The Social and Cultural Alienation of First and Second Generation Immigrant Youths: Interrogating Mainstream Bullying Discourse

Bullying is a multidirectional and a multileveled social problem, which affects every member of a community, thus it requires a diverse and multidisciplinary method to be addressed. Even though immigrant youths are as much prone to this phenomenon, if not more, as their native-born peers, the advertisements, media and news outlets have portrayed youth bullying as a white subject. The socio-cultural differences, past experiences of political, social and domestic violence, and the difficulties of integration and accommodation with the unfamiliar lifestyle of the new country heavily affect the vulnerability of the ignored young immigrant populations. If the bullying experts, bullying prevention activists and the justice system brackets their prejudices and look at every incident involving youths violent carefully and analytically, regardless of the victims socio-cultural backgrounds and the colour of their skin, it might uncover many other fatal bullying cases. In this thesis, I would like to have a closer look at three students fatal cases: Kiranjit Nijjar, Hamid Aminzada, and Zaid Youssef and Michael Menjivar, as examples of this faulty view on the characteristics of the bully and the bullied.