Schooling Experiences of Canadian Students with Post-Soviet Backgrounds in Toronto: An Underrepresented Perspective

Research on educational experiences of post-Soviet[1]migrants in Canada and North America is very scant. In a way, their voices have remained mute. The few existing studies highlight issues that may have been overlooked by policymakers and practitioners, often due to the invisible minority status of post-Soviet immigrants and generalized assumptions rooted in Cold War legacies and current geopolitics. The existing gap of knowledge about the education of immigrant and refugee students and parents with post-Soviet backgrounds and the tendency to overlook their unique and shared needs has important implications for multiculturalism’s claims and promises, as well as for related policies and practices such as equity, diversity and inclusive schooling for all Canadian students. This paper, grounded in a SSHRC-funded broader research project (2022-2026), endeavours to fill in this gap. The data comes from 35 interviews held with former and current students in GTA public and private schools. These students represented various post-Soviet ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds. Our analysis revealed that these students experienced both positive and challenging aspects regarding academic and social expectations, as well as actual learning outcomes. While we provide possible contexts and explanations for their perspectives, we argue that Canadian education policymakers and practitioners should view post-Soviet students through an asset-based lens, pay close attention to their voices, build upon their positive perceptions of Canadian schools, and address their challenges and expectations. Adopting an asset-based perspective will not only enhance post-Soviet students’ academic and social experiences, fostering genuine feelings of inclusion and belonging in their new Canadian home, but will also lay the foundation for these students and their parents to make constructive contributions to the development of Canadian society. [1] The term post-Soviet is chosen as a contested and yet a pragmatic identification marker in this study. While essentialization aside, it is important to acknowledge certain boundaries such as unified geography, a range of time, particular policies and ideologies, historical events and educational structures, policies, and terms that these populations went through. We do however acknowledge that individuals, communities and nations that were put together in the Russian empire and subsequent Soviet Union, were not only incredibly different and had complex relations with each other, but also each of them experienced Soviet socialist Union and Russian empire differently. These experiences can be categorized as some being anti-Soviet, others as in-between or ‘neutral’ and increasingly fewer as pro-Soviet. Accordingly, some post-Soviet migrant parents and communities may try to maintain Soviet-era narratives of the rivalry between the socialist and capitalist paradigms of development and not accept the defeat of socialism, manifested in the collapse of the Soviet Union. For others, Canada-ward migration was a dream to depart from an authoritarian system, and further their pro-European identity and promises of democracy, and human rights and freedoms (for more on our critical perspective on post-Soviet, see website disguised for review).