An Exploration of the Muslim Diaspora in Toronto Public Schools

This paper is an introductory study of the diaspora of Muslim students in Toronto public schools. There has been a tendency in modern discourses to address Muslims as monolithic. Such a limited understanding of this ethnoreligious group fails to recognize the diverse cultural and racial heterogeneity that exists among Muslims. To highlight diversity among Muslim students, pooled cohort data from the 2017 Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Student Census and TDSB administrative records were used to explore the wide range of Muslim-identifying students’ racial/ethnic background, languages spoken, region of birth, and year of arrival in Canada. We noticed that the constructed homogenized identity of Muslims in Canada is entirely inaccurate and we decided to take advantage of the unique nature of the data, which allows us to present a new alternative perspective on how we should understand identity construction of Canadian youth, specifically those with intersectional backgrounds. At the time of writing, these data are the only of their type that allow for a detailed analyses of race and religious affiliation with a sizeable Muslim subpopulation in Canada. We believe that the uniqueness of this data which considers variables such as religious affiliation, region of birth, and first language spoken in the home provides us with the unique opportunity to explore the nuance identity of Muslim youth.