shared his story] because he knew it’ll have a bigger impact beyond himself,” Watt says.

Even so, the process of writing the book was difficult, Ealom says.

“I woke up every single night – sweating – from a nightmare of being in a different prison. The more I thought [about my journey], the more memories resurfaced. It was retraumatizing.”

Growing up in a town northwest of Myanmar, Ealom says he developed an understanding about his life early on. “If you wanted to live, then you needed to leave,” he says. He fled first to Jakarta, Indonesia, but encountered an asylum process he describes as “barely functioning, chaotic” so he arranged to travel by boat to Australia.

“The crew was supposed to sail us to Darwin, Australia, where, according to a rumour that everyone had heard at one time or another, Australians opened their hearts and their country to people like us – those on the run for torture, persecution and death,” he writes in his book.

But the trip was perilous. On the third day, the rickety boat started to sink. For Ealom, who could not swim, death seemed imminent – until the refugees were saved thanks to a fisherman who spotted the boat.

After returning to Jakarta, Ealom set his sights next on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. This time, “I bought a truck tire and a pump in my backpack – a makeshift floatation device,” he says.

Ealom was mid-voyage when Australia, announced a change in the law: Asylum seekers arriving by boat without a visa would no longer be resettled in the country. Upon being intercepted by Australian authorities, he was handed a paper that stated he was an unlawful citizen.

“I thought, I didn’t do anything wrong, there must be some miscommunication.”

Ealom spent three and a half years on Manus Island, which he described as a “living hell” (photo courtesy of Jaivet Ealom)

He spent 148 days in a detention centre on Christmas Island before being transferred to Manus Island, where he would spend the next three and a half years in a “living hell” that he says felt like a psychological experiment complete with rotten food filled with maggots or bits of gravel.

After studying every detail of the prison’s operation and securing the help of those around him, Ealom managed to escape. Posing as an interpreter, he travelled to Solomon Islands, where he altered his appearance and took on a new identity.

He ultimately arrived at Toronto Pearson Airport on a cold and snowy night on Christmas Eve in 2017.

“I didn’t know a single soul and I didn’t know the weather could get this cold,” he says. “I learned everything the hard way. But not in my wildest dream did I think I would live here.”

Fast forward to today and Ealom now calls Toronto his second home – even if it took him awhile to adjust.

For one thing, he says studying at U of T has been vastly different than any schooling he had done in Myanmar. “I wasn’t accustomed to challenging a professor,” he says. “I was taught that questioning anyone with slightly more authority than you is rude.

(Photo courtesy of Jaivet Ealom)

“There was no element of critical thinking. You can study philosophy [in Myanmar], but it’s watered down by the government. The textbooks are written by the military.”

His time in university has also helped him make sense of things that happened throughout his life. He learned that policy decisions that have enormous impact on people’s lives sometimes originate in academic research. “Without going to school, I wouldn’t be able to put a lot of things that I saw in a structured framework,” he says. “It helped me see the bigger picture. I was able to see some of the strategies driving the actions of the ruling regime in Myanmar.”

In his spare time, Ealom regularly volunteers with refugee organizations – and helped launch a couple himself. The Rohingya Centre of Canada, co-founded by Ealom and a friend, is a cause very close to his heart since it helps Rohingya newcomers connect with services and provide supports as they settle in a new home.

“When you come from an oppressed country, it’s easy to mistrust authorities,” he says. “That’s where we come in – we act as a bridge between the authority and the community.”

After graduation, Ealom is considering attending law school. He ultimately wants to return to Myanmar and make meaningful systematic changes – as long as his actions don’t put his parents in danger.

“I feel this moral obligation to help.”

Read ��Ƶ Magazine’s in-depth profile of Jaivet Ealom

By connecting with her community, U of T grad Fatima Azahraa Al Saadie finds academic success

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 15:25:58 +0000

By connecting with her community, U of T grad Fatima Azahraa Al Saadie finds academic success

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 06/25/2021 - 11:25

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U of T Mississauga's Fatima Azahraa Al Saadie is this year's recipient of the John Black Aird Scholarship, which is awarded to U of T’s top undergraduate student (photo courtesy of Fatima Azahraa Al Saadie)

Topic

Beginning with her decision to attend the ��Ƶ Mississauga, Fatima Azahraa Al Saadie’s undergraduate journey has been guided by faith, family and an insatiable curiosity.

As a high school student who was offered scholarships from York University, U of T St. George and U of T Mississauga, Al Saadie says choosing the latter was a “no-brainer.”

She knew that attending U of T would provide her with a world-class education and that being at the Mississauga campus meant that she could continue living with her mother and younger brother, who has Down syndrome and requires constant care.

“I should mention my younger brother is one of my biggest supporters. He’s always uplifting me, and I wouldn’t have made it this far without his support,” Al Saadie says.

Al Saadie, who graduated from U of T Mississauga this week with a double major in sociology and criminology, law and society, is the recipient of the John Black Aird Scholarship, which is awarded to U of T’s top undergraduate student across the university’s three campuses. Her exceptional academic achievements have also garnered her the Governor General’s Silver Medal.

“I was very surprised but also deeply honoured to read that I had been selected for these awards.” Al Saadie says.

Al Saadie credits her success to hard work, a thirst for knowledge and a supportive environment.

“I didn’t set out to be the top graduating student,” she says. “I just tried to do the best I could. I attended all the lectures, did all the readings and started assignments weeks before they were due.

“But I think it was ultimately my love of learning that allowed me to excel in university. And I'm grateful to my mentors and professors for creating a supportive environment where I could ask questions, investigate new topics and pursue my interests.”

An aspiring professor, Al Saadie will spend the next year applying to graduate programs, working as a research assistant for Assistant Professor Steve Hoffman in U of T Mississauga’s sociology department, and co-authoring research papers with Neda Maghbouleh and Ellen Berrey – both associate professors in the department.

Al Saadie grew up in Mississauga and credits God, her family and U of T mentors for supporting her through her studies.

Her mother is her biggest supporter and a constant source of inspiration.

“I thank God every day for my mom,” Al Saadie says. “Without her, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Words cannot express how much my mom has sacrificed, and continues to sacrifice, to ensure my success."

To secure a better education and future for her children, Al Saadie’s mother left behind her family and a thriving law practice in Iraq to immigrate to Canada when Al Saadie was just two years old.

Al Saadie says her mother often regaled her with stories from her work as a lawyer, stoking Al Saadie’s own interest in the field and compelling her to study criminology. And when she pulled all-nighters, her mother stayed up with her, cutting up fruit and serving as her alarm clock if she wanted to nap.

Her family’s immigrant experience spurred Al Saadie’s interest in issues surrounding immigration, integration and resettlement. Al Saadie became a research assistant for Maghbouleh’s RISE (Refugee Integration, Stress, and Equity) Team shortly after taking her logic of social inquiry class.

While Al Saadie earned the highest mark among the 150 students in Maghbouleh’s class, Maghbouleh says she doesn’t recall her ever showing any arrogance about her GPA when she asked about research assistant opportunities.

As part of RISE, Al Saadie joined a team of nine researchers – most of whom, like her, spoke Arabic and hailed from the Middle East or North Africa. They studied how Syrian refugee families were resettling and integrating into their new environments.

“I’d never been in a workplace with so many people from the same background as me,” Al Saadie says. “It was really nice to see, especially in academia.”

During her first year as a research assistant on the RISE Team, Al Saadie wrote an annotated bibliography on anti-Muslim racism and transcribed and translated interviews with Syrian refugees. Later in the study, Al Saadie interviewed adolescent refugee girls about their experiences since arriving in Canada. She mentored some students who were in the process of applying to university, and says she was thrilled to recently hear that a few of them are considering attending U of T in the fall.

Al Saadie’s experiences as a part-time personal support worker for her brother also influenced her research interests.

Last year, Al Saadie undertook an independent study that used RISE Team data to examine how budget cuts to disability care impact Syrian refugees. Her paper was approved for presentation in the Sociological Perspectives on Disability session at the 2020 Canadian Sociological Association Conference.

Her passion for research has earned her numerous prestigious research awards, including two ��Ƶ Excellence Awards and a Mitacs Research Training Award. Al Saadie is currently co-authoring a paper on the educational experiences of refugee youth in Ontario with Magbouleh.

“Fatima is proof that U of T Mississauga produces world-class leaders and scholars out of the talent in its own backyard,” Maghbouleh says.

“She has truly enriched my scholarship as a research assistant and co-author,” Maghbouleh says. “Her careful analysis of data, especially on matters of disability, chronic illness and educational barriers, has pushed my own thinking forward in the project.”

Al Saadie’s research career began in Berrey’s introductory sociology of law class. Berrey offered Al Saadie her first research assistantship, and what was supposed to be a month-long contract turned into a three-year collaboration.

Al Saadie has worked as Berrey’s lead research assistant on multiple research projects, and she is now a collaborator on Berrey’s study of a U.S. anti-sustainability social movement animated by a conspiracy theory surrounding the UN’s Agenda 21 plan.

“Fatima Al Saadie is an exceptional student and stellar researcher,” Berrey says. “She is extremely smart, highly motivated and very capable at executing challenging research projects and tasks. Her attention to detail and rigor in the research process, to ensure data are systematically collected and analyzed, is outstanding. She is one of those rare students who routinely is mistaken for a PhD student, not an undergraduate.”

Al Saadie’s contributions on the project “have ranged from identifying relevant sources out of nearly a thousand newspaper articles to finding and analyzing themes in difficult-to-locate state legislation to developing the arguments for our presentations and papers,” Berrey wrote in a statement of support for Al Saadie’s nomination for the Governor General’s Silver Medal.

Berrey and Al Saadie are co-publishing two papers on the conspiratorial ideas activists have mobilized to obstruct environmental sustainability policies and the tactics they used to institutionalize their claims.

They have presented their findings at multiple conferences, including the April 2021 New York State Sociological Association keynote and the May 2021 annual Law & Society Association meeting. They will be presenting one of their papers at the upcoming 2021 annual American Sociological Association conference.

“Working with Professor Berrey and Professor Maghbouleh has been the highlight of my undergraduate journey,” Al Saadie says. “I have learned and continue to learn so much from them. I am truly lucky to have them as my mentors.”

Beyond her research, Al Saadie strives to have a positive impact on her community. She has served as a notetaker for U of T Accessibility Services and a facilitated study group leader, helping students improve their problem solving, note-taking and critical thinking skills.

During the pandemic, Al Saadie helped several newcomer refugee families apply for provincial funding and social support, helping to overcome language barriers and other factors that can limit refugees’ awareness of the public services available to them.

Al Saadie currently sits on local MP Omar Alghabra’s Mississauga-Centre MP Youth Council, where she’s involved in an initiative that seeks to make mental health resources more accessible to marginalized populations.

Through the challenges of university, Al Saadie says she found solace in staying connected to her faith as a Muslim.

“Prayers felt a lot like therapy sessions where I could air out my losses and frustrations,” she says. “Religion gave me this sort of comfort that I can’t control everything. I can just do the best I can and leave the rest to God.”

Al Saadie says she hopes incoming students will find their own emotional outlets and not be afraid to ask for help when they arrive on campus. She adds that she couldn’t have found success without the help of U of T Mississauga staff and faculty.

“I am immensely grateful to my mentors, my professors, to [Associate] Professor Phil Goodman – the chair of the sociology department – to academic advisers, and to the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre for their support over the years. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

She added that students should keep an open mind.

“Your undergraduate degree is very much a journey, and journeys don’t always go as planned,” Al Saadie says.

“Don’t let your expectations or your plans for yourself and your degree impede your personal and professional development. Focus on doing the best you can and step outside your comfort zone – take courses outside your major, ask for research opportunities, get involved – the rest will come in due time.”

'Making uncertainty visible': U of T researcher says AI could help avoid improper denial of refugee claims

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 12:56:34 +0000

'Making uncertainty visible': U of T researcher says AI could help avoid improper denial of refugee claims

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 10/20/2020 - 08:56

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Avi Goldfarb is a professor at the ��Ƶ's Rotman School of Management and a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (photo courtesy of the Rotman School of Management)

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Our Community

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Alumni

Artificial Intelligence

Refugees

Rotman School of Management

Avi Goldfarb is an economist and data scientist specializing in marketing. So how is it that he came to publish a paper on reducing false denials of refugee claims through artificial intelligence?

Goldfarb, a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the ��Ƶ and a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, read Refugee Law's Fact-Finding Crisis: Truth, Risk, and the Wrong Mistake, a 2019 book by Hilary Evans Cameron, a U of T alumna and assistant professor at the Ryerson University Faculty of Law.

He found some remarkable overlaps with his own work, particularly the methodology he employs in his 2018 book, Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence.

It just so happened that Evans Cameron had read Goldfarb’s book, too.

“It turned out we effectively had the same classic decision theoretic framework,” says Goldfarb, “although hers applied to refugee law and problems with fact-finding in the Canadian refugee system, and mine applied to implementing AI in business.”

Decision theory is a methodology often used in economics and some corners of philosophy – in particular, the branch of philosophy known as formal epistemology. Its concern is figuring out how and why an “agent” (usually a person) evaluates and makes certain choices.

The main idea around which Evans Cameron’s and Goldfarb’s thoughts coalesced was this: Human decision-makers who approve or deny refugee claims are, as Goldfarb noted in his research presentation at the Schwartz Reisman weekly seminar on Oct. 7, “often unjustifiably certain in their beliefs.”

In other words: people who make decisions about claimants seeking refugee status are more confident about the accuracy of their decisions than they should be.

Why? Because “refugee claims are inherently uncertain,” says Goldfarb. “If you’re a decision-maker in a refugee case, you have no real way of knowing whether your decision was the right one.”

If a refugee claim is denied and the refugee is sent back to their home country where they may face persecution, there is often no monitoring or recording of that information.

Goldfarb was particularly struck by the opening lines of Evans Cameron’s book: “Which mistake is worse?” That is, denying a legitimate refugee claim or approving an unjustified one?

In Goldfarb’s view, the answer is clear: sending a legitimate refugee back to their home country is a much greater harm than granting refugee status to someone who may not be eligible for it. This is what Goldfarb refers to as “the wrong mistake.”

So, from Goldfarb’s perspective as an economist and data scientist with specialization in machine learning (ML), a type of artificial intelligence, he started to wonder: Could ML’s well-known ability to reduce uncertainty help reduce incidences of “the wrong mistake”?

Goldfarb’s collaboration with and Evans Cameron reflects the intersections between the four “conversations” that guide the Schwartz Reisman Institute’s mission and vision. Their work asks not only how information is generated, but also who it benefits, and to what extent it aligns – or fails to align – with human norms and values.

“ML has the ability to make uncertainty visible,” says Goldfarb. “Human refugee claim adjudicators may think they know the right answer, but if you can communicate the level of uncertainty [to them], it might reduce their overconfidence.”

Refugee law expert Hilary Evans Cameron is a U of T alumna and an assistant professor at Ryerson University’s Faculty of Law (photo courtesy of Ryerson University)

Goldfarb is careful to note that shedding light on “the wrong mistake” is only part of the battle. “Using AI to reduce confidence would only work in the way described if accompanied by the changes to the law and legal reasoning that Evans Cameron recommends,” he says.

“When uncertainty is large, that does not excuse you from being callous or making a decision at all. Uncertainty should help you make a better-informed decision by helping you recognize that all sorts of things could happen as a result.”

So, what can AI do to help people realize the vast and varied consequences of their decisions, reducing their overconfidence and helping them make better decisions?

“AI prediction technology already provides decision support in all sorts of applications, from health to entertainment,” says Goldfarb. But he’s careful to outline AI’s limitations: It lacks transparency and can introduce and perpetuate bias, among other things.

Goldfarb and Evans Cameron advocate for AI to play an assistive role – one in which the necessary statistical predictions of evaluating refugee claim decisions could be improved.

“Fundamentally, this is a point about data science and stats. Yes, we’re talking about AI, but really the point is that statistical prediction tools can give us the ability to recognize uncertainty, reduce human overconfidence and increase protection of vulnerable populations.”

So, how would AI work in this context? Goldfarb is careful to specify that this doesn’t mean an individual decision-maker would immediately be informed whether they made a poor decision, and given the chance to reverse it. That level of precision and individual-level insight is not possible, he says. So, while we may not solve “the wrong mistake” overnight, he says AI could at least help us understand what shortfalls and data gaps we’re working with.

There are many challenges to implementing the researchers’ ideas. It would involve designing an effective user interface, changing legal infrastructure to conform with the information these new tools produce, ensuring accurate data-gathering and processing and firing up the political mechanisms necessary for incorporating these processes into existing refugee claim assessment frameworks.

While we may be far from implementing AI to reduce incidences of “the wrong mistake” in refugee claim decisions, Goldfarb highlights the interdisciplinary collaboration with Evans Cameron as a promising start to exploring what the future could bring.

“It was really a fun process to work with someone in another field,” he says. “That’s something the Schwartz Reisman Institute is really working hard to facilitate between academic disciplines, and which will be crucial for solving the kinds of complex and tough problems we face in today’s world.”

How U of T helped refugees strike down the Safe Third Country Agreement in a federal court

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 20:40:39 +0000

How U of T helped refugees strike down the Safe Third Country Agreement in a federal court

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 08/21/2020 - 16:40

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Prasanna Balasundaram, a refugee and immigration lawyer with U of T's Downtown Legal Services, was one of nine lawyers involved in the Charter case against the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the U.S. (photo by Nina Haikara)

Topic

In a landmark decision, a federal court ruled this summer that the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the United States violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Prasanna Balasundaram, a refugee and immigration lawyer with Downtown Legal Services (DLS), a community legal clinic and clinical education program operated by the ��Ƶ’s Faculty of Law, represented two refugee applicants in the case.

Several students from U of T’s Faculty of Law played a key role when it came to research, analysis and other legal tasks.

“In terms of the evidence and the issues, it was always very clear to us what the right outcome would be, but the nature of these challenges – to persuade a court to strike down a piece of legislation – are quite complex,” Balasundaram says.

The Safe Third Country Agreement requires refugees to claim status in the first country of arrival as part of a “refugee burden sharing” agreement. But refugee advocates argued this resulted in potential refugee claimants being turned back at the Canada-U.S. border, where many were detained by U.S. authorities.

One of Balasundaram’s clients, Nedira Jemal Mustefa, a Muslim woman, entered the U.S. alone at age 12 on a visitor’s visa for medical treatment. Balasundaram says her visa lapsed and Mustefa, then a minor, was unaware she had to take steps to regularize her status. He says she later discovered she did not qualify under U.S. law and was unable to return home because civil unrest in Ethiopia made it unsafe.

When she was later denied entry into Canada, Mustefa was held in Clinton County Correctional Facility in New York state.

“The experience of our client, as well as several others who we had testimony from, is at the port of entry they get placed into the custody of U.S. state authorities and, in the vast majority of times, are taken to a detention centre and detained for a number of months,” Balasundaram says.

He says Mustefa was detained at a criminal holding facility, even though there were no criminal charges. She was also held in solitary confinement for days.

“The conditions she described, which the judge acknowledged and found credible, were horrific,” Balasundaram says. “Are her constitutional rights violated? The judge essentially determined that they were.”

Balasundaram explains that Section 7 of the Charter guarantees everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person, and that those interests ought not to be infringed unless in a manner that is consistent with the principles of fundamental justice. The language of the Charter applies to everyone who is within the boundaries of Canada, including its ports of entry, according to Balasundaram.

“The judge recognizes the evidence of Mustefa, as well as other people who have been turned back to detention, which infringes their liberty and security of person. The [judge] finds there is no real justification for why this happens.”

There were nine lawyers on the counsel team and Balasundaram says more than a dozen U of T law students worked on the case over the past four years. The students were instrumental in everything from in-depth legal research – gathering, analyzing, distilling evidence – to client interviews, he says.

Alexander Smith, who is in U of T Law's JD program, says applying classroom learning on constitutional law jurisprudence to a challenge that had a far-reaching impact on refugee and immigrant communities across North America has been a highlight of his studies.

“I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the incredible counsel team, including Prasanna,” Smith says. “Every student and client who works with him witnesses first-hand his thoughtfulness, compassion and first-rate advocacy.

“The mentorship and hands-on experience that he provides to students is something that I aspire to provide to the next generation of lawyers in my legal career.”

Supervised by a team of expert staff lawyers, more than 130 U of T law students work at the clinic every year to provide free services to over 2,000 clients.

“We’re doing work that really makes a difference in the lives of marginalized people. Whether it be preventing evictions, family law or employment issues, students who have gone through the DLS program will tell you it is among the most transformative experiences in law school,” Balasundaram says.

“These results demonstrate the power of experiential learning programs,” says Lisa Cirillo, the clinic's outgoing executive director. After a decade of leading the clinic, Cirillo will join the Law Foundation of Ontario as its chief executive officer this fall.

“Every law student who had an opportunity to work with Prasanna on these cases over the last four years, has learned about the power and the limits of the law as a mechanism for delivering justice – and brought this experience with them into their own practice.”

The Canadian government has six months to comply or appeal the decision. Meanwhile, Mustefa remains in the U.S.

“Our hope is that she will be able to come to Canada,” Balasundaram says.

Women at the centre of U of T research on Syrian refugee experience in the Toronto region

Romi Levine — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 05:00:00 +0000

Women at the centre of U of T research on Syrian refugee experience in the Toronto region

Romi Levine Fri, 03/08/2019 - 00:00

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Research assistant Anmul Shafiq (left) and principal investigator Neda Maghbouleh are part of a research team who are interviewing Syrian moms and teens about life in Canada (all photos by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Graduate Students

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Refugees

Research & Innovation

Sociology

U of T Mississauga

Undergraduate Students

Just over three years ago, the first wave of Syrians began arriving in Canada, fleeing the civil war that uprooted their lives and drove them to refugee camps across the Middle East and Europe.

Today, those families are continuing to adjust to life in Canada – navigating their way through learning a new language, the education system and our frigid winters.

Throughout the resettlement process, a group of ��Ƶ researchers have been capturing an intimate portrait of what life has been like for Syrian newcomer families.

The research group – led by Neda Maghbouleh, an assistant professor of sociology at U of T Mississauga, along with Professors Melissa Milkie and Ito Peng – is exploring how the nature of Syrian newcomers’ successes and challenges change the longer they are in Canada.

The all-women investigator team was intentional, says Maghbouleh.

“I think that's super cool,” she says. “We're not re-inventing the wheel, but in many ways we're putting feminist principles around leadership and organizing into practice.”

Women, too, are the focus of their research.

“We said, ‘What would it look like if we centred the stories of women – and not just women but mothers – as a lens into the fortunes of the family more broadly.’”

And that’s exactly what they did, interviewing 41 Syrian mothers twice within their first year in Canada.

Listen to Maghbouleh on the "View to the U" podcast

When interviewing teens, their stories reflect how much they’ve endured in such a short amount of time, says Anmul Shafiq, a research assistant and recent graduate of political science and criminology at U of T Mississauga.

Shafiq says one interviewee moved to Turkey from Syria, where her mother was diagnosed with cancer and her father was ill.

“It's so much for a 16-year-old to go through all of that and it's really eye-opening,” she says. “The interview opens up your eyes to how much they've been through and how much they're still willing to persevere and use what they've been through to give them hope in Canada.”

Expanding the research project also meant involving Syrian newcomers in the research process, says Maghbouleh.

“We have a number of refugees who are paid members of the team who support our data collection and recruiting efforts.”

Iman Abdul Razzak moved to Canada after graduating from Monmouth College in the U.S. Originally from Aleppo in Syria, Abdul Razzak left the war-torn country for Turkey around five years ago, and soon after, moved to North America for school. While her brother is in Canada, the rest of her family lives in Sweden.

“It was very difficult to adjust,” she says of moving to the U.S. at 18 years old.

But in Canada, Abdul Razzak has found community amongst her fellow Syrian newcomers, making friends and participating in local initiatives like CultureLink’s Syrian children and teen choirs.

She’s considering applying for graduate school in 2020, but is enjoying being a part of the U of T research team in the meantime, where she helps to recruit families to be interviewed.

“I relate to them. I know what they're going through because I'm actually going through the same difficulties,” she says. “When I tell them about the research and when I tell them why we're doing the research and that it actually matters to hear their voices, to hear what they want to change, they are very excited.”

Maghbouleh’s research group is gearing up to release its first paper on the first round of research in Meridians, an interdisciplinary feminist journal produced by Duke University Press, and a book chapter in an edited volume about Syrian refugees in Canada written by teams across the country and published by McGill-Queen's University Press.

U of T expert on how Canadian politicians are playing a dangerous game on migration

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 18:02:11 +0000

U of T expert on how Canadian politicians are playing a dangerous game on migration

noreen.rasbach Thu, 09/06/2018 - 14:02

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An asylum-seeker saying he’s from Eritrea is confronted by an RCMP officer as he enters Canada from the United States on Aug. 21 (photo by Paul Chiasson/CP)

Craig Damian Smith

Topic

City & Culture

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Canada has joined the club of states embroiled with irregular migration. But our challenges are not unique, and we have two decades of European misadventures with irregular migration to guide our response. Unfortunately, Canadian politicians are following a well-rehearsed script in which crisis responses to anti-refugee sentiment undermine liberal values, limit policy options and open us to blackmail by hostile neighbours.

I have spent several years studying Europe’s relationship with irregular migration, most recently on a six-week trip that included looking at the Italian government’s hardline policies.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini came to power on a promise to expel 500,000 migrants, and has spent his short tenure repealing services, criminalizing migrant rescue NGOs, fostering xenophobic nationalism and undermining European solidarity.

Salvini attends a news conference after meeting Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Milan, Italy, in August (photo by Luca Bruno/AP)

Salvini, also serving as deputy prime minister, blames migrants for longstanding Italian social problems like youth unemployment. In June, Tito Boeri, head of the Italian pension agency, clashed with Salvini on a very simple point that immigration was needed in light of an aging workforce. Salvini responded by stating that the tenured economist “lives on Mars” and that evidence-based arguments about demographics “ignored the will” of Italians.

This kind of populism has troubling parallels in Canada. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has blamed asylum-seekers for longstanding affordable housing challenges and ended co-operation with the federal government on the issue. His stonewalling and scapegoating to foster a crisis in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election are well-worn tactics.

Fears trump facts

Anti-immigrant populism trades on two interrelated trends. First, facts matter far less than voters’ feelings; second, as Daniel Stockemer from the University of Ottawa puts it, scapegoating migrants pays off at the ballot box. Ruling parties are caught in a bind since governments that want votes should be responsive to their citizens. But responding to anti-immigrant sentiments means policies with negative economic, social and security outcomes.

Ruling parties in Europe have tried to thread the needle by getting tough on irregular migration while maintaining open asylum systems. They must show voters that they’re doing something when their political challengers claim they have lost control of borders and undermined public safety. Statements by Michelle Rempel, the Conservative Party of Canada’s immigration critic, about irregular migration are thus wholly unoriginal.

Xenophobia fosters false opinions. Many Italians believe foreigners comprised 26 per cent of the population, when in reality it is only nine per cent. Similarly, a recent Angus Reid poll found Canadians overestimated the number of asylum-seekers by almost 60 per cent. The majority said Canada was too generous, and that the current situation represented a crisis despite the swath of Liberal ministers and range of credible experts saying the opposite.

Crises demand action

Crises demand extraordinary measures. Seventy-one per cent of respondents in the Angus Reid survey would devote resources to border security if they were in charge. Only 29 per cent said they would focus on assisting arrivals. Respondents were more aware of the asylum issue than any other in 2018. But as in Europe, Canadians’ strong opinions are based on feelings rather than facts.

The federal Liberals have reacted by shuffling the cabinet and appointing a tough-on-crime ex-police chief to oversee the issue. But Bill Blair has been named minister of border security and organized crime reduction. While this might seem like a savvy move, bundling migration with security narrows the range of options to reactive and counter-productive policies that exclude economic and social interventions. When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Not to be outdone, the Conservatives would extend the Safe Third Country Agreement to the entirety of the border, meaning asylum-seekers could be turned back anywhere.

Securitizing borders is expensive, rarely works for long and undermines refugee protection. It also results in more criminality. Prohibition in the face of high demand fosters black market supply. Illicit economies and more dangerous routes also make migrants vulnerable to human trafficking.

What’s more, criminalizing migrants reduces policy options. Politicians in Europe are obsessed with “breaking” smuggling rings, with little interest in the supply/demand logics that drive them. Irregular migration becomes more spectacular, offering politicians fodder to escalate the response. This leads to right-wing parties framing migration as a civilizational threat, the starkest examples of which can be found in Austria, Hungary and Italy.

Maxime Bernier’s tweets about “extreme multiculturalism” and the “cult of diversity” were cribbed from European populists. His break from the Conservative Party in favour of forming an intellectually and morally authentic right-wing party was right on script.

Despite Conservative attempts to brush off Bernier’s defection at the party’s recent policy convention, a far-right fringe party could bleed voters. If Europe offers any lessons, the Conservatives will likely mimic Bernier’s arguments.

That both Andrew Scheer and Michelle Rempel supported far-right activists to score points against Justin Trudeau is telling. So is the fact that Conservative delegates voted for ending birthright citizenship based on apocryphal stories of citizenship tourists.

Scheer speaks at the Conservative policy convention in Halifax in August, where delegates voted in favour of ending birthright citizenship (photo by Andrew Vaughan/CP)

Canadians like to believe we are exceptionally tolerant. Environics pollster Michael Adams argues that Canada is particularly resistant to xenophobic populism, partly because of our immigration history. But the current situation reveals a different story: Canada’s openness is more about exceptional geography.

In a 2017 study, Michael Donnelly from the ��Ƶ found that Canada is no more tolerant than similar countries, and argued our resistance to populism is because we’ve been spared migration crises. That’s no longer true.

Fraying the social fabric

What can be done? The government inherited a broken refugee system from Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, but the Liberals must address unsustainable backlogs in asylum processing, which cascade through the system and decrease people’s trust in its efficacy. Conservatives must ask whether scapegoating asylum-seekers for votes is worth the cost. It frays the social fabric, and will leave them holding the bag if they win the 2019 election.

Political discourse matters. The migrants and asylum-seekers I interviewed this summer told me time and again that Salvini ascension had changed the mood. People routinely approach them in the street to tell them that their time is up and they’ll be expelled to Africa. Italian nationalists have shot migrants in the street. Recall that the Québec City mosque shooter was motivated by xenophobic nationalism. It can, and has, happened here.

All of this might sound like the moralizing of a university researcher (from Toronto, no less), so I will conclude with a national security rationale. Canada’s 2019 federal election campaign will coincide with dates for ending Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of migrants in the United States. While some might choose to come here, the more troubling option is that Donald Trump could send them our way.

Beggar-thy-neighbour policies can be used to exacerbate migration crises, and Trump is nothing if not a zero-sum thinker. As Kelly Greenhill from Tufts University has shown, states routinely use “engineered migration” to coerce or deter their rivals. Turkey did it to Europe in 2016, securing an extra three billion Euros with a threat that it would allow hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers into Europe.

It would take a profound willed ignorance to assume Trump is beyond engineering a migration event to deflect public opinion at home, influence the Canadian elections or leverage trade concessions. Politicians from across the spectrum have a duty to ensure Canada is not exposed to that kind of blackmail, particularly not for gains at the ballot box. That means de-escalating the rhetoric and co-operating to ensure we have our house in order.

Craig Damian Smith is associate director of the Global Migration Lab at the ��Ƶ's Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

U of T’s new Trudeau Foundation scholars explore Beirut refugee neighbourhoods and sovereign debt investors

Romi Levine — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 17:16:27 +0000

U of T’s new Trudeau Foundation scholars explore Beirut refugee neighbourhoods and sovereign debt investors

Romi Levine Thu, 06/21/2018 - 13:16

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PhD students Diala Lteif and Andrew Kaufman are the recipients of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation doctoral scholarship (photos by Sylvain Légaré/PETF)

Topic

Every minute, 20 people flee their countries to escape terror and persecution, the United Nations says – with 68 million people displaced around the world.

And Lebanon, like the U.S., Europe and other Middle Eastern countries, has a long and complicated history of hosting groups of asylum seekers.

Diala Lteif, a PhD student in urban planning at the ��Ƶ, is hoping her research into that history will provide a better understanding of how refugees can shape cities like Beirut, and how migrant groups contribute to the places where they end up.

“The myth that I try to debunk is the portrayal of the immigrants – more specifically the refugee – that is here to steal your job and use the resources of a specific country and not give back,” she says. “The idea is to prove that they are active and positive participants towards the urbanization of a city that is fuller and more inclusive and accepting of everyone.”

Lteif and human geography PhD student Andrew Kaufman are two of 15 social sciences and humanities doctoral students from across Canada who have been given this year’s prestigious Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation doctoral scholarship.

The students were selected from a group of 273 applicants and chosen for their academic excellence and civic engagement. Since 2003, there have been 30 U of T PhD candidates who have received the scholarship.

Foundation scholars are each given $60,000 – opening up new research avenues and giving them more time to complete their PhDs.

“When this money came in, it let me think about how to extend my fieldwork to new areas,” says Kaufman, whose research focuses on the investors who purchase sovereign debt from countries that are struggling financially.

“My interest in urban marginalization made me curious about how larger socio-economic processes change cities,” he says.

Kaufman wants to find out how capital moves around the world through the buying and selling of debt while also exploring different perspectives on investing in sovereign debt. Those in favour of it say it is providing countries with the credit they need while critics say it can prevent countries from recovering from crises.

“I'm really interested in talking with people and understanding the financial networks and how this operates and understanding the different framings of these people’s work,” he says.

Beyond his research, Kaufman is looking forward to the mentoring and networking opportunities built into the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation scholarship.

“It's good to be placed within a space in which you encounter people from other areas, which challenges how you frame your work, how you understand your work and what other ideas you put your work in dialogue with,” he says.

For Lteif, the scholarship has allowed her to spend a year in Lebanon, sorting through archives and conducting interviews with first-, second- and third-generation refugees.

Her work focuses on four waves of refugee immigration: Armenians, who came to Lebanon after the First World War; Palestinians, then Lebanese nationals displaced during the civil war, which began in the 1970s; and the Syrian refugees who are still making their way into the country. Many of those refugees ended up settling in one specific neighbourhood in Beirut.

Lteif has personal connections to her research. Growing up in Lebanon, her family was displaced during the civil war. Her father’s family settled near the neighbourhood she is studying.

“A large realization is that Lebanon, which has been a host to many communities, has not necessarily found effective strategies to welcome these people and help get them back on their feet, despite the long experience with many communities,” she says. “In terms of practical urban and planning policies, not much has been done.”

Lteif says she hopes her research can fill the practical and intellectual gaps.

“All these crises are first framed as a crisis and are studied in isolation, and so what I'm hoping to do is through a longer duration of study, uncover some more long-term effects and patterns we can learn from and refocus our literature,” she says.

Receiving a scholarship of this magnitude is a uniquely Canadian privilege, says Lteif.

“It made me really appreciate Canada's multicultural and inclusive politics that have really allowed me to find my place and be treated equally and be given the equal opportunity as my Canadian peers, friends and colleagues,” she says.

“I hope through the work that I do, I prove that being an immigrant, being given access to such a large opportunity, is actually beneficial for everyone. I hope in one way or another I become proof of the opposite narrative that we see everywhere.”

This U of T PhD student wants to help Syrian refugees – with technology designed for them

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 16:26:22 +0000

This U of T PhD student wants to help Syrian refugees – with technology designed for them

noreen.rasbach Tue, 04/17/2018 - 12:26

Cutline

Computer science PhD student Dina Sabie is a refugee interpreter and sponsor. She is designing technologies to help Syrian refugees integrate into their Canadian communities (photo by Ryan Perez).

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Graduate Students

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Refugees

Research & Innovation

��Ƶ PhD student Dina Sabie is interested in designing technology to help Syrian refugees navigate their new lives in Canada. The first step, she says, is recognizing the barriers they face.

“When we say there are cultural differences, it's not only the traditions or customs, but also the way they use technology,” says Sabie, a researcher in human-computer interaction in the department of computer science’s Dynamic Graphics Project lab.

“They don’t use their phones the same way we do. They use it for communicating with their family and friends. When I tell them there’s an app to find public transit, they’ve never used it.”

Sabie and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, an assistant professor of computer science, have co-authored a study, Understanding Access beyond Information and Commodities: A Case Study of Refugees in Canada. The findings will be presented at the Association of Computing Machinery’s international conference on human factors in computing systems (ACM CHI) beginning Saturday in Montreal.

Sabie, who also works with refugees, cites the example of families who moved to Toronto where their sponsors lived. When they relocated to the suburbs, they had to figure out their new surroundings – including the challenge of using public transit.

In their home country, Sabie says, they walked or travelled by taxi. Public transit, if available, was mostly used by men, so it was unlikely women would immediately use transit here.

“A lot of them stayed within a two-kilometre radius of their apartment, or they just know one bus, one way, that will take them to the mall,” Sabie says. "If you're in Mississauga you can visit Oakville. You can visit Scarborough. But they don't know how to navigate. They just stick within their comfort zone. If you don’t teach them from the beginning, it's like they're scared of it.”

Sabie knows first-hand the struggles of integrating into Canadian life. She is Iraqi and immigrated to Canada with her family from the United Arab Emirates. Over the past two years, she has acted as a refugee immigration adviser and interpreter for both Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Helping her cousin and his wife, who were in Jordan, with their refugee application inspired her to obtain two certificates in refugee sponsorship from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“In the Middle East, they’re used to having lawyers, or litigators, who do everything for you. But here in Canada, you can just fill out the forms yourself as the Government of Canada offers detailed instructions. You don't have to go to a lawyer. So they didn't believe me when I told them, 'I will do it for you.'”

Sabie studied architecture at U of T – both her parents teach architectural technology at Humber College – and she picked up computer science when she needed another subject to finish her undergraduate degree.

“I didn’t know what to take. My sister [Samar Sabie] was at U of T in architecture and computer science. She said, ‘Why don't you try this? It's fun.’ Honestly, I’d never heard of computer science at that time. But I started, and I really liked it.”

Both Sabie sisters pursued a master of architecture at U of T’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Their thesis was an analysis of old refugee camps, current camps, and a design for the future. She researched the past, while her sister looked forward.

“The oldest refugee camps in the Middle East, in Palestine, were established in the late 1940s. Refugee camps are thought of as temporary, but in reality they are never temporary. Especially if they house thousands of thousands of people. They’re usually not allowed to leave. They have children. And so the city grows and grows.”

Sabie says the skills she learned in computer science applied to her architecture studies, such as designing algorithms for smart buildings. After graduating and disliking the 9-to-5 routine at an architectural firm, she decided to return to research, but this time in computer science.

“I’m doing my PhD in computer science because I think there are more possibilities and more resources to help me do what I want to do,” she says. Her sister is also pursuing a PhD at Cornell University.

Ahmed, Sabie's graduate supervisor, is excited about the potential of the research to generate innovative technologies.

Sabie says that over the past five years studies have shown what should be done, which services are lacking and what funding is needed.Technological solutions so far have been limited to the health sector.

Differences in customs are a key factor in finding ways for refugees to integrate into their new community.

“We need not only translation of words. You want something that can translate some gestures and behaviours.”

She gives the example of a three-year-old boy who kissed the hand of his sponsor. The sponsor was shocked and the child’s mother worried the family had given offence. But they could not communicate this, so Sabie was asked to help clarify that it was quite normal. The young boy felt the sponsor was like a mother to him.

Among the technologies Sabie is hoping to design is a storytelling website where refugees can anonymously share – and let go – of their personal stories, and an application to help them navigate the resources to further their education.

“Most refugees stopped their education after middle school. You can't just give them a brochure for a college and tell them – pick whichever subject you want. They look at the brochure like, ‘What is this?’ We have to simplify it for them.”

“We could always write brochures in Arabic. And we think that might help. But that's not enough. Just a really simple app they can even have fun with – what are you interested in?”

For Sabie, this work is very personal.

“When we came to Canada, we found help and we would not be here without the people who helped us,” she says.

Bob Rae on his role as Canada's special envoy to Myanmar

ullahnor — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 05:00:00 +0000

Bob Rae on his role as Canada's special envoy to Myanmar

ullahnor Thu, 12/07/2017 - 00:00

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During his trip to Myanmar as Canada's special envoy, Bob Rae visited members of the growing Rohingya refugee population in neighbouring Bangladesh (photo by Maxime Lauzon-Lacroix)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Global Lens

Alumni

Faculty of Arts & Science

Foreign Policy

Global

Refugees

Ahead of his interim report on Myanmar to the prime minister’s office, special envoy Bob Rae says he remains hopeful the Rohingya crisis can be resolved.

Just this week, United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said the exodus of more than 625,000 Rohingya Muslims driven out of the Buddhist country of Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh in late August could amount to genocide.

In an interview with U of T News, the former Ontario premier and former interim leader of the federal Liberal party, who teaches at the Faculty of Arts & Science, reflected on his fact-finding mission last month to Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), his initial take on the complexity of the conflict and his observations from a recent meeting with the country's leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Suu Kyi, once portrayed as a democratic hero who made great personal sacrifices to guide her people from dictatorship to democracy, is now widely criticized for standing by quietly during the military’s campaign against the Rohingya, and then denying the atrocities had occurred. Despite calls for her honorary Canadian citizenship to be revoked, Rae does not believe such action is needed, and that the controversy actually distracts from the issue.

“I’ve always believed that conflicts have a resolution, but in order to get there, you’ve got to understand better that different parties have different narratives or different explanations for what the problem is,” he said.

“You have to start from the premise that a solution is possible. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, or it’s going to be quick. But it starts with a few human footsteps – that’s what we have to figure out, how to make that happen.”

U of T lecturer Bob Rae in his Toronto office (photo by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

Alumnus Rae, who teaches a policy analysis class in the first-year Vic One program, was appointed by Trudeau in October to advise on the Rohingya dilemma.

He’s been directed to focus on the humanitarian challenges faced in the refugee camps both in Myanmar and in Bangladesh, to better understand the root causes of the conflict that led to the mass Rohingya exodus, and to make suggestions on what Canada and the international community can do to help find solutions and look into allegations of brutal human rights abuses.

Weighing in on Suu Kyi’s honorary title was not part of the mandate, he said.

“My own personal view is that it was given to her on the basis of the extraordinary work she did in fighting for the transition to democracy and ending military rule,” Rae said. “I don’t think this is the time for getting sidelined by issues that I consider to be symbolic only.”

Rae is set to submit an interim report to Trudeau before Christmas. He believes that an advisory commission, headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and partially funded by the government of Myanmar, is a good place to start building a peace agreement.

The commission recommended that the government take concrete steps to end enforced segregation of Buddhists and Muslims, ensure full humanitarian access, and tackle Rohingya statelessness and hold the perpetrators of human rights violations accountable.

Rae began his role with a meeting in early November with Trudeau and Suu Kyi, whom he had previously met on her state visit to Canada over the summer. The 45-minute meeting, ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trade talks in Vietnam, was a chance for the prime minister to voice concerns over Suu Kyi’s perceived inaction, but it was also a moment to hear her out, Rae said.

“It was a private meeting, but it was very candid. We listened carefully to her,” he said. “The prime minister spoke very directly to her about the evidence of the number of people leaving and the deep concern we had about the conditions that would lead people to make the decision to leave, or to be forced to leave, and the ongoing political issues underlying the conflict.

“She was very direct about the challenges that they faced. She insists in any conversation that I’ve had with her that she’s a strong supporter of the peace process and a strong supporter of reconciliation. Where the future of the Rohingya fit into that is something that we need to continue to work on.”

Pope Francis visited Myanmar in late November and met with Aung San Suu Kyi (photo by Handout/Getty Images)

Sympathetic with the challenges Suu Kyi faces, Rae talked about the military, which has run the country since 1962 and still controls the most powerful institutions while Suu Kyi is limited in her role as state counsellor.

“She’s become the public figure,” Rae said. “You must not assume that means she has infinite power and infinite control over what happens because she doesn’t.”

During his trip to the region in mid-November, he got a taste of how hotly contested the facts are in this conflict.

“What is straightforward is that 625,000 people have left since the end of August, but people can’t even agree on that. There are people inside Myanmar who insist the number is nowhere near that great, but those are the UN numbers. Beyond that, there isn’t necessarily much agreement on why did they leave, what were the circumstances under which they left, what is the underlying cause of the problem, how do we overcome it.”

He says he heard from victims about atrocities they faced in Myanmar's Rakhine state, but his training as a U of T law student taught him to be careful about the facts – that allegations can often differ from what is finally determined to be true.

“There are many, many allegations of horrific violence, loss of life, and physical violence against women, including rape and other human rights abuses. I heard personal stories from women and men about the circumstances under which they left, what happened to them and the violence that was done to them,” Rae said. “I don’t think anybody would take the initial report of the government of Myanmar or the military saying nothing happened. These are allegations that cannot be ignored and have to be examined in greater depth.”

The UN Human Rights Council is expected to release a report in March on its own fact-finding mission looking at the allegations of human rights abuses in Myanmar.

Rae said even the term Rohingya is under dispute. Suu Kyi avoided using the term, Rae said as did the Pope on his trip to Myanmar last month.

Gya means “from,” and Rohing comes from Rohang or Rohan, meaning the Rakhine or Arakan state during the 9^th and 10^th centuries, so the name implies a territorial claim by the Muslim minority, which says it has a deep historic link to the country and therefore deserves constitutional recognition, Rae said. The country, meanwhile, considers the Rohingya foreigners returning to where they came from.

Bob Rae visited the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and met with members of the Rohingya people who have fled persecution, as well as those providing aid (photo courtesy of Bob Rae)

While Rae did not get to enter Rakhine state, he did travel to nearby Yangon here a non-governmental organization held a dialogue that brought in both sides from Rakhine. The rules of the dialogue were you can’t get angry or insult the other side.

“It would be very difficult to have a conversation like this in Rakhine state,” Rae said. “It’s not something people want to see happen.”

He also travelled to a refugee camp in Bangladesh where he met with government officials. The situation in the overflowing camps could become worse during the spring with the onslaught of monsoons, Rae said.

In January, he hopes to return to the region to visit refugee camps in Bangladesh and maybe this time get the chance to meet with the military leadership. He will submit a final report to the prime minister shortly thereafter.

Rae, who wrote a book in 2011 called Exporting Democracy on the difficulties and dangers of taking democracy to foreign lands, says we need to keep in mind that there’s a difference between democracy and a liberal or federal democracy, which is more representative.

“We need to understand that there’s a powerful ethnic nationalism that’s at work in many, many parts of the world, including in Myanmar. That ethnic nationalism can actually be fuelled by the forces of populism and democracies as broadly defined. We define democracy as including the rule of law, and various liberal expressions. But if you take democracy as simply being the will of the majority of the people, that can often lead in all kinds of directions.

“The majoritarian principle doesn’t always lead to a protection of civil liberties or to a respect for minorities. One of the underlying challenges that Aung San Suu Kyi has is not simply dealing with the military. It’s dealing with majoritarian opinion in her country and how they see this issue and how they feel about it. That’s one of the things that makes it so complicated.”

Take a stand: a U of T historian shares her story of being a young refugee

ullahnor — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 16:12:06 +0000

Take a stand: a U of T historian shares her story of being a young refugee

ullahnor Wed, 04/05/2017 - 12:12

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Associate Professor Nhung Tuyet Tran with her family in Michigan soon after arriving in America as a Vietnamese refugee. She is pictured standing in the bottom row with her brothers (photo courtesy of Nhung Tuyet Tran)

Topic

With the renewed debate in Europe and North America over refugees, Bruce Kidd, vice-president of U of T and principal of U of T Scarborough, shared his blog this week with Nhung Tuyet Tran, associate professor of Southeast Asian history in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

She shares her story below about her experiences as a refugee escaping Vietnam, being in a refugee camp and eventually settling in the United States – first in Michigan and then Texas.

I never realized that I was an American patriot until I moved to Canada and before this year is over, I may become a Canadian patriot, though through a circuitous route. I rarely share my own story, in part because of my revulsion at the liberal elite’s desire to consume compelling struggles. I want to be known for my scholarship and teaching, a privilege that people of European descent in my field enjoy, rather than being reduced to a representation of the refugee experience. However, last year, in the midst of the largest humanitarian crisis of our times, the fate of Syrian refugees, I felt that it was irresponsible not to speak out.

I was born in Vietnam immediately following the end of the American War, to parents of modest peasant backgrounds. My parents had no formal education, but they could read and write. My father had been a soldier in the French colonial army and had lost his leg on a land mine sometime in 1953-54. My mother was from a moderately successful peasant family from the north, whose own grandparents were executed during the land reforms of 1956. In Saigon, they were among the million or so new migrants who placed pressure on the physical infrastructure of the new state, but also formed the locus of political support for the president of the new Republic of Vietnam, himself an ardent Catholic. Handicapped and uneducated, my parents did what they could to make do: my mother sold tofu on the streets of Saigon and my father took jobs here and there. In the 1960s, they benefitted from the influx of American capital, and alone or together, as memories are blurred, opened a small bar. At some point in the early 1970s, my mother’s hand was maimed when she intervened to protect a patron at the bar.

After 1975, the new Vietnam was not kind to two disabled, Catholic individuals whose migration south signaled a political betrayal. At that point, they had six children, and cared for two maternal uncles, who were teenagers at the time. Twice, they tried to commission escape, only to be turned in by family members. The third and final time, to conceal their efforts, my two eldest sisters, aged 10 and eight, traveled on the back of trucks and buses to a coastal city of no great distance, but seven hours away, to negotiate our family’s escape.

So it was, as the story has been relayed to me over the years, one summer day in 1979, my parents somehow got my six older siblings, my newly born three-month-old sister, my uncles, and me to that port town and on a wooden boat with other families. My parents had always maintained that this would have been our last try, that they had made their peace with the unknown beyond the shores of the South China Sea, or death for their children and wards. I have no real memories of the escape, but one vague manufactured one of the ship that rescued our family. A Norwegian ocean liner had spotted our tiny boat after a few days and we were taken onto it. Real or manufactured, my earliest memory is the sensation that I was stepping onto a steel boat as large as a city, and that automobiles could drive around it. The ship took us to the nearest refugee camp from our location, as the laws of the seas required, in Singapore, which is when my own memories emerge, sometimes with the help of photographic images, which remain the only evidence I have of my existence before the age of five.

In the image [directly] above, I am pictured with my brother in our refugee camp. My hair is freshly shorn to prevent the spread of lice among the refugees. The image [below] captures our arrival in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My father is on the far right and another one of my brothers is carrying his wooden leg. On the left, my mother is carrying my sister, who would have been close to one at the time. The [lead] picture [at the very top of the post] is, as far as I know, our first "family photo" with eight of the nine kids (I'm the girl in the front row), on one Sunday after mass in 1981 or so. My youngest brother had not been born yet. The picture reveals a happy and settled family, but it also obscures other stories, moments of great generosity on the one hand, but also exploitation and discrimination during our early years in the United States.We had been sponsored by a Dutch Reform Church, but with strings attached, it soon emerged. The picture captures a happy moment after mass, but also conceals the fact that we had just been evicted from our home, owned by the congregation, because we would not convert. In retrospect, the eviction seems all the more enraging because my parents, siblings and I had worked long hours harvesting blueberries on farms affiliated with the church. Despite the organization’s decision, a congregant, whom I remember as a tall man who used to take us out into the city, continued to visit. He helped us to apply for public housing and other assistance. One Christmas Eve, he even brought hand-me-down clothes, including my favorite, a Miss Piggy nightgown. Eventually, my parents moved us to Texas, and we left behind cold Michigan winters.

In Michigan and Texas, my family survived because of the government programs implemented to help the weakest among us. My mother worked 14 hours a day in a restaurant and my father did manual labour, but it was not enough. Between the ages of eight and 12, I de-headed and peeled hundreds and hundreds of pounds of shrimp, alongside my younger sister. The shrimp would then be sent to be packaged elsewhere and sold in gourmet stores around the country. My older siblings all worked part-time jobs, not for spending money, but to pay for essentials in the household. Still, it was not enough, and it was the public services for the poor that sustained us.

Despite our poverty, the Medicaid program, which provided basic medical care, ensured that in emergencies we would still receive prescription medications and acute care. The Food Stamp Program, a food-voucher system, did not satiate our hunger but did prevent us from starvation. The Housing Section 8 Program, which helped the poor find suitable housing, ensured that we were not homeless. With the small welfare stipend, my parents could pay rent and the gas bills so we did not freeze in Michigan, die of heat exhaustion in Texas or forego basic hygiene items like soap.

As our basic material needs were met at home, our intellectual and psychological needs were nurtured at school. Then, in the 1980s, the educational structure in the United States was good enough that we could attend our local schools and receive quality education. The federally funded university grant and loan programs allowed us to attend university. Throughout these years, we had to start over many times, twice because of robberies in our tiny home and another time when our house burnt down. We faced xenophobia, racism and inequality in our America, but we also benefitted from the incredible structural generosity of a nation and the personal generosities of others around us. From the bureaucrat who could have made our lives more difficult but instead gave us the benefit of the doubt, to the teachers who recognized our thirst for knowledge and sent information about enrichment programs to us. Personal generosities, however, were no replacement for that safety net, and it was our fortune to have the two that enabled us to survive.

Despite its failings, our America was one in which the poor had access to basic healthcare, a more compassionate immigration system and a solid education system. These institutions are essential in a fair society. Since the first weeks of this new administration, the President and the Republican-led Congress are dismantling it. They have drawn on language to turn Americans against one another, and it is only three months in.

Lucky as I am to enjoy a stable position in Canada, I have a responsibility to share my story as we see similar sentiments take shape here. The defunding of education in Ontario, and the stripping of programs to help the poor in cities across Canada, are muted examples of those American initiatives.

I share my story also, not only to resist the xenophobic, Islamophobic rhetoric, often accompanied by violence, that has been unleashed in the United States and in Canada, but to counteract language that is emerging from progressive circles, too. The distasteful discourse around the potential “brain surge” that may flow into Canada as a result of the travel bans in the United States directs attention away from the real suffering that these individuals face. Refugees and victims of religious discrimination should be welcomed because it is right to protect them against state-sponsored violence, not because they can help the bottom line. If I made any contributions to society, it is not because I had any promise as that young child in the refugee camp, it was because of those institutional structures.

As a teacher of the history of Southeast Asia, I retell stories of courage and cowardice that have shaped the contours of our modern world. I have never seen any person who has stood up and taken a stand against oppression regret it later in their lives, though there are many stories of those who turned away, and regretted it for the rest of their lives.

I believe that Canadians who enjoy the benefits of influence and position have a responsibility to take a stand and speak out against the injustices they see, whether south of the border or in our own communities. Canadian leaders should add substance to their rhetoric of fostering a just and inclusive society, by welcoming refugees not because they can become great citizens, but because it is the right thing to do. A living income, access to social services and equal access to education is what makes great citizens. As my neighbours, friends and colleagues work to bring Syrian refugee families to Canada, and to see how differently RCMP officials are greeting refugees fleeing the United States, I feel proud. However, I am mindful of how quickly public opinion can turn.

As I write this blog, I am also preparing my application for Canadian citizenship, so that in the next year or so, should my application be approved, I can exercise my civic duty to vote in local and provincial elections. My own father voted in every election from the time he became an American citizen to the day he died, on the morning of the 2002 mid-term elections. At the end of a lengthy illness, he was declared brain dead that morning. After he was gone, I collected his things and saw that after so many years, he still carried his voter’s registration card in his wallet. He had become an American patriot and exercised his most sacred of duties faithfully. Our elected leaders answer to us, and as citizens of a just society, it is our responsibility to demand it of our representatives.

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Read more on the Rohingya crisis

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Refugees

U of T student, author and activist reflects on his incredible journey as a Rohingya refugee

Read ������Ƶ Magazine’s in-depth profile of Jaivet Ealom

By connecting with her community, U of T grad Fatima Azahraa Al Saadie finds academic success

'Making uncertainty visible': U of T researcher says AI could help avoid improper denial of refugee claims

How U of T helped refugees strike down the Safe Third Country Agreement in a federal court

Women at the centre of U of T research on Syrian refugee experience in the Toronto region

Read more about the research initiative

Listen to Maghbouleh on the "View to the U" podcast

U of T expert on how Canadian politicians are playing a dangerous game on migration

Fears trump facts

Crises demand action

Fraying the social fabric

U of T’s new Trudeau Foundation scholars explore Beirut refugee neighbourhoods and sovereign debt investors

This U of T PhD student wants to help Syrian refugees – with technology designed for them

Bob Rae on his role as Canada's special envoy to Myanmar

Read more on the Rohingya crisis

Take a stand: a U of T historian shares her story of being a young refugee

Read ��Ƶ Magazine’s in-depth profile of Jaivet Ealom