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Social movements, in Canada and around the world, offer a rich window to study social actors as they struggle for power and justice. Relatively less explored in the academic literature is the role of social movements as a site of learning. In this article, the authors synthesize several theoretical frameworks for social movement learning and apply them to extensive fieldwork, in 2009, during Sri Lankan Tamil protests in Toronto and during Indigenous land and water defence in Beausoleil First Nation. They argue that such movements can serve as a powerful educational environment and explore how learning takes place by understanding the sources and sharing of knowledge, how the social identities of participants are consequential for learning, and the underlying social, economic, and political forces that shape movements and their emergence. Ultimately, the authors claim that understanding the learning that takes place in social movements in Canada helps us understand broader political struggles and discourse in the Canadian context and beyond, including critical new forms of solidarity.

Right-wing extremist groups harness popular social media platforms to accrue and mobilize followers. In recent years, researchers have examined the various themes and narratives espoused by extremi...

This inquiry examines how religious illiteracy amongst politicians, legislators, lawyers, and judges could lead to discriminatory legislations and increased persecution against religious minorities...

This article provides a deep dive into several recent cases of majoritarian hate speech and violence perpetrated against Muslims in India. We first provide an introduction to Hindutva as a social movement in India, followed by an examination of three case studies in which Islamophobic hate speech circulated on social media, as well as several instances of anti-Muslim violence. These case studies—the Delhi riots, the Love Jihad conspiracy theory, and anti-Muslim disinformation related to the COVID pandemic—show that Hindu nationalism in India codes the Muslim minority in the country as particularly dangerous and untrustworthy.

During the mid to late 1980s tens of thousands of Tamils from Sri Lanka sought and got asylum in Canada, forging the basis of the sizeable diaspora today. The Canadian state granted overwhelmingly ...

The overwhelming focus in the scholarly literature on extremist groups online tends to focus on jihadist groups like the so-called Islamic State and Al Qaeda. With right-wing violence erupting in places like Charlottesville and Quebec City, and with a new generation of extreme right activism coming to the fore, there is a need to better understand how its members communicate online, not only in Canada but around the globe. While the racist “old guard” has maintained its presence in traditional online spaces, a new generation of right-wing extremists are communicating on an array of social media sites, with Facebook at the forefront. Although some scholarship is emerging, relatively little remains known about how right-wing extremist groups make use of these platforms. This gap in the research is particularly prevalent in the Canadian context. In this chapter, we draw from a sample of 34 of Canada’s most prominent far-right extremist group pages on Facebook using a mixed-methods approach. Here we assess the popularity of the group pages, the volume of content, and the types of posts that generate the most user engagement, paired with an in-depth analysis of the group posts that generate the most “buzz” amongst users, exploring who is targeted, why the content is so popular, and how the use of violence is negotiated by the groups.

Analyses were conducted with a sample of 18–30-year-old Somali Canadians to test the association between discrimination and violence-related beliefs and behaviours, whether this association differs by the source of the discrimination, and whether there is a different pattern of effects for men and women. Results indicate that discrimination from within one’s own community is not associated with attitudes towards violence, anti-violence behaviours or criminal violence. By contrast, out-group discrimination is associated with more anti-violence behaviours by women, although these effects are not strong. Out-group discrimination is also related to criminal violence among men but not women.

Little of the discussion of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq is informed by primary data derived from talking with the foreign fighters. This article reports some initial findings from interviews with twenty foreign fighters in Syria. The findings are compared with three other recent studies of European foreign fighters, and aspiring fighters, based on some primary data. While those studies emphasize the role of low social and economic prospects in motivating the choice to go, this study found little evidence of such factors, and alternatively argues more attention should be given to existential concerns and the role of religiosity. Consideration is also given to the methodological challenges posed by using of terrorists' accounts of their motivations.

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. Resume Le multiculturalisme est un concept politique conteste dans le context actuel. De nombreux dirigeants europeens ont declare son echec, et plusieurs chercheurs ont trace une reaction generale contre les politiques multiculturelles, en particulier en Europe. Cependant, les Canadiens sont plus susceptibles de considerer positivement ce concept de multiculturalisme et l'etablissent comme une composante de la citoyennete ou de l'appartenance. Etre multiculturel est devenue aujourd'hui etroitement liee au fait d'etre Canadien, surtout pour les immigrants et leurs enfants. L'objectif de cet article est d'exposer les significations du multiculturalisme parmi un groupe d'immigrants dont la plupart sont maintenant des Canadiens, il s'agit des Tamouls sri-lankais dans la region du Grand Toronto. Notre objectif est de mieux comprendre comment les membres de ce groupe considerent la relation entre leurs identites (canadienne et tamoul) dans le contexte du multiculturalisme. En particulier, nous sommes interesses a l'> du concept, de la pratique et de la politique du multiculturalisme parmi les nouveaux arrivants sri-lankais tamouls au Canada. On se basant sur des entrevues et des groupes de discussion avec les immigrants Tamouls sri-lankais (premiere generation) et les Tamouls sri-lankais ne en Canada (deuxieme generation), nous illustrons quelques-unes des facons dont le multiculturalisme fonctionne comme un comportement de premier plan au debut de l'installation au Canada, puis comme un concept plus tacite dans la vie de la diaspora tamoule du Grand Toronto. Nous soutenons que les fonctions du multiculturalisme canadien, en tant que > au Canada, et en tant que pratiques quotidiennes de construction de la nation tacite, sont produites et repetees sur une base quotidienne entre sri-lankais tamouls canadiens. INTRODUCTION Multiculturalism is a contested concept and policy in the current context. Many European leaders have declared its failure, and scholars have traced global backlash against multicultural policies, especially in Europe (Kymlicka 2010). England's Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, argued in 2011 that "state multiculturalism" has encouraged different cultures to live different lives, often "behaving in ways that run counter to our values" and at the expense of a unifying "vision of society to which they feel they want to belong" (BBC News 2011). …

A colleague of mine recently told me a story of a discussion he had had about Islam and politics with an FBI agent during an intensive summer course in introductory Arabic. Sayyid Qutb, the infamou...

The Sri Lankan state's power to narrate the war and characterize the enemy is an expression of “triumphalist nationalism” and is a selective remembering of war. Based on photographs taken during several field visits to these sites by both authors between December 2012 and January 2014, we analyze the relationship of war and tourism and how a particular Sinhala nationalist remembering of the war and landscape of memory are being constructed in post-war Sri Lanka. Today, Sri Lanka is a former war zone where the Government's troops defeated the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers) and ended 26 years of violent conflict in May 2009. The end of the war came at a huge cost to civilian life in the northern part of the country; the UN estimates that over 40,000 people were killed, most of whom were Tamils who form the majority in Northern Sri Lanka. Despite the end of military conflict, war continues by other means, and its representation encapsulates a nationalist politics of victory that at once vilifies the defeated LTTE “terrorists” and excludes Northern Tamils from the Sri Lankan polis. The LTTE's former hideouts, training facilities, weapons, and vehicles are now tourist sites on display for public viewing.