Refugee background families’ engagement in schooling across migration contexts: a community cultural wealth perspective

ABSTRACT

This study adopts Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework to examine family engagement of Syrian refugee background parents with their children’s elementary schooling during their migration journeys across pre-migration, transit, and resettlement contexts. Utilizing interpretive inquiry, interview and artistic data were collected from eight children and their parents over a 14-month period, then analyzed within the hermeneutic circle. The findings elucidate the various forms of capital that the families brought to their engagement with schools across contexts, suggesting that understanding familial values and beliefs is central to building positive, reciprocal relationships.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our research participants for welcoming us into their homes and sharing their experiences with us. This work was supported by a grant from the McDowell Foundation.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the McDowell Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Christine Massing

Dr. Christine Massing is an associate professor in early childhood education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. Christine’s research expertise is in the fields of immigrant/refugee studies and early childhood education. More specifically, her recent projects have explored newcomers’ experiences accessing child care and educational opportunities, intercultural child care practice, family engagement in schooling, and early childhood teacher education. She has extensive experience teaching both children and adults in cross-cultural contexts including Colombia, Japan, Guatemala, Mexico, Egypt, and in two First Nations communities in Canada.

Needal Ghadi

Dr. Needal Ghadi is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. His research interests span both identity and second language acquisition among non-native speakers of the English language. His previous research projects have explored social identity development among refugees in Canada, the language learning disruption of newcomers, and newcomer families’ participation in their children's education. Needal is currently involved in collaborative research projects in the area of newcomer resettlement experiences in rural Canada.

Daniel Kikulwe

Dr. Daniel Kikulwe is an assistant professor at the School of Social Work, York University. His area of academic interest is in child welfare practices, policies, families, and immigration. Other areas of research interests relate to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children and its applicability to the global south, as well as kinship care trends in Canada.

Katerina Nakutnyy

Ms. Katerina Nakutnyy is an English as an Additional Language teacher with the Regina Catholic School Division. Her thesis research looked at the sociocultural literacy practices of a Sudanese mother and son in Canada and she has done further research pertaining to literacy practices and refugees. Katerina is very involved in her Ukrainian community and is currently supporting new displaced Ukrainians to Saskatchewan, including her own EAL students.