Moving the Nation: Multiculturalism, Race, Representation, and Emotional Belonging in Canada
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation is a braided history that weaves together personal, professional, and scholarly narratives to critically examine the complex interrelationship between multiculturalism, race, representation, and emotional belonging in Canada. A one-time “Asian” refugee child from Uganda, a long-time as well as racialized and visually impaired journalist with CBC Radio (a daily site of Canadian nation-making that for too long neglected the stories of ethno-racial others), and a serious student of history, I explore what it means to live in a postcolonial context while also navigating the legacies of colonialism. I do so by working through the contested discursive formation of official multiculturalism, which was, I argue, designed not only to manage minorities, but also to manage majoritarian resistance to pluralism. Drawing on the concept of positionality, situated knowledge, and other insights from oral history, emotions history, and feminist-informed personalized scholarship, the project brings together and examines refugee narratives, oral histories, personal reflection, and some ethnographic observations as well as news reports, newspaper articles, government documents, memoirs, journalist non-fiction, and conference presentations and discussion. It also scrutinizes and contextualizes my recollections as a long-time journalist with Canada’s public broadcaster. Four case studies are analysed within broader comparative and international contexts. The scale of analysis begins with a focus on individuals, namely, the dramatically contrasting refugee narratives by which my mother and father articulated their expulsion in 1972 from Uganda and resettlement in Canada. Turning to policy and race, I revisit certain debates related to Canada’s policy of official multiculturalism through a lens sharpened by the experience of South Asians in East Africa. In addition, I assess how, as a journalist, I found official multiculturalism useful as a discursive foundation for pitch…
abstract: This dissertation is a braided history that weaves together personal, professional, and scholarly narratives to critically examine the complex interrelationship between multiculturalism, race, representation, and emotional belonging in Canada. A one-time “Asian” refugee child from Uganda, a long-time as well as racialized and visually impaired journalist with CBC Radio (a daily site of Canadian nation-making that for too long neglected the stories of ethno-racial others), and a serious student of history, I explore what it means to live in a postcolonial context while also navigating the legacies of colonialism. I do so by working through the contested discursive formation of official multiculturalism, which was, I argue, designed not only to manage minorities, but also to manage majoritarian resistance to pluralism. Drawing on the concept of positionality, situated knowledge, and other insights from oral history, emotions history, and feminist-informed personalized scholarship, the project brings together and examines refugee narratives, oral histories, personal reflection, and some ethnographic observations as well as news reports, newspaper articles, government documents, memoirs, journalist non-fiction, and conference presentations and discussion. It also scrutinizes and contextualizes my recollections as a long-time journalist with Canada’s public broadcaster. Four case studies are analysed within broader comparative and international contexts. The scale of analysis begins with a focus on individuals, namely, the dramatically contrasting refugee narratives by which my mother and father articulated their expulsion in 1972 from Uganda and resettlement in Canada. Turning to policy and race, I revisit certain debates related to Canada’s policy of official multiculturalism through a lens sharpened by the experience of South Asians in East Africa. In addition, I assess how, as a journalist, I found official multiculturalism useful as a discursive foundation for pitch…
author: Saujani, Sheyfali
keywords: canada, canadian broadcasting corporation, history of emotions, migration, multiculturalism, south asian
date published: 2024-11
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:28:20Z
provider: University of Toronto
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Toronto

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/140641