Category: Papers

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Dear Hon. David Eby

Cultural competence is an essential asset for healthcare providers

Author:
Elisha Fu 傅羽佳

When your community is faced with a problem, it can be hard to know how to even begin to address and tackle it. Leveraging her own experiences, Elisha decided to take on the issue of the underutilization of mental health support services among Asian Canadian communities with this draft letter to her Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), the Honourable David Eby. In this letter, Elisha discusses the scope of the problem at hand, and the devastating impact it can have on Asian disapora in Canada. Through her research, she proposes several important recommendations that the government should consider to ensure that there is sufficient culturally safe mental health resources that Asian diasporic communities can feel comfortable accessing. If you are faced with a similar problem affecting your community, what would you say to your MLA or Member of Parliament?

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Intersectionality Matters!

Both Asian Canadians and LGBTQ+ Canadians are facing increasing rates of discrimination and violence

Author:
Tsuba Shima (she/her)

Health is a huge issue when it comes to the Asian diaspora for numerous reasons – cultural barriers, traditional systems of medicine, discrimination, and other factors all play an important role. The discussion that needs to take place with greater prominence is understanding how racialization, gender, and sexual orientation all intersect with each other to better explain and account for variability in health. Tsuba conducts a comprehensive review to examine whether or not such intersectionality matters when examining health disparities. In particular, do conventional health trends regarding racialized settlers in Canada replicate for racialized LGBTQ+ folks, and what implications does this have for future research involving this topic?

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Filipino Media Representation and Colonial Mentality

“Most of us are expatriates right here in our own land. America is our heartland whether we get to go there or not.” – Conrado de Quiros

Author:
Gabrielle Abando

The Philippines is an infinitely diverse country with a rich precolonial and postcolonial history. Notably, though, the several centuries of colonization inevitably left their indelible mark on the Philippines in things like beef caldereta, champorado, and spamsilog. As benign as those examples might be, colonialism had more insidious effects, most notably affecting the psychology of the local population. This effect, more generally referred to as a colonial mentality, has impacted consequential aspects of life including standards of beauty, social stratification that prizes Whiteness, migratory aspirations, and Western idealization. In considering these issues, Gabrielle presents a research proposal to address a greatly important question: To what extent do second-generation North American Filipino diaspora identify with media about Filipinos and how does this facilitate distance or proximity to their Filipino ethnic identities?

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Voices of Queer Asian Canadians

Voices of Queer Asian Canadians: Identity and Belonging for the Queer Asian Diaspora in Vancouver

Author:
Alger Liang 梁家傑

Queerness is a set of identities that many individuals in Asian diasporic communities still face barriers over due to a combination of the perceived clashes between queerness and Asian cultural traditions/concepts, and a lack of understanding/discussion on the part of friends, families, and family members from older generations. This is compounded by the racism that queer Asian Canadians experience in the face of a predominantly White queer scene in Canada, compelling queer Asian Canadians to create communities by themselves for themselves. Read as Liang summarizes some important themes underlying three queer Asian Canadians’ experience as they explore what it means to be a queer Asian for them. “Identity” is a complex issue, especially when it exists at the intersection of multiple dimensions of marginalization. Can better understanding of these intersections allow for a better equipped society to helping each other achieve liberation?

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All I can do…

All I can do is dream about…affirmative care

Author:
Sahana Babu சஹானா (she/they)

In this qualitative study, Babu explores a topic that isn’t often studied, but certainly has pervasive impact on the lives of the diaspora – diasporic guilt. When bad things happen “back home,” diasporic communities invariable feel helpless, not knowing what to do or how to help make things better. How do we support our people when we’re so far away? We have privilege in being able to be away from all the bad things; but how should we use it? Babu interviews several individuals to get their thoughts on their respective experiences with things happening “back home.” With increased migration over time, such questions will only become even more important predictors of diasporic wellbeing. Where do diaspora find support, and how do we assuage such helplessness when turmoil hits home?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view viab mobile PDF viewers)

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