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.
Diaspora as a Multilevel Political Space for Young Somalis
Since the outbreak of the civil war in 1991, Somalis have become one of the largest diaspora populations globally. According to United Nations estimates, the number of people born in Somalia but living outside the country is reaching two million (un 2015). Due to the prolonged instability in Somalia, diaspora mobilization among Somalis has evolved worldwide and comprises multiple forms of action, both on a collective and individual level (Pirkkalainen 2013, 9). This has produced a number of studies analysing the participation of Somali diaspora communities in social and political projects relating to the future of their former and current home countries (Allen 2014; Sheikh and Healy 2009; Orozco and Yansura 2013; Leitner 2004). Regardless of its scholarly recognition, however, the societal and political participation of the Somali diaspora has been overlooked in the public discussions of their settlement societies (Pirkkalainen et al. 2016). When conducting research on the Somali diaspora in Finland and the United States, we have noticed that this disregard raises concern among its active members; in fact, we have encountered a group of young Somalis who vigorously contest the image of Somalis as incompetent and uninterested bystanders in the affairs of their new home countries. By focusing on the group of young people which, following Laine (2012, 16–18) and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s (2009) definition, could be considered representatives of the active segment of today’s global generation, we wish to take part in the debate concerning migrant transnationalism, belonging and diaspora politics. There are two main arguments presented in the chapter. Firstly, we highlight the importance of ‘diasporic micropolitics’, that is, the ways in which Somali youth draw on specific diaspora practices and discourses in order to establish themselves as active, capable agents in their new places of residence and as the builders of future Somalia (cf. Laine 2012, 9). Secondly, our aim is to emphasize the role of what Bernal (2014) calls ‘infopolitics’, consisting of the struggles over identity and positioning which take place online and in digital media. Evidently, today’s information technology formulates diaspora
The qualitative research interview
Background  Interviews are among the most familiar strategies for collecting qualitative data. The different qualitative interviewing strategies in common use emerged from diverse disciplinary perspectives resulting in a wide variation among interviewing approaches. Unlike the highly structured survey interviews and questionnaires used in epidemiology and most health services research, we examine less structured interview strategies in which the person interviewed is more a participant in meaning making than a conduit from which information is retrieved.