This path-breaking collaboration by leading Black scholars examines the complexities of Black life in Canadian post-secondary education.

This book explores how questions about home and belonging have been framed in the discourses on race, migration, and social relationships. It does this with the aim of envisioning alternative modes of living and reimagining our political communities in ways that question the legacy of colonization and constructed identities which detract from our sense of obligation to each other and the planet. The book questions problematic categories of difference to transform human relations beyond the materialism of our global political economy. Questions addressed in the volume include: In what ways are combative colonial identities of difference manufactured within our national and global spaces of encounter? How can we expel the racialized and tribalized political identities that seek to purify and deny the complexities and sacredness of being human? How do we embrace the notion that everyone we encounter is a mirror reflecting our fears of suffering and our desires for happiness? The book is set in the context of re-emerging ultra-nationalists and anti-migrant politicians on the national and international stage, advancing various strands of extreme-right and protectionist ideology couched as redemptive-welfarist strategies. The adverse impacts of these strategies seem to be reifying a possessive idea of citizenship and identity, engendering a national fantasy that portrays communities as homogenous entities inhabiting enclosed borders. This is essentially a compendium of conversations across the intersection of the racial, national, ethnic, spiritual, and sexual boundaries in which we live.

The first wave of Black immigrants arrived in North America during the 1960s and 1970s, coming originally from the Caribbean. An opportunity was missed, however, in documenting their everyday experience from a social science perspective: what did it mean for a Barbadian or a Jamaican to live in Toronto or New York? Were they Jamaicans or did they go with the descriptor ‘Black’? What relationship did they have with African Canadians or African Americans? Black Immigrants in North America answers these and other questions while documenting the second wave of Black immigration to North America, which started in the early 1990s. Theoretically and empirically grounded, the book is a documentation of the process of becoming Black – a radical identity transformation where a continental African is marked by Blackness. This, in turn, leads to a deeper understanding of what it means to encounter that social imaginary of, ‘Oh, they all look like Blacks to me!’ This encounter impacts what one learns and how one learns it, where learning English as a Second Language (ESL) is sidestepped in favor of Black English as a Second Language (BESL). Learning becomes a political and a pedagogical project of cultural, linguistic and identity investment and desire. Perfect for courses such as: Black Immigrants, Race Complexity, Critical Applied Linguistics, Ethnography, Graduate Course on Educational Foundations and Curriculum

A study of youth culture worldwide and its influence on popular cultural practices, national ideologies, and global markets.