Immigrant Student Experiences in Canada: Mothers and Children Storying Belonging

This book centers on stories immigrant children share with their mothers--stories that reveal their lived realities within Canadian schools. Drawing from Afro-Caribbean, Ghanaian, Indian, Afghan, and Chinese communities, it explores how immigrant children’s identities are shaped by racialization, exclusion, belonging, and institutional norms rooted in Eurocentrism and Whiteness. Organized into two parts, the first provides two chapters critically examining how Canadian educational structures reinforce racial hierarchies, linguistic conformity, and conditional inclusion, positioning mothers as critical knowledge-holders whose insights disrupt institutional erasure. The second part includes four chapters that illuminate the complex daily experiences of immigrant children through detailed maternal narratives, capturing subtle resistance, cultural tensions, intergenerational struggles, joy, pain, invisibility, and affirmation. The final chapter moves beyond critique, framing storytelling as epistemic resistance against institutional exclusion and performative multiculturalism, calling for radical listening practices that center immigrant mothers’ interpretations and children’s lived experiences as foundational to transformative education.

Soudeh Oladi is a scholar in education and equity studies, specializing in the schooling experiences and identity formation of immigrant students. Her research engages anti-racist and decolonial frameworks, critically examining racialized educational structures and centering intersectional storytelling to interrogate colonial legacies and enact transformative pedagogical praxis.