“We Just Don't Know Each Other”: Racialised Girls Negotiate Mediated Multiculturalism in a Less Diverse Canadian City

How do ethnic-minority, immigrant, and Aboriginal girls in Canada negotiate dominant whiteness, struggle for social inclusion, and identify themselves and others? This paper applies an intersectional gender analysis to racialised girls' practices of subject making to examine how state discourses of Aboriginality, immigration, multiculturalism, and Canadianness take hold to constrain possibilities for multicultural engagement. Focus groups held with over 130 racialised girls (ages 12–19) in a predominantly white, mid-size city in western Canada show that racialised girls often feel disengaged from each other. Shaped by scattered relations of gender, race and nationality, among other forces, their disengagement is punctuated by the legacy of colonial formations. Study findings emphasise that racialised girls' everyday negotiations of dominant whiteness and intercultural relations, while largely under-researched, have much to contribute to Aboriginal, multicultural, and immigration research, practice, and policy debates.