Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Canada is a nation that endorses the multiculturalism of its citizens. Our nation's openness to various cultures is reflected in the large number of Canadians who are immigrants. Immigrants to Canada come from various areas that endorse diverse cultural values. A significant portion of Canada's youth are also immigrants, or have immigrant parents. Understanding how cultural values affect parenting practices and youth mental health is very important to develop culture-sensitive practices and policies to address concerns related to immigrant youth mental health. Firstly, the proposed project aims to understand how parenting practices of immigrant parents from different cultural backgrounds impact children's mental health over their childhood development and transition into adulthood. The proposed project plans to expand on previous work in this field by incorporating other contextual factors related to a child's life outside of the family setting in order to explain the mental health status of immigrant children. The project will explore peer relationship experiences such as: racial discrimination and peer victimization, as well as the level of ethnic diversity in children's neighbourhoods and school settings in order to fully uncover how the various social relationships of Canadian immigrant youth (parents, peers and neighbours) impact their mental health across their lifespan. The proposed study aims to capture how the mental health of immigrant children of various cultures is impacted by their experiences across multiple social contexts. This research is important to provide stakeholders information on how to optimize immigrant children's social settings and relationships to best support their mental health development.