Identities and Interactions of Chinese and Muslim Youth: From Regent Park to the University of Toronto

In urban Toronto, how do people’s ethnic and religious identities affect how they navigate their lives? Specifically, what are the similarities and differences in the experiences of Chinese and Muslim residents, and how do these two groups interact? This paper reflects on the experiences of navigating in an urban environment while identifying as an ethnic or religious minority, which is the theme of the authors’ media project. Further, the paper examines the significance of this theme, the method of conducting video interviews to create a narrative of the interviewees, as well as the authors’ learnings from the project development.

Toronto is a highly diverse city with its residents being part of a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds. Specifically, East Asian is the most common non-Western ethnic group in Toronto, whereas Islam is the most common non-Western religion practiced by Toronto residents (World Population Review, 2020). People of these two identities are also represented in Regent Park, a neighbourhood that signifies the diversity of the city, as 70% of its residents are visible minorities (City of Toronto, 2018).

Regent Park has a significant Muslim population. Notably, over half of the students in the neighbourhood’s two elementary schools are Muslims from many different countries (Jamil, 2015). Traditionally, the Muslim community has had a strong sense of belonging in Regent Park (Jamil, 2015). Additionally, Regent Park is home to many Chinese residents. Mandarin is the second most-spoken non-English mother tongue, and Cantonese is the fourth (City of Toronto, 2018). Chinese residents can access social support and services through SEAS, a social service agency aimed to help East and Southeast Asian community members (SEAS, 2020).

Although there is a large population of Chinese and Muslim residents in Regent Park and in Toronto, people of both identities still experience prejudice and discrimination in the city. The authors interacted with Diva Girls at Regent Park Focus, who have discussed their experiences of being targets of verbal discrimination and unequal treatment from their white peers or teachers at their schools. Islamic identity features, such as wearing veils, could also put Muslim residents at a disadvantage, such as decreased job access and workplace discrimination in Toronto (Zine, 2006). These examples demonstrate Islamophobia and prejudice of Muslims amongst some Toronto residents.

Residents of Chinese backgrounds in Toronto also experience discrimination. While this discrimination exists normally, it has been particularly acute during the current coronavirus pandemic, as discrimination against the Asian community has greatly increased since the pandemic started (Boutilier, 2020). In particular, Chinese international students can face discrimination and alienation, affecting their mental health (Du & Zhai, 2020). However, it is also notable that there is prejudice by some Chinese towards Muslim residents in Toronto. For example, there have been protests organized by members of the Chinese community against the admission of Muslim refugees (Zhou, 2018). How do Chinese Canadians’ own experiences of discrimination as well as their conceptions of other communities influence their interactions with others?

Inspired by the experiences of the Diva Girls and the writers’ own experiences navigating Canadian society as Chinese persons, the media project aims to examine how Chinese and non-Chinese Muslim Torontonians, specifically youths, navigate the urban environment and interact with each other. Do these youths experience any conflicts or challenges in their interactions with one another? Understanding these interactions could help the City to develop policies to combat discrimination.

Additionally, the media project aims to inform people of Chinese and Muslim experiences in Toronto, thus promoting understanding. Further, by focusing on youth interactions, this project hopes to spur further youth-related research. Griffin (2001) argues that such research can not only break stereotypical representations of young people, but also foreshadow future societal states. Thus, the authors’ project takes a focus on youth interactions in Regent Park and in Toronto at large.

The authors’ project consists of interviewing people and creating a short video to present experiences of Chinese and Muslim youth. These interviews allow the authors to directly engage with youth residents. The authors, as editors, are able to select the most relevant portions of the interviews to include in the final video. This ability may raise concerns of misrepresenting interview contents due to editing. The authors eliminate this concern by consulting with interviewees to ensure that the selected portions represent what they aim to express. The benefit of the video is twofold. First, viewers can listen to multiple perspectives in a concise timeframe and an engaging way. Second, putting together the experiences of the interviewees creates a form of narrative. Asthana (2017) explores how youth-created short films allow them to express their identities through a narrative of their daily experiences. Similarly, the authors’ video provides interviewees with a space to relate their identities with their daily interactions, constituting a narrative identity as per Ricoeur’s definition (Asthana, 2017). These youth narratives would further encourage explorations of a “relationship between culture(s), place(s) and identities in young people’s lives,” as identity and place of living can both influence how young people navigate their lives (Griffin, 2001, p. 162). Understanding these relationships can help to create better urban spaces for youths from diverse backgrounds.

The production of the video coincided with the coronavirus outbreak in Canada. Although this pandemic significantly affected the project, the authors gained an important lesson in how to adapt project plans to extenuating circumstances. The authors originally intended to interview Chinese and Muslim youths from Regent Park to gain insights on this community. Additionally, the authors had planned to use technologies and equipment offered by Regent Park Focus to enhance the production quality. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the authors were unable to access these resources or conduct interviews with Regent Park youths. To adapt to these disruptions, the authors interviewed University of Toronto students on the same topic and filmed the remaining portions using technologies at hand in the authors’ homes to comply with social distancing.

Through interviewing Chinese and Muslim university students, the authors gained insights on the intersection of identity and interactions. Ethnic identities play a role in the interviewees’ interactions and social groups on campus. While the Chinese interviewees had more diverse interactions during high school, they seem to have limited opportunities during university to interact with Muslim students. These experiences suggest that there are still gaps between Chinese and Muslim youths in Toronto. However, interviewees agreed on the benefits of increasing intercultural and inter-religious interactions, showing the potential for increased cross-cultural understanding in the future.

It is also important to note the shortcomings of the media project. Since the findings were based on a small sample size of three online interviews from students at the University of Toronto, they may be heavily biased and should not reflect typical interactions between Chinese and Muslim youths in Regent Park or the city at large.

Further research is required for a comprehensive understanding on interactions between the Muslim and Chinese community in Regent Park, which was the authors’ original topic. Future research can also examine the relationship between youths and public spaces. Both Regent Park and the university campus contain public spaces, which are significant for interactions and can be used for the intercultural events that interviewees have brought up. However, young people’s perception and usage of public spaces are often not understood by planners, resulting in urban designs that do not reflect the needs of these young people (Johnson & Laughlin, 2011). A better understanding of cross-cultural interactions amongst youth and their relationship with public spaces can lead to public space design that promotes interactions and understanding in a diverse urban environment.

Despite the shortcomings of the authors’ final project, it was nevertheless a valuable exploration of how identities affect interactions of Chinese and Muslim youth. This is a significant topic to explore, under the backdrop of the challenges navigating urban life as an ethnic or religious minority. Thus, the authors hope to inspire further, expanded research on this topic by future students of INI430 and urban studies scholars.

Watch our final project below:

The Faithful Delta team members are Andrew and Jim.

References

Asthana, S. (2017). Translation and localization of children’s rights in youth-produced digital media in the Global South: A hermeneutic exploration. New Media & Society, 19(5), 686-700. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816686320

Boutilier, A. (2020, April 2). Worries grow that discrimination against Chinese Canadians is getting worse as pandemic continues. The Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2020/04/02/worries-grow-that- discrimination-against-chinese-canadians-is-getting-worse-as-pandemic-continues.html

City of Toronto. (2018). Neighbourhood profile: Regent Park [PDF file]. https://www.toronto.ca/ext/sdfa/Neighbourhood%20Profiles/pdf/2016/pdf1/cpa72.pdf

Du, X., & Zhai, Y. (2020). Mental health care for international Chinese students affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. The Lancet, 7(4), e22. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215- 0366(20)30089-4

Griffin, C. (2001). Imagining new narratives of youth: Youth research, the “New Europe” and global youth culture. Childhood, 8(2), 147-166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568201008002002

Jamil, U. (2015). Making place: Muslims in the neighbourhood. Contemporary Islam, 9, 321-335. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-015-0346-y

Johnson, L. C. & Laughlin, D. L. (2011). Defining and exploring public space: perspectives of young people from Regent Park, Toronto. Children’s Geographies, 9(3-4), 439-456. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2011.590703

SEAS. (2020). Homepage. https://www.seascentre.org/

World Population Review. (2020). Toronto Population 2020. https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/toronto-population/

Zhou, S. (2018, September 18). How anti-immigrant rhetoric crept into Chinese Canadian politics. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/gyngex/how-anti-immigrant-rhetoric-crept-into-chinese-canadian-politics

Zine, J. (2006). Unveiled sentiments: Gendered Islamophobia and experiences of veiling among Muslim girls in a Canadian Islamic school. Equity & Excellence in Education, 39(3), 239-252. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665680600788503

Muslim and (Non-Muslim) East Asian Residents in Regent Park

This past Monday, Faithful Delta made some significant progress on our group project, but also realized some of the challenges that we are facing.

We were joined by Tommy, a friend of Jim’s who is interested in getting out of the U of T “bubble” and exploring the rest of Toronto (he was actually very helpful in critically reflecting on our ideas, so thanks Tommy!). Since we came up with a rough idea of our project and who to interview last week, we decided to head to Regent Park early Monday afternoon to visit some of the community organizations and institutions and potentially set up interviews. 

Our first stop was SEAS, which we talked about in our last two blog posts. Since our group wanted to explore the interactions between the (non-Muslim) East Asian community and the Muslim community in Regent Park, we thought that SEAS would be a good starting point. After introducing ourselves and our project to Sabrina, Program Director at SEAS, we encountered our first challenge: the bureaucracy involved in setting up an interview. The supervisor was sympathetic to us and willing to help but stated that setting up an interview with a SEAS client would need to go through her boss and we may have to wait until the end of March to hear back. That would cause a problem for us, since we should have finished our project by then. We plan on sending a formal email, as requested, to Sabrina, but we will provide more flexibility, such as including the option to interview a SEAS staff member who lives in Regent Park. 

Next, we visited the nearby Regent Park Community Centre. Since the community centre acts as a hub for Regent Park residents, we thought that the staff there may be able to share their knowledge of the community and point us in the right direction. Through interacting with an administrative staff at the community centre, we realized another problem: we weren’t entirely sure who we wanted to interview (any East Asian and Muslim residents? Or those with specific traits or experiences?). We also weren’t sure we were seeking to gain out of the interviews, partly because we haven’t thought of specific interview questions. These problems made us a little directionless. 

Just three Asian-guys-with-glasses in front of the Regent Park Community Centre. Photo by Tommy.

However, the community centre staff member did suggest us to visit the local mosque and the TAIE private school. We had time to visit one more location, so we decided to visit the TAIE school before heading to class. Upon reaching TAIE, we had trouble finding the entrance to the school. We asked a student for directions, who informed us that the classroom and administrative building is actually on Church St, whereas this building in Regent Park houses the school dorm and cafeteria. We were thus faced with this question: should we go through the school administration to set up interviews, or should we do so informally by enlisting volunteers ourselves? 

Manson Tower, housing the dorms and cafeteria of TAIE International Institute. Photo from Emporis.

Back at Regent Park Focus, Jim, Tommy and I sat down to reflect on our visits and discuss the questions and challenges that we have encountered thus far. To help us find direction, we eventually came up with 3 questions that we hope to explore through this project: 

• How do (non-Muslim) East Asian residents and Muslim residents experience the multiculturalism of Regent Park in their daily lives?

• Do these two ethnic/religious groups interact with each other? How do they interact, or why do they not interact?

• What would promote understanding/interaction between these two groups?

After coming up with these guiding questions, we also wrote down a draft list of interview questions. These two steps provided us with a much clearer sense of direction going forward, including who to interview and what we hope to gain from the interviews. 

It was then time to consider our next steps and the logistics of conducting interviews. We decided that, next week, we would visit TAIE and proactively seek out students to participate in our project as interviewees, saving us from spending the time and effort of going through the school’s administration. For SEAS, we will send out an email proposal soon, but if we are able to gain connection otherwise with the people at SEAS, it would be much more helpful. We also need to prepare for the risk of SEAS not being able to respond to us before our deadline (especially through the email approach), so we need to come up with a Plan B on hearing from other East Asian residents in Regent Park. Additionally, we hope that our Diva Girl partners will show up next week, or else we may need to interview Diva Girls of other groups. We may also need a plan to talk to other Muslim community members. 

There is still a lot of work to be done, but we’re confident that we will be able to face the challenges ahead of us!

The Faithful Delta team members are Aisha, Amal, Andrew, Jim, Sahara (+Tommy as an honorary group member this week).

Narrowing Down Our Topic

This week, we hoped to move forward by working on the content and deciding on the media format of our project. The theme of our group, inter- and intra-faith divides and solidarities, is very broad. Therefore, we wanted to narrow down our topic and explore a specific theme that we can address in our final media project. Unfortunately, our Diva Girl partners were unable to make it this week. Taking on this challenge, Andrew and I decided to brainstorm together and explore possible pathways for the project. 

A few weeks ago, we learned in class from the Divas Girls that there are two mosques in Regent Park that attracts Muslim residents of different ethnic backgrounds. There is a sense of rivalry between these two mosques. We passed by one of them during our walking tour of the neighbourhood last week. The rivalry between these two mosques could be an interesting entry point to discuss intra-faith divisions and solidarity. Interviewing people, perhaps religious leaders, from different mosques could give us an understanding of the divisions within Muslim residents of Regent Park. The potential tension between these two groups and how they still, in a way, coexist peacefully could be an interesting theme of our project.

However, we have two concerns about this option. First, we do not know whether our Divas Girl partners would feel comfortable delving into the tensions. This is an important concern, as the project also depends on what stories our partners are comfortable with sharing. Additionally, since the topic may be very controversial, it may be difficult to distinguish subjective opinions from facts. Since neither me nor Andrew are of the Muslim faith, we may not have sufficient background knowledge to approach this issue in an objective, respectful manner. 

Another option that we proposed is to explore various faith groups in Regent Park and their perspectives on others. This route would provide us with a more comprehensive understanding of religious communities in Regent Park. However, this approach is very broad. Since we are doing one media project, Dr. Mehta suggested us to focus on a narrower topic so we could explore in more depth. 

Going back to the drawing board, we came up with another theme, which is to explore the interactions between the Chinese and Muslim communities in Regent Park. We thought that this topic could work for several reasons. First, Andrew and I are both of the Chinese background, with the ability to communicate with residents in the Chinese language. Second, the SEAS community centre, which we stopped by last week, could help to connect us with local Chinese residents who may be willing to speak to us about their experiences. Lastly, this exploration of two groups in Regent Park could provide insights on the relationship between different religious groups and between religious and secular groups in Regent Park, as well as how these relationships can be strengthened in a positive direction. Next week, we plan to talk to our Divas Girl partners about this idea and hear their thoughts.

SEAS community connects many Chinese residents. From SEAS website.

Another important discussion we had is about the form of our media project. Both Andrew and I want to make a short documentary film, because the shooting process can incorporate all our Divas Girl partners, and both Andrew and I have experience with filming. Andrew once edited a short video for another class, and I made a short trailer for my high school English class. These experiences would be conducive to our filmmaking process. We’re also planning on watching the short film that we presented earlier in our class, “Hair And Self Image”, again on our own to seek inspiration.

Lastly, we set a timeline to guide our work in the coming classes: 

March 9

Discuss with Diva Girl partners

Narrow down specific plan and how we use media

Email/explore community to set up interviews

March 16

Preferably conduct interviews + filming

March 23

Interviews + filming + editing

We’re hoping that we can follow through with this process. We can’t wait to start exploring!

The Faithful Delta team members are Aisha, Amal, Andrew, Jim, Sahara.

Faithful Delta

As reading week came to an end and we resumed our school work, our course also entered a new phase: we are now going to start working on our media project! However, we had to first come up with a group name. We wanted the name to reflect our project theme: inter- and intra-faith divides and solidarities. Amal, one of our Diva Girl group members, thought of the word “faithfulness”. Going along with that, we decided upon the name “Faithful Delta”. A delta is where a river diverges into a number of paths, which echoes the multitude of religions and faith groups that co-exist in Regent Park. Further, in mathematics, delta represents change. In Regent Park, there has been a great change in demographics and religious composition over the years, creating divisions but also a sense of social harmony. Thus, our group name represents not just the areas of focus of our project, but also what Regent Park is.

After we decided on our group name, we set out on our first tour of Regent Park, led by our Diva Girl group members. It was a brief tour, but the girls pointed out a number of interesting sites, each with their own stories. For example, across from Regent Park Focus is a basketball court, it is run-down state in stark contrast with the new buildings behind it. With all the changes that had happened in Regent Park since the revitalization project begun, the basketball court remained. Could this court symbolize neglect? Or perhaps it is better seen as resistance? Regardless, a few teenagers of various skin colours were still playing a game when we stopped by, while the girls told us how important basketball is in building community solidarity. It seems that sport can really bring people together.

I immediately noticed the Chinese on this sign. (Photo by Andrew)

During our short tour, I took a few photos of sights that I found interesting. Near Daniels Spectrum, I noticed a place called “SEAS” - “Support Enhance Access Services Centre”, written in blue on opaque glass. What caught my attention was its Chinese name written in the line below, “協群社區服務中心”. I found it very interesting because we passed by a lot of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian ethnic locations with signs in various languages, but that was the only Chinese sign that I noticed so far in Regent Park. Indeed, I did not often notice East Asians in the area during my visits so far. Thus, a community service centre that seems to target Chinese or East Asian residents piqued my curiosity.

On our way back to Regent Park Focus, I quickly browsed information on SEAS and the Chinese community in Regent Park. It turns out that Mandarin is the second most popular non-official language mother tongue of Regent Park residents, with Cantonese being the fourth. I was also surprised to realize that while SEAS currently has 4 branches in the Greater Toronto Area, its first was established in Regent Park in 1986. At that time, it was focused on helping Southeast Asian residents integrate into the community. Nowadays, it is focused on providing settlement services and various classes to Chinese and Vietnamese newcomers in Toronto. Perhaps this change in targeted demographics offers insights on demographic changes in Regent Park and the other neighbourhoods that SEAS serves over time. 

The contrast between the old church building and new residential towers really symbolizes what Regent Park is. (Photo by Jim)

Returning to Regent Park Focus after our community tour, I felt that I had a much greater understanding of Regent Park as well as on our project theme. While our class discussions with the Diva Girls so far have been focused on the Muslim community in Regent Park, I believe that it would be beneficial to have a wider engagement. Perhaps we could map out all of the religious institutions in Regent Park, and interview people with various religious beliefs? That could help us gain a deeper and more authentic understanding of the divisions and solidarities between faiths in Regent Park. But what kind of story would the girls be comfortable with exploring? Additionally, we have yet to decide on the type of media that we will use. In any case, I am excited for our next class, during which we can discuss with our Diva Girl partners and brainstorm together on how to proceed with our project.

The Faithful Delta team members are Aisha, Amal, Andrew, Jim, Sahara.