I didn’t do that! Contested Definitions of Racialized Immigrant Youth in the Extra-Judicial Sanctions Program: Uncovering Hidden Voices.

Abstract

The social organization of knowledge focuses on how knowledge is created, enacted and shared by individuals in order to coordinate people’s actions. Using the frameworks of Institutional Ethnography (IE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), this paper will look at the process of hearing the cases of racialized immigrant youth who are referred to the Extra-judicial Sanctions program in Calgary. I investigate how cultural knowledge impacts the way in which the youth’s cases are adjudicated. In particular, looking at how knowledge about various racialized and ethnic groups is gained in an environment of popular discourse, and how this influences the cases of racialized immigrant youth. I then look at how this racialized knowledge impacts the process of the youth and their families attempting to contest the definitions that are assigned to them during the hearing process. I suggest that in the context of a neo-liberal, “colour-blind” Canadian society and policy, workers in the EJS process draw on their own cultural understandings in order to interpret the interactions with racialized immigrant youth, which then impacts the ability of the youth to truly have their voices heard.