Mandeep Kaur Mucina

Area of expertise
Family and gender-based violence, critical migration studies, and the lived experiences of second-generation South Asian women, including their resistance, identity formation, and encounters with racism in the diaspora.

Biography

 Mandeep has dedicated over 20 years to working alongside children, youth, and families in diverse contexts across Canada. She began her career in Victoria in after-school care and youth programming, later earning a degree in Child and Youth Care. In Vancouver, she served as a child protection worker on the Aboriginal Family Services team, supporting Indigenous children and youth in care and working with families toward reunification.

During this time, Mandeep began supporting women and girls involved in child protection who were survivors of family, domestic, and sexualized violence. Inspired by their resilience and resistance, she pursued a Master of Social Work to deepen her practice in the gender-based violence sector. Following her MSW, she worked with migrant families facing family violence, focusing on young girls experiencing “honour”-related violence, which informed her PhD research and dissertation.

Mandeep earned her doctorate in Adult Education and Community Development at OISE, University of Toronto, where her research examined “honour”-related violence in the South Asian diaspora through the life histories of women who resisted, reclaimed, and transgressed boundaries of “honour” throughout their lives. The dissertation is entitled: Transgressing Boundaries Of Izzat: Voices of Punjabi Women Surviving and Transgressing “Honour” Related Violence In Canada.

Over the past 15 years, she has taught in post-secondary institutions across Canada, including Toronto Metropolitan University (Ryerson University), Dalhousie University, and Mount Saint Vincent University. Since joining the University of Victoria in 2017, Mandeep has been teaching child welfare courses, practice courses, theory and research courses in both the undergraduate and graduate programs.

Selected publications

Mucina, M. K. (2025). Transgressing boundaries of izzat: Resisting, surviving, and understanding honour-related violence through the stories of South Asian women. In A. Jamal, J. Ku, & M. Khan (Eds.), South Asian feminisms in diaspora: Critical perspectives from Canada (Chap. 3). University of Alberta Press.

Mucina, M. K., Pratezina, J., & Abdel-Malek, A. (2025). “Deportation is double punishment”: Non-citizen former youth in care and the neoliberal “crimmigration” system. In G. Gosek, M. Fairbairn, J. Carrière, & S. Strega (Eds.), Walking this path together: Anti-racist and anti-oppressive child welfare practice (3rd ed.). Fernwood Publishing.

Mucina, M.K. (2024). A short history of izzat or honour from the lens of the Punjabi diaspora. In Rajan, S. I. (Ed.). India Migration Report 2024: Indians in Canada (1st ed.). Routledge India. 

Mucina, M. K., & Lash-Ballew, A. (2023). Narratives from non-citizen former youth in child welfare care fighting crimmigration and deportation. International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 8(1/2), 4–21.  

Areas of expertise

Mandeep’s research and social justice work focuses on family and gender-based violence, critical migration studies, and the lived experiences of second-generation South Asian women, including their resistance, identity formation, and encounters with racism in the diaspora. She brings extensive expertise in community-engaged research with BIPOC women and girls, narrative and life-history methods, action-based and intersectionality-informed research, critical discourse analysis, and policy–practice analysis. Her work is grounded in South Asian feminist perspectives and aims to bridge academic inquiry with community advocacy.

Mandeep is co-leading a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded project with Dr. Rupaleem Bhuyan titled Bordering Practices: Systemic Racism, Immigration, and Child Welfare. This collaborative initiative, undertaken with child welfare, immigration, and gender-based violence service providers and advocates in Ontario and British Columbia, examines how immigration policies and systemic racism influence child welfare policies and practices affecting children, youth, and families.