Ben Woodfinden: Canada’s aspiring populists aren’t actually all that radical – Immigration excerpt

2022/05/28 Leave a comment

Really telling, whether in Conservative leadership debates or this commentary by Woodfinden, just how much all political parties, save for the PPC, have accepted the Century Initiative, the business community, education institutions and other stakeholders arguments for increased immigration to address – or at least to appear to address – an aging population.

While on the right, this may reflect a legitimate fear of being labelled xenophobic or worse, on the left, hard to know why they raise some of the issues raised by increased immigration in terms of labour markets and conditions, housing shortages, environmental and climate impacts etc.

Of course, real politik, the battleground ridings in the GTHA and BC’s lower mainland, with majority or significant numbers of immigrant and visible minority voters, also plays a role.

But these voters also face the same issues and impact of large scale immigration, and I continue to wonder whether the current approach and general consensus will eventually fracture and change, as Woodfinden also raises:

Take for example the great third rail of Canadian politics: immigration. The rise of populism around the world in recent years has many competing explanations, but a backlash against immigration is a common theme in many of the places where populism has caused political earthquakes. Poilievre, nor any major candidate in the race, has shown absolutely no interest in touching this. If anything, he has embraced the political consensus on immigration, making direct pitches and appeals to immigrant communities. This is probably a political necessity given the diversity of ridings in areas like Toronto that anyone who seeks to form government will need to win.

But the present moment might well be ripe for a populist challenge to this consensus. Over 400,000 immigrants came to Canada in 2021, a record number. Yet with a growing number of younger Canadians locked out of the housing market due to skyrocketing prices, it’s a surprise a political entrepreneur hasn’t come along and pointed out, rightly or wrongly, that Canada’s high levels of immigration are likely to keep propping up what feels like to many young Canadians an economic pyramid scheme in which they pay exorbitant amounts for housing so that older Canadians can retire. While the PPC have made such arguments, and while you will see this kind of sentiment bubble up on social media, it’s probably more widespread than we generally assume. Thus far no serious figure has challenged the status quo on this.

Arguments in favour of immigration are often framed in economic terms. We need these immigrants to keep our population growing and to support an ageing society. But of course, there’s no real challenge or consideration given to the deeper reasons why this is necessary, namely that we need high levels of immigration because of our low, and still falling, birth rates. Our discourse and politics just accept this as a fact, given that having children is just entirely a personal choice. To suggest that we should try and increase birth rates and that having children and starting families are a social good we actively ought to be promoting and encouraging seems beyond the pale. Bring this up, and you’ll inevitably get accused of being a secret white supremacist who is motivated by racial concerns. For many pundits and elites, it is simply inconceivable that anyone could be legitimately concerned about birth rates and thus must have ulterior motives. 

Source: Ben Woodfinden: Canada’s aspiring populists aren’t actually all that radical

Filed under Immigration, Politics Tagged with , ,

Rioux: Retour de balancier

2022/05/28 Leave a comment

Rioux rails against “les élites multiculturalistes” and celebrates counter-reactions, even if “souvent déroutantes et parfois extrêmes.”

Ceux qui se souviennent de l’extraordinaire fierté qu’avait suscitée l’adoption de la loi 101 en 1977 auront compris que nous ne sommes plus à cette époque. Difficile de trouver la même ferveur chez ceux qui ont adopté cette semaine le projet de loi 96. La loi 101 avait alors fait parler d’elle dans le monde entier. Dans l’univers anglophone, on avait évidemment dénoncé dans des mots souvent outranciers une loi brimant les droits de la « minorité ». Mais ailleurs, l’écho était différent. Le journal Le Monde avait évoqué une « revanche historique ». Lors de son adoption, le quotidien avait repris les mots de ses auteurs selon qui le but de cette loi était de « rendre la province “aussi française que le reste du Canada est anglais”. »

Lors de mes premiers reportages à l’étranger, on me parlait spontanément de la loi 101. En France, dans les milieux informés, elle jouissait d’une véritable aura. C’était aussi le cas ailleurs en Europe, comme en Catalogne, où les nationalistes au pouvoir ne cachaient pas leur admiration pour la détermination dont nous avions fait preuve. En 2012, le linguiste Claude Hagège avait même soutenu que la France devait s’inspirer du Québec afin d’imposer l’unilinguisme français dans l’affichage. À voir les Champs-Élysées aujourd’hui, on déplore qu’il n’ait pas été entendu.

« Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement », disait Boileau. Ce principe s’applique à toutes les grandes lois, qui sont généralement des lois simples qui reposent sur un principe immuable. Au lieu de se perdre dans un fouillis administratif et des contorsions juridiques (comme les complexes tests linguistiques de la défunte loi 22), elles proclament une vérité essentielle que chacun est à même de comprendre. C’est ainsi qu’elles imposent le respect.

Qu’exprimait l’esprit de la loi 101 sinon qu’au Québec, tous les nouveaux venus avaient vocation à s’intégrer à la majorité linguistique et culturelle par le truchement de son école ? Bref, à devenir des Québécois de langue et de culture française. Point à la ligne. Ce principe de l’intégration scolaire est d’une telle évidence qu’il mériterait d’être appliqué à tous les niveaux du réseau éducatif sans exception. C’est d’ailleurs ce que font depuis longtemps les Catalans en Espagne et les Wallons en Belgique, qui semblent avoir retenu mieux que nous la leçon de Camille Laurin. Nul doute qu’un jour, il faudra y revenir.

Mais nous avons changé d’époque. C’est ce qu’explique avec talent le jeune essayiste Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard dans son premier essai, Le Schisme identitaire (Boréal). L’ouvrage propose une description passionnante du cheminement idéologique du Québec depuis 1995. Beauregard décrit le passage de l’effervescence nationaliste que fit naître la Révolution tranquille à l’idéologie « post-nationale » qui domine aujourd’hui. Il raconte le ralliement de la gauche, au nom du progressisme, à l’idéologie diversitaire et sa déclaration de guerre contre ce que Fernand Dumont appelait la « culture de convergence ».

Avant 1995, écrit Beauregard, le nationalisme des historiens Lionel Groulx et Maurice Séguin exerçait une telle hégémonie intellectuelle que même le Parti libéral de Robert Bourassa fut en quelque sorte obligé de se dire autonomiste. D’où la loi 22. À l’inverse, la nouvelle hégémonie diversitaire pousse aujourd’hui les nationalistes dans leurs retranchements, les forçant à donner des gages à la gauche multiculturaliste qui exerce le magistère moral dans les médias et les grandes institutions.

Dans ces débats comme celui qui s’achève sur le projet de loi 96, il arrive que les nationalistes québécois se sentent à ce point isolés qu’ils se croient hors du monde. Il est pourtant frappant de constater combien cette nouvelle guerre culturelle que décrit Beauregard n’est pas proprement québécoise. Elle est même la réplique, à notre échelle, d’un affrontement qui se déroule partout en Occident. Partout où l’idéologie de la mondialisation heureuse, qu’est au fond ce rêve post-national et diversitaire, se bute au retour des nations.

Il y a quelques années encore, on pouvait croire que ces dernières n’étaient destinées qu’à se fondre dans des ensembles plus grands et multiethniques. Des ensembles dont le Canada se prétend depuis toujours le prototype achevé. Ce n’est plus vraiment le cas, alors qu’à la faveur des ratés d’une mondialisation aujourd’hui en déclin, on assiste au réveil du sentiment national aussi bien en France et dans les anciens pays de l’Est qu’au Royaume-Uni et ailleurs en Occident. Sans parler de l’Ukraine.

Partout, les coups de boutoir contre l’identité nationale imposés par les élites multiculturalistes font réagir les peuples qui ne sont pas prêts à troquer leur langue, leur héritage et leurs mœurs pour un grand melting-pot informe et sans substance. Comme l’écrit Beauregard, cette guerre va s’intensifier, et l’on voit déjà les forces politiques qui prétendent s’en tenir à l’écart se faire balayer. C’est un peu ce qui arrive chez nous au Parti québécois et qui, dans un autre contexte, a décimé en France le Parti socialiste et Les Républicains.

Cette reconfiguration du combat politique prend des formes diverses, souvent déroutantes et parfois extrêmes. Mais les mêmes forces sont à l’œuvre, qui mettent en scène de vieilles nations qui ne veulent pas mourir et qui n’ont pas dit leur dernier mot.

Source: Retour de balancier

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Almeida: How we keep racism alive in Canada

2022/05/28 Leave a comment

A South Asian critique of multiculturalism, the author arguing, incorrectly IMO, that it fosters separation, not integration, contrary to what most public opinion and other research shows for the vast majority of immigrants and minorities. Moreover, identities are complex, mixed and shifting:

The verbal assault on Jagmeet Singh in Peterborough is a grim reminder that racism still exists in Canada. We are told time and again that individuals acting out their hate-filled ideologies are a minority, but this is hardly reassuring to the many immigrants who feel the pressure to prove they’re Canadian on a daily basis.

The federal NDP leader is not a new immigrant with an “accent” although treated like one. He was born and raised here just like the people who attacked him verbally. But his brown skin and turban make him ‘un-Canadian’ in their eyes. This was not his first brush with racism (his youth is probably full of such experiences) and it certainly won’t be his last, even at his political level! Being elected leader of a federal political party was a huge step forward for him as well as Canada, but being accepted as prime minister is a difficult bridge to cross. The Peterborough incident highlights the underlying sentiment of more Canadians than we’d be comfortable admitting to.

Every individual who is a “visible minority” knows that no matter how long they have lived here their physical appearance will make them the target of white supremacists at some point in their lives. We expect and mentally prepare to deal with it in the best way possible. Some fight back, others endure it silently.

We know that racism is driven by ignorance, closed-mindedness and fear… but political hypocrisy and an over-played multicultural policy are equally responsible for keeping it alive.

Being Canadian doesn’t mean forgetting your roots but it should not define who we are either. Multiculturalism was meant to make Canada inclusive but seems to encourage us to cling to our origins rather than assimilate it into our new identity instead. That’s the monumental difference between being American and Canadian! Immigrants south of the border don’t wear their culture on their sleeves. They’re eager and happy to blend into the American melting pot.

It serves Canadian politicians well to keep us in our racial ghettos which can be exploited for their benefit at election time. They field candidates with the same cultural background who pledge to be the voice of “the community” but do little once elected. Either because election promises are meant to be broken, or they are more interested in protecting their position and must toe the line to do so.

The professional world is no different. Ask the doctor or engineer who is driving a taxi, or a former executive denied a front line job for lack of “Canadian” experience. Veiled systemic racism will have you believe that you’re just not there yet!

Our non-white skin colour does not fit the stereotypical image of a Canadian and so our origins continue to define our social and professional lives. Tell another South Asian you’re Canadian and they will ask you whether you’re Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, etc. It’s difficult to get past your brown skin.

One must also acknowledge that we won’t hesitate to play the racial card to our benefit. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it has opened the doors to many privileges which we are not afraid to explore. This does not encourage acceptance but only reinforces cultural stereotypes and resentment…and the cycle goes on.

Many Indians and South Asians are also racist. We’ve discriminated against dark-skinned people in our home countries for centuries. Moving to a different continent rarely erodes our colour bias. Take a look at the matrimonial ads asking for fair-skinned brides. We’re also uncomfortable with people from different cultures and will often instruct our kids to find life partners with a similar cultural background. Anyone else is simply not good enough.

So what’s the solution to our racist attitudes? Adopting a race-neutral approach to all inequalities. This can only happen if we stop laying so much emphasis on an individual’s cultural background and promoting their traditions.  Enough with this post-national state nonsense! It’s time to build a distinct and unifying Canadian identity!!!

Source: How we keep racism alive in Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

McWhorter: Every Day, We’re Told to Use New Lingo. What Does That Really Accomplish?

2022/05/27 Leave a comment

Indeed. Changing terminology and labels is often an easy way out of confronting the harder substantive issues and disparities. Fairly or not, I tend to discount those who focus more on terminology than substance:

The left these days gets a bad rap for policing language. It can be irritating to feel like you have to watch how you say things or keep up with the latest lingo when the old lingo still seems perfectly fine. This is especially the case with counterintuitive ideas such as referring not to “pregnant women” but to “people who are pregnant” — a phrase now used on Planned Parenthood’s website — or the even less intuitive “birthing people,” which we’re asked to embrace as inclusive, and therefore progressive, despite that both reduce women to being biological vessels.

I’m certainly not arguing for intolerance toward those who can become pregnant but don’t identify as women. I’m saying that even if we’re not being forced to use the new terms, the way they’re introduced, almost as if by fiat, can make it seem as if sticking with the old ones is a kind of thought crime. But it isn’t that those on the left have some weird, childish yen for control. Rather, they seem to be operating under an attractive but shaky idea that language channels thought: Change how people say things and you change how they think about things and then the world changes.

That’s not how it works, though. Good intentions frequently don’t translate into efficacy. So, the question is, how much does changing terminology really accomplish?

In the late 1980s, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said the term “African American” had more “cultural integrity,” and “Black” was, therefore, out of date. But I’d be hard-pressed to say that the Black community today has a greater measure of cultural integrity or is any prouder than it was then. And though a recent poll showed that a majority of Black Americans see being Black as central to their identity, the younger they are, the less central it is — suggesting less significance, as time goes on, about what we call ourselves.

I think also of Nina Simone’s musicalization of Lorraine Hansberry’s phrase “To be young, gifted and Black.” Watch Simone perform this song in Questlove’s Oscar-winning documentary, “Summer of Soul,” with her vocal emphasis, full of conviction, on the word “Black.” Singing “African American” wouldn’t — couldn’t — ring with the same richness. Black America added meaning to and wrested pride out of a word that was supposed to have negative connotations by thinking of ourselves as beautiful and determined. I’m not sure “African American,” just as a term, has furthered that at all: “To be young, gifted and African American”?

Remember, too, the “euphemism treadmill” described by the Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker, who explained in a 1994 Times Opinion essay: “People invent new ‘polite’ words to refer to emotionally laden or distasteful things, but the euphemism becomes tainted by association and the new one that must be found acquires its own negative connotations.” For example, the pathway from “crippled” to “handicapped” to “disabled” to “differently abled.” New words ultimately don’t leave freighted ideas behind; they merely take them on.

Consider the phrase “urban renewal.” Starting in the 1930s, there were initiatives in American cities to raze working-class, often Black neighborhoods. They would eventually be replaced with various civic projects, such as new highway construction. One term for this, embraced by city planning éminences grises such as Robert Moses in New York City, was “slum clearance.”

As the years passed, the downsides of this destruction of modest but cohesive communities became more apparent, and the term “slum clearance” was gradually supplanted by the term “urban renewal,” starting in the 1950s. But calling it urban renewal didn’t persuade a range of writers, thinkers and displaced residents to celebrate this destructive dislocation. Other than by, perhaps, some city planners, urban renewal was increasingly perceived as a glum business — the same business — as slum clearance. James Baldwin memorably coined it with the more reality-based term, “Negro removal.”

Even when factoring in Pinker’s treadmill, I understand the impulse to refer to “enslaved people” rather than “slaves” — not all new terminology is pointless. Describing someone as a “slave” can be taken as indicating that servitude is an inherent trait rather than an imposed condition. But I suspect that after a while, the term “enslaved person” will continue its lexical drift and we’ll need a new term. Why? Because of what happened to “homeless person,” which began as an enlightened replacement for terms such as “bum” and “bag lady,” but is now itself being slowly replaced by referring to someone who is “unhoused.”

It is, then, reasonable to surmise that terms such as “pregnant people,” while pleasing a certain contingent, will not deter most people from continuing to perceive the world according to an old-fashioned gender binary. Basic perception will remain that most pregnant people are cisgender women, such that it will still feel natural to think of being pregnant as something women experience, and it will feel forced to use gender-neutral language, even as we acknowledge that there are people who identify as men or nonbinary who can become pregnant.

As I’ve discussed before in this newsletter, research has shown that language can influence thought, but sometimes only slightly. And what pops up in a psychological experiment may not track with real-life behavior: The Implicit Association Test, more than two decades old, has often been used to demonstrate how implicit bias is supposed to work — how negative associations with terms such as “Black” may correlate with people exhibiting prejudice or bigotry. But a more recent analysis argues that there is no evidence that quietly associating negative terms with Black people rather than white people in such tests correlates with racist behavior.

Today’s predilection for newspeak neglects all of this. Frankly, I think it is partly because generating new labels offers instant gratification, especially with the internet handy. It’s easier to introduce new terms than to change the way different groups referred to by those terms are really perceived. In that way, never-ending calls to change the way people talk and write is less an advance than a cop-out.

Terminology will, of course, evolve over time for various reasons. But broadly speaking, thought leaders and activists of past eras put their emphasis on what people did and said — not on ever-finer gradations of how they might have said it.

Far better to teach people what you think they should think about something, and why, instead of classifying the way they express themselves about it as a form of disrespect or backwardness. After a while, if you teach well, they won’t be saying what you don’t want them to say. Mind you, you may not be around to see the fruits of the endeavor — a frustrating aspect of change is that it tends to happen slowly. But “Change words!” is no watchcry for a serious progressivism.

Source: Every Day, We’re Told to Use New Lingo. What Does That Really Accomplish?

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UN agency concerned about impact of Canada’s immigration backlog on refugees

2022/05/27 Leave a comment

Of note. Implementation and delivery matters:

The UN refugee agency says it is concerned about the impact of Canada’s immigration backlog on the federal government’s commitment to resettle the world’s most vulnerable people, including Afghans who risk being targeted by the Taliban as they await refugee protection.

Gillian Triggs, assistant high commissioner for protection at the United Nations refugee agency, said Canada’s immigration backlog of more than two million applications is “very distressing.”

Refugee advocates and the opposition parties in Ottawa have repeatedly expressed concern that Canada’s overrun immigration system is delaying resettlement for refugees.

Ms. Triggs, who met senior government officials in Ottawa Wednesday, said refugees face increased risks the longer their cases are stuck in government processing.

“I will be raising with the relevant deputy ministers and others our concerns about that backlog. What it does, of course, is expose people to the kind of dangers that you’re raising, of torture, attacks – the very dangers, of course, that underpin why they have refugee status in the first place,” Ms. Triggs said in an interview.

“The whole point of the need for refugee protection is that that needs to be fast. You cannot leave people in backlogs and pipelines for many months or, in some cases in some countries, for years.”

Earlier this month, The Globe and Mail reported that Afghans who aided Canada’s military and diplomatic missions in Afghanistan have been tortured by the Taliban while they struggle to navigate federal government red tape.

Concerns grew further on May 14 when a 24-year-old Afghan man who was urgently seeking protection from Canada was shot dead by the Taliban. While Ms. Triggs was careful not to comment on specific cases, she expressed concern about the fate of Afghan women, who now face more restrictions under Taliban rule.

Ms. Triggs said the COVID-19 pandemic bogged down immigration processes in many resettlement countries, such as Canada, which are now trying to catch up amid an “unsustainable” increase in the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide. An unprecedented 100 million people have been forcibly displaced by conflict, violence, human-rights violations and persecution, the UN refugee agency announced Monday.

“Part of the advocacy that we will engage in is to encourage governments to look at their processes to see if they can be made what we call fair and fast,” Ms. Triggs said.

She said she is not qualified to suggest specific system changes for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), but cited instances in which other countries have forgone their “cumbersome” immigration policies in the interests of urgency. For example, she said Poland, Slovakia and Moldova immediately opened their borders to Ukrainian refugees earlier this year when Russia invaded.

She also said a move toward digital application systems will speed up processing in resettlement countries.

IRCC did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Immigration Minister Sean Fraser has previously said the Liberal government’s investments in additional resources, including $85-million to help reduce the backlogs and 500 new processing staff, should help IRCC return to its prepandemic processing times by the end of the year.

Ms. Triggs said resettlement programs are available to less than 1 per cent of globally displaced people, which is why she said governments need to work to address the root causes of mass displacement. She said Canada can be a leader on this front, particularly in Central America, where violence and persecution have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

“Canada can play a role in looking at root causes in the region, at stabilizing populations, advocating for investments for finding ways to deal with gender inequality, with the abuse of women and girls, poverty and of course, instability,” she said.

Ms. Triggs is in Ottawa for a meeting of the Comprehensive Regional Protection and Solutions Framework Support Platform, a multicountry initiative that encourages greater responsibility sharing on forced displacement in Central America and Mexico. Canada is currently chairing the platform, with a focus on the needs of women and girl refugees and migrants.

Source: UN agency concerned about impact of Canada’s immigration backlog on refugees

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

UK: Home Office makes £240m selling #citizenship to children

2022/05/27 Leave a comment

Not the first article I have seen on this money making scheme:

The Home Office has made more than £240m in profit from children caught in citizenship limbo since 2010, the New Statesman can reveal.

An exclusive analysis of registrations of children as British citizens has revealed that the department is making £640 per child by charging people far more in fees than an application costs to process. The figures show an estimated total surplus of almost £211m since 2010, which when adjusted for inflation comes in at more than £240m.

That total is likely to be an underestimate, because it only includes successful applications, not those of children who weren’t granted citizenship. The Home Office was contacted for comment, including on this number, but has not responded.

Under British law, since 1981, being born in the UK does not automatically entitle a child to citizenship. In the cases of some children whose parents have a certain immigration status, their families have to apply for citizenship for them. Currently it costs £1,012 to register a child as British, but Home Office documents show that the “unit cost” – the official estimate of how much an application costs the department – is only £372.

The analysis shows that fees for child registration have consistently outpaced costs. In 2010 it cost the Home Office £208 to register a child as British, but it charged people £470. Since then, fees have gone up 115 per cent, but unit costs have only risen 79 per cent.

The number of children registering as British has fallen over the last decade. In 2010 there were 48,659 successful registrations. In 2016 there were 30,799 and the last 12 months of data shows only 27,674 registrations. This trend suggests high fees may be putting people off applying, which may restrict people from living full lives, as the New Statesman reported in February. The children would not have a passport so would not be able to go on school trips abroad, for example.

The rising profit margin means the Home Office has consistently made more than £2m every quarter, even though the number of registrations has dwindled. Just 5,065 children registered as British in the third quarter of 2021, but that was still enough to make £3.2m – more money than when 10,586 children registered in the first quarter of 2012.

“Exploiting the need for people to formally register their British citizenship as a way to make money is shameful,” said Solange Valdez-Symonds, chief executive of the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens. She added that for many children, who were born and grew up in the UK, the fees effectively deprive them of their citizenship rights altogether, “leaving them alienated and excluded in their own country”.

The High Court ruled in 2019 that the government had set the fees without proper regard for children’s rights, a ruling that was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in 2021. In February this year, however, the Supreme Court concluded that parliament was entitled to allow the government to set the fees so high, so it would be up to MPs and peers to change that.

Source: Exclusive: Home Office makes £240m selling citizenship to children

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David: La sécurité imaginaire [Bill 96]

2022/05/27 Leave a comment

One side of Quebec commentary on Bill 96:

Quand on est en politique, où l’horizon ne s’étend guère au-delà de la prochaine élection, il devient parfois difficile de distinguer le compromis, qui facilite la victoire, de la compromission, qui sacrifie l’essentiel.

« Une grande journée pour le français », a déclaré le premier ministre François Legault après l’adoption du projet de loi 96. Il doit surtout se féliciter de la levée de boucliers dans la communauté anglophone et au Canada anglais.

Même si les dispositions de la « nouvelle loi 101 » demeurent bien insuffisantes pour enrayer le déclin du français, la colère des anglophones, partagée tardivement par le Parti libéral du Québec, et la réprobation du pays apparaissent aux yeux d’une majorité de francophones comme autant de signes qu’elles vont dans la bonne direction.

Le sentiment de sécurité que peut procurer l’impression d’être en mesure de dicter les règles du jeu dispense d’envisager les moyens plus décisifs que nécessiterait la survie d’une société française en Amérique du Nord et permet de rationaliser le manque d’audace collective qui a causé la défaite du « oui » en 1995.

S’il a provoqué chez les représentants de la communauté anglophone des dérapages qui ont parfois frôlé le délire, le débat sur le projet de loi 96 n’a d’ailleurs pas eu chez les francophones l’effet galvanisant de celui qu’avait suscité l’adoption de la loi 101.
* * * * *
Dans un essai qu’il vient de publier sous le titre La nation qui n’allait pas de soi, Alexis Tétreault, doctorant en sociologie à l’UQAM, évoque la nouvelle « mythologie de la normalité » qui aurait remplacé la traditionnelle « mythologie de la vulnérabilité » dans la conscience politique québécoise.

L’Acte constitutionnel de 1791 avait pu donner pendant un temps l’illusion que la Conquête n’empêcherait pas l’ancienne Nouvelle-France de poursuivre son développement d’une façon à peu près normale. Après l’écrasement des patriotes et l’Acte d’Union, la conscience de leur vulnérabilité et la crainte de l’assimilation n’ont cessé d’habiter l’imaginaire de leurs descendants.

C’est toujours ce désir d’échapper au sort prévu par le rapport Durham et d’aménager un espace politique où leur situation majoritaire permettrait aux Québécois de retrouver cette normalité qui a largement inspiré la Révolution tranquille et le mouvement indépendantiste.

Malgré le coup de force constitutionnel de 1982 et l’échec du référendum de 1995, Alexis Tétreault constate le maintien « d’une hégémonie de l’imaginaire majoritaire et de la nouvelle mythologie de la normalité qui est, pour le moins, inconsciente du péril de la minorisation-assimilation ».

Son maître à penser, le sociologue Jacques Beauchemin, l’avait exprimé de la façon suivante dans Une démission tranquille : « À force de ne pas disparaître et de se maintenir, les Canadiens français et, après eux, les Québécois de la Révolution tranquille ont fini par intégrer la certitude de leur perduration. »
* * * * *
Il est sans doute heureux que les Québécois ne vivent plus continuellement dans la hantise de disparaître ni dans l’impression d’être « nés pour un p’tit pain », mais cette nouvelle sérénité ne doit pas se traduire en inconscience. La diminution du poids démographique du Québec au sein du Canada et celui des francophones au sein du Québec sont des réalités incontournables.

« Ce sentiment d’éternité fera-t-il long feu à mesure que s’effriteront cette stabilité démographique et cette rhétorique en inadéquation avec la tendance démographique et politique du Canada ? » demande M. Tétreault.

Les francophones acceptent volontiers, se réjouissent même de vivre dans une société diversifiée et acceptent, à ce jour, qu’elle s’inscrive dans le cadre fédéral canadien. Encore faut-il que les règles du vivre-ensemble soient compatibles avec la survie de cette « majorité minoritaire », qui marche elle aussi sur la ligne fine entre le compromis et la compromission.

Même ce que le premier ministre Legault estime « raisonnable », qu’on pourrait également qualifier de minimal, est remis en question. Le ministre fédéral de la Justice, David Lametti, a confirmé que le gouvernement Trudeau s’associerait à la contestation de la loi 21 sur la laïcité devant la Cour suprême, et ce n’est qu’une question de temps avant que la loi 96 se retrouve à son tour devant les tribunaux.

Il est clair que le grand débat sur l’immigration, que M. Legault annonce pour son deuxième mandat, provoquera un autre affrontement, qui pourrait être encore plus dramatique. Une sécurité imaginaire n’a jamais protégé qui que ce soit. Qu’ils le veuillent ou non, les Québécois devront un jour avoir le courage de regarder les choses en face.

Source: La sécurité imaginaire

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Debating difference and diversity: combining multiculturalist and interculturalist approaches to integration

2022/05/26 Leave a comment

Much of these debates and discussions are more semantics than substantive, as the devil is in the details regarding the specific practices and policies of integration, social cohesion, multiculturalism and interculturalism:

In the UK, as elsewhere in Western Europe, issues of integration and social cohesion in relation to ethno-cultural minorities are never far from the headlines or policy concerns in one form or another. In the last year, events such as the Black Lives Matters protests, COVID-19, the Euros, and the upcoming Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, have all prompted reflection on integration. In 2019 the government published a new indicators of integration framework and the term has again been the central concern of a recent report by a prominent think tank, which notes that integration is ‘one of the slipperiest concepts in the political lexicon’.

One of the central issues to thinking about integration is what is to be done about ethno-cultural difference? Is it a problem to be overcome, a barrier to integration? Is it something positive, to be embraced and celebrated? Should it be overlooked in favour of what we all, as individuals, have in common, or should it be the ground we build a more equitable sense of belonging from?

The term integration can be not just slippery but the site of antagonistic and at times heated debate. These two properties of antagonism and slipperiness are well exemplified in debates between two alternative camps on how to manage and think about integration and ethno-cultural diversity: multiculturalism and interculturalism. Whereas the former emphasises respect for difference and hyphenated identities, the latter emphasises contact, mixing and what is shared or common against difference.

The two have frequently butted heads in academic debates, with multiculturalism under fire from interculturalists as in need of replacement, something reflected in political and policy discourse. For instance, the government’s 2018 Integrated Communities Strategy stated that ‘multiculturalism has too often encouraged communities to live separate lives – reinforcing distinct cultural identities to the detriment of efforts to draw attention to what we have in common – and is defunct’. Multiculturalists have responded by pointing out how these arguments misrepresent or caricature multiculturalism.   

In a new research project, PLURISPACE, we ask if this antagonism must necessarily be the case. We’ve found that integration as it exists in government policy as well as policy advocacy from civil society organisations more often combines these two opponents in various ways, and this is where the slipperiness comes in. Peeling back from political rhetoric and academic theory debates, what might we learn from the slipperiness?

While policies that are consistent with an intercultural position have become central, through increased emphasis on contact and mixing, as well in discourse around fundamental British values, the term itself is found nowhere in policy documents or parliamentary debates themselves (unlike, for example, in Spain or at the EU level). Moreover, these interculturalism gains have not been to the detriment of multicultural policies, which have also shown an increase over the last few decades. This begins to point to types of complementarity between different approaches, which forms the focus of the PLURISPACE project. But what different forms does such complementarity take in practice?

From an analysis of documents produced by prominent civil society organisations, supplemented by interviews, we can point to three main types of complementary form in which multiculturalism and interculturalism are combined in the UK, reflected in alternative emphases on the idea of integration. The first two represent what we might call a principled multiculturalism, complemented or qualified by interculturalism to different extents.

The first variation is broadly multiculturalist in emphasis. It wants to preserve the importance of difference between ethnic, cultural, and faith communities whilst developing a sense of multicultural nationhood that can include these differences. Integration is thought about as relations between communities and across difference, but which adds to this the need for contact and mixing between people of different ethnicities and faiths and a simultaneous emphasis on what is held in common if it is to be successful. Here, integration is very much a ‘two-way street’.

The second variation represents a more equal mixing of multiculturalism and interculturalism. It is more cautious of stronger statements about group rights but with a significant feature; its underlying premises can be said to be more multiculturalist than interculturalist. That is, underpinning interculturalist features is a stronger sense of the need to recognise and respect difference as a fundamental way in which equality is thought about. As one report puts it: ‘If integration is not about everybody, it is not integration‘. Interculturalist emphases from this position are important, but bound to fail if not substantively underpinned by thicker multiculturalist sensibilities and policies when it comes to identifying and addressing discrimination and positive recognition.

Across these two positions features of interculturalism are seen as extremely important but also as inadequate and ineffective if not underpinned by more substantive approaches to equality consistent with multiculturalism.

A third position is one we might call critical interculturalism. This adopts a broadly interculturalist stance, but is qualified in significant ways (and ways that some interculturalists would reject) by multicultural emphases. It emphasises contact and mixing, and is oriented foremost around individual rights and the centrality of ascribing to fundamental British values, and of minority integration into these values. It stresses general laws and policies that apply to everybody, rather than differentiated policies and stronger forms of group recognition. Yet, different expressions of this broad position also emphasise the national level as significant in setting the tone for equality and integration; some emphasise that group targeted policies might be necessary in order to address patterns of discrimination and disparities in policy areas such as employment, education and so on, even if they are not necessarily ideally desirable and one day might not be necessary. We might see this as a kind of stop gap multiculturalism.

Overall, these different forms of complementarity are suggestive of the important contestations and differences there are when it comes to questions of what integration should mean and look like. But what they also show is that out of the shadows of academic debates and political rhetoric, syntheses and hybrids are occurring on the ground, and this has lessons for theory and politics alike. It also shows that behind the rhetoric, multiculturalism is not only alive but a multicultural sensibility is a significant feature of how we should think about equality and belonging.

Thomas Sealy (@SealyThomas) is Lecturer in Ethnicity and Race in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol.

Source: Debating difference and diversity: combining multiculturalist and interculturalist approaches to integration

Filed under Integration, Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Australia: How did Labor get it so wrong in Fowler?

2022/05/26 Leave a comment

One of the more interesting vignettes in Australia’s election, when parachuting a “white” candidate backfired spectacularly:

“Dai! Dai!” they cry from across the street, followed by a burst of Vietnamese.

As their new federal member walks through the Cabramatta mall in a pink suit, people run across to shake her hand and hug her. In Gough Whitlam Place, Dai Le is mobbed by fans and poses for photos.

After a lacklustre election, the electorate feels, well, alive.

There’s shock and amazement that a once seven-year-old girl who fled Vietnam by boat will be heading off to Canberra to represent them. Who would have thought?

“We are the little people,” one man said. “But this time we raised our voice.”

“Kristina Keneally sucks!” a tradesman in fluro added.

It’s all a wild dream, according to Ms Le, who spoke to 7.30 a day after Labor’s parachute candidate Kristina Keneally conceded defeat.

On Saturday night, as the results trickled in from booths across Fowler in Sydney’s south-west, the veteran local councillor’s pleasant surprise turned to shock and disbelief.

The very safe Labor seat of Fowler hadn’t changed hands since its creation in 1984, and it had been held by retiring incumbent Chris Hayes on a margin of 14 per cent. Ms Le won narrowly but enjoyed a 16 per cent swing towards her. A political miracle.

“I sat there in my lounge room and I literally looked back at that time when I was on a boat in the middle of the ocean with my mum and two younger sisters and I remember how fearful that moment was for me because we thought we were going to die,” she said.

If the 2022 election was about flipping the bird to the major parties, then the result in Fowler speaks volumes.

Questions over Labor’s multicultural legacy

Gough Whitlam is known as the father of multiculturalism and used to live in Cabramatta. There’s a monument to his legacy in the heart of the mall. It sits in front of a cafe where old men gather around tables to play traditional games.

So how did Labor, the purported party of multiculturalism and the working class — the people of Fowler are both — get it so wrong?

Some blame Labor’s Sussex Street headquarters, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese played his part by backing Kristina Keneally over young lawyer Tu Le.

Ms Keneally would have lost her Senate spot had she stayed there, and needed a safe Labor seat to return to parliament.

Mr Albanese described Ms Keneally — a white American-born woman from the northern beaches, who did not grow up in south-west Sydney — as a great migrant success story.

Ms Keneally was unavailable for an interview.

“Fowler shows that people will see through cynical ploys,” Per Capita research fellow and Labor member Osmond Chiu told 7.30.

“They don’t want to be taken for granted, and when they feel like you’re taking them for granted they’re more than willing to punish you.”

The Keneally decision sparked an outcry among some Labor MPs at the time, but the increase in cultural diversity among Labor ranks in this parliament is likely to neutralise the anger.

Either way, the end result is the first Vietnamese Australian to enter federal parliament, just not on the Labor side.

‘I’m not a teal’, Dai Le declares

If blue seats turned teal this election, then Dai Le’s Fowler turned from red to pink. The politics are slightly the same, the shade is a little different.

The disparity between Fowler and the wealthy teal electorates in Sydney and Melbourne is stark.

In Fowler, most voters are labourers and tradespeople, clerical and administrative workers, machinery operators and drivers, and community service workers.

According to the 2016 Census, 60 per cent were born overseas while more than 80 per cent have parents born overseas. Vietnamese is the top ancestry.

The rise of the independents in Australia is as uneven as our country.

Dai Le is quick to say she’s not a teal even though she’s happy to sit down and “have a cup of tea” with them.

How she votes in the parliament remains to be seen.

When 7.30 asked her how she would vote on climate change, Ms Le seemed to echo Scott Morrison who told 7.30 last week that some parts of the country were more insulated to such issues.

“The teal independents are very much affluent,” Ms Le said. “They have other things they can worry about. Whereas my electorate, we actually have to worry about food on the table.

“The climate change issue, the federal ICAC issue, I mean it is important to us, but for me it’s our health system.

“For me, the priority would be how to make sure there is affordable and cheap electricity prices.”

As she embarks on a life in the Canberra bubble, Ms Le is promising to be her same, genuine self, and on the streets of Fowler, voters are proud that one of their own will be in parliament.

“Menzies, years ago, talked about the forgotten people,” said Than Nguyen, a former Vietnamese community leader.

“We are the real forgotten people.”

Politicians be warned. If you forget the voters, they’ll remember.

Source: How did Labor get it so wrong in Fowler?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , ,

Soutphommasane: We’re about to have Australia’s most diverse parliament yet – but there’s still a long way to go

2022/05/26 Leave a comment

Still less than 10 percent (Canada is just under 16 percent):

The message from Saturday’s election result was clear: Australians want a political reset. And not just about issues such as government integrity and climate change.

While much attention has been directed at the teal wave of independents, another change is taking place to the composition of parliament.

This Australian parliament is shaping to be the most diverse yet in its ethnic and cultural background. Capital Hill is about to see a substantial injection of colour.

A fitting result

Newly elected members Sally Sitou, Michelle Ananda-Rajah, Sam Lim, Zaneta Mascarenhas, Cassandra Fernando and Dai Le will bolster the non-European representation of the House of Representatives.

The Indigenous ranks of parliament are also set to swell, with the additions of Marion Scrymgour and Gordon Reid in the House, and Jacinta Price in the Senate.

In many ways, it is a fitting result to an election that had its share of controversies about representation.

Labor caused consternation when it parachuted former Senator (and ex-NSW Premier) Kristina Keneally into its then safe southwest Sydney electorate of Fowler, cruelling the prospects of local Vietnamese-Australian lawyer Tu Le.

A second captain’s pick from Anthony Albanese, millionaire former political adviser Andrew Charlton, ran in the western Sydney seat of Parramatta, to the chagrin of local aspirants from multicultural backgrounds.

Such picks left many asking, with good reason: if worthy candidates from non-European backgrounds can’t get preselected in multicultural electorates like Fowler and Parramatta, how can we get more diversity into parliament?

It’s a question that lingers, notwithstanding what this election has delivered.

Still a long way to go

If it feels like a surge of diversity will flow through the parliament, it’s only because there was so little to begin with.

While those from a non-European background make up an estimated 21% of the Australian population, they made up just a tiny fraction of the 46th parliament.

The 47th parliament could feature up to 13 parliamentarians with a non-European, non-Indigenous background, along with nine or ten (depending on final results) parliamentarians of Indigenous background.

That may sound like a strong result – it’s certainly an improvement, and better than how many other major institutions in Australian society perform – but we should put it in perspective.

It would still mean just a tiny fraction of the parliament (no more than 10%) having a non-European or Indigenous background – far less than what you’d see if the parliament actually reflected our society accurately. Australia lags significantly behind the US, UK and Canada and New Zealand.

It’s not all about numbers, of course. We can’t judge the calibre of our parliament solely on whether it’s proportionately representative.

Yet when sections of society can’t see themselves within our public institutions, it is a problem. The very legitimacy, and quality, of those institutions can suffer

A new phase?

For a long time, calls for greater multicultural diversity in politics have been typically greeted with indifference. It wasn’t an urgent problem. Gender diversity was a higher priority. Political parties didn’t feel the pressure from those supposedly excluded from the system.

That now has changed. Labor has been brutally punished for its Fowler move. A swing of more than 16% saw the seat fall to independent (and former Liberal) Dai Le.

Clearly, being from a non-European background isn’t the electoral handicap political parties have sometimes feared.

Something generational is at play. Australia may once have comfortably accepted that newer arrivals were expected to play the role of the grateful supplicant in their “host society”.

But the children and grandchildren of yesterday’s migrants don’t see themselves as guests in their own country. They aren’t happy refugees or cheerful migrants who are content to know their place. They’re taking their lead less from the Anh Dos of the world and more from the AOCs (Democrat politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) of US politics.

Demands about access and equity for non-English speaking background people have been replaced with calls for the equal treatment of “people of colour” and for attention to “intersectionality”.

We could be seeing a new phase in the evolution of Australia’s multicultural project.

While a triumph in many respects, Australian multiculturalism has to date fallen short on several counts. A celebration of cultural diversity has never been accompanied by a sharing of Anglo-Celtic institutional power. Or, for that matter, by a full reckoning with racial inequality and injustice.

That’s why it will be interesting to observe this new parliament. The very presence of this new ethnic and cultural diversity will, in subtle and not so subtle ways, be felt in Canberra and beyond.

Critical mass matters. It is hard, for example, to imagine a more diverse parliament trying to wind back racial hatred laws (as parliament has done on more than one occasion with respect to the Racial Discrimination Act).

Or to imagine a diverse parliament indulging other periodic bouts of race politics (think of the scaremongering over African gangs in Melbourne or the McCarthyist targeting of Chinese-Australians).

All such excesses become much harder when the people debating such matters have skin in the game.

So don’t mistake the wave of multicultural politicians for being a mere symbolic adornment in Canberra – like the political equivalent of having exotic foods and festivals.

It may feel like a subplot for now, but this could end up being just be as significant as the teal revolution.

Source: We’re about to have Australia’s most diverse parliament yet – but there’s still a long way to go

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