Social inclusion and world making

Since 2015, Canada has accepted over 50,000 Syrian refugees and 85% of the refugees are families. We found little research into the experiences of refugee children living with disabilities ( Malloy et al., 2023 ). Through a narrative inquiry study alongside Syrian refugee families with preschool children, some of whom were living with disabilities in a large urban centre in Western Canada, we learned of the crucial importance of belonging, agency and community as the families entered Canada (Raymond et al., 2022). Our narrative inquiry is grounded in the feminist pragmatist work of Addams (1902) and Dewey (1938) , as well as in the work of Arendt (1958). Arendt’s concepts of world making understood as the co-creation of public spaces in which social inclusion is a kind of active everyday world making are central. Social inclusion emanates from the idea of ongoing world making that takes place in, and across, family, educational, social and cultural places. We link Arendt’s concept of world making to natality, the process of beginning anew which offers the hope that each person can begin again in public spaces, spaces in which each person will bring, through their natality, unique new ways of engaging in, and continually renewing, the world. For refugee families, we understand natality as processes of starting to compose their lives in a new country. Kattago (2014) argues for considering Arendt’s concept of world making through highlighting Arendt’s attitude of amor mundi, or love of the world, as embodying the idea of being together with unique and diverse others, as a place where we belong and make our mark. It is within natality that each person’s capacity to contribute to, and renew, an old world is possible. Veck (2020) helps us attend to refugee children’s newness, noting that “children are new to the world and new to the condition of displacement” (p. 95). Children’s ability to appear, begin, imagine, and make a world is intimately connected to the capacity of those around them to be attuned in ways that might give birth to other ways of being (Veck & Wharton, 2021). Drawing on the experiences of Syrian families who have preschool children living with disabilities, we will make visible how families engage in world making.

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