“We have four young ladies with us today. They are from UBC…[and] will be here ‘till June.”

For my fellow classmates/volunteers and I, this marked the commencement of our IVEFS placement. At the same time, it introduced three “strangers” into the neighborhood house.

The “stranger” is a social position coined by Georg Simmel (1908). The term alludes to an individual fixed within a social circle, who is not perceived as entirely among the “in-group” due to his/her “origin” from outside that group.

Negotiating between the “participant” and “facilitator” labels, our position within the immigrant integration program in which we are placed, epitomizes that of the “stranger.” On the one hand, we have not the responsibility of facilitating the discussion groups, but simply that of preparation duties. Yet, as student ethnographers, we do not “fit in” with the participants either.

In a way, this “stranger” position in the neighborhood house facilitates my ability to hold both an emic and etic perspective (Sunstein & Chiseri-Strater, 2007). It allows me to make the strange familiar by immersing into the culture of the group, all the while trying to keep an “outsider” perspective on the issues arising during the course of my placement, by problematizing that which has been made familiar.

I had not questioned my exact responsibilities of having the privilege to see both sides of the story until my second week at the fieldsite. During that placement session, the topic of the Chinese head tax arose in the midst of an activity. In response to inquiring participants, a native English-speaker, who we shall refer to here as ‘X.’, took it upon himself to enlighten the group:

X.: “The UK had [the head tax] too…they called it the ‘poll tax’: P-O-L-L tax.”

Wrong.¹

X.: “[It was] necessary at that time…to stop the 50,000 Chinese that wanted to come into Canada.”

Wrong again.

X.: “It’s even worse than today – you wouldn’t believe it.”

And strike three.

The facilitator rolled his eyes and hurried the group to “move on to the next activity,” but the damage was done.

It is understandable why the facilitator reacted to the situation the way he did, and overlooked it as “just another [controversial] thing X. said,” for he has said many of those throughout his time there. To put things into perspective, however, in no way was what X. said acceptable. Letting an anti-immigrant sentiment slide in a supposed “safe space” for immigrants is simply outrageous!

At the end of the day, an unsettling feeling remains as I leave my fieldsite. Should I have intercepted and problematized what X. had said? Do I have an obligation, as someone who has studied the topic at hand, to speak out for those victimized in the ordeal? What exactly is my position within the group? Is it worth abandoning my own moral stance and not “raise hell”, in order for things to play out as they would normally? It dawns on me then, that ethical dilemmas are prevalent in the process of ethnographic research. As (student-) ethnographers, we can only take action according to what seems the “most right” when an issue occurs, and the by-product of our choice – whether we like it or not – is something we simply have to live with.

—

Notes
1. The UK poll tax was levied on all British residents, whereas the Canadian head tax was only incurred on the Chinese.

References
Simmel, Georg. (1908/2010) “The Stranger.” In Scott Appelrouth and Laura Desfor Edles, Sociological Theory in the Classical Era (2^nd edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Pine Forge Press, pp. 302-305.

Sunstein, Bonnie Stone & Chiseri-Strater, Elizabeth. (2007) FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research (4^th edition). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

I recently attended a “Families in Transition” (FIT) workshop run by Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House (FHNH). This past week, a non-profit organization was invited to run a “financial literacy” workshop for the women in attendance.

FIT is a 36-week long pilot program for immigrant mothers that helps them integrate into “mainstream” Canadian society.  Among other things, participants develop language skills, learn about parenting in Canada, receive Foodsafe training, and develop job-searching skills. The FIT program illustrates Lauer’s argument that voluntary organizations (such as neighbourhood houses) help immigrants extend their social networks, which can help them incorporate into the community at large.

“L”, the program director for FHNH explained to us that one of the barriers of bringing mothers from certain cultural backgrounds to FIT is that many are used to staying inside the home and tending to their children all day.  L. said that separating the women from their children (who were being minded nearby) was challenging at first, but over the course of FIT, most had grown comfortable with being temporarily apart from their children.

At the beginning of the workshop, everyone went around in a circle introduced themselves. The mothers in the group had been living in Canada between four and ten years – an average about 6 – and all had young children under about five years of age.  Two of the mothers were also pregnant. The workshop covered topics such as saving money (or “keeping money” as the facilitator framed it), financial norms in Canada, and the predatory nature of both credit and “discounts” at stores.

One woman commented on how surprised she was at the ease of obtaining credit in Canada.  Another woman echoed this by sharing how she had 5 credit cards despite not being employed.  Most shared their concerns about their ability to save for their children’s education, and about finding a healthy balance between not spoiling their children and not being “bad” mothers for not buying them toys or treats.

Although these are concerns of all parents – not just immigrant parents – this concern had an extra layer to it, as finding this balance was influenced by their experiences in negotiating their identities as new mothers learning cultural norms of urban Canadian society.

An aspect of the workshop that surprised me was the gendered nature of the content.  The facilitator made several comments about women wanting to buy products such as purses, dresses, lotion, makeup, and about gender roles between men and women.  The facilitator also frequently used the term “husband” to describe the partners of all of the women.  I found this surprising, but I considered that my background in sociology has primed me to be more aware of how gender stereotypes present themselves.

Although the topic covered at last week’s FIT was not related to my final project (food and nutrition), I had fun listening and even sharing my own experiences and fears about money with the women in the group.

Sources:

1.         Lauer and Yan 2007, “Neighbourhood Houses and Social Ties,” pp. 5-34. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/docDetail.action?docID=10216306

2.         Image from http://www.creditcards.ca/credit-card-news/how-to-find-the-best-savings_accounts-1267.

Edsel Yu Chua 36172104

“The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image, which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again”

–Walter Benjamin

Top of the morning, stick with it!

It was a sunny mid-spring day in Vancouver, British Columbia I woke up, did my usual morning routine, having coffee and a smoke contemplating on what my day would be like. I remember the day before there was a discussion in the Immigrant Vancouver Ethnographic Field School class about methods in researching our sites and last Thursday May 17, 2012 was the first-time I configured myself to be an anthropologist for this term. For my volunteer component of my field school, I volunteer in a neighborhood house that helps newcomers, immigrants and temporary foreign workers settle and integrate in multicultural (mind you, not to be confused with intercultural) Canada. The afternoon of my orientation with my supervisor she was discussing my responsibilities as a volunteer front-desk clerk I found myself overwhelmed with the information she was giving me; I was going in and out of focus while she was explaining and suddenly I saw the greatest material a social scientist can have at that point in time laying on the table, a small, bright yellow, and compact pile of post-it notes. “May I have some of those post-it notes and borrow your pen?” are the words that activated my role, reconfigured my senses and trajectory from being an ordinary front-desk volunteer to a social scientist interested in the culture, social organization, structural and systemic construction, social, historical, and political environment of my field-site.

I am, I Post It

Post-it notes function as mobile organizers of thoughts, they can be placed anywhere it sticks, fast, concise, no-nonsense, easy to post and easy to tear-off object where abstract thoughts become material reminders. “I am, I Post-it” serve as a metaphor for my placement this summer, fast, concise, no-nonsense, in and out where abstract thoughts gets materialized in the final project at the end of the term. I enter my field-site and construct my final project using methods such as participant observation, formal and informal interviewing, and a collaborative art-based component with the Filipno/a community in Vancouver with a goal of exploring the culture of balikbayan boxes (boxes filled with gifts and sent to the Philippines by loved-ones that live overseas). As a new volunteer I was given the responsibility to work the front desk of the neighborhood house.  I remember the conversation I had with my supervisor as she apologizes for giving me the role of a front-desk clerk, she says that working the front desk “does not fit my qualification”, but starting at the lowest position will give “give me the advantage of learning the ropes as I integrate and work my way to the top” (with my qualifications probably a project director). Personally I was relived that she gave me a mechanical job of sitting down, logging and transferring phone calls, and greeting guests, but the anthropologist in me noticed the underlying narrative of being “new” in a certain place. Being a new front-desk clerk places me in a liminal position of temporariness, and like post-it notes, I can easily be transferred from space to space and my permanence depends on how I stick with my responsibilities, how good I store information and accurate in passing it to others. After my shift I found myself contemplating my responsibility as a front-desk clerk, “I work the front-lines of this place and without me messages will not be received by the higher-ups, I shall do this job to the best of my ability in order for me to move-up in ranks” and I wonder, do other newcomers think and feel this way?

ESL class, community festival & dinner. Source: Little Mountain Neighborhood House

As the first contact and source of support for many newcomers to Vancouver, the Neighborhood Houses also play an important role in communicating Canadian values to new members of this “big family”. Immigrants tend to fall into disadvantaged positions during the process of “uprooting” from abroad and “replanting” here. In this context, the Neighborhood Houses provide access to learning and practicing citizen rights and responsibilities, and nurturing both a cross-cultural environment and respect to individuals and their respective cultures and religions. Eventually, such values can carry on to the wider community and subsequent generations that are key to the prosperity of the “Canadian mosaic”.

Literal portrayal of my positionality during the adult immigrant pre-employment class

The realization that qualitative research produced within a subject/observer framework is inherently flawed has been a long time coming in academic circles. Yet we are still just now acknowledging the power of academic text, which often attributes motive and meaning to the actions observed, constructing an ‘event’ out of daily life, while inconspicuously failing to recognize the presence and influence of the viewer (Smith 1988). Scenes such as an adult immigrant pre-employment class are painted through the rose-colored glasses of the privileged viewer. The written work that this viewer then produces  is presented to readers as an objective perspective on ‘real’ life, when in fact such a depiction constitutes what Donna Haraway calls ‘the God trick’ —the act of appearing to see everything from nowhere in particular, which, of course, is physically impossible. Feminist sociologists now posit that the only way in which significant qualitative work can be produced is through active participation in the material social practices of everyday life—and a subsequent production of narratives of personal consciousness, which can then be compared to those belonging to others (Smith 1988).

In my time at Frog Hollow for example, while participating in a pre-employment program for Spanish mothers  which focused on financial literacy, I happened to sketch the table around which we were all seated, facing the instructor, Billy Sinclair. I have included this sketch below in Figure 1, adding a circled star to indicate where I was sitting. Encouraged by the instructor and the Frog Hollow facilitator, Lea Laberge,the other IVEFS students and I participated in the class by contributing our financial questions to the list posted on the wall. The act of adding questions to the wall, while all sitting around the same table, and sharing personal stories along with the women, symbolized participation in the active creation of the material and social environment of the class. The photo above (from my field notes) is simply a representation of my physical position, which I can use to remind myself that while I may have understood the class from a certain personal standpoint, others may have their own standpoints, stemming both from the seating arrangement and from their social status.

While personal narratives of everyday life are valuable, in order to produce knowledge some analysis must be done. Through my active participation in my field site I am able to then compare the notes that describe my personal experiences, thoughts, questions with others. Instead of objectifying the other participants, feminist methodology empowers its subjects by allowing them the agency to experience their own consciousness, unaffected by the researcher, which later can be analyzed to understand the larger power structures at work.

Although my experience participating in the group was probably tainted by having my notebook out instead of devoting the entirety of my attention to the class, in other ways I did my best not to allow my role to become that of a ‘researcher’ observing subjects in their ‘natural habitat, rather, I was, just as everyone there was, eager to learn about money management. I did however diligently record that which permeated my consciousness that morning—which now rests of the pages of my notebook as a series of jokes, interspersed with questions, financial advice, etc. all of which speak directly to my experiences that day, but can be used in the future to attempt produce a feminist sociology of adult immigration classes at Frog Hollow Neighborhood House.

Work Cited

Smith, Dorothy E. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Boston:   Northeastern UP, 1988.

IVEFS Participants,

You will be using this blog to post reflections on your fieldwork experiences and your thoughts on the readings for the course. Each of your two blog assignments should be about 500 words and written in journalistic-style prose that are accessible for general readers. Remember to give your blog post a title and also to include an image or two – either a photo you have taken yourself, or an appropriate image you have found – to illustrate your blog post…

You can also leave comments on the posts of your classmates and receive feedback on your own work. This can include constructive feedback regarding writing style, methods, use of specific readings, info about their sites or topics of fieldwork. Overall the blog should be a forum to share your thoughts about your field sites with each other and get a feel for the work that each other are doing.

Happy Posting!

IVEFS Team