Abstract
This paper examines threads of belonging and un-belonging in Vancouver, Canada, a city of 2.5 million with Eurocentric features and wealth derived from extractive industries and as a financial hub and tech centre. Settlers occupied traditional Indigenous lands, their belonging derived from the colonial history of writing the rules of the game and hence continuing to win. But continuing to win requires complicity, at least in the form of a modestly sustainable social fabric. Empirical data, stories and news accounts tell three stories of un-belonging, asking “What makes – and breaks -social sustainability?” Vancouver was the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples who continue to live in Vancouver, on unceded land. They number less than 5% of Vancouver’s population. Reserve lands contrast sharply with their pre-contact settlements, poverty levels are high and racism is rampant. Transnational migration has also shaped Vancouver, notably Chinese immigration accounting for 20% of Vancouver’s population. Racism marks and mars their settlement. The third thread of un-belonging comprises an amalgam of settlers, immigrants and the colonized, all marked by extreme poverty. Vancouver boasts Canada’s highest poverty rate at 11%. Indigenous poverty is double that level, similar to that of Chinese Canadians. An intersectional, anti-colonial lens enables an analysis of the colonial legacies that shape livability in a city regarded as a ‘best place to live’. Attention is drawn to seeing social sustainability at the nexus of geo-political, economic and environmental sustainability – all of which forge the ‘social’ in place and space.
Presenters
Lea CaragataDirector and Associate Professor, School of Social Work, University of British Columbia, British Columbia, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Economic, Social, and Cultural Context
KEYWORDS
SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY, POVERTY, RACIALIZATION, SPACE, PLACE
