Constructing Rwandan Identity in the Diaspora: Remembering the Green Hills in Cold Canada

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorHenders, Susan J
dc.creatorAinsworth, Anna Maria
dc.date.accessioned2016-09-20T16:31:09Z
dc.date.available2016-09-20T16:31:09Z
dc.date.copyright2015-10-02
dc.date.issued2016-09-20
dc.date.updated2016-09-20T16:31:09Z
dc.degree.disciplinePolitical Science
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis study investigated the processes of identity formation among those who identified as Rwandan and lived in the Greater Toronto Area. The study was conducted using in-depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic participant observation. It argues that those who identified as Rwandan in the GTA were subject to powerful discourses of simultaneous belonging and non-belonging in both the Canadian and the Rwandan state. The extreme violence of the Rwandan genocide ruptured the bonds of belonging that had tied those who identified as Rwandan to each other and to the Rwandan state. Since 1994, the new Rwandan state had developed a powerful mythico-history that proposed that all those who are identified as Hutu are perpetual perpetrators and all those who are identified as Tutsi are perpetual victims, even as it had denied that the identities of Hutu and Tutsi continued to exist. The re-telling and re-enacting of this mythico-history became the condition of belonging to the newly created diaspora and the Rwandan state. Simultaneously, ambivalent welcome and racialization that those who identified as Rwandan faced in Canada, and, specifically, the GTA, generated an anxiety and an awareness that they could only partially belong in the new homeland. Thus, the exclusion of the Canadian state generated a desire for the imagined homeland and enabled the Rwandan state to create a diaspora. Yet, those who were defined as part of the Rwandan diaspora negotiated and navigated the terms of their belonging/non-belonging in both Canada and in Rwanda. Even as they were they were racialized by the Canadian state and framed as both desirable and threatening by the Rwandan state, those who identified as Rwandan in the GTA built a sense of home and belonging in Canada. They simultaneously became a diaspora and rooted themselves in the new homeland of Canada.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/32132
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectAfrican studies
dc.subject.keywordsRwandan Diaspora
dc.subject.keywordsMigration
dc.subject.keywordsMulticulturalism
dc.subject.keywordsRwandan genocide
dc.subject.keywordsCultural trauma
dc.subject.keywordsRacialization of African migrants
dc.subject.keywordsCommunity formation
dc.subject.keywordsHutu and Tutsi
dc.subject.keywordsMemory of violence
dc.titleConstructing Rwandan Identity in the Diaspora: Remembering the Green Hills in Cold Canada
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Ainsworth_Anna_M_2015_PhD.pdf
Size:
1.9 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.83 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
YorkU_ETDlicense.txt
Size:
3.38 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download

Collections

Political Science

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.