Abstract

This thesis investigates change over time within a diasporic community in Canada using oral history methodologies with four generations of a South Asian-Canadian family. Using a life story narrative style, the formative experiences of first-generation immigrant parents highlights their pre-migratory social worlds and kinship ties. Their experiences in re-creating cultural practices within the private sphere of their homes and re-establishing kinship networks to socialize their children with their heritage created strong ties to their cultural homeland. The experiences of later immigrant cohorts - the 1.5 generation - indicates how intra-generational experiences differed and influenced parenting practices with their children. By contextualising each generation within the broader history of the diaspora, the community’s growth, and movement around Southern Ontario highlights the emergence of a South Asian ethnoburb. The ethnoburb served as a public sphere steeped in South Asian heritage, blending two cultural worlds, and replicating the diverse experiences of the South Asian diaspora. The ethnoburb also created space within the private sphere of the home to negotiate values between two distinct cultures. By shifting the analysis of agency from fixed points of conflict and reconceptualising notions of age, space, and gender, the granular social navigations indicate on-going negotiations within a transplanted community in Canada.