Nicholas Goberdhan – “Invisible Carers: Making the Case for Racialized Young Carers”

As part of our Graduate Fellows Lunchtime Seminars, the Social Justice Centre welcomes a talk by Nicholas Goberdhan.

UPDATE: Watch the recording on youtube.

Title: Invisible Carers: Making the Case for Racialized Young Carers

I am a young carer, I think. In many ways, an identity can be both capacious, but dangerous at the same time. The same visibility that offers access to information and resources, may also subject one to be easily identifiable for violent state projects that are rooted in histories of ableist, racist, patriarchal and capitalistic oppression.  In 2012, 1.25 million Canadian youth between the ages of 15 and 24 provided unpaid caregiving to individuals experiencing illness, disability and aging – a cohort known as “young carers” (Stamatopoulos, 2016). Though these youth frequently encounter negative life outcomes such as lower rates of employment participation, depression and substance abuse (Stamatopoulos, 2018), the experiences of young carers continue to be under-investigated and they remain invisible from the public eye in Canada (Charles et al, 2010). This invisibility is further amplified for racialized young carers (Aldridge, 2018), as cultural understandings of family, care and language complicate access to Western structures of healthcare. Drawing from Nicholas’ PhD project that is currently in the proposal phase, this presentation will seek to identify the categorical limits of the young carer identity, and theorize through the crip-of-colour critique to imagine the futures of the field on young carers studies.

Nicholas Goberdhan is an interdisciplinary PhD student and a graduate fellow at the Social Justice Centre.

The talk will be followed by a commentary by Arseli Dokumaci (Professor of Communication Studies, Canada Research Chair in Critical Disability Studies and Media Technologies, and Director, Access in the Making (AIM) Lab).

The talk will be hybrid, both in person and on zoom.

Click here to register online on zoom.

To attend in person:
J.W. McConnell Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
R. Howard Webster Library
Room LB-362