CRS Seminar: Pathways into homelessness for Muslim refugee and Immigrant women in Canada

November 12, 2025

3:30 - 5:00pm (Toronto)

This is a virtual event

Zoom: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/Rl1xSp9iTNihSrP3vS2o0A

Guest Speaker: Dina Taha, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Doha, Qatar

Abstract

This Seminar presents findings from a community-based, mixed-methods study with Nisa Homes and the Women’s National Housing & Homelessness Network on how refugee and immigrant Muslim women in Canada enter—and circulate within—homelessness. Using an intersectional feminist lens and the concept of gendered Islamophobia, we analyze 50 client surveys, 19 resident interviews, and 12 staff/leadership interviews and focus groups across two sites in Southern Ontario. Findings show how intimate partner violence, immigration precarity, and service fragmentation entrench dependency and heighten homelessness risk. We theorize a pattern of triple marginalization: (1) community stigma and spiritual/moral policing, (2) institutional misrecognition and Islamophobia in mainstream systems, and (3) structural exclusion via status, housing, and welfare regimes. We conclude by highlighting both the promise and limits of faith-informed, culturally grounded shelter models and urging refugee and homelessness studies to move beyond siloed approaches.

Dina Taha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Doha, Qatar and an affiliated scholar with the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada where she received her PhD degree in Sociology in 2022. Her research focuses on the sociology of migration, family, marriage and gender. Her theoretical and pedagogical approaches are informed by community-based and decolonial practices.  Prior to joining DI, Dina was the senior researcher at the Centre for Community-Based Research located in the University of Waterloo campus, where she has provided invaluable insights on numerous regional and national projects, spanning from food security to digital equity among racialized minorities, refugees and newcomers.