Immigrant Student Experiences in Canada: Mothers and Children Storying Belonging

This book centers immigrant children’s school experiences as recounted and interpreted by their mothers, exposing how racialization, exclusion, and proximity to Whiteness shape their realities in Canadian schools. Drawing from Afro-Caribbean, Ghanaian, Indian, Afghan, and Chinese communities, mothers emerge as critical knowledge holders, sharing their children's stories to disrupt institutional erasure. Part One’s two chapters reveal how Canadian schools enact symbolic multiculturalism while reinforcing linguistic conformity and Eurocentric norms, reframing identity, belonging, and home through mothers’ stories. Part Two’s four chapters present mothers’ and children’s experiences capturing subversive resistance, intergenerational tensions, trauma, invisibility, and affirmation. The concluding chapter frames storytelling as epistemic resistance, grounding immigrant families' wisdom as essential to transforming education.