The Newcomers is a media publication where we try to make sense of the Canadian immigrant experience.
The immigrant experience is a layered one. It involves paperwork and grief, ambition and loneliness, reinvention and loss, sometimes all in the same week. The dominant stories about immigrants tend to flatten all of this into two categories; the struggling victim or the inspiring success story. I don’t think either version is honest or useful.
We publish original analysis on Canadian immigration policy. We tell the stories of immigrants building lives, businesses, and communities across Canada. We produce practical guides on money, careers, and the hundred small decisions that define your first two to ten years in a new country. And we host conversations with the people shaping what immigration looks like on the ground.
We are building the most trusted source for understanding the Canadian immigrant experience.
The Newcomers
A few things that stuck with me as I listened through my conversation with Stefana Sopco:
1. Every immigrant’s biggest fear is getting the dreaded call that something has happened to their parents. And then depending on when you last travelled back home to see them, you’ll lash yourself with guilt for months or years.
2. It can be exhausting trying to perform as someone else because you are desperate to fit in. I don’t think there’s anything like being perfectly integrated, except you are a 4yo kid.
3. You are never going to fully belong to your new country or the old one. I am not sure, but maybe accepting that is the best thing we can do for ourselves. That liminal space is not a problem to solve. It’s an identity that we’ll carry forever.
11 months ago | [YT] | 1
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