“It’s the small stuff you can’t see”: Stories of mental wellness, community, and leisure told by new arrivants of colour to a mid-sized, South-Western Ontario city

ABSTRACT

There is a tendency for new arrivants to experience a decrease in self-reported mental health as they spend more time in their new country of settlement. We wanted to discern whether new arrivants of colour (<10 years) to a mid-sized Ontario city had a similar story. With the knowing that positive and inclusive leisure experiences can buffer stressors for individuals, this research sought to hear about the mental well-being of new arrivants (between the ages 18–64) and the ways leisure enhances or detracts from their perceived mental well-being. Through photo elicitation qualitative interviews with five new arrivants contextualized existing literature in this area and described experiences of isolation, their transition experience, social stress and support, and building social capital through bridging and bonding. From our analysis, a novel finding we called, ”a perception of necessity for leisure” was a novel contribution to the new arrivant leisure literature.

Résumé

Les nouveaux arrivants tendent à subir une détérioration de leur bien-être mental à mesure qu’ils s’intègrent à leur pays d’accueil (Byrne, 2017). L’étude cherche à déterminer si les nouveaux arrivants de couleur (<10 ans) dans une agglomération moyenne de l’Ontario vivent une situation similaire. En tenant compte du fait qu’une expérience de loisirs positive et inclusive est susceptible de mitiger les facteurs de stress, cette étude s’attarde à évaluer l’état mental des nouveaux arrivants de 18 à 64 ans, ainsi que les façons dont les loisirs nuisent à ou améliorent leur bien-être mental. À l’aide de photos et d’entretiens approfondis avec cinq nouveaux arrivants, nous avons pu mettre en contexte la recherche existante dans ce domaine, l’isolement, l’expérience de la transition, la pression sociale et les services de soutien, ainsi que le fait de se bâtir un capital social par l’intégration. Selon notre analyze, une découverte que nous appelons « perceptions autour de la nécessité des loisirs » est une toute nouvelle contribution à la recherche moderne en loisirs.

KEYWORDS:

• mid-sized city
• mental health
• settlement
• stress
• immigrants

Mots-clés:

• ville
• agglomération
• santé mentale
• intégration
• stress
• immigrants

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. We are always informed by past experiences and learnings (Ali et al., 2016; Holt et al., 2019) and attempt to write with the assumption that ‘language is not neutral’ (Byrne, 2017, p. 5). The term migrants privileges Canadian-born individuals and assumes homogeneity of experience by placing individuals in broad categories where little variation (an individual’s age when travelling, country of origin/settlement, how long it takes to travel between countries and the mode of transportation, etc.) exists. Too often labels are used without considering the impact of stereotypes on an individual’s identity. While imperfect, the term ‘arrivant’ considers all individuals coming to settle on the land known as Canada regardless of origin country (Byrd, 2019). Throughout the paper we use understandings of migrants found in the literature to contextualize interviewee experiences and use the term arrivants refer to people who have experience with resettlement as a person of colour. The term arrivants attempts to attend to BI and POC who are translocating to Turtle Island. Literature (Barker, 2015; Ben-Zvi, 2018; Wong, 2019) supports the critique that it is discursively violent to refer to BI and POC as settlers given the attachment of this term to white colonial commodification and harm.

2. ‘Back home’ is a turn of phrase often used to describe a country of origin (Abdul-Korah, 2007).

3. At the time of the creation of this project we did not consider the origination of this knowledge, specifically the context in which this definition was created. We want to highlight the experiences of new arrivants of colour whose perspectives may not align with the predominantly white sample of Ryff and Keyes (1995) work. For this reason, we used minority stress theory to analyze the data.

4. We continue to trouble the use of the term BIPOC in today’s discussions. ‘Centering particular groups only in name ultimately furthers their marginalization’ as participation and inclusion are crucial for individuals to use their power (Deo, 2021, p. 118). We believe more intentionality and nuance is needed when considering when to use BIPOC, considering Black and Indigenous communities are not always at the centre of an issue being discussed (Deo, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. the