Browsing by Author "El-Lahib, Yahya"

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    Arts-informed Teaching in Professional Disciplines: Talking about Critical Practice
    (2017-05) El-Lahib, Yahya; Wehbi, Samantha; Zakharova, Ganna; Perreault-Laird, Jordyn
    This workshop introduces participants to arts-informed teaching within professional education. Relying on preliminary findings of a research study, the workshop opens a space to discuss how arts-informed classroom activities allow educators to have conversations with their students about reflexivity, inclusion, social justice, and critically engaged professional practice.
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    Centering Indigenous Voices to Inform the Delivery of Culturally-Appropriate Mental Wellness Services
    (2021-06-28) Zaretsky, Lisa; Katrina, Milaney; Roach, Pamela; El-Lahib, Yahya
    Colonization and ongoing colonial policies and practices have shaped a mental healthcare system rooted in racism. A systemic lack of awareness and response to the transhistorical impacts of colonization have resulted in the perpetuation of mental wellness services that are not culturally-appropriate. Utilizing an anti-colonial theoretical framework, the purpose of this study was to explore if Indigenous peoples were receiving mental wellness supports that were responsive to their needs. A storytelling methodology was used with five participants from permanent supportive housing (PSH) buildings to share their experiences of mental wellness including homelessness and alcohol use. The stories revealed profound resistance to ongoing colonization. Further analysis of stories identified the absence of available supports, cultural connection, and supportive staff relationships in PSH buildings. Together, these results suggest participants are not receiving mental wellness supports that are culturally-appropriate. Using the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action as a framework for change, agencies can actively work towards providing culturally-appropriate mental wellness supports by: 1) increasing the availability of supports; 2) ensuring access to culture and connection; 3) re-evaluating hiring policies; 4) providing ongoing training; and 5) transforming to relationship-based care. Ultimately, this shift towards anti-colonial mental wellness services will result in disrupting colonial systems, policies, and practices; however, without the leadership and self-determination of Indigenous peoples themselves, there will be no real change in the provision of culturally-appropriate services.
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    Confronting White Femininity in Community-based Social Work Practice: An Autoethnography and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
    (2022-04-27) Hoselton, Jill; Walsh, Christine A.; El-Lahib, Yahya; Banerjee, Pallavi
    Understanding the effects of White femininity on social work practice is a worthy endeavour provided the disproportionate numbers of White women that have built and occupied the professional role of social worker from the origins of colonization to present. Mainstream accounts of social work history narrate the profession to be a pursuit of well-intentioned middle- and upper-class White women, concealing the colonial operations that underpin the formation of social work as a White feminine project. Additionally, this dominant discourse conceals the racial segregation prominent in the field of social work that prevents Indigenous, Black, and other racialized people from gaining entry into the profession. While Whiteness and its effects within social work have been a subject of study, the intersection of gender and Whiteness has been minimally addressed, disregarding significant nuances that inform the relationship between the project of colonization and social work. This thesis study provides a detailed analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight White, woman-identified social workers who have practiced in community-based social work for a minimum of two years in Alberta, Canada. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis and drawing from autoethnographic techniques, I trace the ways the participants perform, witness, and disrupt the dominant discourse of White femininity. The findings illuminate the social work profession's ongoing complicity with its colonial origins, which collude with White femininity and ultimately foster practices steeped in racism. A vital need to disentangle social work from its colonial and racist scripts is emphasized.
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    Misfit Narratives: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Mad Social Workers
    (2023-12-15) Warner, Erin Christina; El-Lahib, Yahya; Callaghan, Tonya; Warria, Ajwang
    This thesis chronicles the stories of six Mad social workers in Canada, including my own story as a Mad social worker. I unsettle dominant methods for approaching lived experience research through establishing a research methodology which creates a harmony between feminist narrative inquiry and autoethnography as they are guided by teachings of Indigenous wholism and critical resistance. Grounded in a theoretical framework of critical disability studies, Mad studies, and critical feminism, I conducted five feminist narrative life history interviews – or conversations – with storytellers and critically explored my own life history through art and poetic reflection. As the story of this research unfolds, storytellers share about the masks they wear in response to sanism in both education and in the field of practice, as well as the pressure to be a “blank slate” to conform to the expectations of professional social work. Yet, in the midst of these experiences, storytellers demonstrate that it is within their Mad identities which initially brought them to the field that they find their strengths and ability to “get it” as mental health professionals. This research calls on the social work profession to build robust support systems to better respond to the psychological and emotional labour of our roles as social workers; to dismantle dominant ideas shaped by the interlocking systems of oppression which determine who gets to be a social worker; and to reimagine a social work praxis that is better aligned with our professional values of social justice and self-determination.
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    A Narrative Inquiry into the Professional Identity Shifts of Skilled Immigrants
    (2021-05-11) Marulanda, David; Wada, Kaori; Domene, Jose; El-Lahib, Yahya
    The challenges and barriers that skilled immigrants face in Canada lead many of them to forego pursuing employment in their fields of expertise. This unexpected disruption in their professional lives has been known to have a profound effect on their sense of self that has been coined a loss of professional identity. This loss has been associated with negative impacts to their well-being, including feelings of frustration, hopelessness, depression, and a strong sense of betrayal by the Canadian government. The bulk of the research on this population has focused on understanding the barriers that thwart their labour market integration. Comparatively, few studies have explored how skilled immigrants negotiate this loss and reconstitute their professional sense of self. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the professional identity shifts of skilled immigrants. Using narrative inquiry, I documented the stories of seven skilled immigrants about their job search experiences and their impact on their view of themselves as professionals. In addition, I borrowed elements from critical discourse analysis to explore the role that discourses about skilled immigrants in Canada played in how participants made sense of their job search experiences. Data collection involved a 90-minute semi-structured interview with each participant. The themes that emerged from each interview were organized into a short narrative of each participant’s career experiences pre and post migration. Across-case analysis of these narratives revealed common threads of prosperous careers in their home countries; expectations of professional success in Canada; a rupture in their professional lives; the rekindling of their professional selves; and resisting hopelessness in the face of great difficulties. Reflecting about these common threads led me to conclude that participants’ stories communicated a sense of perseverance and hope, but their accounts were mired with tensions tied to the unhelpful influence of discourses about skilled immigrants on their attempts at professional integration. In an effort to avoid relinquishing their careers, participants resisted being construed as deficient and attempted to negotiate the requirement of Canadian experience. From these broader themes I drew implications for employment counsellors, the immigrant-service sector, and investigators whose research focuses on this population.
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    Raising Children with Disabilities: A Critical Understanding of the Lived Experiences of Chinese Immigrant Parents in Canada
    (2020-07-07) Fang, Xiao Yang; Hughson, E. Anne; Milaney, Katrina J.; Lashewicz, Bonnie M.; Nelson, Fiona; McConnell, David B.; El-Lahib, Yahya
    People with disabilities are widely disadvantaged and often excluded from participating fully in society and its major institutions. Negative societal attitudes towards disabilities as well as restrictive social policies and practices frequently lead people with disabilities, as well as their families, to experience stigma and social isolation. Little is known about the experiences of immigrant parents raising children with disabilities, whose marginalization may be compounded by the additional challenges faced in the process of transition and adapting to a new country and culture. Through the examination of lived experiences of first-generation Chinese immigrant parents raising children with disabilities in Calgary, Canada, this qualitative study provides a deeper understanding of the complexity of the immigrant disability experience and how it is related to the ways in which dominant political ideologies and related policies and practices respond to and manage disability. Using hermeneutic phenomenology and in-depth interviews with 11 Chinese immigrant parents, I explore meaning- and decision-making as these parents navigate the social processes and structures of assessment, diagnosis, intervention, and service provision for their children. Employing a critical social theory lens in my analysis, I unpack the question, “how does dominant neoliberal ideology and a medically-informed view of disability systemically influence the lives of Chinese immigrant parents raising children with disabilities?” The phenomenological experience of being a Chinese immigrant parent to children with disabilities manifests itself through the themes of transformation, capacity for choice, and hope. In essence, becoming a parent to a child with a disability is a transformative experience that has significant impacts on the choices that parents are subsequently forced to make and the hopes they have for what will become of their children. Critical analysis further reveals that structural processes exclude parents from acquiring knowledge and power regarding how diagnoses are performed and how access to services is negotiated. Silently and invisibly, Chinese immigrant parents are wilfully assimilated into a new language and culture of understanding and responding to disability, and subsequently of understanding their children. Findings from this interpretive investigation offer insights into the struggles and sacrifices that Chinese immigrant parents raising children with disabilities experience and provides suggestions for more inclusive future directions.
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    Tales of the Mountains and Tales of the Sea: A Creative Fiction Exploration of Muslim Women in Lebanon and the Laughing Hyena as Metaphor
    (2019-08-28) Idriss, Dania; Mayr, Suzette; Shraya, Vivek; El-Lahib, Yahya
    Tales of Mountains [etc.] is a collection of short stories that take place at significant moments in Lebanese history, beginning in 1918 at the end of the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon, then 1920, the start of the French occupation; 1945, after Lebanese independence; 1980, during the Lebanese Civil War, and 2010, after Syrian and Israeli forces have both pulled out of the country. The stories focus on the effects of these events on the lives of women. Each story uses elements of Arab folklore in order to imbue the protagonists with supernatural abilities, or to place them in supernatural settings. The protagonists are not meant to be good or bad, they simply are. Their actions are not meant to be heroic, only subversive.
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    University Education as a Process of Self-Discovery: Processes that Facilitated the Completion of University by Young, Second-Generation Filipino Men in Calgary
    (2017) Sato, Christa Louisa; Este, David; El-Lahib, Yahya; dela Cruz, Aniela
    With Canada’s increasing ethnocultural diversity, understanding long-term integration patterns of immigrant communities is essential. Filipinos are experiencing less-than-expected higher educational outcomes that have important implications on the second-generation and their socioeconomic status and wellbeing in Canada. The purpose of my thesis was to generate a constructivist grounded theory to understand processes that facilitated university completion by second-generation Filipino males in Calgary. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with eight participants along with journals that captured reflections on the interview. Corbin and Strauss’ (2015) data analysis methods were employed and facilitated using Atlas.ti. Findings suggest that participants’ educational expectations are challenged as they advance through five core processes (preparing, transitioning, navigating, and completing) of university. As such, Canadian-born Filipino men are provoked to renegotiate the meaning of university education as a process of self-discovery. I conclude with a discussion of the study’s significance and implications for social work education and practice.