The impact of media representations on Somali youth's experiences in educational spaces
In this article, I examine how the politics of representation following September 11, 2001 attacks on the US impact the experiences of Somali youth in educational spaces in North America. This research draws from a discourse analysis of representations of Somalis and Somalia in North American newspaper articles (n=82) between August and October 2011 and 51 interviews with Somali youth between the ages of 14 and 30. It also draws from ethnographic fieldwork for 16 months ( July 2010−October 2011) in Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto, Canada and Minneapolis-St. Paul, USA. This includes participant-observation at Somali youth events, organizations, centres, homework programs, mosques and after-school and weekend Islamic schools that provide spaces of learning for Somali youth outside of public/private schools. In this article, I argue that the representations of Somalis in the media as either perpetrators or victims of violence are gendered and have variously politicized Somali men and women within the current ‘War on Terror.’ As a result, Somali youth are targets of routine forms of structural violence, expressed in discrimination and marginalization as well as interpersonal forms of violence, including bullying. I examine how these forms of violence are both carried out and resisted in educational spaces and how they variously affect Somali youth’s experiences in school. The article shows how Somali community educational spaces provide spaces of belonging and a space to learn the skills needed to challenge representations of Somalis and Somalia in the media. Somali youths’ experiences of violence and within educational spaces reshape their identities.
Raising Citizens: Parenting Education Classes and Somali Mothers’ Experiences of Childrearing in Canada
Mothers are viewed as the people who are raising future citizens of Canada; therefore, their parenting practices are being targeted for intervention by civic organizations funded by the state. In this article, I argue that modernity narratives and neoliberalism approaches to mothering inform parenting education classes for Somali refugee women to Canada. Thus, Somali women are often seen as victims. Stereotyped identities conceal their social and historical agency. This research draws on 15 individual interviews with Somali mothers and participant- observation in two parenting education classes in Canada.
Religion, Law and Society
Issues concerning religion in the public sphere are rarely far from the headlines. As a result, scholars have paid increasing attention to religion. These scholars, however, have generally stayed within the confines of their own respective disciplines. To date there has been little contact between lawyers and sociologists. Religion, Law and Society explores whether, how and why law and religion should interact with the sociology of religion. It examines sociological and legal materials concerning religion in order to find out what lawyers and sociologists can learn from each other. A groundbreaking, provocative and thought-provoking book, it is essential reading for lawyers, sociologists and all who are interested in the relationship between religion, law and society in the twenty-first century.