Impeded Sociability: Racial Consciousness and Racialized Immigrants’ Sense of Sociable and Unsociable Places in Semi-rural Alberta, Canada.

Immigrant settlement success hinges on effectively reconstructing social life in the receiving society. With the increased admission of racialized immigrants to Canada, it is imperative to investigate how their sense of sociability and belonging manifests within the broader context of white-dominant Canadian society. This research examines everyday place-based experiences of settlement sociability among racialized immigrants based on the understanding that racial matters are spatial matters. Using the photovoice method, ten racialized recent immigrant men aged 27 to 50, mostly from African and West Asian origins, expressed their settlement experiences through photo-rendering of places of comfort and discomfort. The participants had lived in Canada for less than ten years and immigrated to Canada through the refugee, family, and economic immigration admission categories. Findings indicate that racialized immigrants felt comfortable in “de-racialized” spaces, where they were temporarily relieved from their ethnic visibility and a sense of being out of place. They were uncomfortable in areas that triggered “racialized insecurity,” where they felt vulnerable because of their racialized identity. The analysis further points to the emotional and embodied nature of racial experiences: participants’ uneasy sense of otherness is rooted in their racialized physiques that inhabit a socio-cultural environment where whiteness is the somatic norm. The findings of this research call attention to the need for a closer inspection of how places of immigrant settlement and race are inextricably linked. The promotion of settlement sociability needs to go beyond physical proximity to social closeness, valuing co-ethnicity and cultural familiarity, especially in the initial stage of settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]