Discourses of Domination: Racial Bias in the Canadian English-Language Press

This article examines how a refugee-background student of Somali Bantu heritage employs linguistic resources to make sense of his experience with forced migration, resettlement, and formal educatio...

From Deficit to Asset: Locating Discursive Resistance in a Refugee-Background Student’s Written and Oral Narrative

Refugees are generally viewed as a transitory problem. In many African countries, however, protracted refugee situations have turned the temporary refugee state into a more or less permanent phenomenon. In this article, I draw on the concept of uncertainty, and on claims that suspicion structures humanitarianism, to examine how long-term residents in Dagahaley refugee camp in Kenya attempted to make themselves worthy of being considered for resettlement. I demonstrate how the incompatibility between the UNHCR's resettlement criteria and Somali refugees’ lived realities provided both sets of actors with a resource: they used understandings of vulnerability as a means for making or denying resettlement claims. Refugeeness is a process of becoming, premised on how earlier arrivals deployed long-term suffering as a justification for being prioritized for resettlement. These dynamics resulted in the emergence of ‘new’ and ‘old’ refugee distinctions through which the meanings of vulnerability were redefined.

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Animating 'refugeeness' through vulnerabilities: worthiness of long-term exile in resettlement claims among Somali refugees in Kenya

El articulo aborda la situacion actual de los medios etnicos, espacios tradicionalmente destinados a las comunidades migrantes, que lejos de su preconizada extincion, han sobrevivido y encuentran nuevas posibilidades a traves de la conservacion y en muchos casos renovacion de su papel como gratificadores identitarios. Hoy conservan aun un espacio de importancia en cuanto a las preferencias de consumo por parte de estos colectivos, aunque han debido adaptarse al ecosistema digital introduciendo cambios sustanciales en su modelo de negocio, estructuras y produccion de contenidos adecuados al entorno digital. Estas paginas exploran y comparan de forma cualitativa contenidos, estructuras organizacionales, herramientas y lineas editoriales de dos medios etnicos relacionados con la comunidad migrante de mexicanos en Estados Unidos, uno nacido con vocacion exclusivamente digital y transnacional como Conexion Migrante y el otro adaptado desde un formato impreso a la comunidad de mexicanos en Nueva York como Diario de Mexico en U.S.A. El articulo pretende definir las nuevas estructuras, lineas de contenidos y modelos de negocios adoptados por los nuevos medios etnicos y que conexiones guardan con sus funciones tradicionales. Del mismo modo investiga si estos medios estarian privilegiando el mantenimiento por parte de los migrantes de sus vinculos con la sociedad de origen o por el contrario la asimilacion cultural en su nuevo destino, y de que forma, el paso a un formato digital con estructuras mas interactivas y horizontales ayuda en ese proceso.

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Medios étnicos, adaptación al ecosistema digital y usos de la diáspora migrante

Working at the intersection of migration studies and radio studies, we interrogate podcasting’s potential as a practice-based activist research method. This article documents podcasting’s role in an ethnographic project conducted together with Konstkupan (The Art Hive),
 a migrant-focused community arts space in Malmö, Sweden. We argue that the value of podcasting as a practice-based research method exists in its potential to function as a boundary object. Boundary objects are technologies and processes bridging social worlds and providing sites of communication
 and translation between groups. Challenging narratives that detect a decline in podcasting’s radical potential, we argue that as a boundary object, podcasting’s political significance continues in how it convenes small, diverse, but attentive ‘listening publics’. A
 boundary object does not demand consensus on the meanings or representations it produces, affording space for both the synchrony and dissonance of narratives produced by migrants.

Sounds like ‘home’: The synchrony and dissonance of podcasting as boundary object

In the United States, numerous studies have reported a significant increase in the use of ethnic media and their audiences.2 However, the area of research studying ethnic media, located at the intersection of media, minorities, and immigration, remains underdeveloped in Europe,3 which could explain the existing confusion about the concepts of “community media” and “ethnic media.” In France, instead of the concept of “ethnicity,” an elaborate list of euphemisms was constructed to serve as a semantic repertoire describing the same phenomenon,4 even though the phenomenon in question has been extensively defined.5 This confusion seems to be a product of disinterest on the part of the social sciences in France in the studies of minorities and interethnic relations, a phenomenon that involves multiple factors.6 Therefore, it appears pertinent to clarify these ambiguities. Ethnic media and community media are used in conjunction with three developments: international migration, increased privatization and commercialization of public spaces, and, lastly, the development of information and communication technologies. The development of community media is linked to the rise in privatization and commercialization of public spaces. Operating from the margins of mainstream media, community media offer a third voice in the mass-media system, after the private and public sectors.7 Ethnic and alternative media are also located in this third category.

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Charmarkeh Houssein

Papers

Diaspora, memory, and ethnic media: media use by Somalis living in Canada