Jibriil Ali

In this episode, we spoke to Jibriil who shared their experience of navigating Canada as a second generation immigrant. In the podcast, Jibriil shares a courageous story of how his mother migrated to Canada. Jibriil's mother describes that in reluctance (Zhou, 2020 ), his mother had no other choice but to leave Somalia due to the civil unrest that was occurring. On this journey, she left with 4 young children, flew to the United States and later travelled to the Canadian border in order to gain citizenship. This difficult decision caused Jibriil and his family to live as a transnational family (Albanese, 2009) until his mother sponsored his father (and many others) to come live in Canada. 

Jibriil describes how this experience has greatly affected the education and career he pursues now. He explains how growing up in a low-income community, he had seen how many of his friends and community members had gone down a different path than he did. Now he wants to have a career in social work (specifically health care settings) to help rectify these situations. Jibriil is currently completing a Master’s Degree in Social Work at Carleton University while working at the Somali Centre for Family Services. He tells listeners that he was once very anxious when applying to university, but says to not “limit your options, explore what is out there, and to not be open to experiment”. 

Jibriil leaves listeners with a lasting note “Relax, take a breath, there are lots of options available for you, no matter where you want to go.”

References

Albanese, P. (2009). Newcomer Children in Canada. In P. Albanese (Ed.), Children in Canada Today (pp. 143-262).Oxford University Press. 

Zhou, P. (2020, January 21). Forced, Reluctant, and Voluntary Migration. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/voluntary-migration-definition-1435455