Critical social workers emphasize activism for social justice, and acknowledge that global justice movements can inform the evolution of social work practice. Yet, scholarship on community practice and citizen participation has shown varying levels of attention to the interests and context of racialized populations. This dissertation engages this discussion by developing an understanding of what activism comes to be for migrant communities who experience social injustices across local, national and transnational scales. I draw upon a framework of citizenship, racialization and spatiality to problematize conditions of resistance through the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada.
Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of print media and key informant interviews, I explore the following: (1) What are the ideologies underlying media representations of the movement in Canada? (2) How can social work researchers ethically represent the resistance movements of others? (3) Why and how does race frame the production of suffering and spectacle through protest? (4) How can we unpack representations of racialized local groups who protest an issue unfolding elsewhere?
This project highlights the challenges experienced by racialized communities' in their struggles towards citizenship, social justice and decolonization. Chapter 1 presents the context of the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests, the conceptual framework, and methodology guiding this study. In accordance with the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work's 3-paper dissertation format, Chapter 2, 3 and 4 are stand-alone papers geared towards different peer-review journals. Chapter 2 problematizes how we should represent contested resistance movements in the age of terrorism. Chapter 3 examines how racial logic frames the expression of protesters' suffering, and the construction of the Canadian public's racial apathy. Chapter 4 explores how national media discourses racially and spatially mark protesters as "others," "outlaws," and "outsiders." The findings of this interdisciplinary study demonstrate how resistance by racialized groups in a white settler state is distorted by the indirect and direct representational politics imposed by a hegemonic West. In Chapter 5, I offer implications for social work theory, practice and education to reconsider the boundaries of social justice, incorporate a conceptualization of transnational activism as citizenship, and forefront the politics of protest.Ph.D.2016-11-30 00:00:0
