Social Palliation: Canadian Muslims’ Storied Lives on Living and Dying

"Social Palliation provides a groundbreaking approach to thinking about immigrant experience in Canada. It artfully weaves together a critical analysis of how neoliberal structures have diminished social interactions and created greater precarity, specifically for vulnerable immigrants. The text comes alive with Parin Dossa’s attention to the materiality of lived experience, punctuated by images of rotlis, flowers, and tea drinking, while highlighting the socio-political structures that largely constrain the possibilities of the lives of those portrayed."

Alexia Bloch, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia

"A sensitive and urgent inquiry into the experience of dying and loss for the displaced but that speaks to us all. How to find and remake one's place in the world from the very edges of life? The answer for Dossa lies in 'social palliation'— creating new ways of relating that reverse isolation and loneliness. An enthralling book, full of profound insights. "

Yasmin Gunaratnam, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College

"Social Palliation is relevant, timely and significant, especially in the ways in which it raises crucial questions about caring, social suffering, aging, life and death."

Öncel Naldemirci, Department of Social Work, Umeå University