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Laila Photo.jpeg

Welcome!

I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. I have a Master’s Degree in Sociology (Toronto) and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology, with a double minor in International Development Studies and Middle East Studies (McGill). 

My research interests lie within the fields of immigrant and refugee integration and qualitative methods. More specifically, I am interested in the integration process of refugee and immigrant mothers and youth from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in Canada.

​My dissertation project explores how forced migration not only affects individuals’ movement across space, but also influences their experiences with time in the host country in which they settle. Building on emerging scholarly interest in theorizing migrants’ experiences with time and the “future,” I examine how Syrian refugee mothers and teenagers experience time and conceptualize their futures after resettlement in Canada. I do so using diverse methods including qualitative interviews, participant observation, and visual-elicitation techniques. My research illuminates broader phenomena related to considerations about time and the future, and how those play a role in shaping refugees’ identity-formation and integration processes in the host country and at different phases of the migration process.
 

My graduate research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and two Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS), comprising over $150,000 in funding external to the University of Toronto.

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