Understanding social inclusion: a narrative inquiry into the experiences of refugee families with young children

While refugees are part of patterns of global migration, their ordinary lives remain obscured. In a narrative inquiry into the lives of Syrian refugee families who came to Canada within the past 4 years, we focused on their experiences of belonging, agency, and identity as part of social inclusion. The main focus was the lives of young children and their families as they made sense of Canadian institutional settings. Working with two community-based Arabic-speaking women, we engaged with each family for up to two years. Data (field texts) included recorded and informal conversations, photographs, memory box artefacts, field notes on activities, and art work. In an initial analysis, we wrote narrative accounts of each family's experiences. Second level analysis involved collaborative identification of two narrative threads that cut across families' experiences: making and sustaining familial and community relationships and composing stories to live by as a process of becoming. We draw on one family's experiences to illustrate these threads. Learning to speak English is a central component within each thread. Tensions between inclusion and exclusion, which become apparent as families struggled to hold on to who they were, and as they worked to reimagine and recompose their lives, are visible.