Archiving Afghan-Canadian Long-time Settlement Experiences: Emergent Methods Digital Design

Skewed, damage-centered narratives based on war and violence have shaped Canadian views of the Afghan-Canadian diaspora despite almost four decades in Canada. This study uses critical ethnography and iterative digital design methodologies to conduct oral histories of a slice of the long-time settled Afghan-Canadian diaspora in order to understand their digital archival needs and identity-formation processes. The result is a proof-of-concept digital archive called the Afghan-Canadian Digital Archives (ACDA). The findings demonstrate that the Afghan diaspora in Canada, more specifically the intersection of the diaspora represented in this thesis, agree that digital archives could provide answers to problems that they identified in their community: working against symbolic annihilation of minority identities within the community, the lack of a pedagogical resource on the community’s history and stories, and the desire for a platform to present their successful integration to all Canadians.M.I.S