Sieves and reeds:  Identity, cohesion, and be-longing in a glocalizing space.  Young Oromos in Toronto [Ontario].
Published: 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 379
Description: This is a qualitative study examining complex micro and macro social processes of negotiating drastic shifts in identity, cohesion, and belonging in the context of refugee displacement. A community-based small sample of 18 self-identified research participants is selected from among young Oromos living in Toronto. While most were born in Ethiopia, some were born in Somalia but all came to Canada as refugees or as children reuniting with families who fled Ethiopia as refugees. Innovative methodology was designed to capture the fluidity and complexity of micro processes as they interplay with macro processes in the wider society. Rich qualitative data were generated through loosely structured conversations, telling stories, singing songs and chanting poems, as well as evocative exercises, group reflections, and debates. Participants met every week in four one-to-one and three small group weekly sessions for an average of seven weeks in two rounds. This process built up to a larger focus group debate at the end of the second round of weekly sessions. Six events of ethnographic activity participation were completed intermittently. Data were analyzed using critically interpretive approaches and strategies of critical reflexivity. Concepts and theories from across multiple disciplinary and ontological boundaries were critically engaged and an empirically grounded conceptual framework, dispersal-affinity, was developed through constant goings back and forth between the data and the literature. Dispersal signifies globalizing movements of expulsion and dispersion for refugees while  affinity signifies localizing movements of yearning to relocate disrupted social ties. Dispersal-affinity depicts a constant dialogue between the past and the future, the global and the local, the conscious and the unconscious, as well as the individual and the collective. Findings indicate that identity and cohesion are simultaneous processes neither separable from nor reducible to each other and that these processes produce a sense of be-longing simultaneously. Furthermore, they indicate that these processes are directional movements where participants long away from spaces of perceived violence and oppression towards spaces of perceived healing and liberation. The implications of these findings for social work and social justice are discussed.
Notes: Adviser:  Adrienne Chambon.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2004.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-10, Section: A, page: 3992.