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El Hajj-Hassan, Ali

University of British Columbia

To the growing body of research on the assimilation of Lebanese-origin youth into Canada, I contribute an argument about acculturative stress—an analysis of the antagonism between the spheres of home/family and school/society based on my own development as a child migrant. This time-variant approach helps redress prevalent misconceptions regarding the impact of acculturative stress on the relationship between the first and subsequent generations. Simultaneously, it critiques the misleading association of heteronomy with the sphere of home/family and individual flourishing with the sphere of school/society. The first half of the dissertation charts my understanding of the antagonism between these spheres across four inscapes or eras of interiority including: Prevarication, Detachment, Freedom and Objective Irony. The second half evokes the personal consequences of this antagonism through a series of fragmentary dialogues, a strategic method for assessing the possibility of its attenuation without performing it in the text. This dissertation, in sum, contributes to the understanding of an under-represented experience of assimilation as well as the good and productive types of challenges posed to Canada by the migrant communities that resist adaptation to it.

Text

2021-06-09

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/78570

Geography

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/