Troubled Masculinities: Exploring Identity Formation and Criminality among Young Men within Somali-Diaspora communities

• In Event: Cultural Conflict, Legal Cynicism, and "Street Codes"

Abstract

In the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Somali nationals, spurred by civil war, emigrated and established Diasporas around the world. Those families that settled in Canada have been marked by radical transformations in family relations. While women have experienced greater independence and increased earning opportunities relative to men, men have seen their role as traditional breadwinning authority depreciate, often to that of a familial appendage. The ‘Tim Hortons phenomenon’ (in which unemployed men spend their days commiserating with one another in local coffee shops while their wives are shouldered with the responsibilities of both running and providing for the home) is emblematic of the troubled place of masculinity within Somali Diaspora communities, and thus far there has been a dearth of research on how a new generation of young men negotiate with these anomic conditions. Based on a qualitative analysis of over one hundred interviews with members of Canada’s two largest Somali Diaspora communities, this presentation will examine how religious orientations, (perceived) ‘newcomer’ status, and the liminality of adolescence interact to mediate the masculinities of young Somali-Canadian men and produce new orientations toward identity–orientations that can alternately be sites of resistance against, or points of entry to, criminality.

Authors

• Paul Joosse, University of Alberta

• Sandra M. Bucerius, University of Alberta

• Sara K. Thompson, Ryerson University