Over the past four months, we have embarked on a joint journey between UofT students and Regent Park members. This journey has allowed us to get to know one another, and understand different perspectives, different backgrounds, and what brings us to Toronto. With no surprise everyone had a different answer, this highlighted the diversity of individuals within our classroom and also within Regent Park.
Thus when our group was tasked with deciding a topic for our research project, it was a given that we wanted to look at immigration within Regent Park and the role it plays within the community. Hence we landed on the research question:
What is the history of immigration in creating social communities, and how has the introduction of redevelopment disrupted already-created communities?
Our research question aims to understand the history of immigration within Regent Park and how the revitalization process has impacted immigration, and the social connection and ethnic communities that have formed due to immigration. The reason we decided to look at immigration was that all of us identified as either first or second generation immigrants and had our social connections and personal networks stem from that identity. We were also curious to understand how the physical changes to space impacted the social connections that were made.
Before we moved forward we decided what we wanted to achieve as a group, the four goals we settled on are:
1) Develop our understanding of the role immigration plays in social housing. We aim to achieve this goal by interviewing members of the Regent Park community who identify as immigrants. We also made sure to ask the interviewees how they felt they were impacted by the social housing community within Regent Park and why it played a large role in their social relationships.
2) Develop our understanding of community building in the context of immigration, and gentrification. When interviewing members of the community we made sure to understand how gentrification has impacted their social relationships.
3) Create space to find lost narratives in immigration. We aim to do this by using the interview clips wherever possible to have the residents' own voice tell their stories. We aim to be honourable with the trust they’ve placed within us in relaying their story through our project.
4) Allow immigrants to be makers and tellers of their stories + understand and hear them. This goal sums our previous three goals perfectly and will be achieved as we strive towards achieving our previous goals.
Based on our goals we decided to conduct our research in various methods. Once we had decided that we wanted to conduct interviews with various members of the community, accompanying it with academic research would be our best option. Through this process, we have both primary and secondary research.
Primary Research: Each group member aimed to interview two members of the Regent Park community. These individuals were either immigrants themselves or worked closely with immigrants. To prepare for these interviews as a group, we decided on ten questions to ask the interviewees, understanding that the interviewer would have to adapt the questions to the specific individual.
Secondary Research: The two U of T students were equipped to research the immigration patterns of the ethnic demographic of the individuals interviewed. The goal of doing so aimed to shed light on how these demographics landed in Canada and the history behind this specific migration pattern.
In combining these two research methods, the group wanted to create a big picture of the people who made up Regent Park and why Regent Park was so diverse. Doing these two research methods also shed light on the various social connections that were made due to immigration and how they may/have changed due to revitalization.
Thus we decided for our project to be displayed on a website in which the viewer could choose who’s story they wanted to hear. We also knew that we wanted to understand the path of immigration for each demographic that we interviewed. Trying to achieve this was harder than anticipated, and therefore we decided that a multimedia website would be the best fit for our group. We would achieve our vision by using various tabs and hyperlinks within a website. When we started to brainstorm how we wanted to plan the website, we began to think of the various methods in which we wanted to deliver our research and interviews. We wanted the authenticity of the interviews to come through instead of quoting them, so we decided to put clips of the interviews throughout the website. This allowed the interviewees a chance to express their own perspectives and emotions.
Our biggest takeaway from the project was understanding the different types of immigration patterns and the various reasons why individuals migrate. Through the article written by Boyd and Bickers, we learnt some of the main reasons why individuals migrate to Canada, these being; education, joining family, to flee human rights violations, amongst other hardships (Boyd & Vickers, 2000). Through the interviews we learnt how hardships process of migrated brought many individuals together and created a tight-knit community. However, it was clear that revitalization had affected this community.
One way in which the community was affected and was discussed in class was the divide between apartment owners and those who lived in TCHC housing, creating a change in the existing social communities. This was reminiscent of the papers on condo owners within Regent Park. Within their paper, Kelly discusses how the new mixed income housing model created a negative divide between owners and community members (Kelly, 2013). While Kelly’s paper is more cognizant of condo owners' worries, the paper by Rose and Walks addressed the negative implications on existing residents. Stating that the increase in condominiums is not only displacing various communities it is also breaking the bonding social capital within the community (Rosen & Walks, 2015). A class member brought up the very harsh reality that many condo owners do not live in Canada let alone in Regent Park, however, they are given a stronger voice due to their financial ability to own a Condo. This is not a new concept, within his theory of Three Cities, Hulchanski talks about the long history of income polarization within Toronto and how this creates large disparities within socio-economic opportunities and growth (Hulchanski, 2010). Furthermore, Bucerius et al, stated within their study that the social mix model/ mixed income housing model has often shown to be ineffective and cause lower benefits for existing residents than newer ones (Bucerius et al., 2017).
Our biggest takeaway was; participating in a group with Residents and UofT students. This gave us an opportunity to learn about the community within Regent Park and how big of a role it plays in everyone's day-to-day lives. We learned about the immigration patterns within Regent Park and the personal narratives of the various members of the community. narratives of the various members of the community. We are all very grateful for the opportunity that taking part in this course has provided us with. Being able to learn while creating friendships that have impacted us all positively has been an experience that none of us have been able to have before this course.
This is the link to our final project: https://www.uoftxrpfocus.com/uehome
Urban Eyes: Ipshita, Tanishka, Gail, Lizete, Saquib, Fardowsa
Bibliography
Boyd, M., & Vickers, M. (2000). 100 years of immigration in Canada. CANADIAN SOCIAL TRENDS, 11, 12.
Bucerius, S. M., Thompson, S. K., & Berardi, L. (2017). “They’re Colonizing My Neighborhood”: (Perceptions of) Social Mix in Canada. City & Community, 16(4), 486–505. https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12263
Hulchanski, J. D. (2010). The three cities within Toronto: Income polarization among Toronto’s neighbourhoods, 1970-2005. Cities Centre, University of Toronto. Kelly, S. (2013). The New Normal: The Figure of the Condo Owner in Toronto’s Regent Park. City & Society, 25(2), 173–194. https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12015
Rosen, G., & Walks, A. (2015). Castles in Toronto’s Sky: Condo-Ism as Urban Transformation. Journal of Urban Affairs, 37(3), 289–310. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/juaf.12140