Search

Background and Objectives: Adiposity at birth is a predictor of childhood obesity. Abdominal circumference (AC) at birth has been shown to correlate well with visceral adipose tissue and abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue. Adiposity differs according to ethnicity and geography. The aim of this study was to describe the anthropometry derived adiposity phenotype in neonates from Colombo, Sri Lanka and compare it with global data.Methods and Study Design: Birth anthropometry was performed within 12-24 hours by the same investigator as part of a prospective cohort study on healthy term babies, at a tertiary care hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2015-2019. The anthropometry derived adiposity phenotype was indicated by skinfold thickness, AC and upper arm fat area (UFA) derived from the mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC).Results: Sri Lankan neonates had a significantly lower weight with significantly higher AC (n=337, 2.9±0.4 kg, 30.6±2.3 cm) compared to Canadian (n=389, 3.5±0.02 kg, 29.9±2.1 cm; p<0.001) and Australian (n=1270, 3.4±0.4 kg, 28.5±1.9 cm; p<0.001) neonates. Anthropometry derived adiposity at birth showed a significant correlation with weight and BMI of both mother and father (p<0.05) as opposed to their income or education (p>0.05).Conclusions: Healthy neonates from Colombo, Sri Lanka demonstrated significantly higher AC despite significantly lower weight, indicating increased abdominal adiposity compared to neonates from high-income countries as well as Indian neonates with the thin-fat phenotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiculturalism is a contested concept and policy in the current context. Many European leaders have declared its failure, and scholars have traced a global backlash against multicultural policies, especially in Europe. Canadians, on the other hand, are more likely to view it positively, as a badge of citizenship or belonging. Being multicultural has become closely intertwined with what it means to be Canadian, especially for immigrants and their children. The focus of this paper is to unpack these meanings of multiculturalism among one immigrant group, most of whom are now Canadians, and their children: Sri Lankan Tamils in the Greater Toronto Area. Our aim is to better understand how members of this group view the relationship between their Canadian and Tamil identities in the context of multiculturalism. In particular, we are interested in the 'uptake' of the concept, practice, and policy of multiculturalism among Sri Lankan Tamil newcomers to Canada. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with both immigrants (first generation) and Sri Lankan Tamils born in Canada (second generation), we illustrate some of the ways in which multiculturalism operates as frontstage behaviour and as a more tacit backstage concept among those in the Greater Toronto Tamil diaspora. We argue that Canadian multiculturalism functions as 'banal nationalism' in Canada, as daily practices of tacit nation-building are produced and repeated on a daily basis among Sri Lankan Tamil Canadians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which focuses on the narrative demands made via the Personal Information Form (PIF) on Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who arrived in Canada between 1983 and 2009, at the height of the civil conflict in Sri Lanka. The aim is to draw attention to the ways in which it reinstated the refugee as a minoritized subject. It then discusses Shyam Selvadurai's novel "The Hungry Ghosts to explore the ways in which it can serve as a critical intervention in the hearing process.

The arrival of Sri Lankan migrants in British Columbia on the MV Sun Sea in the summer of 2010 renewed policy discussion in Canada around "managing migration" and the role that detention of irregular migrants and refugee claimants should play in this process. Within this context calls emerged for Canada to adopt models for handling irregular migration similar to those being practiced in Europe and previously used in Australia. In response, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-49 (reintroduced as Bill C-4) Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act. This article examines Bill C-4 within the context of the greater securitization of mobility in the post-9/11 period as well as comparative border control policy in Australia and Europe. The article argues that governments increasingly use detention as a technology of citizenship to govern mobile populations and their rights to movement, with the effect of undermining established refugee rights to movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To explore the salience of pre- and postmigration stresses as risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and to identify resilience factors and explore their mental health salience. Methods: We conducted a mental health survey of 1603 Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto, incorporating the World Health Organization Composite International Diagnostic Interview for PTSD. Results: According to the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, criteria, lifetime prevalence for PTSD was 12%; according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, criteria it was 5.8%. Female sex and the number of stresses of passage increased the probability of PTSD, whereas satisfaction with life and the availability of nonfamily social relations reduced it. Conclusions: Consideration of pre- and postmigration stresses of passage and of the nature of resilience contributes to an improved understanding of PTSD among refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Title. Intimate male partner violence in the migration process: intersections ofgender, race and class. Aim. This paper is a report of a s tudy of Sri Lankan Tamil Canadian immigrants’ perspectives on factors that contribute to intimate male partner violence in the postmigration context. Background. Increasing evidence illustrates the extent and nature of intimate male partner violence and its links to a range of physical and mental health problems for women around the world. However, there has been little health sciences research on intimate male partner violence in the postmigration context in Canada. Methods. Data were collected for this qualitative descriptive study in 2004 and 2005, through individual interviews with community leaders ( n = 16), four focus groups with women and four with men from the general community ( n = 41), and individual interviews with women who had experienced intimate male partner violence ( n = 6). The research was informed by a postcolonial feminist perspective and an ecosystemic framework. Findings. Participants’ conceptualization of the production of intimate male partner violence in the postmigration context involved (a) experiences of violence in the premigration context and during border crossing; (b) gender inequity in the marital institution; (c) changes in social networks and supports; and (d) changes in socioeconomic status and privilege. Conclusion. Increasing immigration requires that nurses pay attention to and respond appropriately to women’s unique needs, based on complex and interrelated factors that produce intimate male partner violence in the postmigration context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents survey and interview data from twenty-five Sri Lankan Tamil youth in Ontario, specifically dealing with the interaction between religion and ethnicity, the experience and expression of religion, the importance of religion, as well as the importance of the Tamil language for religious and ethnic identity. Herbert Gans's ideas about "symbolic ethnicity" and "symbolic religiosity" are used to explore the ways in which Tamil youth in Ontario interact with their ethnic and religious heritage. Many express their ethnicity through seemingly mundane acts such as wearing a sari to a family gathering, eating with their hands, and watching Tamil movies. Many are losing their proficiency in the Tamil language, but see it as essential for their ethnic identity. Many only attend a Hindu temple three to five times per year, but see it as essential for passing on their cultural heritage to their children. In other words, much of their ethnic and religious identity is constructed through a symbolic transnationalism. The research, although preliminary, begins to fill gaps in scholarship on the Sri Lankan Tamil population in Canada, as well as the role of religion in the lives of immigrant youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada currently hosts the world's largest Sri Lankan diaspora. Most of the roughly 400,000 Sri Lankan immigrants to Canada are ethnic Tamils who came as political refugees following the outbreak of civil war on the small island in 1983. Sadly, however, their persecution continues at the hands of the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), an ethnic Tamil insurgency group fighting for autonomy in the northeastern portion of Sri Lanka, and notorious for using tactics such as political assassination, suicide bombing, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Half a world away from the conflict's origins, the LTTE has established a formidable presence within Canada's Tamil enclaves. The LTTE regards these diaspora communities as attractive sources of revenue for funding its costly war. They've developed a system to extract remittances from Tamil refugees in Canada by exploiting transnational social ties. They threaten migrants about the security of relatives or property still in Sri Lanka. The practice creates victims on both sides of the migration system because it draws resources from the host state to fuel a destructive war in the sending state. Political, social, and geographical features on both sides of the Sri Lankan Tamil migration experience make people vulnerable to sustained coercion by the LTTE after resettlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]