Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black African youth and homelessness in Toronto.

Abstract

This qualitative narrative study investigates how social services among African immigrant youth in Toronto can be reimagined and provided in intersectional ways that are just and responsive to their specific and unique needs. The study interviewed 6 African Youths living in Toronto. The study employed an eclectic theory to argue for reimagining of policy that drive homelessness in Canada. The themes that came out of this study are: Homelessness is not African, The walls are squeezing me: Intersectional homelessness. African values and spiritualities are my survival tactic and policy resolution. The study calls all social work researchers and practitioners to work with African communities in providing social services that are attuned to African lived realities, values, and histories rather than relying on market-branded solutions for the "African problem," such as cultural competency frameworks that continue to mark and market African bodies for profit. The study employs an African-centered perspective to bring forth new approaches to African bodies in diaspora. The study looks at homelessness as a neoliberal concept intended to designate some bodies as improper and out of place while equally producing profit for the capital. Based on African immigrant youth narratives, homelessness is a foreign term in African cosmogonies since African people live with nature.