Interviewee: Dr. Shahin Kassam, RN, PhD, Postdoctoral Analysis Fellow, College of British Columbia Faculty of Nursing, Capability Analysis Unit
Authors/Editors: Romina Garcia de leon, Shayda Swann (Weblog Co-coordinators)
Revealed: February ninth, 2024
This week we discuss to Shahin Kassam who tells us about her work on pressured migration, particularly how displacement (for causes equivalent to local weather instability, political battle, coercion and human trafficking) impacts native and worldwide intersections the place gender, race, class and migrant standing converge to form girls’s well being and entry to well being and social providers.
Are you able to inform us a bit extra about your analysis?
My doctoral analysis checked out how public well being nurses positioned right here in British Columbia help girls dwelling with refugee standing whereas additionally transitioning into parenthood. This intersectionality-framed analysis recognized fragmented pathways girls should self-navigate to entry well being and social techniques whereas additionally dwelling with the impacts of gender-based violence, discrimination, and concern stemming from migration insurance policies.
This doctoral work opened up extra questions for me to additional perceive girls’s experiences of accessing techniques of well being and social well-being and the way they’re formed by these conjoint experiences of racial discrimination, gender-based violence, and their migrant standing. To specify “pressured migration” on this work is vital as a result of after we speak about migration it’s typically in binaries, both voluntary or involuntary. Experiences of being pressured might be about being categorized by coverage as a refugee, or as looking for asylum. However it may also be categorizations the place girls are rendered dependent and socially disconnected thereby growing their threat for gender-based violence publicity and consequential persistent and acute well being issues equivalent to post-traumatic stress dysfunction, melancholy, hypertension, diabetes, and bronchial asthma. Fairly than techniques deciding whether or not a lady migrates forcibly or not, why are we not letting girls’s experiences form the narrative?
Primarily the analysis I am doing simply actually deliberately ensures that we place girls and their experiences on the forefront of understanding pressured migration.
What drew you to this work?
I come from a medical public well being nursing background. My analysis took off from the tales and experiences that I had with various girls with completely different backgrounds who skilled marginalization or disadvantages equivalent to poverty or lack of help, literacy expertise, and restricted schooling. I consistently noticed the inequities that these girls confronted and couldn’t let go of how that deserved extra consideration. So I feel that simply actually propelled me into doing extra.
Are you able to share any findings from this work?
As a Postdoctoral Analysis Fellow, I’m working with my supervisor Dr. Vicky Bungay who’s the Scientific Director of the Capability Analysis Unit and professor on the UBC Faculty of Nursing, to construct my program of analysis involving the event of non-profit group partnerships with sectors which might be actually integral to the secure settlement of girls. So the analysis being finished is knowledgeable by community-based participatory analysis rules the place the group drives the analysis course of. The overarching aim is to tell the enhancement of entry to well being and social providers with the experiences of girls impacted by gender-based violence, racism, and compelled migration.
By means of a SSHRC Partnership Engagement Grant, our group co-lead, Diana Ospina from DIVERSEcity Neighborhood Sources Society (DCRS) and I convened a gaggle of leaders from three extra non-profit organizations centered on settlement service supply. Collectively we met typically and formed the analysis course of. We recruited 9 girls who had been in Canada from 0-5 years throughout various races, migrant statuses, and languages equivalent to Spanish, Ukrainian, Dhari, and Tigrinya.
A number of the key findings that we discovered via these girls’s tales have been that ladies want help of their pursuit of significant employment and integration into the labor market sector. Lack of monetary independence and coping with poverty could be very difficult. Language boundaries proceed and language courses are sometimes inaccessible due to the shortage of inexpensive childcare. One other discovering is housing that’s secure from types of violence or exploitation. The necessity for social progress and connections is one other discovering. When girls arrive in Canada, typically their solely connection is their associate or their associate’s household/associates, creating dependency.
To additional perceive the experiences of girls impacted by pressured migration, we hope to develop via additional funding alternatives to delve deeper into this work.
Given the shortage of consideration to pressured migration, and ladies’s well being, what retains you transferring ahead?
A giant a part of doing this work is grit and tenacity and easily not giving up. I feel that in case you are keen about one thing, and also you’re surrounded by help, that I feel these are two large key elements to doing the work. For me, it is the utilized experiences as a nurse that proceed to simply actually propel me on this route. After which I feel it is the pragmatic and inclusive pillars and the values that align my work with the Capability Analysis Unit and the Faculty of Nursing which have promoted constructing and weaving collectively this program of analysis.
How can individuals study extra about your work?
Web site: Shahin Kassam’s web site
Analysis Unit: Capability Analysis Unit, Ladies’s Tales of Pressured Migration
Extra data:
Funder: SSHRC Partnership Engagement Grant
Precept Investigator: Dr. Vicky Bungay, UBC Faculty of Nursing, Capability Analysis Unit
Neighborhood Co-Applicant: Ms. Diana Ospina, DIVERSEcity Neighborhood Sources Society
Tutorial Co-Applicant: Dr. Shahin Kassam, Postdoctoral Analysis Fellow
Neighborhood Collaborators:
