Two SFU professors are teaming up with DIVERSEcity, a not-for-profit agency located in Surrey dedicated to offering services to the city’s multicultural population, to create more inclusive spaces for refugees identifying as LGBTQ+.
DIVERSEcity has been playing a leading role in helping refugees get settled in Surrey and Canada. Dr. Sharalyn Jordan, an assistant professor in SFU’s faculty of education, and associate professor Jen Marchbank have been providing program development and evaluation consultation for the non-profit’s new pilot program aimed at providing a safe space for sexual or gender diverse newcomers.
The program originated as a response to findings in a report conducted by students in SFU’s department of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies in collaboration with DIVERSEcity. The report found that resources are non-existent for LGBTQ+ refugees in Surrey.
“Jen [Marchbank and her students] did an environmental scan and provided empirical evidence that, although Surrey is the major arrival city for all refugees in BC — about half end up settling in Surrey — and LGBTQ newcomers are a significant group in that settling, there were absolute no services [for the LGBTQ+ newcomers],” commented Jordan.
Services offered for LGBTQ+ refugees in Vancouver, such as the Rainbow Refugee community group can be difficult for refugees settled in Surrey to access due to transportation difficulties such as taking transit or taking transit at night.
“Where do you go if you are both queer and Muslim to pray?” – Dr. Sharalyn Jordan, assistant professor
The new program currently under development is expected to launch around late February. Services that the program will be providing for sexual and gender diverse newcomers include information on mental health services, health care, HIV care, guest speakers on the topic of engaging in a job search, and handling interview questions, in addition to simply being a place of connection and a way refugees can get involved in the community.
The program hopes to bridge the gap between LGBTQ+ newcomers and the resources available to them in their new community, which may not always be well-known.
“An example that Jen and I talked about is, where do you go if you are both queer and Muslim to pray?” said Jordan. “There is a gender equity prayer group, but it’s not well-known. Another example is what kind of services are available for single queer parents in Farsi?”
“It’s important to recognize that even though in many ways Canada has legal protections to help people have human rights and equality, the reality is that Canadian cities are often a very confusing mix of open acceptance and celebration of rights to the realities or violence and hate and stigma particularly for people who are gender fluid or gender diverse and racialized.”
That being said, Jordan expressed optimism for Canada’s growing culture of inclusivity and sensitivity towards topics of gender and sexual diversity. As an example, she pointed to Canada’s restructuring of guidelines relating to gender and sexually diverse refugee claimants.
In previous practices, a great weight was placed on LGBTQ+ refugees’ responses to invasive questions on their sexual lives and sexual practices in order to prove themselves to be gender or sexually diverse. “People were denied refugee status because they weren’t credible as gay because they didn’t recognize the rainbow flag,” said Jordan.
In May 2017, however, the immigration and refugee board launched a new set of guidelines specifically around sexual orientation, gender identity, and sexual expression as it relates to refugee claimants. Jordan was involved in the consultation for those guidelines, and in the training of workers who would evaluate the refugee claimants based on these new guidelines.
“What we are now seeing is a far more respectful and sensitive approach,” she said. “One that is trauma-informed, one that understands that sexual and gender identity varies from culture to culture.”
Canada is moving towards a general understanding, Jordan assessed, that “there is no one standard on how to be LGBTQ+.”
With files from CBC News.
