Syrian Newcomer Objects: A Study in Material Culture and Forced Migration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research explores the world of material belongings of Muslim Syrian newcomer/refugee families as they establish themselves in Canada since 2015. The study centers the cultural and emotional meanings of the material belongings by looking at both those that are brought with the newcomers and those that are left behind. It aims to shed light on how these objects hold memories and connect refugees to their cultural and personal histories while also examining the role of displacement in this context. Additionally, it investigates the different perspectives between generations by looking into how the value and meaning of belongings may alter between older and younger family members. The key questions of the study develop at the intersection of material culture and forced migration. It first examines whether material belongings hold a significant place in the everyday lives of refugees and how this reflects on their memories. Secondly, it considers if migration and the experience that comes with it alters refugees’ attachments to their material belongings and leads to changing their sentimental value over time. Thirdly, it evaluates whether the decision-making process behind what refugees choose to bring with them and what they decide to leave behind is affected under distressing circumstances. Methodologically, the study offers an alternative ethnographic approach by braiding migrant narratives with object biographies, shifting the subject of the narrative toward a demonstration of the interrelationships of persons and things.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.023 | 0.019 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".