ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how racialized refugee students face microaggressions and bullying within Ontario schools. The chapter takes on a discursive approach while drawing on Refugee Critical Race Theory in convergence with anti-colonialism to examine the social and policy framework facing refugee students and the myriad of reasons why they are vulnerable to racism and racial microaggressions. The authors argue that Ontario schools continue to perpetuate a multicultural approach in terms of welcoming refugee students and their families, by embracing cultural differences, while simultaneously glossing over the racialized power relations, which permeate these relationships and interactions within a settler-colonial context. The extant literature indicates that Ontario teachers are ill equipped to respond to the specific needs of refugee students in their classrooms. As a result, refugee students experience social isolation at schools by being categorized and labelled as sharing a similar lived experience to other ELL/ELD and immigrant students, while omitting experiences and positionality. The chapter concludes that refugee children and youth need supportive educators and clinicians to decrease acculturative stress and eliminate post-migration barriers such as racism and discrimination.
