Immigrant & Transnational Narratives: Re-envisioning Anti-Colonial Place-Based Environmental Education

• In Event: Decolonizing Environmental Education: Place, Pedagogy, and Counter-Histories

Abstract

This paper offers narrative evidence to disrupt deficit-oriented assumptions about young adults with immigration experiences by demonstrating how transnational and transcultural connections can profoundly enrich motivations and engagement with environmental learning and activism. Adopting with an anti-colonial orientation, this research used a participatory narrative-photovoice methodology to engage co-researchers with significant immigration experiences. Their diverse place stories serve as counter-narratives, challenging narrow colonial conceptions of place. Findings reveal how environmental viewpoints are expanded through contrasting socio-cultural geographies, diverse worldviews (e.g. Pachamama, Taoism), and critical awareness of colonial entanglements and erasures. By inviting these layered narratives, this work contributes to constructing place-based environmental education that is more inclusive, culturally responsive, justice-oriented, and re-imagines land relationships beyond singular or apolitical framings.

Author

• Sarah Urquhart, University of Toronto - OISE