Shifting Fatherhood and the Resettlement Realities of Syrian Fathers Living in Canada
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Syrian families who have come to Canada face challenges adjusting to a new home and a new country. Adnan Al Mhamied, a McGill doctoral student and Syrian immigrant, is studying the resettlement realities facing these family units with a focus on the fathers. Adnan spoke to a large audience at the Schwartz auditorium on March 2, 2020 about his research on Syrian resettlement in Canada. His study is focusing on identity issues facing families and the process of transition to their new homes in Canada.
Adnan himself fled Syria following his arrest for pro-democracy activism. He has worked with internally displaced persons inside Syria, co-founded the Damascus Centre for Human Rights and has worked with Syrian refugees in Jordan and Canada. He explained to the receptive audience that leaving a country one loves is very stressful. Families must vacate a home and community where they had everything in place including family, friends, and social support systems. They are then forced to search for a country where human rights are recognized and respected.
Adnan’s own transition to Canada was not easy. He faced a new country, culture, two new languages, and then enrolled as a university student. Added to all this was his responsibility as a father, and his role as caretaker for his wife and children. He recognized that this was not just his experience but a reality for each and every other Syrian refugee family. All new families and fathers are facing similar obstacles after arriving in Canada, including housing, employment, finances, schooling, climate and integration into the community. Adnan wanted to explore and understand the experiences of Syrian migration to Canada, so he began his doctoral research.
He studied the conditions both inside and outside the refugee camp system in Jordan and elsewhere and began to see the very difficult situations facing refugees. He made note that a large percentage of refugees are not inside the camp system which added to the overall problem. The dire political and military policies in Syria have resulted in many men being killed or going missing. Many wives are now alone or abandoned. The family dynamic ends up in turmoil once they become refugees. The children in this situation also suffer. Many are forced to leave school to find work, thus becoming breadwinners themselves.
The ones who have been accepted as refugees into Canada are grateful, but their challenges are not over. They first have to make the initial decision to move, which then leads to uncertainty throughout the whole migrant process. The resettlement progression forces families to learn the Canadian way of life including new language(s), values and standards.
Adnan says once families arrive, the kids seem to adapt quite well to school, the language, and the Canadian system, but when they come home after classes there seems to be somewhat of a disconnect. The parents struggle with communication because of their isolation in the home and of not being totally immersed in the community. A language barrier develops because the kids pick up English quickly while the adults remain immersed in Arabic. He says the mothers and fathers remain stuck in the past while the children easily adapt to the new land. In addition, the parents do not have the traditional support system they were used to in their former country which included their own parents, family and friends. Adnan emphasized that we must think of the new families as a unit and assist the parents, helping them to adapt and relate to their children. The uncertainty is there, and they need support he says.
New immigrants to Canada are faced with the loss of social connections they had back in Syria. They no longer have their neighbours, friends or the social services they were used to. “A lot of the social networks are lost, and the fathers are facing a loss of identity,” he says, and Canada is lacking the research and the data to understand this problem. Furthermore, he added there is little data available on the stress the fathers are facing and the state of their mental health.
One problem confronting the fathers is that they find it hard to get help because their culture back home is steeped in conservatism, and once in their new Canadian home, the men are struggling to maintain their identities. For example, they are facing unemployment or underemployment and there are few support systems to guide them along. Social exclusion from the community remains worrisome, and the barriers to economic and social integration, and access to services, must be identified and removed.
“We need a holistic approach and political support to help fathers be more involved with their wives and children, and to become integrated citizens within the inherent value system and traditions of the Canadian experience,” says Adnan. His research needs more fathers to participate in the study and this will allow the findings to move forward to the policy level. His doctoral studies involve data from several provinces and cities which makes coordination a challenge, but he believes progress is being made and the evidence is necessary for government policies and future funding. “We have to make the voices of the Syrian refugees heard,” Adnan says. Their stories must be recorded, we must understand what their needs are and how to best support their situation.
The McGill researcher says he and his team are conducting a large study of refugee integration and long-term health outcomes in Canada. They are looking at social integration, health access and patterns of service. The participating families are from BC, Ontario and Quebec. In Montreal Adnan is looking at the social conditions of Syrian fathers including employment, income streams, spending habits, inclusion and community relations. He added that his team is noticing a poor level of skills in both official languages and there remains a large percentage still in need of interpreters. The study is comparing the difference between refugees sponsored under government programs and the ones supported privately. The numbers are reporting rather high levels of unemployment, and many of the newcomers with jobs are only reaching minimum wage. He says a lot of families need government support to succeed, and many of the family needs are not being met. “The wages are not meeting the standards,” he says, and these new families need good social relations within their own community.
Adnan arrived on campus through the support and sponsorship from several departments and groups within the University and the Syrian Antigonish Families Embrace (SAFE) in town. He is a research associate with the McGill Refugee Research Group, the Global Child McGill, a Fonds de Recherche du Québec fellow, and is affiliated with the SHERPA Centre in Montreal. Since arriving in Canada Adnan has received many awards including the 2019-2020 Tryna Rotholz Annual Creative Award. His dissertation research was reported in a 2019 CBC series: Ideas in the Afternoon, and his own escape from Syria and his experiences of loss, flight, resettlement and homesickness were captured in a NFB documentary Far from Bashar. In addition to the public lecture, Adnan gave an Arabic language session for Syrian community members in Antigonish, Pictou and Inverness counties.
