Raising Children with Disabilities: A Critical Understanding of the Lived Experiences of Chinese Immigrant Parents in Canada
Date
2020-07-07
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Abstract
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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Critical Social Theory, Disability Studies, Phenomenology, Chinese Immigrants, Lived Experience, Culture, Canada
Citation
Fang, X. Y. (2020). Raising Children with Disabilities: A Critical Understanding of the Lived Experiences of Chinese Immigrant Parents in Canada (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.