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  5. Longing for Home: Exploring Second-Generation Immigrant Identity with Nostalgia

Longing for Home: Exploring Second-Generation Immigrant Identity with Nostalgia

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By Ameena Abid

Ameena Abid is exploring how nostalgia shapes identity and belonging among second-generation immigrants.

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Ameena Abid (she/her) is a Registered Social Worker, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion educator, and writer, who completed her Master (MSW) and Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degrees at King's University College.
By Ameena Abid

MSW candidate, Social Work
King’s University College - Western University

What relationship do the children of immigrants have to their parent’s homeland? Using the concept of nostalgia (from the Greek, pain “algia” for the homeland “nostos”), I wanted to explore how second-generation immigrants, who now make up a third of children in Canada, long for a place of belonging and identity. Using autoethnography, I mapped my own experience growing up in-between cultures, as the daughter of a Pakistani Muslim father and Punjabi Sikh mother, growing up in Canada. This study led me to trace my roots back to my two grandfathers, men of different cultures but the same subcontinent, partitioned into countries that did not exist when they were born. I discovered that the children of immigrants often become nostalgic for their parent’s homeland in adulthood; a longing which can be mediated by meaningfully exploring the long answer to the common question: Where are you from?

Ameena brings an interdisciplinary background to her research, with a BA in History and Political Science from Western University, and has a special interest in exploring second-generation immigration, social justice, and psychotherapy. Ameena is also a published poet and attended the Orien Artist Residency located in Elmira, New York in August 2024. She plans to continue working in mental health counselling and EDI advocacy in the London community.

You can connect with Ameena on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/ameena-abid or via email at aabid22@uwo.ca.

View Ameena's work as it appears in the Inspiring Minds Digital Collection: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/564/.

Supervisor

Laura Lewis (https://socialwork.kings.uwo.ca/people/faculty-and-administration/member-profile/?doaction=getProfile&id=llewis2)