Decoloniality has become a buzzword in the Canadian international development sector. The term intends to draw continuities between Canada's colonial past and present and draws attention to the way that the practice of international development perpetuates colonial power structures, specifically what Pailey (2020) has called the “White gaze of development.” When racialized actors in a white settler state like Canada are involved in international development initiatives in their countries of ethnic origin, they are often met with a binary, racist discourse among the broader Canadian community that either praises them as useful "tools" of Canadian foreign policy or denigrates their activities as a posing a potential "risk" to national interests. As a development actor on the world stage that sees itself as “cultural mosaic,” Canadians and the Canadian government should consider the potential for its diaspora to contribute to its foreign policies and strategies. Diasporic development can help with innovation in the development industry by expanding ideas about development and how it can be done. Reductionist understandings about diasporic transnationalism limit these possibilities, which underline the imperative to better understand diasporic identity and transnationalism. Using a Bourdieusian (1986) field analysis, Bhabha's notions of (1994) hybridity and liminality, as well as Yuval-Davis' (2006) conceptualization of belonging, this research explores the negotiations of belonging among the second-generation Tamil diaspora in Canada as they engage in development initiatives focused on communities in Sri Lanka. Through in-depth interviews with 34 participants, this research finds that the diaspora has day-to-day interactions in a number of sites or "micro-fields" which inform their engagement in international development initiatives that are focused on communities in Sri Lanka, and that their negotiations of belonging and otherness are salient in their development experiences. Members of the diaspora also interrogate coloniality through their hybridity and subsequent positioning in a liminal space. They reject colonial discourse by constructing belonging to the communities at the development sites and valuing localization. However, their interrogation of power structures across different fields as well as their multiple subject positions also contribute to their reflexivity about the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island/Canada.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/43853 |
| Date | 27 July 2022 |
| Creators | Kandiah, Akalya |
| Contributors | Spronk, Susan |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
Page generated in 0.0028 seconds