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Social Science General

The New African Diaspora in Vancouver

Migration, Exclusion and Belonging

by (author) Gillian Creese

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Aug 2011
Category
General, General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781442642959
    Publish Date
    Aug 2011
    List Price
    $79.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781442611597
    Publish Date
    Aug 2011
    List Price
    $42.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442695184
    Publish Date
    Sep 2013
    List Price
    $72
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442695191
    Publish Date
    Aug 2011
    List Price
    $32.95

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Description

The New African Diaspora in Vancouver documents the experiences of immigrants from countries in sub-Saharan Africa on Canada's west coast. Despite their individual national origins, many adopt new identities as ‘African’ and are actively engaged in creating a new, place-based ‘African community.’ In this study, Gillian Creese analyzes interviews with sixty-one women and men from twenty-one African countries to document the gendered and racialized processes of community-building that occur in the contexts of marginalization and exclusion as they exist in Vancouver.

Creese reveals that the routine discounting of previous education by potential employers, the demeaning of African accents and bodies by society at large, cultural pressures to reshape gender relations and parenting practices, and the absence of extended families often contribute to downward mobility for immigrants. The New African Diaspora in Vancouver maps out how African immigrants negotiate these multiple dimensions of local exclusion while at the same time creating new spaces of belonging and emerging collective identity.

About the author

Gillian Creese is the associate dean of Arts, Faculty & Equity, and professor in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

Gillian Creese's profile page

Editorial Reviews

‘Creese provides the first substantial academic study of the immigration experience of Black sub-Saharan Africans living in the Greater Vancouver area.’

Canadian Woman Studies, vol 30:01:2013