National Assimilation and/or Cosmopolitan Transnationalism? Impending Transnationalism among the Upwardly Mobile Children of Refugees

Abstract

In sociology of migration, assimilation theory anticipates second-generations’ socio-economic mobility into the mainstream. In contrast, the concept of transnationalism predicts second-generations’ simultaneous belonging to the origin and destination countries. We draw on 118 qualitative interviews with second-generation Somali-Canadians whose parents were refugees to assess which of these perspectives best explains our participants’ experiences. We explore educational and occupational attainments and transnational practices. Our data show upward mobility and an absence of contemporary transnational practices. Yet, we find that our participants’ refugee background impacts their transnationalism; their parents’ forced departures as refugees and the ongoing violence in their origin-country lead to second-generation Somali-Canadians’ lack of transnationalism. Many, however, emphasize their desire to discover their origin-country at some point in the future. As such, to contribute to the emerging literature on second-generations with refugee parents, we argue that refugee background seems to push transnationalism into the future for our study participants.

Introduction

A 2018 Guardian article prompted its readership by asking ‘what is happening to our national politics?’ (Dasgupta, 2018). The author contrasted the rise of nationalist fervor after ‘the national nervous breakdown of Brexit’ with the ongoing transnational flows of population movements, telecommunications, and finance (Dasgupta, 2018), and, somewhat surprisingly, argued that an ‘integrated world system’ is here to stay while the ‘spasms of resurgent nationalism’ are but the signs of its decline (Dasgupta, 2018). Since then, given the recent of experiences of varied national responses to a global pandemic, the construction of border walls and fences, and the increasing numbers of migrants and refugees, it is perhaps not surprising that the nationalism–globalization showdown is once again at the center of public and academic debates (May et al., 2020; Triandafyllidou, 2023).

Sociologists have long examined the patterns of change, the pendulum-like swings (Skey, 2012), between nationalism and globalization whether in the early stages of European industrialism and mass population movements (Durkheim, 2014 [1984]), in the post-1989 period of optimistic post-national cosmopolitanism (Beck, 2000), or in the recent age of migration (de Haas et al., 2019). From a bird’s eye theoretical viewpoint, such analyses have ranged from a focus on the changing face of nationalisms and challenges to ethnonational identities in times of globalization (Tamir, 2019; Wimmer, 2018), to rethinking the legitimacy of national boundaries (Mayblin et al., 2020), to embracing increasing ethnoracial diversities as a sign of a new era of cosmopolitan solidarities (Vertovec, 2023). From a bottom–up stance, studies have explored how everyday individuals experience nationalism–globalization contradictions between the nation-state’s quests for ethnic self-conservation and the capitalist labor markets’ push for uninterrupted labor mobility (Turner, 2006). Research points to various patterns of nativism and antagonism toward immigration, as a representation of globalization (Kim, 2023; see Pichler, 2008 on the limits of cosmopolitanism), but also to local-level inclusion and conviviality sentiments (Neal et al., 2019; Wessendorf, 2020).

Those with immigrant and refugee backgrounds are central to the nationalism–globalization debates. A central question is whether they veer toward the cultural life of their new nation-states or do they maintain a transnational lifestyle through their connections with their origin countries? A subset of sociological theories and associated empirical findings have addressed this question. On the one hand, various iterations of assimilation theory anticipate that immigrants and their offspring will adopt the norms and practices of the destination society. Ultimately, despite the constraining impacts of race and ethnicity on inclusion, assimilation leads to joining the nation (Alba and Nee, 1997; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). On the other hand, the transnationalism framework challenges assimilation theory’s claim that immigration necessarily leads to the severing of ties with origin countries (Basch et al., 1994). Instead, transnationalism proposes that origin-country visits and access to information and communication technologies enable immigrants and their offspring to simultaneously belong to and connect with destination and origin countries (Baldassar et al., 2016; Kyei et al., 2022).

In this article, based on 118 interviews with second-generation Somali-Canadians, whose parents were refugees, we rely on assimilation and transnationalism frameworks to empirically examine where our participants fall on the nationalism–globalization spectrum in the multicultural Canadian context. ¹ Our data demonstrate that second-generation Somali-Canadians evidence successful educational achievement, generally optimistic outlooks on future employment and socio-economic opportunities, and, as a consequence, many articulate a strong sense of belonging in Canada. Further, the majority of our participants did not report having stable ties with families in Somalia, nor had they ever visited the country. At first glance, then, our findings appear to be consistent with the assimilation framework in that they illustrate patterns of joining and sustaining the host nation (Levitt and Waters, 2002; Waldinger, 2023).

Our data, however, also reveal a temporal aspect to the prospects of transnational belonging. More specifically, we identified an impending future-oriented desire for broader transnational connections among our participants. Many first-generation Somali-Canadians fled war-torn Somalia and arrived in Canada in the 1990s, often via refugee resettlement programs. Ongoing tribal conflicts and political instability have meant that, except in rare cases, neither first- nor second-generation Somali-Canadians are able to return to Somalia. As such, almost all study participants expressed a desire to visit Somalia to discover their roots and, potentially, to contribute to rebuilding the country in the future when it is safe to visit and/or return. Our findings, therefore, show that the groups with refugee backgrounds might push transnational connections and practices into the future. As such, our findings contribute to the debates surrounding the fluid rise and fall of nationalism and globalization (Billig, 2023; Nehring and Hu, 2022) and to the nascent literature on the relationship between refugee backgrounds and second-generation transnationalism (Bloch and Hirsch, 2018; Chimienti et al., 2019; Huynh, 2022; see Luthra et al., 2018 on context of departure). In what follows, we discuss the literature on assimilation and transnationalism in relation to nationalism and globalization, outline the Canadian multicultural context and our methodology, and proceed to present our findings and their implications for the sociological discussions of national assimilation and cosmopolitan transnationalism.

National Assimilation or Global Transnationalism

Three decades of research on nationalism–globalization debates point to a pendulum-like swing between nationalism and globalization over time and space (Nehring and Hu, 2022), which underscores the need to recognize ‘the national nature of globalism and the global nature of nationalism’ (Billig, 2023: 177). Accordingly, there is an ongoing sociological debate as to whether assimilation theory or transnationalism better explain the trajectories and orientations of second-generations with refugee backgrounds vis-a-vis nation-building projects and globalization patterns.

In line with, and preceding, the emergence of the 20th-century writings on the formation of (primordial and modern) nationalisms (e.g. Gellner, 1983; Kohn, 1944; Smith, 1986), and at the time of European mass migrations to North America, assimilation theory also sought to explain newcomers’ impact on the US nation-building trajectory (Park, 1928). By then, assimilation was theorized as an intergenerational process of joining the national culture of ‘middle-class White [Anglo-Saxon] Protestant Americans’ (Gordon, 1964: 74). A more recent iteration, the neo-assimilation perspective, has supplanted assimilation into Whiteness perspective with assimilation into the mainstream, or ‘the assemblage of the social and cultural spaces where the native majority feels at home’ (Alba et al., 2018: 101). Newcomers are theorized to take it upon themselves to acculturate, make friendships across ethnic-racial boundaries, engage in intermarriage, and, by extension, in intergroup identification. From this point, majority and minority groups, through self- and other-ascriptions, find grounds for mutual identification as one national people. This leads to more interracial intermingling and, as racial boundaries become blurred or indistinct through intergroup interactions, ‘ethnic stratification orders ultimately tend to become undone’ (Alba and Nee, 1997: 839).

Another iteration, segmented-assimilation theory, emphasizes the role of the national context of reception for shaping ultimate assimilation trajectories, with a focus on governmental immigration policies (negative toward illegal immigrants, neutral toward routine immigration, and active toward refugee resettlement and integration), ethnic enclaves and capital (working-, middle-, and professional-classes), and racial prejudice in the labor market (positive or negative) (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Portes and Zhou, 1993). Based on various combinations of these factors, second- and consequent-generations might experience upward mobility, stagnancy, and/or downward mobility. This is because in the economic restructuring of the North American economies away from industry and manufacturing toward a service economy, the offspring of some newcomer groups do not necessarily have access to secure and well-paying jobs. Economic precarity can thus limit their upward mobility and may require them to rely on local ethnic economies instead.

Despite their differences, assimilation theories predict that the second- and later-generations often adapt to the mainstream values, behaviors, and beliefs of the destination country, therefore supporting the persistence of nation-building projects (cf. critiques by Karimi and Wilkes, 2023a, 2023b). Assimilation theory, in general, has been criticized for falling into methodological nationalism and for overlooking the role of transnational forms of belonging and practices that connect newcomers with their origin countries (Dahinden, 2017). A core tenet of the transnational approach is that, unlike the assimilation perspective – which posits that, over time, immigrants will eschew norms and practices of the origin country in favor of those in the destination society – it is possible to simultaneously belong to origin and destination countries (Levitt and Glick-Schiller, 2004; see Karimi and Wilkes, 2024 on a transnational amendment to assimilation theory).

In line with the late 20th-century writings on the rise of globalization and the possibilities of cosmopolitan identities (Beck, 1992; Soysal, 1994), Basch et al. (1994: 7) turned their attention to immigrant communities to define transnationalism as ‘the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement’. Although they sought to highlight both the grassroots agency and the macro-level elements of transnationalism, the former has been the main focus in transnational migration studies to date (Faist, 2018). Transnationalism theorizes immigrant communities’ opportunities for transnational practices and ways of belonging within transitional fields as ‘a set of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices, and resources are exchanged, organized, and transformed’ (Levitt and Glick-Schiller, 2004: 1009). Indeed, accelerated globalization, facilitated by the rise of communication technologies, has assisted immigrants and refugees to sustain their cross-border ties (Ryan and Dahinden, 2021).

Yet, because initially conceptually too broad to operationalize, subsequent studies have reconceptualized transnationalism with greater precision to refer to sustained and long-term socio-economic practices such as sending remittances, return visits, and participation in political activism in relation to the country of origin (Portes et al., 2002; Waldinger and Fitzgerald, 2004). According to this (re)conceptualization, transnational practices do not necessarily lead to gravitating away from identifying with the cultural life of the host country. For instance, in destination countries, immigrant communities draw up the lessons they have learnt and the political networks and resources that they have amassed to engage in transnational activism (Miller, 2011; Quinsaat, 2019; see Karimi, 2020 on refugees’ transnational activism). Then, transnationalism generally facilitates embeddedness, through ways of being and ways of belonging, in both countries of destination and origin (Brocket, 2020; Levitt and Glick-Schiller, 2004).

Although transnational research initially focused disproportionately on the experience of first-generation immigrants, this narrow focus gave way to a wealth of research on second- and later-generations (Levitt and Waters, 2002). Here, two main themes stand out. In the early 2000s, research focused on questions of identification with the destination society versus the parents’ origin country, and on the quantity and quality of ties to parental origin communities (e.g. Louie, 2006; Rusinovic, 2008). By the 2010s, questions related to the possibility of return to the parents’ home country and the second-generations’ place-making endeavors dominated the literature (e.g. Fokkema, 2011; King and Christou, 2014). Second-generations’ returns to parents’ home countries – their ‘roots migration’ (Wessendorf, 2016) – are often described as a journey to further explore their transnational identities, but also a way of using their western-accumulated capital to find better employment and income opportunities (Jain, 2013). In other words, to participate in sociopolitical activities ‘there’, second-generations become increasingly involved in and assimilated into the sociopolitical structures ‘here’ (Kyei et al., 2022).

Overall and over time, proponents of assimilation theory have conceded that, faced with prejudice and limited occupational opportunities in the host country, transnational identification with parental origin countries may provide second-generations with an alternative resource for belonging (Levitt and Waters, 2002). Yet, as discussed above, it is now apparent that with the passing of time, a process of ‘dissimilation’ (Fitzgerald, 2012) picks up and second-generations’ transnationalism declines (Waldinger, 2023). These fluid assimilation–dissimilation trajectories reflect the rise and fall of nationalist–globalist trends over time (Billig, 2023). It is against this theoretical background that an emerging literature is now considering the assimilation and transnationalism experiences of second-generations whose parent were refugees (Bloch and Hirsch, 2018; Huynh, 2022). Below, we discuss the multicultural context of our study and, next, our methodology and findings.

Multicultural Context of Reception and Somalis’ Arrival

Since the 1970s, the Multiculturalism Policy Act has articulated Canada’s official integration approach. Through this policy, the nation constructs a national narrative of ‘unity in diversity’ to manage the inclusion of newcomers as well as their sociocultural assimilation (Bloemraad, 2007). In 2019, a report prepared by Canada Immigration and Citizenship underlined Canada’s multicultural and points-based immigration system as the core reason for Canada’s success in building a ‘welcoming host society, which considers immigration as a part of its national heritage’ (CIC, 2019). The Canadian self-understanding as an immigrant country has had positive impacts on the reception of immigrant communities, a situation that has been described as different from the USA and Europe (Reitz et al., 2011). Indeed, the overall goal of Canadian immigration and refugee policies, labor markets and unions, and educational and welfare institutions has been to achieve redistributive economic equality and cultural plurality among majority and minority populations (Abu-Laban, 2018). In addition, Canada’s Single Member Plurality electoral system – which rewards the geographic distribution or concentration of votes paired with Canada’s regional concentration of newcomers – moderates the force of any populist political party and provides more opportunities for immigrant communities to make their voices heard (Triadafilopoulos and Taylor, 2021).

Yet, it is important to note that not all segments of the Canadian population are received and treated equally; the Canadian racial formation project positions immigrant groups according to a three-tier classification hierarchy. At the top, there are the exalted subjects who are of settler European backgrounds (Thobani, 2007). Racialized minorities are positioned in the middle rungs of the hierarchy, while Indigenous people are at the bottom and dehumanized. This racial hierarchy differs from that described in the USA where the majority Whites are seen as at the top, racialized minorities such as Asians and Latinos in the middle, and Black populations at the bottom, while Indigenous populations are almost always left out of scholarly analyses (Karimi et al., 2023).

Given these considerations, we underline the contextual differences in immigrant incorporation. In Canada, multiculturalism policies and discourse attempt to strike a balance between minority and national identification. For example, Medina et al. (2019) offer a tridimensional rather than a binary model of minority-White identification among second-generation Black Canadians. In contrast with the US zero-sum melting pot model, their findings suggest that Black Canadian youth actively participate in their own ethnic and racial communities, the wider Black and immigrant cultures, and the mainstream White culture. This is a form of conviviality in Toronto’s urban area, which enables Black youth to cross group boundaries while accounting for the persistence of racism.

Canada’s immigrant Black population is quite small and relatively unsegregated in their residential patterns vis-a-vis other groups (Alba and Reitz, 2021). Somali-Canadians are only one of many racialized newcomer groups, who together comprise over a quarter of the Canadian population. Since the early 1990s, Somalia has grappled with the absence of a centralized Somali government, clan-based militant insurgencies, and outright civil war, which prompted a mass exodus of Somali nationals, many of whom resettled to the United States and Canada. The province of Ontario is home to the largest Somali community in Canada. According to the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (2016), Somali-Canadians initially faced several forms of negative deferential treatment by the Canadian government, including five-year wait times before eligibility for permanent residency. Further, the Canadian Somali diaspora has been under intense governmental and media scrutiny for what is thought to be their disproportionate involvement in gun- and gang-related activity, and for alleged affiliations with various transnational Islamic extremist movements (Joosse et al., 2015). In addition, Somali-Canadians’ origin-country experiences of tribal fragmentation are reflected in the absence of a cohesive diasporic Somali community (Karimi et al., 2019).

Methodology

We designed our study to consider the background of Canadian multiculturalism and how it shapes the experience and trajectories of refugee and immigrant groups who experience multiple forms of marginalization. At the time (2013–2014), we developed our interview guide in accordance with the central tenets of the above-discussed theories and built in questions about the popular stereotypes about community safety and national security threats that Somali-Canadians purportedly posed. We approached our research from a critical realist perspective, aiming to elicit and understand how our research participants construct their individual and shared meanings around our phenomena of interest. For the purposes of this article, we have recontextualized our findings on assimilation–transnationalism within the post-Brexit and post-Trump era of renewed interests in the sociology of nationalism–globalization.

To recruit participants, we used a variation of the respondent driven sampling method (RDS) as outlined by Heckathorn (1997), allowing us to take advantage of intra-group social connections. We initially planted four diverse ‘seeds’ (initial interview participants) in different geographic areas; each seed was asked to recruit two additional participants (receiving a set dollar amount per referral), and each new referral could equally refer two more. Using this approach, we were able to recruit participants from different neighborhoods, tribal backgrounds, social circles, and with different levels of education. Our research team was diverse and comprised of the principal investigators, along with male and female community-based and graduate student interviewers of both Somali and non-Somali backgrounds. We believe that the diversity of our research team greatly enriched the quality of the interview data. More specifically, some research participants preferred being interviewed by a team member from a different ethnic background than their own, while others requested that they instead be interviewed by a co-ethnic. That we were generally able to accommodate these preferences likely increased comfort levels on the research participants, thereby producing richer interview data.

Our participant recruitment strategy led to 118 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with second-generation Somali-Canadians in their late teens to mid-20s in Toronto, Canada. Our sample consisted of 50 female and 68 male participants. The overwhelming majority (78%) of our participants self-identified as coming from a low-income family background, with the remaining 22% self-identifying as middle income. The average interview lasted about one hour. We digitally recorded and transcribed all interviews and used Nvivo 12 to code our data. To assess assimilation theory’s predictions, we indexed the data for upward mobility and racialization, and then divided each theme into several sub-themes or nodes including national and ethnic identification, perceptions of majority groups’ viewpoints of minorities, experiences of racism, educational and occupational achievements and aspirations, and affiliation with ethnic communities. To assess transnationalism, our indexes focused on sending money back to Somalia, visits to country of origin, and connections with transnational movements. We specifically referred back to our participants’ responses to several questions in our interview guide such as ‘do Somalis here send money back home to families or relatives?’ and ‘have you ever thought about going back to Somalia?’

Findings

Socio-economic Assimilation

The majority of our sample were young, unmarried, and lived in the same household as their parents. We are therefore unable to speculate on their assimilation trajectories in terms of spatial proximity and intergroup marriage. ² Here, we present our findings on second-generation Somali-Canadians’ educational and employment achievements. With respect to educational achievements and aspirations, it is important to note that all participants were either working on their high-school diplomas or university degrees when interviewed. The majority of our participants described their college and university experiences as welcoming and ultimately aspired to earn a graduate degree:

When I did start [my program] it was, it was so many different people. . . And it was, there was a lot of Black people, there was a lot of Asian people, there was a lot of Indian, there was mix of everything, and I felt very welcomed. And then I went to the police foundations at King City and I was, there was four Black people and there was, there was two guys and two girls, and me and the other Black girl become really close friends.

I’m going into my second year [undergraduate]. I’m taking humanities and I plan on majoring in psychology and sociology. I work at a call center, we’re doing projects for Ontario ministry. When I figure out what I wanna do after four years. It’s either, um, a two-year master’s program at UofT or teacher, [a] one year [program].

Regarding employment experiences and aspirations, a majority of our participants described discrimination experiences when applying for jobs, which perceived these to be based on their race and sometimes religion:

Once I open my mouth when I’m at a job interview and people know that I can construct a full sentence, um, you know, people are shocked and then, you know, I’m not given the job because, you know, although my experience and my community work or, whatever, my internship work is fabulous and definitely extensive, I don’t end up getting the job. . . I definitely think that’s due to . . . discrimination.

Yet, the dominant majority of our participants did not perceive fundamental or insurmountable structural and racial barriers against their career aspirations. We also did not observe gender differences between our male and female participants in terms of their educational and career goals, though our female participants perceived that their religious clothing (e.g. wearing a hijab) has and may continue to serve as grounds for discrimination in job interviews and social interactions. Our participants’ career choices were varied and included counselling, medicine, human and social service work, policing, law, and engineering:

I am from a health background and I definitely would like to see a merge, I mean my community development component and also my love for health. So, I definitely have an interest in public health and health promotion . . . I definitely see myself working as a community health worker, assisting, you know, people who live in . . . in priority neighborhoods, [in] attaining better health.

I’m kind of interested in kinesiology so I want to pursue that in university. . . Well . . . my goal is to be a soccer player but if that doesn’t work out, I mean, I’ve always been interested in like chiropractor field [sic]. Because I’ve played soccer all my life and I’ve witnessed all the injuries and I know everything.

To navigate educational and occupational settings, and to secure jobs, our participants did not report relying on broader ethnic communities and economies that are much discussed in the assimilation literature. Indeed, none of our participants mentioned their reliance on or hope for employment within their ethnic community. Instead, our participants trusted that mainstream institutions would facilitate their educational and occupational mobility. In a few instances, however, participants mentioned that they had volunteered at community centers with an eye toward using the hours accrued toward the required field-placement and practicum hours associated with their educational programs. One participant said: ‘I volunteer at some events, like, there was like a fundraiser for the Mosque, but a Somali Mosque, and I only did it because I needed my hours.’

Our participants reported two reasons for why they did not rely on their ethnic communities for assistance navigating their educational and occupational goals. Many mentioned intergenerational mentalities and conflicts that, they felt, prevented their participation in community events. They also felt that their parents’ generation dominated community events and organizations, which also tended to be organized along tribal lines, leaving little-to-no-room for the voices and meaningful participation of younger Somali-Canadians. One participant said:

It’s because I feel that it’s not youth-led. It’s like, they’ll say it’s youth-led, but then . . . there is [sic] some Somali elders who are biased based on, maybe, clan affiliations based on their own ideology, and they influence those youth in negative ways and then, you see no result.

The second reason for not relying on the ethnic communities was our participants’ aspiration to fully integrate into the Canadian society as a way of ‘paying forward’. One participant said:

[Community is] a little too tight and they need to break up from each other and realize that in Canada there are other people that live here with you. Go contribute to this economy. You know, this country’s done a lot for you. This country’s helped you, you know, run away from the war and terror that you know terrorized Somalia for 20 years. Contribute. Give back to this country.

Current Transnationalism

The described disconnect between the first- and second-generations was also reflected in our participants’ lack of connections with sociopolitical developments in Somalia. In response to our questions such as ‘Do you and your friends follow political issues in Somalia?’ participants reported:

Currently I’m not sure. I heard that they have like a new government or something, but I don’t know. [I heard] Something about the Al Shabab, I don’t know what they’re doing there, but I guess they’re, like, a terrorist group and they’re just, like, destroying everything to make it their way. So I don’t know. I think it’s still shaky to . . . rebuild Somalia how it was back then.

Participant: I don’t know what’s going on [in Somalia].

Interviewer: What about your family? It’s not something that, you know, at the dinner table you guys talk about?

Participant: More like Toronto politics.

Interviewer: Like Rob Ford?

Participant: Yeah, all that stuff going on right now.

The second-generations’ lack of connections to and interest in Somalia’s sociopolitical situation were also paired with the fact that they could not visit their parental country of origin. The ongoing war, persistent violence, and extended periods of political instability in Somalia have made such trips difficult, if not impossible:

I’ve never been there before. . . I think it’s disgusting, to be honest, it’s like why are you bombing or, like, killing your own people off? Everything should be peaceful.

Maybe, like, one day when there’s, like, an actual government, I’d wanna go back. But right now, I don’t care, ’cause it doesn’t look too stable.

Currently, then, the second-generation Somali-Canadians in our sample do not appear to engage in transnational practices, which is in contrast to their first-generation parents’ activities. ³ For example, almost all participants said that they knew of at least one person from the first-generation – usually a parent or family friend – who would send money back to Somalia:

My mom sends money to my uncle and my grandpa in Somalia. Older people, like parents here they send money, it’s like a respect thing.

My mom sends money to my grandpa’s brother. And then they have like a system, each month every family member has to pay that guy’s bill.

Our participants also emphasized that their parents, and at times their grandparents, worked to maintain kin ties in Somalia and kept up-to-date with the ongoing sociopolitical situation in Somalia. This way of practicing transnationalism was accomplished via frequent phone calls, consumption of Somali but also diasporic TV channels and radio, and visits to community events and businesses owned by co-ethnics.

The first-generations’ transnationalism and their connections with a place and culture beyond Canada provided the second-generations with a point of reference for their own identification. The fact that assimilation and transnationalism are not oppositional (Levitt and Glick-Schiller, 2004) was reflected in how our participants self-identified in a variety of ways that combined their parental heritage with their Canadian national identity. These self-identifications included ‘Canadian’, ‘Somalian’, ‘Somalian and Black’, ‘Somali-Canadian’, and, in some cases, ‘East African’. These identifications were of high importance to their daily lives since, as one participant said, ‘you shouldn’t be ashamed of telling what you are and where you come from to people’. Our participants perceived these identifications as important because race and ethnicity matter in the Canadian context – as one participant pointedly reported ‘people judge me on [race]’ ⁴ – and impacted their daily interactions.

Impending Transnationalism

While study participants drew on their Somali heritage for the purpose of self-identification, they also imagined fostering more connections to Somalia at some point in the future. Indeed, our participants expressed the hope that, once war and political instability in Somalia ends, they could visit their parents’ country of origin and, perhaps, assist in rebuilding it. This reflected a desire to know where their parents had come from and who their relatives were. In a sense, instead of ‘roots migration’ (Wessendorf, 2016), we observed a desire for ‘roots discovery’:

My roots are Somalia, [I have] not stepped into Somalia, [but] in the future I would love to see what my country was like.

I do want to go back when it’s better so I can see, you know, where I came from . . . and just experience it, like where my parents grew up and stuff. ⁵

Their impending transnationalism and the anticipation of visits to their parents’ country of origin had more practical aspects as well. For instance, similar to Jain’s (2013) second-generation Indian-American participants who saw ‘return’ as an economic opportunity, some of our participants set their sights on benefitting from potential post-war opportunities (also Fokkema et al., 2013). Several participants said:

I’d love to go back, [there] is potential, a lot of potential for just making it. . . Money, investing in that place for myself. My friend was telling me this, that they’ve found a lot of resources in Somalia. Yeah, they say that oil, they’re not sure yet, a lot of resources that have always been there.

One, because it’s a place that I’ve never been and I only hear of and I have a distant connection [to], I’m a child of the Diaspora so I want to go back home. Two, recently after I lost my job I felt that there was more economic opportunities in Somalia than there is in Canada, ironic and really weird, I know, but that is the reality, there’s money to be made, there’s, you know, you know NGO [non-governmental organization] you know in terms of, IOM [International Organization for Migration] the UN, you know, the World Health Organization, and so forth are hiring and, you know, I wanted to go and get a job.

At the same time, in addition to the gain–loss approach evidenced in the above quotations, other participants talked about the possibility of contributing to rebuilding Somalia if the war were to come to an end. Their comments revealed a sense of ‘owing to [their] parents’ but also to those who are left behind in Somalia:

If I was to get my master’s, perhaps taking a government position in the Ministry of Health or something like that and like, giving back to Somalia. The only thing is I feel like, right now, in the current Somali circumstance, my contributions would be a little futile. They’d fall a little short of the needs.

I definitely want to go back. . . . The area that we’re from, it’s a little bit stable, not as much, it’s stable enough that you can fly there. I would go back to just try and help rebuild the country and just sort of give back to the community.

Overall, our data point to the second-generation’s successful upward mobility (by virtue of existing or aspired educational attainment and employment opportunities) and assimilation, and to their current lack of transnational practices. Yet, as the preceding quotations show, we also found evidence of impending transnationalism. That is, our participants expressed their desire to visit their parental country and culture, discover their roots and family members, and contribute to rebuilding the nation – at some point in the future. Below we connect our findings to the broader literature and discuss implications for future research.

Discussion

Despite reporting experiences of racialization and a series of negative impacts of racial structures that organize and stratify Canadian society, our data generally support assimilation theory’s prediction of second-generations’ assimilation into the host society. At the time this research was in the field (2013–2014), our second-generation study participants did not practice transnationalism by visiting their country of origin, sending remittances, or staying connected with ethnic communities and family members in Somalia. These findings underline the decline of transnationalism from the first- to second-generations (Levitt and Waters, 2002; Waldinger, 2023). Nonetheless, evidence of impending transnationalism in our data requires that we remain cautious about claiming that transnational practices are irrelevant to the lives of the young people that we interviewed.

Our participants’ current or expected educational attainments and occupational aspirations suggest intergenerational upward mobility. The great majority of the second-generation Somali-Canadians in our sample are the offspring of Somali refugees who relocated to Canada during the 1990s. A vast number of our participants’ parents – their mothers in particular – had only earned high-school degrees in the country of origin, whereas study participants themselves report aspiring to earn a university degree, most often a graduate degree (Karimi et al., 2019, 2023). Such educational success and the broader occupational aspirations reported by our sample reflect a wider trend observed among second-generation Canadians (Chen and Hou, 2019); according to the Census Canada (2016), 52% of Black Canadian children of immigrants, including Somali immigrants, go on to earn a university degree. Similarly, the Census Canada (2016) data show that second-generation North Africans’ 81.5% employment rate and their 46.3% full-time employment rate closely resemble Canada’s average employment rate of 81.8% and the full-time employment rate of 51.4%.

Yet, our data also point to a surprising impact of refugee backgrounds, or the context of departure, on second-generation Somali-Canadians’ assimilation and transnationalism practices. On the one hand, we do not observe a constraining connection between refugee backgrounds and assimilation. This is in contrast to much of the mainstream assimilation research, particularly those studies that examine segmented-assimilation wherein racialized refugees are generally portrayed to be yet another immigrant group that is likely to face a hostile context of reception (Fitzgerald and Arar, 2018). This is because, it is said, they arrive with low levels of social and cultural capital, face prejudice in the labor market, and receive insufficient support from the government (Cheung and Phillimore, 2014). As a consequence, racialized second-generation refugees tend to be subsumed into to the category of ‘non-white, Third-World, non-English-speaking, and low-skilled immigrants and refugees’ (Zhou and Xiong, 2005: 1121). However, our findings suggest that refugee backgrounds and the context of reception they experienced do not necessarily operate to constrain second-generations’ upward mobility. That is, our participants who come from refugee backgrounds, akin to other second-generations, attain upward educational and occupational mobility (Bloch and Hirsch, 2018; Chimienti et al., 2019). This is particularly relevant in the Canadian context; Canada’s expansionist welfare system and policies – as well as the labor market and educational institutions – are set up to, ideally, maximize redistributive economic and political equality across social groups.

On the other hand, we observe a connection between refugee backgrounds and an impending transnationalism among our participants. It is true that, when compared with other immigrant groups, first-generation refugees also participate in transnational practices, albeit under the strong impact of the home-host inter-state relations (see Riaño-Alcalá and Goldring, 2014). Yet, the refugee background – that is, their parents’ departure from a war-torn country and the impossibility of return – mean that the second-generations do not know their extended kin and are unable to visit the country of origin. Instead of engaging in transnational practices, they ponder the possibilities of engaging in such practices at some point in the future, pending greater social and political stability in Somalia.

The importance of the context of departure on second-generations is gaining more salience in the literatures on transnationalism and assimilation (Chimienti et al., 2019; Luthra et al., 2018). As our findings also reflect, more recent research highlights the similarities between second-generations from refugee and non-refugee backgrounds in terms of their experiences of mobility and racism in the receiving country (Bloch and Hirsch, 2018; Brocket, 2020; Huynh, 2022). This emerging line of research further emphasizes that the impossibility of return, coupled with the absence of kin, may lead to weak transnational connections within ethnic communities (Fokkema et al., 2013), low or non-existing rates of sending remittances, and nostalgic feelings toward parental culture (Bloch and Hirsch, 2018). Our findings augment this literature by showing that low rates of transnationalism may not necessarily preclude transnational activities in the future, nor do they imply that assimilation trajectories are complete. Instead, considering the context of departure, that is, the current political state in the country of origin, second-generations’ transnational practices may remain dormant as long as violence and political instability in origin countries persist.

Conclusion

Much has been written on whether nationalism or globalization better account for the organization of modern life (Beck, 1992; May et al., 2020; Soysal, 1994). The current consensus points to the pendulum-like swings between the two in the sense that the rise of one is tied to the retreat of the other and vice versa, time and again (Skey, 2012). This is because, it is argued, these two social forces are interdependent and formed in opposition to one another (Billig, 2023). Against this broad background, we assessed whether assimilation theory or the transnationalism framework would best capture the specific experiences of young Somali-Canadians in terms of veering toward the Canadian nation-building project or a global cosmopolitan lifestyle. Our findings caution against making quick judgments about the rise and fall of nations and transnationalism. They also encourage a more nuanced understanding of how assimilation and transnationalist practices do not necessarily play out in either/or fashion, but rather can (and do) operate simultaneously to shape experiences and life trajectories in the host country.

More specifically, our findings align with assimilation theory’s predication that, with the passage of time, assimilation toward the nation increases and transnational connections decline. All of our participants had or were planning to earn a university degree and join the professional labor market in Canada at rates that appear to exceed those of the native born. Likewise, we observed an impending sense of transnationalism in our sample of participants. Our data reveal a connection between refugee backgrounds, or the context of departure, and the second-generations’ transnationalism in the future. Our findings imply that, for those coming from refugee backgrounds, assimilation takes place while transnationalism may become dormant and remain so until activated. The activation of such impending transnationalism would require conditions of relative safety and stability in origin countries – whether this mechanism of activation identified by our participants ultimately results in greater transnationalism remains to be seen.

Overall, our study contributes to the emerging research on the relationship between refugee backgrounds and transnational practices among second-generations. Their lives particularly highlight the temporal aspect of the interrelations between national assimilation and global transnationalism in the sense that while one seems to consolidate, the other might be awaiting its chance to ascend.