Immigrant Youth in Canadian Culture
Immigrant Youth in Canadian Culture
Introduction
Canada is a place where people all over the world immigrate to. People immigrate to Canada due to reasons such as war, famine, employment, better health plans, colonialism, educational opportunities and many more. Some come here by choice while others are forced to leave their homeland to survive. For whatever reason one immigrates to Canada, the point is, they leave things that are familiar to them and come to an unknown and uncertain environment. What most people forget to look at is regardless of the reasons for coming to Canada it is hard to leave everything they have learned and adapt to a whole new culture fluidly. Children and youth especially struggle when they grow up with parents who are immigrants and then they have to integrate into the larger society. The children and youth live in a world where their home life is significantly different from the larger society.
The purpose of this paper is to look at what are the impacts for immigrant youth integrating into Canadian culture. This paper will be focusing on some of the negative and positive aspects of integration into Canadian society due to dual sources of self-identity, language barriers, conflicts of values between home and peer life, educational gaps, mental health, what role gender plays, facing racism and bullying due to the unique differences and what are some things parents and Child and Youth Workers (CYW) can do to assist these youths.
Most immigrants come from developing countries, which is non-western cultures. Many cultures reside in one place and every person brings something unique that is solely understandable to them. Each culture has traditions and brings a form of modernity into the western world and if there had been any education acquired in their country of origin it may not be recognized here in Canada (Halli & Vedanand, 2007).
Dual-Self Identity
Canada is known as a multi-cultural country and there are many different
Introduction
Canada is a place where people all over the world immigrate to. People immigrate to Canada due to reasons such as war, famine, employment, better health plans, colonialism, educational opportunities and many more. Some come here by choice while others are forced to leave their homeland to survive. For whatever reason one immigrates to Canada, the point is, they leave things that are familiar to them and come to an unknown and uncertain environment. What most people forget to look at is regardless of the reasons for coming to Canada it is hard to leave everything they have learned and adapt to a whole new culture fluidly. Children and youth especially struggle when they grow up with parents who are immigrants and then they have to integrate into the larger society. The children and youth live in a world where their home life is significantly different from the larger society.
The purpose of this paper is to look at what are the impacts for immigrant youth integrating into Canadian culture. This paper will be focusing on some of the negative and positive aspects of integration into Canadian society due to dual sources of self-identity, language barriers, conflicts of values between home and peer life, educational gaps, mental health, what role gender plays, facing racism and bullying due to the unique differences and what are some things parents and Child and Youth Workers (CYW) can do to assist these youths.
Most immigrants come from developing countries, which is non-western cultures. Many cultures reside in one place and every person brings something unique that is solely understandable to them. Each culture has traditions and brings a form of modernity into the western world and if there had been any education acquired in their country of origin it may not be recognized here in Canada (Halli & Vedanand, 2007).
Dual-Self Identity
Canada is known as a multi-cultural country and there are many different
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