Reimagining Refugee Childhoods: From Settler Conscription to Relational Ways of Welcome and Belonging

Refugee resettlement in Canada does not occur in a vacuum rather through processes shaped by global relations of power such as imperial intervention, various colonialisms, extractive economies, racialized citizenship, hegemonic border controls, and neoliberal governance. When refugee children are forced out of their homelands, they are already enmeshed in some of the interlocking geo-political dynamics that render their homelands unsafe. When they arrive in Canada, they get channelled into modes of belonging that align with the settler state; this is particularly true in schooling systems.

In this chapter, the author argues that refugee childhoods in Canada can be understood within a spatialized configuration of displacement, settlement, and settler colonial nation-building. Understanding that settler colonialism is a node within the broader global matrix makes visible how refugee children are spatially situated inside logics connected to those that shaped their departure, rather than outside them. The chapter examines how schooling becomes a key site where refugee children are oriented towards a future as settlers through curriculum, everyday practices, and narratives of national benevolence.

At the same time, the analysis turns to Indigenous conceptions of relational belonging to propose an alternative ethical horizon. Rather than framing belonging as assimilation into the settler nation, the chapter considers how refugee children might have opportunities to cultivate forms of relation rooted in Indigenous presence and sovereignty, in such a way that honours the complexity of their lived worlds.