Understanding social inclusion: a narrative inquiry into the experiences of refugee families with young children

ABSTRACT

While refugees are part of patterns of global migration, their ordinary lives remain obscured. In a narrative inquiry into the lives of Syrian refugee families who came to Canada within the past 4 years, we focused on their experiences of belonging, agency, and identity as part of social inclusion. The main focus was the lives of young children and their families as they made sense of Canadian institutional settings. Working with two community-based Arabic-speaking women, we engaged with each family for up to two years. Data (field texts) included recorded and informal conversations, photographs, memory box artefacts, field notes on activities, and art work. In an initial analysis, we wrote narrative accounts of each family’s experiences. Second level analysis involved collaborative identification of two narrative threads that cut across families’ experiences: making and sustaining familial and community relationships and composing stories to live by as a process of becoming. We draw on one family’s experiences to illustrate these threads. Learning to speak English is a central component within each thread. Tensions between inclusion and exclusion, which become apparent as families struggled to hold on to who they were, and as they worked to reimagine and recompose their lives, are visible.

KEYWORDS:

• Social inclusion
• Syrian refugees
• young children
• families
• narrative

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the generosity of the participants, who welcomed us into their lives with open arms. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge our collaborators from the Multicultural Health Brokers, Edmonton, AB, especially Dr. Yvonne Chui. We also learned so much from Hanan Alhendi and Zamard Rajab de El Houchaimi who worked closely with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, the data are not publicly available due to protecting the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC IG 435-2017-0665).