Todd on his experience at Metropolis (I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with him, as I always find his columns of interest).
His critique about the Metropolis bubble could of course be repeated with respect to most conferences. As could his critique of attendees being dependent of government cheques. Being dependent on private sector funding doesn’t make one more objective.
However, all that being said, it is a valid critique that Metropolis does not include a wide range of perspectives in both the plenaries and workshops, something that the conference organizers, as well as individuals like me who organize workshops, should keep in mind.
As well as the general point that one should be mindful of one’s bubble, and make efforts to get outside it, whether as Todd did by coming to Metropolis or ensuring that one’s media includes a range of perspectives (the main lesson that I learnt working under former Minister Jason Kenney as recounted in Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism):
I just spent a few days with Canadians who work with immigrants, refugees, international students and other migrants.
The almost 1,000 people at the 2017 Metropolis Conference in Montreal are on the front lines of an effort central to a country with arguably the world’s highest per capita in-migration.
Each year, Canada spends roughly $1.2 billion on the so-called “settlement sector.” Its mission is to assist more than 300,000 new immigrants and refugees a year while supporting 325,000 foreign students and more than 300,000 temporary foreign workers.
Migration is a mass phenomenon in Canada, unlike in most nations. Many settlement workers live in the cities that draw most migrants: Foreign-born people make up 23 per cent of Montreal’s population, 45 per cent of Metro Vancouver’s and half of Greater Toronto.
Workers in the settlement-sector form an influential Canadian subculture. One person at Metropolis affectionately referred to them as “activists with pensions.” Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen spoke twice and told them they greatly influence public policy.
I began wondering, however, how much these upstanding people represent the Canadian population. Do their values correspond at all to opinion poll results or with the issues Canadians follow through the media?
The vast majority at the taxpayer-funded Metropolis conferences live on government paycheques or grants. They are in the Immigration Department, the Heritage Department, public research universities and taxpayer-financed non-profit organizations.
Their theme is humanitarianism. Metropolis participants repeatedly said Canada should bring in more immigrants, refugees and foreign students, migrants are a “vulnerable population” and taxpayers should spend more on them.
Borrowing from Canadian scholars Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, it’s fair to say almost all at the 19th national Metropolis event would be among the one-third of Canadians who unconditionally support multicultural, refugee and immigration policy. I did not hear disapproval.
They would definitely not be among the slightly smaller proportion of people that Banting and Kymlicka found at the opposite end; those opposed to Canadian-style immigration and multiculturalism.
It’s also not likely many attendees would be in the middle group of Canadians — the roughly 40 per cent (domestic and foreign-born) who generally support official multiculturalism, but with conditions.
Given what I witnessed, and the titles of hundreds of Metropolis presentations, critical discussion was muted. Orthodoxy seemed to reign.
It’s understandable. A lot of livelihoods, research grants and vested interests are at stake.
And, anyways, most attendees seemed keen on what they do. A few, indeed, seemed boastful.
There were basically only two things attendees would criticize.
Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told Metropolis delegates they greatly influence public policy. But to what extent do they reflect a cross-section of Canadians?
One was the alleged shortage of funding for settlement organizations, refugee agencies and foreign students. As a keynote speaker said, “We always have to do more.”
The second thing subject to criticism was the “media” and, by extension, Canadians themselves. Each was occasionally referred to as “tolerant” but more often chastised for being xenophobic.
I opened with my critique of the “two-way street” metaphor by emphasizing that it did not capture the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of immigration, the Hegelian dialectic between thesis (host society) and anti-thesis (newcomers), resulting in a synthesis, and presented my preferred metaphor, harmony/jazz, where harmony represented the underlying framework of laws and institutions, and jazz the improvisation involved in resolving accommodation demands.
Mort Weinfeld of McGill drew from the personal experience of his parents and talking to cab drivers, noting that integration of the second generation was key. His preferred metaphor was the roundabout, with multiple points of entry and exit, with traffic moving smoothly.
Richard Bourhis of UQAM provided a Quebec perspective, looking at how Quebec language policies were characteristic of an assimilationist approach.
Elke Winter of UofOttawa drew from her analysis of European policies and practices and noted a third dimensions, that of outside actors and transnational forces (e.g., other countries, home communities of immigrants), and that integration was more a three-way than two-way process
The presentations prompted considerable discussion (although no one jumped to the defence of the ‘two-way street.’ The particular points I found most interesting were Richard’s noting the advantage of institutional diversity in terms of integration and others noting the need for metaphors and definitions to include indigenous peoples.
Thinking about next year, this is a topic that merits further exploration, perhaps involving some literary descriptions or metaphors (see the notes for Minority Voice, Identity and Inclusion – Media and Literary Expressions).
Citizenship – Factors Underlying a Declining Naturalization Rate: In the only session on citizenship, Elke WInter opened the workshop with an overview of how Canadian citizenship has evolved over the last 150 years, setting out four phases: colonized citizenship (pre-1947), nationalizing citizenship (1947-76), de-ethnicising citizenship (1977-2008) and re-nationalizing citizenship (2009-15) with a possible fifth phase emerging under the Liberal government. She presented some preliminary findings from an interview-based study.
I followed with my usual presentation of citizenship statistics, showing the impact of previous policy and administrative changes along with an assessment of the 2014 Conservative changes and Liberal partial repeal of these changes (currently in the Senate).
Jessica Merolli of Sheridan presented the key MIPEX naturalization indicators and data from the European Social Survey comparing immigrant/non-immigrant attitudes on issues such as self-sufficiency, interests in politics, LGBT acceptance and others and how over time in the country of immigration differences declined. The most striking exception was with respect to interest in politics, where immigrants, no matter how short or long the time, were more interested than non-immigrants.
Questions of note included do we need a citizenship knowledge test given that it presents barriers for some groups, and the impact that the physical presence requirement has on families when one parent has to work abroad given difficulties in obtaining well-paying work in Canada.
Other workshops that I found particularly of interest included:
Inclusion, engagement partagé, participation – comment en rendre compte: Elke Laur of Quebec’s Minister de l’Immigration, de Latin American Diversity et de l’Inclusion presented their integration strategy and related measurement approach. Quebec has invested considerable time and resources on both aspects.
Of note is their definition below, capturing the complexities and dynamism of integration:
“Une participation réussie résulte d’un partage d’engagement mutuel de la personne et de la société dans son ensemble. Ainsi, la participation des personnes de minorités ethnoculturelles est conceptualisée sous forme d’un espace participatif dans lequel ces deux modalités se croisent dans une matrice. Cette matrice rend compte de l’articulation de différents degrés (allant de faible à fort), d’engagements individuels et de dispositions sociétales.”
Enhancing the Potential to Analyze Immigration – Adding the Admission Category to Census Data: Laetitia Martin of Statistics Canada presented the detailed methodology of linking post-1980 IRCC administration data on immigrant admission categories, complemented by Lorna Jantzen of IRCC outlying the potential and challenges. Dan Hiebert of UBC provided an example for refugees of how this linkage could be used to analyze the economic outcomes of refugees, showing that in the long-term, economic outcomes are comparable to the Canadian average.
Minority Voice, Identity and Inclusion – Media and Literary Expressions: A mix of a case study (Punjabi media by Syeda Bukhari where she noted the ethnic media was getting more sophisticated in comparing what politicians said to English and ethnic media and thus holding them to account) and the overall contribution ethnic media does and can make to integration (Madeline Ziniak, current chair of the Canadian Ethnic Media Association (CEMA)).
Myer Siemiatycki of Ryerson gave a fascinating presentation regarding the person and poetry of Julian Tuwin, a Polish Jew (or Jewish Pole) whose loyalty and identity were attacked by both sides.
An example, Tuwin’s Poem, We, Polish Jews (1944)
I am a Pole because I want to be. It’s nobody’s business but my own. I do not divide Poles into pure-stock Poles and alien-stock Poles. I leave such classification to pure and alien-stock advocates of racialism, to domestic and foreign Nazis.
To be a Pole is neither an honor nor a glory nor a privilege. It is like breathing. I have not yet met a man who is proud of breathing.
A Pole – because I have been told so in Polish in my paternal home, because since infancy I have been nurtured in the Polish tongue; because my mother taught me Polish songs and Polish rhymes; because when poetry first seized me, it was in Polish words that it burst forth; because what in my life became paramount — poetical creation — would be unthinkable in any other tongue no matter how fluent I might become in it.”
A Pole – also because the birch and the willow are closer to my heart than palms and citrus trees, and Mickiewicz and Chopin dearer than Shakespeare and Beethoven.
A Pole – because I have taken over from the Poles quite a few of their national faults.
A Pole — because my hatred of Polish Fascists is greater than my hatred of Fascists of other nationalities. And I consider that particular point as a strong mark of my nationality.
He also presented Yolanda Cohen’s deck on the Sephardic press and diaspora identities.
Negotiating “fit” – Connections Between Employer Mindsets/Practices and Labour Market Success of Newcomers: Kelly Thomson of York provided an overview of the issue of “fit” and presented a case study of foreign-trained accountants. Aamna Ashraf of the Peel Newcomer Strategy Group (near Toronto) presented the results of a study on soft barriers, with focused and practical recommendations. Madeline Ng of Autodata and Nancy Moulday of TD Bank presented how their respective organizations encourage and facilitate diversity in their workforces. Unfortunately, Thomson took far to long for her presentation, reducing the time available for discussion with the practitioners.
Fitting In: Identity and belonging among second generation Canadians: Elizabeth Burgess-Pinto of MacEwan University organized this roundtable discussion focussing on the second generation. A number of second generation (and generation 1.5) participants shared their experiences, challenges and identities.
I generally find these data based comparisons more informative than the policy comparison indexes like MIPEX or the Multiculturalism Policy Index although both, of course, are helpful to understanding and discussion.
As with previous and other studies, the sharp contrast between immigration-based countries, particularly Canada, Australia, New Zealand and to a lesser extent, the USA, is striking:
All those images of border-crossing migrants, and swaggering tough talk about what to do about them from some federal Conservative leadership aspirants, have prompted a lot of discussion about how Canada absorbs newcomers, and if we do it differently, maybe better, than other countries.
My colleague Scott Gilmore warned here that we should brace for anti-immigrant populism to rise in Canada, as it has in other countries after the immigrant portion of their populations reached a certain level. I reported here on research that suggests that where immigrants tend to live in Canada, and how they vote, makes the path to political power steeper for right-leaning populists in this country than in the U.S. and Europe.
No matter how you see the issue, understanding how immigrants fare in Canada suddenly seems essential—if the debate is going to be about more than hunches. If you’re really gripped by the subject, you might want to take a look at “Indicators of Immigrant Integration 2015: Settling In,” by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.” Here’s some of what jumped out at me from that study of the OECD’s 35 member countries [I have only listed the titles, the article has charts and narrative – well worth reviewing]:
US example of how schools facilitate the integration process:
For many immigrant students, the trauma of crossing the border follows them into the classroom — affecting their performance and ability to learn. And that’s where Michelle’s school comes in.
At Langley Park, in Prince George’s County, Md., 87 percent of students are Spanish-speaking. Out of 176 students, 24 countries are represented and 15 languages are spoken at home, not including English.
The school started last fall. So far, the school sits in temporary buildings, but the kids don’t mind it too much — unless it’s raining.
Her school is part of a larger network across the country called Internationals Network For Public Schools. It serves English language learners, or ELLs, and recent immigrants.
For students like Michelle, the problem is two-fold: Not only are they dealing with trauma, but they also belong to one of the most marginalized student populations.
According to a recent Stanford study, the achievement gap between ELL-Hispanic and white students is the largest in the context of race and ethnicity. And, the average high school graduation rate of ELLs is 19 percentage points lower than the national rate, 63 percent compared to 82.
In 1985, the network opened its first school to address that long-standing disparity. Since then, it has grown to 27 schools in seven states, including Washington, D.C.
And, it seems to be working. Last year, ELLs who attended the network’s high schools in New York City graduated at a rate 16 percentage points higher than ELL students in the city’s public schools, the nation’s largest school district.
As for Langley Park, it hasn’t had a graduating class, yet — it opened last fall — but results so far look promising. In the first class of students, 98 percent showed improvement in their English language skills.
Two talented young artists — Stefany Novoa (left), 16, and Frishta Wassl, 14 — work on self-portraits in Christine Wilkin’s art class.
LA Johnson/NPR
How does the network do it when so many other schools struggle to educate ELLs? It seems to boil down to three simple things:
Every teacher is a language teacher. Tammy Tatro, who teaches technology, says implementing English-language instruction into her class curriculum is “really hard.” But she does it by repeating herself and using visual aids to get concepts across to students.
Second, one of the network’s vital principles is collaboration. That’s why the classes are a mix of students with varying English language skills.
“They all want to lift each other up,” Tatro says. “When one fails, especially if they’re working on a team project, then they all kind of fail. So, they have to help each other.”
A third key principle, Principal Carlos Beato says: the school’s partnerships.
Christine Gilliard, a phys ed teacher, used to teach at a large high school where she had “a two-story gym and two storage closets.” Now she teaches out of a trailer-sized temporary building. “We may not have the best of everything, but we have each other,” she says.
LA Johnson/NPR
CASA de Maryland, a Latino advocacy organization, is one of Langley Park’s partners. The organization offers legal advice for students and their families. Students can also take a social justice class from CASA to learn about advocacy and their rights, depending on their immigration status.
Partnerships like this are crucial, given the extra challenges many of these students face — homelessness, separation from their parents and, of course, the language barrier. Without tending to all of their social and emotional needs, Beato explains, “we wouldn’t be getting any of the academics done.”
Most of the network’s schools employ a full-time social worker. At Langley Park, that’s Lesly Lemus. Her job is to support students any way she can as they cope with life outside school, whether it’s connecting them to community resources or just listening.
Always good to see some of the better initiatives of the previous government continued by the current government:
A pilot Conservative project to loan money to help skilled immigrants land jobs in their field could be revived as a permanent program under the Liberal government.
One of the biggest barriers for newly arrived doctors, dentists, engineers and high-tech professionals is coming up with the cash to pay for the required licensing fees, exams and training upgrades.
Proponents say micro loans speed up the process and pay off big time for the federal treasury, yet they can’t keep up with a demand that will likely grow with the Liberal government’s plan to welcome more economic immigrants to the country in 2017.
Jean-Bruno Villeneuve, spokesperson for Patty Hajdu, the minister of employment, workforce development and labour, said a three-year pilot that was launched in 2011 under the Conservatives demonstrated that loans sped up the credential recognition process, led to a 47-per-cent increase in full-time employment and eased reliance on government income assistance.
“We were very pleased with the results of the pilot, and we’re working hard on a framework for a more permanent policy,” he told CBC News.
A spokesperson for Finance Minister Bill Morneau would not say if a new foreign credentials loan program would be included in this year’s budget.
“Can’t tip our hand here either way,” the official said. “Stay tuned.”
The Conservative government earmarked $35 million over five years to make the Foreign Credential Recognition Loans program permanent in the 2015 budget, but it was never implemented due to the election. Then-prime minister Stephen Harper had also promised to more than double that figure during the 2015 campaign by adding an extra $40 million over five years.
Herb Emery, a labour market economist at the University of New Brunswick, said loans to help immigrants overcome the up-front financial hurdle have a big net payoff in federal revenue.
‘Huge’ impact on federal treasury
“When these immigrants are taken out of low-skill jobs and converted into high-paying ones, the impact on the federal treasury is huge,” he said. “They recoup any costs they put into it in the first year alone, and from then on it’s basically pure profit for the treasury.”
Emery said immigrants often have no access to credit or bank loans — what he calls a “pervasive market failure.” That leaves newcomers unemployed or working in low-paid jobs just scraping to get by.
Many skilled immigrants wind up unemployed or working in low-paying jobs because of the financial barrier to earning their foreign recognition credentials. (CBC)
“We’re doing a horrible job in that we bring very high human capital individuals to Canada, then we throw away their potential by not letting them work in what they are trained and educated to do,” he said.
There are several programs in Canada offering micro loans between $5,000 and $15,000, with some receiving operating funding contributions from the federal government and the provinces.
One of the programs Emery has reviewed favourably is the Calgary-based Immigrant Access Fund (IAF), which grants loans to immigrants across the country. Dianne Fehr, vice-president of stakeholder relations, said it needs millions more in federal funding to keep up with a growing demand.
“It’s a very clear way to support immigrants toward labour market integration,” she said.
The ongoing challenge of foreign credential recognition and related barriers:
Le gouvernement Couillard refuse depuis deux ans que des ingénieurs de l’État issus de l’immigration soient payés en fonction de l’expérience qu’ils ont acquise dans leur pays d’origine. Une « hypocrisie », selon leur syndicat, alors que Québec veut faciliter l’intégration des immigrants au marché du travail.
Le 28 août 2015, 23 ingénieurs du gouvernement formés à l’étranger ont écrit au ministre des Transports de l’époque, Robert Poëti, pour demander une révision des politiques de classement du Ministère.
Ils soutiennent que leur expérience à l’étranger n’a pas été considérée par le ministère des Transports du Québec (MTQ) au moment de leur embauche. Ils ont donc été classés dans des échelons salariaux qui ne reflètent pas le nombre d’années de pratique.
DROIT DE PRATIQUE
Ces professionnels ont pourtant réussi tous les tests imposés par l’Ordre des ingénieurs (OIQ) et obtenu leur droit de pratiquer au Québec.
« Nous trouvons que cette situation est inéquitable et ne tient pas compte de l’analyse rigoureuse de nos dossiers qu’a faite l’OIQ et les expériences reconnues par ce dernier pour nous attribuer des permis d’ingénieurs », peut-on lire dans la lettre.
« De plus, elle va à l’encontre des articles 16 et 19 de la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne du Québec », ajoutent les plaignants.
Dans une réponse écrite envoyée en février 2016, la directrice des ressources humaines du MTQ, Brigitte Duchesne, se montre sensible à la situation de ces employés. Elle soutient avoir adressé une « demande formelle » au secrétariat du Conseil du trésor, « de façon à soutenir une éventuelle reconnaissance de [leurs] expériences en génie acquises hors Canada ».
« CHEAP LABOUR », DÉNONCE LE SYNDICAT
Or, un an plus tard, rien n’a bougé, dénonce le président de l’Association professionnelle des ingénieurs du gouvernement (APIGQ), Marc-André Martin.
« Le gouvernement se paye du “cheap labour”, dénonce-t-il. Il est au courant de la situation et il ne fait rien. »
Il cite en exemple le cas d’un ingénieur qui a travaillé pendant cinq ans en Roumanie avant d’immigrer au Québec. Lors de son embauche au ministère des Transports, il a été rémunéré au plus bas échelon salarial, car il venait tout juste d’obtenir son permis de pratique de l’Ordre des ingénieurs. S’il était rémunéré à la hauteur de sa véritable expérience, il gagnerait environ 10 000 $ de plus par année, dit M. Martin.
The PQ appears to be stepping back from identity politics post Quebec mosque killing and proposing some positive and concrete integration measures:
Dans la foulée de l’attentat au Centre culturel islamique de Québec, le 29 janvier, le chef du Parti québécois (PQ), Jean-François Lisée, a présenté, lundi, une série de mesures destinées à améliorer l’intégration des immigrants et à combattre le racisme et la discrimination au Québec.
«Au cours de la dernière semaine, il y a eu une prise de conscience nationale extrêmement forte des difficultés d’intégration de plusieurs Québécois d’origines diverses – particulièrement, mais pas exclusivement maghrébine -, une prise de conscience très forte qu’il y avait dans notre société des traces de racisme et de discrimination qu’il convient de faire reculer», a affirmé M. Lisée en conférence de presse à Montréal.
Le plan d’action comporte une vingtaine de mesures touchant l’emploi, le logement, l’éducation et la francisation, notamment.
On y retrouve, entre autres, des propositions pour assurer une meilleure reconnaissance des diplômes et des compétences des immigrants, qui sont aux prises avec des taux de chômage beaucoup plus élevés que la moyenne des Québécois. Ces propositions impliquent le déblocage de goulots persistants que l’on retrouve chez certains ordres professionnels et dans les institutions d’enseignement, par exemple.
Certaines mesures visent aussi à contrer la discrimination à l’embauche, notamment en interdisant l’exigence d’une première expérience de travail canadienne, qui crée un cercle vicieux auquel il est impossible d’échapper lorsqu’un candidat nouvellement arrivé se cherche un premier emploi.
Le PQ propose également d’instaurer des amendes salées dans les cas de discrimination pour l’obtention d’un emploi ou d’un logement, parallèlement à des mesures de soutien financier pour l’incitation à l’embauche d’immigrants et à l’offre de stages.
«Il n’existe aucune amende pour quelqu’un qui est pris en flagrant délit de discrimination à l’embauche. Ça n’a pas de sens», a soutenu le chef péquiste.
De plus, il suggère de donner plus de mordant au programme d’embauche des minorités par l’État québécois en insistant sur les objectifs à atteindre, notamment par le biais de la discrimination positive.
Le PQ, qui a déjà fait part de son intention de mettre au rancart le cours d’éthique et culture religieuse, veut remplacer celui-ci par un cours sur la citoyenneté qui toucherait un ensemble de notions sociales, incluant, entre autres, le fait religieux, l’égalité entre les hommes et les femmes, la démocratie, la sexualité et autres.
«Ce cours doit avoir comme objectif de promouvoir une culture de l’antiracisme et contre la discrimination», a dit M. Lisée.
Le Parti québécois insiste également sur les mesures de francisation et l’intégration d’un plus grand nombre d’immigrants dans les conseils d’administration d’organismes publics et parapublics, parmi les candidats et employés des partis politiques et dans les manifestations culturelles.
Good in-depth coverage of some of the integration debates in the UK:
In 1966, then-Home Secretary Roy Jenkins of Labour gave a speech setting out a policy of multiculturalism, though he didn’t use the term. “I do not think that we need in this country a ‘melting pot’, which will turn everybody out in a common mould, as one of a series of carbon copies of someone’s misplaced vision of the stereotyped Englishman… I define integration, therefore, not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity,” he said. Katwala [head of U.K.-based think tank on integration and migration British Future] says he was probably right to do so, at a time when immigrants, largely from former colonies, had quite a strong sense of British culture and its expectations anyway. But over time, as immigrant groups grew more diverse and ideas of what British culture was became less clearly defined, this approach looked less satisfactory. By 2011, former Prime Minister David Cameron had declared that multiculturalism had “failed,” but nobody was clear about what was supposed to replace it.
In recent years, politicians and the type of people who read policy reports have been well aware that there’s something of a vacuum between talk and action. As Casey put it in her review, “Numerous reports on community cohesion and integration had been produced in the preceding 15 years but the recommendations they had made were difficult to see in action.” A controversial topic like integration may be guaranteed to grab punchy headlines each time a review is announced, but generally proves far more complex to actually address.
One reason for the absence of government policy on this issue might be that there is less of a problem than it often seems. Buried in the Casey review were plenty of positive statistics: 82 percent of Britons socialize at least once a month with people from a different ethnic and religious background. Over 98 percent of people living in the U.K. speak English. Many supposedly isolated communities turn out on closer inspection to be boringly similar: extensive polling by the center-right London-based Policy Exchange think tank in December, for example, found that “In terms of their everyday concerns and priorities, British Muslims answer [our survey] no differently from their non-Muslim neighbors.”
And, some would argue, as long as people are generally getting along OK, why should they have to subscribe to sets of ill-defined cultural values that nobody can agree on anyway? “There’s a brilliant quote from the rapper Heems where he says: ‘My parents didn’t come here to assimilate, they came here to make money,’” says Nikesh Shukla, editor of The Good Immigrant, an essay collection on the British immigrant experience. “Wherever [people] move in the world, their first thought isn’t ‘I’m moving to integrate into society.’”
Defending her review from critical questioning by MPs in parliament on January 10, Casey gave examples of supposedly British traits Eastern European immigrants had not learned, including taking out the trash on the right evening and being “nice.” Neither is a practice unique to Anglo-Saxon culture.
However overblown the headlines that emerge after reviews like Casey’s, it’s important not to forget that some genuine issues do exist. Katwala points to the problems with integration, particularly how concerns about the topic are a significant driver of the spiraling anti-immigration feeling in Britain. “If you’re a country that’s quite confident about integration…you’re probably a country that’s got more consent for immigration,” he says. To take the issue of language, for example: While the vast majority of people in the U.K. speak English, there were 850,000 immigrants in 2011 who did not, according to the last British census, making it far harder for them to navigate British society by themselves.
So where there are problems, what can the British government do to address them? For the opposite approach to Britain’s—with its own substantial pitfalls—we can look to France, where immigrants have traditionally been expected to sacrifice many aspects of their home culture in the name of becoming French. This more “assimilationist” approach goes back to modern France’s revolutionary origins, as Joseph Downing, a Marie Curie fellow at Aix-Marseille University, explains: “The political elite after the French revolution felt that the ethnic diversity of France itself…was a weakness,” he says. The Constitution of the Year III, adopted by revolutionary France in 1795, enshrined the country’s colonies as “integral parts of the republic.” From that era on, the French approach has broadly been to ignore ethnic differences and maintain a strict separation between religion and government in favor of a shared national identity.
In his report, Umunna [British Labour Party MP] says changing Britain’s approach to integration should stop short of France’s “assimilationist politics.” It’s right to say that the French approach has brought substantial problems, says Downing: “because the state doesn’t recognize difference, it doesn’t have the means to fight…discrimination.” This “colorblind” approach has led to entrenched inequality in a range of areas of French life, from prisons (it is estimated that 70 percent of inmates are Muslim, but the lack of official statistics that confirm that add to the difficulty of tackling the problem), to schools (the equality required by the constitution has made it difficult to pass laws to make it easier for poorer students from different backgrounds to reach the top universities until recent years). At its most extreme, it manifests itself in policies like last summer’s attempted ban on the burkini, Islamic swimwear for women, that sparked condemnation across Europe.
One answer, says Katwala, is to work out what demands should be made of British citizens, and then communicate them not only to immigrants and the descendents of immigrants but to white British people too. Often, as Shukla points out, the integration debate “lacks nuance, because it seems to just go on skin color.” People whose families have lived in the U.K. for generations are lumped in with recent arrivals, while the responsibilities of white British people are ignored. “Integration has now got to become a sort of ‘everybody issue,’” Katwala says. “The majority hasn’t really known what its role or place in integration is.” Any approach to integration in contemporary Britain will need to emphasize the responsibility of all citizens equally, says Katwala, or risk provoking a backlash.
But in more concrete terms, where there are clearly identifiable issues, the problem often comes back to government planning and funds. A report by the think tank Demos published in 2014 blamed language problems among immigrants partly on “a poor understanding of the scale of need, and of the quality of provision” of language classes. The APPG report noted that the economic security of immigrants is one of the most important factors in how easy they find it to integrate, and said there might be a need for government to invest more in helping migrants to enter the labor market. It also said that local government should take more of the responsibility for improving integration, to increase pressure for change and ensure policies are carefully tailored to requirements in an area.
After Brexit, immigration is likely to be at the heart of the British political debate for some time, and it’s essential that the conversation focuses on how British society works, not just on the numbers of people arriving. But any such discussion has to acknowledge Britain’s relative success so far at integrating migrants, and address immigrants arriving in the country as equals, not treat them as problems to be solved. “I don’t think acknowledging that migration and population change can pose challenges means that we need to kowtow to a UKIP agenda,” Umunna says. However, only a genuinely positive and inclusive approach to drawing British society together can solve the problems that do exist, without creating new ones.
Does seem that this guide would have benefited from greater care in its design and emphasis. That being said, it is an effort to capture some unwritten aspects of integration but not whether the content reflects evidence or is based upon the assumptions of the authors:
Immigrants who settle in Quebec City are being offered a new guide to explain local customs, and the authors spare no detail in telling the newcomers how to fit in – for example, refrain from committing incest, wash with soap and use underarm deodorant to “control perspiration and bad odours.”
The guide from city hall was made public last week and has already been condemned as insulting and paternalistic.
“It’s a good idea to prepare something intelligent to help immigrants, but the way it was done is infantilizing,” Anne Guérette, municipal opposition leader in Quebec City, said on Sunday.
Quebec City is one of 13 municipalities across Quebec designated by the province to settle refugees from Syria. While Montreal remains the overwhelming destination of choice for newcomers, more than 550 state-sponsored refugees landed in Quebec City, 400 of them from Syria.
To help them integrate, city hall unveiled a guide last week, “Québec, Une ville pour moi” (Quebec City, A city for me) that spells out “common values” and ways of life in the province’s second-largest city. Some of the values, such as the equality of men and women, are commonly recognized in Canada. Other rules in the booklet, whose contents were first reported in Le Journal de Québec, seem to treat newcomers as if they are joining the civilized world for the first time, or have never bathed.
The section on “Hygiene and body care,” which is accompanied by a diagram of a dark-haired man with a beard, advises brushing one’s teeth at least twice a day “with a toothbrush and toothpaste.” Hand-washing is a must, “especially after going to the bathroom,” among other occasions. Socks and underwear should be washed after each use. And when washing one’s body, “pay particular attention to underarms, feet and intimate parts.”
For household rules, the guide counsels limiting kitchen odours through the use of an oven vent, and removing shoes inside the house to avoid disturbing one’s neighbours. In yet another rule aimed at removing “bad odours,” the guide helpfully suggests opening a window.
Mayor Régis Labeaume defended the guide in Quebec City last week, calling it “completely normal.”
“We could have just talked about sorting household garbage, but that is not enough,” Mr. Labeaume said. “There are practices, ways, traditions that are different,” he said. “There are laws and rules that exist here that might be different from the countries of origin of immigrants. So it’s better to go this far.”
The tips out of Quebec City come as the country debates the notion of defining “Canadian values,” as the country integrates large numbers of newcomers, and as Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch has proposed screening would-be immigrants for “anti-Canadian values.”
Quebec City’s guide, which received funding from the provincial immigration ministry, also has a section on family violence. It says using violence against your spouse violates the Criminal Code, as is using “unreasonable” force or using a belt or ruler to punish your child. Sexual consent is necessary even among married couples. Incest is a crime.
The guide is being distributed to organizations working with immigrants and refugees. Chantal Gilbert, a city councillor whose responsibilities include minority ethnic communities, says the individual sections can be made available to groups depending on their particular needs.
“There are communities to whom things won’t necessarily apply,” she said. “There are communities that might come from a place that is exactly the same culture as us, though they might need to know how things work for schooling. Even a French person from France comes here and can’t figure out the schooling for their children.”
On how Switzerland makes it particularly hard to participate and integrate:
Since permit and citizenship laws have become tied to social aid money, both Müller and Chukwunyere have worked with people who try to avoid taking such payments because they know the consequences.
“They would definitely be eligible for social aid and are considered working poor. But they don’t want the support anymore – and what does that mean for their children?” Chukwunyere wonders.
Müller mostly sees the laws affecting young immigrants who have no choice but to take social aid money when they become adults because their families depended on it throughout their childhood.
Usually, those young people aren’t after citizenship – at least not right away – but they do want to get a residence permit that gives them a better chance on the job market in Switzerland. To get a better permit, they also have to prove they’re not getting social aid and pay it back in some cases – nearly impossible for young people just starting out on their own.
“Those with certain types of permits aren’t eligible for scholarships, so they’re forced to take social aid money at age 18,” Müller explains. “Unless they don’t do an apprenticeship and look for a job right away, but that’s not what’s generally encouraged in Switzerland.”
“It is a big goal for young immigrants to get another type of permit,” Müller says. “And you’re taking some hope away from them if you tell them that it will be more difficult to get that permit if they take social aid money.”
More laws
Although Elif and Emre feel discouraged that they will have to wait nearly another decade to become Swiss, they say they’ll wait it out and fight for the law to be repealed in the meantime.
But political winds may be blowing against them, with similar laws being debated or in place in other cantons such as Uri, Basel City and Aargau. And the new national citizenship law, which will come into force in 2018, will have a similar effect because it requires applicants for naturalisation to have a permanent residence permit, generally only obtainable for those who pay off their social aid debts.
Meanwhile, the number of citizenship applications in canton Bern have increased again after having fallen off considerably following the approval of Hess’s law.
“I’m sure there would have been even more applications without the law,” Hess said of the rebound in Bern’s Der Bund newspaper, adding that his party advocates for quality and not quantity when it comes to citizenship and that today’s citizens are better integrated as a result.
But Chukwunyere wonders where that leaves the quarter of the Swiss population without a passport.
“Research shows that a person only feels at home when they can participate,” Chukwunyere points out. “Here you can only fully participate if you are Swiss. But if you hang the fruit so high that everyone knows they can’t reach it, then you’re achieving the opposite of integration.”
Multicultural Meanderings 