Undone: A Newcomer’s Story • Parsing and decolonizing the mediation of Canadian immigration narratives

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Requested response to an article in The Tyee

ABSTRACT

The Tyee, an independent online magazine out of Vancouver, BC, published an article entitled “Undone: A Newcomer’s Story”, about a “refugee” who ended up committing suicide:

https://thetyee.ca/News/2019/07/01/Undone-Newcomer-Story/

The publisher, David Beers, asked if I would be interested in addressing the following concerns about the story, stated as follows:

We are reaching out to you and others who have expertise and influence in order to publish a follow-up piece. We ask for your responses and ideas for how to improve support for newly arrived refugees, particularly those from the LGBTQ community who may be from conservative religious backgrounds. We aim to publish this piece on August 2. Any thought or ideas you might be willing to share for publication would be very much appreciated. Among the questions that come to mind are:

How does Farid’s story fit into the picture of challenges for refugees you are learning about in your role?
What additional context would you like to see added to this report?
Do you see in Farid’s story indications of a systemic failure?
Do you think the provincial or federal government should be holding hearings on gaps in services, especially around mental health?
Can you recommend others we should connect with in seeking ideas for improving matters?
Would you be willing to allow us to publish your response?

This is my response to the story, which addresses issues of decolonization, mediation, and representation of “refugees” in “Western” media. It is an attempt to provide a meta-observation, a step back away from the story, in an effort to decolonize perceptions of immigrants within a Canadian context. This response is referenced in a follow-up article that appeared on 
August 2, 2019.

The full response can be downloaded from this link:

https://www.academia.edu/39973236/Undone_A_Newcomer_s_Story_Parsing_and_decolonizing_the_mediation_of_Canadian_immigration_narratives