Articles by author: Brock University

• Public talk to provide South Asian perspective on trucking industry

  Monday, July 11, 2022 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 11 July 2022 – R0078

  The Freedom Convoy protests that began this year in response to vaccination requirements have catapulted the trucking industry into the headlines.

  However, the faces shown in media coverage don’t reflect the reality of the profession, says Vibha Bhalla, Fulbright Research Chair with Brock University’s Centre for Canadian Studies.

  “Close to 20 per cent of Canadian truckers are South Asian,” she says, “but what you see as the face of the industry are all white representatives.”

  While the trucking industry has increasingly become a niche for new immigrants, the public hasn’t heard discourse from South Asian truckers, including both drivers and owner-operators with established companies, about how the Freedom Convoy affects them, Bhalla says.

  “My aim is to add a voice, a different perspective, to this truckers’ movement,” she says.

  Bhalla will share her research with the public in a free talk, “The Invisible Truckers: South Asians and the Canadian Trucking Industry,” held at the St. Catharines Public Library on Thursday, July 14 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

  Her work encompasses economics, labour needs and immigration policy. Using the magazine Road Today, she is examining race, class and gender issues in the South Asian trucker community.

  Road Today, published in English, Hindi and Punjabi, serves Canada’s South Asian trucking community and points to a sizeable population. The magazine discusses federal, provincial and local issues, from national regulations and supply chain challenges to municipal highway access, parking and public bathrooms.

  Long term, Bhalla’s research will also include oral interviews and ethnographic research with truckers in Canada and the United States.

  Her past work concentrated on Indian immigration in the Detroit area, but she chose to focus her Fulbright research on the Indian diaspora and cross-border migration between Canada and the U.S.

  “Indian migration to this part of the world began in the 1950s, once India became independent. As a colonized nation, it didn’t have much infrastructure in education, so educational migration in scientific and professional fields began at this time,” Bhalla says.

  Now, South Asian immigrants are one of the largest immigrant populations in both the U.S. and Canada. The ease of border crossing has provided immigrants, who often have social networks on both sides of border, with new opportunities to pursue.

  “Trucking is a growth industry, and growth industries always bring in immigrants,” Bhalla says. “I want to show how the trucking industry is changing. Why are South Asians joining this industry and what specific issues are they experiencing within it?”

  What: “The Invisible Truckers: South Asians and the Canadian Trucking Industry,” a free, in-person talk by Fulbright Research Chair Vibha Bhalla of Brock University’s Centre for Canadian Studies.
  When: Thursday, July 14 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
  Where: St. Catharines Public Library, 54 Church St., St. Catharines

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University dhunt2@brocku.ca or 905-941-6209

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  Categories: Media releases

• Canadian youth have say in Brock-led UNICEF study on growing up in ‘apocalypse’

  Wednesday, July 06, 2022 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 6 July 2022 – R0077

  Young people across Canada have been deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

  And they have some notes.

  Youth have made their voices heard in “It’s Difficult to Grow Up in an Apocalypse: Children’s and Adolescents’ Experiences, Perceptions and Opinions on the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada,” a new report from the UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti produced in collaboration with Brock University, Bishop’s University, the Students Commission’s Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement and UNICEF Canada.

  Assistant Professor Heather Ramey in Brock’s Department of Child and Youth Studies led the Canadian study at the heart of the report, which was released Wednesday, July 6. The work connects with a larger project, spearheaded by UNICEF’s Office of Research in Italy, comparing the pandemic’s impact in various countries around the world.

  The Canadian report shows enormous willingness on the part of children and youth to do whatever is necessary to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, provided leadership does its part to make good plans, rely on experts and be clear and consistent with the rules.

  “I think a lot of people may believe that young people don’t care about restrictions, that they just want everything to be relaxed so they can hang out with their friends, but that’s not what they told us,” Ramey says. “They say they want strong responses from government and policy-makers, but they also want them to make sense and be consistent.”

  To complete the study, Ramey and Heather Lawford of Bishop’s University engaged three advisory councils of young people across Canada. The youngest members were between the ages of 10 and 13 and lived in Quebec. A group of teens aged 14 and up was drawn from a national pool and met monthly for the duration of the project. A third group was made up of youth up to the age of 22 in urban Toronto.

  “UNICEF really wanted the voice of children and youth to direct this study and be at its centre, which ties in with the work we already do through the Students Commission,” says Ramey, who shares the Commission’s academic co-directorship with Lawford. “We ensured the advisory councils directed us in terms of getting funding, planning for who we were going to recruit and what the process involved — everything from start to finish.”

  Discussions for the project began in fall 2020, when UNICEF sought a Canadian research partner. Ramey secured a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Engage Grant (PEG) from the PEG COVID-19 Special Initiative program that enabled the researchers to work closely with youth advisory groups to collect data about experiences and formulate policy recommendations.

  Even as a researcher committed to engaging with youth, Ramey says she was surprised by what she learned from participants.

  “They told us things that I just wouldn’t have expected to hear,” she says. “The participants had really strong opinions on what governments and policy-makers should be doing going forward, often not things that I’ve seen asked for elsewhere.”

  Similarly, the voices of many of the participants themselves have often been overlooked by researchers or media, an issue the project sought to rectify.

  “We talked to young people in multiple provinces and in one territory, so we hit a lot of areas geographically in Canada, and we also talked to a really diverse population, including LGBTQ+ youth, young people in residential care or group homes, and young people with disabilities,” Ramey says. “We were able to hear about the needs of many young people who we don’t always read about in other studies or in the media.”

  The report shows some common threads, but consistently, the heaviest burden is borne by children and youth who already face challenges in their daily lives, whether due to disability, poverty, discrimination or other factors.

  Ramey’s biggest takeaway from the study was the willingness and ability of young people to identify both problems and solutions.

  “You can’t understand young people’s experiences unless you talk to young people. You can’t come up with recommendations that will address their needs without talking to them,” she says. “We need to embrace their ability to guide policy-making, because the recommendations and problems they described in this report are not things adults would come to on their own.”

  The study resulted in a series of recommendations for decision-makers meant to improve the well-being of young people during these unprecedented times. Highlights include:

  • Focusing on youth’s developmental needs and seeking regular input from them when designing policies. Involving young people in the decision-making process is key for adequate policy response to crises like COVID-19, because they, with their diverse identities and lived experiences, know best how the pandemic and policy responses to it affect them. The report also recommends decision-making is accompanied by transparent rationale based on evidence from experts, with resources aimed at educating and informing youth.
  • Improving access to data and digital infrastructure to ensure students can engage fully in their education. Across the world, young people have been affected by school closures. In Canada, it has brought new opportunities for digital learning but highlighted gaps in access to technology and other school resources that, if unaddressed, will deepen socio-economic and cultural inequalities.
  • Enhancing the social function of schools during the pandemic era by creating spaces for safe social interaction and providing the opportunity for students to build relationships with their peers, teachers and mentors. Attention should also be given to young people at transitional points in their lives.
  • Promoting awareness of mental health issues among young people and providing culturally appropriate and easily accessible services that meet the needs of specific demographics, such as LGBTQ+ and Indigenous youth. The study found this generation is highly concerned with mental health and that the pandemic has contributed to deteriorating mental health among youth, requiring appropriate supports.

  The full report is available on the UNICEF website.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University dhunt2@brocku.ca or 905-941-6209

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  Categories: Media releases