Professor Neda Maghbouleh spoke on the Ajam Podcast, a platform that challenges simplistic representations of the ‘Ajam’ region in Western media, and brings academic debates on the topic to a wider audience. After discussing the major themes and reception of her book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race, Professor Maghbouleh talks about her latest project that focuses on the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Canada since 2015. She articulates how Trudeau has used Syrian resettlement to present a different political vision of who Canada is as a “multicultural tolerant society.” However, the romanticized view of a refugee community, to show Canada as its best self on the political stage, still results in the exclusion and discrimination of many Syrian refugees once they land. Professor Maghbouleh is currently leading a five-year study on 100 Syrian newcomers and their teenage children to track their lived experiences of resettlement in Canada.
Listen to the full podcast here. Professor Maghbouleh begins discussing her new project at 19:53.
Professor Maghbouleh is an Assistant Professor of Sociology with teaching duties at the UTM campus. Her work addresses racism and immigration, with a particular interest in groups from the broad Middle East. She brings together the study of international migration and race/ethnicity to learn how refugees and immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa navigate new worlds in North America. These topics are explored in her recently published book, The Limits of Whiteness, and will continue to be examined through her research projects.