Calgary Newcomers Collaborative Empowering Communities Together Anti-Racism Initiative

A strong community is created through building relationships. As a group, the Calgary Newcomers Collaborative (CNC; formerly Calgary East Zone Newcomers Collaborative) hopes to welcome newcomers in East Calgary and support them through a collection of the group’s free services. This zonal approach, created by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, utilizes a community model of inclusion for all newcomers to Calgary. The CNC Anti-Racism Initiative involved collaboration between settlement service agencies to facilitate different aspects of knowledge collection and distribution.

The core of this CNC project comprised of three non-profit organizations:

• Centre for Newcomers (CFN)
• Immigrant Services Calgary (ISC)
• The Immigrant Education Society (TIES)

TIES’ Research & Program Development Department was responsible for data collection and analysis from program participants to create a better understanding of the experiences and needs of Calgary’s racialized community.

To learn more about racism, mental health, and how to address these issues, you can visit https://www.letsstopracism.com

Project Information

What is the Empowering Communities Together Anti-Racism initiative?

The Empowering Communities Together Anti-Racism Initiative explores experiences of racism in Calgary, particularly amidst the rising numbers of hate crimes in the COVID-19 pandemic context. Funded by the Family and Community Support Services Association of Alberta (FCSSAA), TIES interviewed participants of self-defence sessions offered by CFN. These classes were aimed at building self-belongingness and bolstering confidence among members of immigrant, newcomer, and racialized communities experiencing discrimination in Calgary. Additionally, they were intended to teach ways for vulnerable populations to protect themselves in racially motivated attacks and other similar situations. Then, an Empowering Communities “Unconference” discussion with approximately 40 participants from a variety of fields (academia, government, and settlement organizations), was hosted by ISC. These discussions considered new directions which policy makers, service providers, experts, and community members could address racism in Calgary.

What were the aims of the Empowering Communities Together Anti-Racism initiative?

This initiative was developed in response to acts of racial discrimination brought on by the pandemic and aims to:

• Understand individual experiences with racism
• Provide exploratory questions and discussion for policymakers and practitioners to understand how identities and notions of spatial agency affect broader anti-racism initiatives.

Why is this important?

Hate crimes in Canada have been steadily increasing in the past few years with ethnic- and race-motivated hate crimes almost doubling from 884 cases in 2019 to 1,619 cases in 2020 (Statistics Canada, 2020). Mediating factors contributing to the increase in racially-charged crimes were exacerbated by the effects COVID-19 had on perceptions of blame, and the ongoing backlash and criticism directed towards racialized minorities (Elias et al., 2021; Esses & Hamilton, 2021; Human Rights Watch, 2020; Reny & Barreto, 2022). Although perceived discrimination has a negative impact on well-being, highly identifying with one’s minority group serves as a buffer towards these negative effects (Branscombe et al., 1999). An individual’s increased identification with their in-group has protective effects and is correlated with positive effects on well-being.

To counteract the negative experiences of these racialized groups, interventions such as the self-defence sessions facilitated by CFN were implemented with the intention of teaching important life skills and strengthening minority group identification. The latter was realized by having self-defence sessions separated in accordance with ethnic group membership to strengthen in-group identification among participants in each session. CFN’s self-defence sessions were the starting points of the data collection for TIES’ research.

Research Overview

Methods

The data gathered for this research draws on an exploratory grounded theory approach and was collected from three stages.

206 surveys were collected at 14 self-defence sessions to gain overall understanding of community members’ experiences. ‍

• Field notes were collected to contextualize survey data.

18 interviews and 3 focus groups of participants from self-defence sessions centred around two key questions:

• Have you ever witnessed or been the victim of discrimination in Calgary?
• What are some suggestions you would give to immigrant-serving organizations to provide related programs to tackle racism and discrimination in Canada?

Discussions from a 6 hour online “Unconference” event to understand community capacity and engagement, and possible actions to propagate change.

Key Findings

Survey

• 71% of participants perceive Calgary to be “relatively safe.”
• Over the past year, 44% of participants felt no change in safety, 34% felt less safe than before, and 22% felt safer than before.
• 41% of participants stated that they witnessed or experienced discrimination in Calgary, 37% stated they did not witness or experience discrimination, 20% weren’t sure, and 2% preferred not to respond.  

Interviews and Focus Groups

• Asian Canadians report instances of harassment brought about by pandemic-related discriminatory views.
• Gaps in systemic, institutional responses to language barriers in healthcare facilities can result in racially-charged encounters.
• Racism between racialized communities themselves.
• Racialized operations can be embedded in the hiring process which deskills, devalues, and denies immigrants their educational and professional assets.

Unconference

Unconference attendees identified and discussed five themes that emerged from survey and interview data:

• Intergroup hostility and stereotyping
• Language and racism
• Workplace discrimination
• Racial biases in education
• Sexual harassment and public safety

Learn more

If you would like to learn more about the CNC Anti-Racism Initiative, you can read our publications:

• Unconference Discussion Outcomes: November 24, 2021
• Anti-Racism Report: September 2021 – December 2021

References

Branscombe, N. R., Schmitt, M. T., & Harvey, R. D. (1999). Perceiving pervasive discrimination among African Americans: Implications for group identification and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(1), 135-149. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.77.1.135

Elias, A., Ben, J., Mansouri, F., & Paradies, Y. (2021). Racism and Nationalism during and beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(5), 783-793. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1851382

Esses, V. M., & Hamilton, L. K. (2021). Xenophobia and Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in the Time of COVID-19. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(2), 253-259. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220983470

Human Rights Watch. (2020). Covid-19 Fueling Anti-Asian Racism and Xenophobia Worldwide. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide

Reny, T. T., & Barreto, M. A. (2022). Xenophobia in the time of pandemic: Othering, anti-Asian attitudes, and COVID-19. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 10(2), 209-232. https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2020.1769693

Statistics Canada. (2022). Table 35-10-0066-01 Police-reported hate crime, by type of motivation, Canada (selected police services). https://doi.org/10.25318/3510006601-eng

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