The Media Roundup provides links to recent and archived articles, in both English and French, on immigration and diversity appearing in the national and local news. Some international content is also included. Articles are updated weekly.
Radio-Canada – Des nouveaux arrivants de Québec célèbrent leur premier Noël
Quelques centaines de nouveaux arrivants ont célébré Noël pour une première fois dans la capitale, dimanche midi, au Club social Victoria. Le centre multiethnique de Québec y organisait le Noël des immigrants, un évènement annuel marqué cette année par l’arrivée de près de 450 réfugiés syriens. Au total, la région de Québec a accueilli quelque 1000 immigrants en 2016.
CBC – Syrian Refugees Get Help From Not-So-New Newcomers
For most people, a trip to the nearest coffee shop with a friend is a chance to relax and catch up. But for a newcomer like 24-year-old Haneen Muttar Ahmed, it’s also a first step in the complex journey to adapting to a new country. So when Zainab Kadhem headed to a local café recently with her new friend Muttar Ahmed, she encouraged Muttar Ahmed to place the coffee order herself. “She told me she wants to be independent, able to talk to people,” said Kadhem, Muttar Ahmed came away with the coffees, and a boost in confidence from having finished the transaction in English.
Al Jazeera – Casey Report: The Problem is More Than Integration
“Drawing on what we have seen and heard during the review, we suggest integration is the extent to which people from all backgrounds can get on.” So suggests the Casey report, the latest British government study of the problems of immigration and integration (PDF).
Last year civil servant Louise Casey was asked by the then British Prime Minister David Cameron “to consider what could be done to boost opportunity and integration in our most isolated and deprived communities.” Her report was published last week. Even by the standards of government reports, Casey’s definition of “integration” – “the extent to which people from all backgrounds can get on together” – is particularly vapid. It well sums up both the tone of the report and of much official thinking on integration.
The central arguments of the report are familiar. Too much immigration and diversity, Casey suggests, has helped create segregated communities, with too many migrants who cannot speak English or are unwilling to accept British values. Muslims, in particular, are dangerously isolated, with a chasm between their values and those of society at large.
Hamilton Spectator – ‘I just want to be Canadian’: Wonder and Worry, as a Syrian Child Transforms
As soon as Bayan Mohammad, a 10-year-old Syrian refugee, arrived here last winter, she began her transformation. In her first hour of ice-skating, she managed to glide on her own. She made fast friends with girls different from any she had ever known. New to competitive sports, she propelled herself down the school track so fast that she was soon collecting ribbons. Bayan glued herself to the movie “Annie,” the ballet “Cinderella” and episodes of “Wheel of Fortune,” all stories of metamorphosis. As her English went from halting to chatty, she ticked off everything she hungered to do: An overnight school trip. Gymnastics lessons. Building a snowman — no, a snow-woman. “I just want to be Canadian,” she said.
CTV News – Little Mosques on the Ocean: Halifax Welcomes a Growing Muslim Population
The most recent census in 2011 listed Arabic as the third most commonly spoken language or mother tongue in Nova Scotia — at roughly 6,700 people — and second in Halifax, ahead of Mi’kmaq and Chinese. Many of the Arabic speakers are part of the province’s Lebanese population, much of which is Christian, but a rising number are from other countries like Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait. About 1,500 Syrian refugees also arrived in the province this year, boosting the number of Muslims and Arabic-speaking people in communities that many say are responding to the unique demands of a changing population when it comes to language, food and religion.
Le Monde – En Allemagne, le meurtre d’une étudiante relance le débat sur l’immigration
L’enquête sur la mort de Maria L., cette étudiante en médecine de 19 ans, dont le corps a été repêché dans une rivière, le 16 octobre, à Fribourg-en-Brisgau (Bade-Wurtemberg), avait relancé, outre-Rhin, le débat sur l’immigration : en raison de l’identité du meurtrier présumé, un réfugié afghan de 17 ans arrêté le 2 décembre après avoir été confondu par son ADN […].
