We Are Already Resilient - Interrogating Immigrant Resilience in Sub-Saharan African Newcomers' Context.

I started kindergarten in 1970 after the Nigeria civil war. My classroom was under the shade of a tree in my village and the military base’s garbage dump close to our house was a major hunting ground for food. By 2008, I’ve become a full professor in one of Canada’s finest Universities. Most people would say that I’m highly resilient. But the truth is that my experience of adversity is not an uncommon one among members of equity seeking groups like Indigenous folks, Blacks and more recent immigrants to the West. My achievements are due more to the kindness of strangers than to resilience; I’m aware of the millions of far more resilient people in my village, country, continent and even in Canada, whom I left behind on my way up.

This paper interrogates resilience, operatively defined as the capacity to survive or overcome adversity. Based on a 30-year track record of researching Sub-Saharan Africans in Africa and their new diaspora in Canada, I argue that resilience is a gospel that the marginalized should be preaching to the mainstream who represent the majority of scholars in the field; not the other way-round. I focus especially on the theoretical discourse around resilience, particularly its more recent sojourn into debates on international migration and settlement. Ultimately, my intent is to defend a basic stance: I agree with this strength-based approach which affirms that I’m of value to and not a burden to Canada. But I wrestle with a concept that is uniformly applied to all cultures and contexts, despite its inherently Eurocentric, neoliberal and dindividualistic foundations.