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This paper is based on qualitative interviews undertaken with immigrant youth of African descent in Windsor, Ontario; it describes their sojourner lives across geographic borders and their final settlement in Windsor. The paper also offers narrations of the activities that enabled them to formulate friendships and the barriers and facilitators to the development of friendships across races. Critical findings reported in this paper reveal the ways that youth use resources in their travels to construct and negotiate their identities and to formulate new friendships. An important resource used by the majority of the youth was that of an imagined homeland, which consequently impacted on how they viewed and acted on the racial boundary critical in the formation of friendships in the Diaspora.

This paper describes a recent initiative designed to provide support for teacher candidates from culturally diverse backgrounds as they traverse a one-year teacher education program in Canada. Results and discussion are based on qualitative data from an information survey, student-professor conversations, a review of seminar documents and processes, and observations and reflections made by professors conducting the seminar. Overall, the Language and Cultural Engagement Seminar was successful in providing a supportive environment in which complicated and politically volatile issues, which would otherwise have remained unacknowledged, were discussed openly. The main concerns expressed by participants were the communication concern (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, accent, etc.), concern for power and authority in the classroom, and the socio-cultural acceptance concern. Power and communication concerns diminished when teacher candidates felt a level of cultural acceptance in the classroom; therefore, we propose that socio-cultural acceptance be investigated in future research into the concern construct. Since differential pronunciation had the effect of positioning teacher candidates on the periphery of classroom discourse, we concluded that acceptance of accent diversity (lack thereof) was one barrier between ideal (policy) and experienced (lived) multi-cultures. Cet article décrit une initiative récente désignée à procurer un soutien aux étudiants-maîtres provenant de divers milieux socio-culturels pendant l'année de leur formation au Canada. Les résultats et les discussions sont basés sur les données qualitatives obtenues d'une surveillance de renseignements, des conversations entre professeurs et étudiants, une revision des documents et processus obtenus pendant un colloque et des observations et réflexions faites par les professeurs conduisant ce colloque. En général le colloque "Language and Cultural Engagement Seminar" a réussi à offrir un mileu positif dans lequel des problèmes compliqués ou explosifs, qui auraient pu passer inapperçus, avaient été discutés franchement. Les principales inquiétudes citées par les participants sont: l'inquiétude sur la communication (grammaire, vocabulaire, prononciation, accent, etc.), l'inquiétude concernant l'autorité et le pouvoir en classe. et l'inquiétude de n'être pas acceptés à cause de leurs antécédents socio-culturels. Mais les inquiétudes sur le pouvoir et la communication sont diminuées quand les étudiants-maîtres sentaient qu'ils atteignaient un certain niveau d'acceptation culturelle en classe. Nous proposons que l'acceptation socio-culturelle deviendra un sujet de recherche plus poussé dans l'avenir. Comme la prononciation différentielle avait l'effet de placer les instituteurs aux périphéries du discours en classe, nous avions conclu que l'acceptation des accents divers (ou le manque de) est une barrière entre l'idéal (politique) et l'expérience (vécue) d'un milieu à cultures multiples.