Canadians cannot be overly impatient with integration of immigrants, Justin Trudeau says

2016/09/17 Leave a comment

Worth noting the PM’s understanding of the integration process:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used the example of Italian grandmothers in Montreal on Thursday to explain why Canadians shouldn’t be “overly impatient” with the integration of newcomers.

Being fearful of immigrants is “nothing new” in Canada and around the world, he said, explaining that Italians and Greeks settling in Montreal in the 1950s faced similar kinds of discrimination as do Muslims and other immigrants today.

“The first generation is always going to have challenges in integrating,” Trudeau said during a panel discussion with London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

“There are districts (in Montreal) where Italian grandmothers still pretty much only speak Italian and don’t speak that much French or English. But their kids and grandkids are seamlessly and completely integrated into Montreal and the only difference is they tend to be trilingual and not just bilingual.”

The prime minister was taking part in a day-long conference hosted by Canada 2020, which describes itself as a progressive think-tank.

Asked by the panel moderator what can be done to reduce fear of and discrimination against newcomers, Trudeau replied that what’s happening in Canada and around the world is “nothing new.”

Italians, Greeks faced ‘tremendous distrust’

Italians and Greeks who settled in the northern part of Montreal and in other Canadian cities “faced tremendous discrimination, tremendous distrust.”

“This country didn’t happen by accident,” Trudeau continued. “And it won’t continue without effort. When we think about integration and success we can’t be overly impatient.”

He said citizens should “keep a solid pressure” to ensure human rights and the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms are respected by all Canadians.

Trudeau also referred to his time visiting places of worship around the country such as mosques and temples.

He was recently criticized online and in some Canadian media for visiting a mosque in Ottawa where women and men were kept separate.

Engage with all communities, Trudeau says

The prime minister said Canadians should engage with all communities.

“The question is, do you engage or participate or say ‘I’m not going to talk to you until you hit the norm or the perfect ideal that we all aspire to’,” he said. “I think (the latter) is wrong.”

Khan said Canada “has become a beacon of how a civilized G7 country should treat those who are vulnerable and need help.”

He also praised Trudeau for his “progressive” politics and said the prime minister’s election in October 2015 inspired him.

Source: Canadians cannot be overly impatient with integration of immigrants, Justin Trudeau says – Montreal – CBC News

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Integration and multiculturalism: Finding a new metaphor – Policy Options

2016/09/14 Leave a comment

Having never been comfortable with the “two-way street” metaphor for immigrant integration, I finally got around to articulating my reasons more formally, and proposing some alternatives and stimulating debate and discussion.

The following article in IRPP’s Policy Options is the result.

Some other alternatives that I have received to date include: Wittgensteinian sailing a boat while always renewing the planks, in economics, the supply and demand model in setting prices and achieving a new equilibrium, big river with little streams, and the Norwegian metaphor of samspill, or play together.

I welcome additional suggestions and comments:

When immigration officials and advocates talk about the integration process for new Canadians, often they reach for the metaphor of a “two-way street.” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada notes that “the focus of the integration programs at CIC is on operationalizing the ‘two-way street approach’…through assisting individuals to become active, connected and productive citizens.” The Canadian Index on Immigration Integration talks about the “metaphorical meeting of the immigrant and the receiving population somewhere in the middle of the street.” Former Immigration minister Jason Kenney used the phrase in speeches, where he emphasized the duty of newcomers to adapt to their new home and the responsibility of Canadians to accommodate them.

But does a metaphor matter? It does, given Canada’s increasingly diverse population and the challenges of ensuring successful integration of immigrants and their children. Getting the metaphor right will convey expectations to newcomers and the host society alike regarding their respective roles in the integration process.

The “two-way street” is handy shorthand. With integration, immigrants and the host society both adapt to each other’s presence, instead of the assimilationist expectation that immigrants will completely adopt the values, attitudes, norms and lifestyles of the host. The aim of integration is for immigrants and their children to obey Canadian laws and eventually and voluntarily to adopt Canadian values, attitudes, norms and lifestyles, most notably gender equality and acceptance of other groups. The ultimate goal is that they eventually enjoy economic, social, health and political outcomes that are broadly comparable with those of “old-stock” Canadians. Accommodation by the host society aims at facilitating that integration process.

While diversions from this norm exist; for example, voluntary exclusion as in the cases of Mennonites or other religious communities, or involuntary exclusion because of racism and discrimination (separation or segregation, to use psychology scholar John Berry’s terms), the overall emphasis is on this integration process.

However, in order for metaphors to be successful, they have to speak to the broader population, not just the specialists, and they have to resonate in a visceral way. They have to be simple and easy to grasp, but they also have to avoid being simplistic. The “two-way-street” metaphor is unsuccessful for a number of reasons.

Streets are for cars, not people. Cars do not meet on a two-way street, they drive past each other (and if they do meet, usually it is in a crash!). Integration is about mingling, interacting and adapting.

The integration process is asymmetric: it is more important for immigrants and new Canadians to adapt to Canadian laws, norms and values than it is for the host society to adjust to them. The meeting point is not “somewhere in the middle” between the host society and the newcomers, but much closer to the host society (80/20 percent, in my view).

And integration is dynamic and ever changing, not linear. What is deemed acceptable evolves through the democratic, legal and political processes, as newcomers assert their identities and their rights and the host society responds. What was originally considered unacceptable (e.g., turban-wearing Mounties) becomes normal; what might initially be considered acceptable (e.g., sharia family law in Ontario) is deemed unacceptable following public discussion and debate.

It also must be noted that the values of the host society are dynamic and change over time; for example, attitudes toward gender equality, homosexuality and same sex marriage have undergone a sea change in Canada and elsewhere over the past generation. Immigrants and new Canadians are expected eventually to follow suit.

The metaphor also fails to capture the diversity and multilayered identities in Canadians, and how these can change with contexts and individual preferences. Ethnicity, religion, gender, age, generation, and lived experiences all play a part at the individual and group levels.

So, what are better phrases that describe this process and dynamic, and how do these capture the roles of newcomers and the host society?

Similar to the multiculturalism dynamic, the integration/accommodation dynamic captures the fact that newcomers integrate into the host society while the host society accommodates and adjusts to newcomer needs and identities. A combination of push and pull between newcomers and the host society, mediated through political, judicial and everyday socio-cultural processes, finds an equilibrium point, which evolves over time. Individuals and groups provide the push that forces the host society to respond. And, of course, as the host society itself becomes more diverse and its values evolve, this mediation happens between not only the “old stock” Canadians of the host society but also the more established and more recent groups of immigrants.

A more sophisticated version of this characterization can be seen in Harald Bauder’s description of integration as a process of Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, or the host society (thesis) being challenged by newcomers (antithesis), resulting in a new balance and accommodation (synthesis), hence reducing the difference between the “newcomer ‘other’ and the Canadian ‘self’.”

Another concept used by some academics and policy-makers in a multiculturalism context, is that of harmony/jazz. Harmony is provided by the legal and constitutional framework that applies to all Canadians — it is the underlying melody. Jazz reflects improvisation in dealing with accommodation requests within that overall context. Again, the underlying harmony predominates. This approach has the advantage of being more flexible in dealing with accommodation pressures.

So what best describes integration and multiculturalism? Passing each other on a two-way street or “making music together?” My preference is the latter, as it describes the dynamic, complex and varied nature of how we, in our ever more diverse society, continue to search for a new and hopefully improved equilibrium.  Perhaps just as every jazz band interprets a musical composition in new and unanticipated ways, so does a healthy, diverse multicultural society.

—

I would like to thank Michael Adams and Harald Bauder for their helpful comments and suggestions on integration definitions and metaphors.

Source: Integration and multiculturalism: Finding a new metaphor – Policy Options

Filed under Immigration, Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

A Danish school now separates children by ethnicity – The Washington Post

2016/09/09 Leave a comment

Unlikely to help integration and reflective of a broader trend in Denmark:

Nearly a year after the influx of migrants into Europe reached its peak, the repercussions can now be felt in thousands of classrooms across the continent as a new school year begins.

Whereas most other schools are focused on assimilating migrant children, one Danish school in the city of Aarhus has decided to separate them. The idea has drawn criticism from human rights advocates who question the legality of segregating children based on their ethnicity.

Many countries provide separate schooling for newcomers in efforts at quicker assimilation. In special “international classes” in Germany, for example, migrant and refugee children receive intensive language training in an attempt to move them into normal German classrooms as soon as possible.

The Danish school’s approach, however, is somewhat different because it was not originally designed to integrate migrant children better. Instead, it seeks to allow children to avoid classes with more migrants than ethnic Danes, according to the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which first reported the story. There are now four classes for migrant children and three mixed classes in which the ratio between migrants and ethnic Danes is equal. The policy does not only apply to refugees or children born abroad, but also to pupils who grew up in Denmark but have parents who migrated from abroad.

The case of the Aarhus school is considered isolated. About 25 percent of the school’s pupils were either migrants or the children of migrant parents in 2007, but that number has since risen to 80 percent.

Some critics of the plan say it reflects a deeper trend within a society that has grown opposed to more immigration. Denmark made headlines last year with a law that allowed police officers to seize valuables from refugees as a way to help defray the costs of hosting the new arrivals — many from war-ravaged countries such as Syria and Iraq. Opponents of such policies say that Denmark is increasingly isolating itself and portraying the country as unwelcoming to refugees and others. The number of refugees coming to the country has decreased significantly as a result.

 “It is pure discrimination when you sort people according to whether they are white or brown Danes,” Jette Møller, the president of the nongovernmental organization SOS Against Racism, was quoted as saying by Jyllands-Posten. The school headmaster has rebutted such criticism, saying the measures were necessary to prevent ethnic Danes from leaving the institution.

Source: A Danish school now separates children by ethnicity – The Washington Post

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Getting Syrians here was easy. Now comes the hard part.

2016/08/12 Leave a comment

Good long read by Michael Friscolanti:

But as accurate as that may be, the Trudeau government has no firm statistics on how many Syrian refugees are actually earning a paycheque. This much is certain, though: to expect that every family will be self-sufficient after 12 months is wishful thinking.

“Some will do better than others,” says Carolyn Davis, executive director of Catholic Crosscultural Services, a settlement agency that also provides training courses for private sponsors. “Some will probably be independent and no longer requiring assistance before month 13, some will be independent by month 13, and some will not be independent by month 13. It would be very hard for me to put any numbers or proportions on that, but there will be people in every single one of those circumstances.”

That some government-assisted refugees end up on social assistance is hardly new. Departmental figures show that in 2009 (the latest stats available), 49 per cent of government-sponsored refugees who had arrived two years earlier were collecting welfare (compared to 19 per cent of privately sponsored refugees). Although most gradually wean off (50 per cent after the second year, 75 per cent by the fourth), a proportion stay dependent on welfare for the rest of the their lives.

“I think, as Canadians, we need to wrap our heads around that,” Douglas says. “These are refugees. These are not people who made a choice to come to Canada. These are folks who have been running for their lives, who have experienced things we can’t even begin to imagine, and as a country, we absolutely have to understand that we will always have refugees who will never be able to work.”

Indeed, it’s important to remember that government-assisted refugees are specifically flagged by the UNHCR because they are considered the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. They aren’t chosen because of job skills.

“In general, people are going to need to have a realistic viewpoint of the maximum you can expect,” Desloges says. “There is so much hopefulness and joy around the program right now, which is wonderful, but not everyone is going to succeed. You’re going to have some superstars who are going to grab this opportunity with two hands and become something wonderful, but we have to be realistic in our expectation. Just be grateful that we were able to save some lives.”

In the meantime, though, cities are bracing for month 13, well aware that a significant number of Syrians will soon transfer from federal to provincial assistance, at least temporarily. “It’s a big challenge, there is no way around it,” says Qaqish, the city councillor in Ottawa, which has welcomed more than 1,500 Syrians. “The province pays for social assistance but the municipalities administer it. We’ve asked the feds if they are open to the idea of extending federal assistance, maybe for another six months.”

Like others, Qaqish worries that some refugees will no longer be able to afford their rent because many landlords initially lowered prices in a show of solidarity with the Syrian program. Some stakeholders also fear the optics: a refugee collecting a welfare cheque is hardly the stuff of photo-ops.

“One refugee that fails resettlement is not acceptable, because it means we as a society failed to make sure those people integrated,” says Rabea Allos, director of the Catholic Refugee Sponsors Council, an umbrella organization for private sponsorship groups. “You don’t want, a year or two down the road, for Canadians to become upset with the refugee program and believe that some people are abusing the system. They will say: ‘You know what? Let’s stop getting refugees in.’ This is the concern. We want the program to work so Canadians will continue this compassion toward bringing more refugees.”

Source: Getting Syrians here was easy. Now comes the hard part. – Macleans.ca

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Integral to Canada’s economy, immigrants deserve more support: John Ralston Saul

2016/07/23 Leave a comment

Ralston Saul’s take on where some improvement is needed. Should provoke some good discussion and debate:

What would this mean today? What are we not doing, or not doing enough?

First, we seem to forget that our society and our economy were built from 1850 on the wealth of public education.

Today that simple strategy is more important than ever. In an urban society, newcomers need to adjust much faster. Immigration often comes with language difficulties and cultural complexities. Both require much smaller classes for students. A monolithic group of middle-class children can get by in classes of 30 students. A complex school with many newcomers needs classes of 20 at the most and a greater emphasis on all those adjustment phenomena. That means more teachers. Many more.

And volunteer mentoring programs like Pathways to Education have a strategic role to play. Canada is a world leader in volunteerism, but these kids, whose parents are themselves struggling with language and adjustment, need the support of established citizens. This is about much more than simple tutoring.

And while it is true that new Canadians are above-average creators of companies and some of our large corporations have serious diversity programs, other companies as well as our schools, colleges, universities and governments are lagging behind in support programs.

There are not nearly enough courses available on how our bureaucracies work, on regulatory structures, on business law, on the culture of business in Canada. There seems to be little understanding in the big urban centres that new Canadian entrepreneurs often prefer to install themselves in suburbs or smaller cities. This requires a different approach to training programs.

As I looked through the many studies which have been done, the message keeps coming back to the lack of professional networks. I was left with the sense that basic things are not being done – or not done enough. Have chambers of commerce thrown themselves into helping new Canadians find their way? Are business schools – so obsessed with overcharging for their services – reaching out to help new Canadians get started? Who is providing easily available advice on professional norms, on how people act in business situations? Treat each other? In a very good Maytree and Metcalf Foundation report, we learn of initiatives being taken in the Netherlands and in Finland. In a Conference Board of Canada report, it is clear that businesses still do not take advantage of the language skills of new Canadians when it comes to international possibilities.

And despite enormous pressure to change over the years, professional self-regulating bodies continue to grumble and to obstruct when it comes to the equivalence of foreign qualifications. This can be seen as a way to protect their advantages. By limiting membership in their profession, they limit competition. This is classic protectionism.

Those old self-regulation models of the professions are increasingly an obstacle to maximizing the contributions of new Canadians. Germany – the champion of tough professional standards! – is now moving ahead of Canada by setting up clear, efficient equivalency rules for immigrating professionals.

In spite of all these problems, immigrants and new citizens continue to be important drivers of our economy. And they quickly become participants in society, and catch on to the volunteerism ethic. But Canada has never been a place of economic ease or easily shared well-being. If it works, it is because we have designed social agreements and public policies to support individual action.

It is fashionable to insist that everything changes. And some things do change. But social behaviour and its economic outcomes are pretty stable factors in all societies. The Canadian idea that an immigrant is a citizen in the making is tied to the idea of both public support and volunteerism. And all of this makes it possible and essential that we will adjust and act aggressively to ensure that new citizens get their chance. At this point, I would say that they are making their effort, while our constituted society is lagging behind.

Source: Integral to Canada’s economy, immigrants deserve more support – The Globe and Mail

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ICYMI: Jihad and the French Exception: Farhad Khosrowkhovar – The New York Times

2016/07/23 Leave a comment

Good, thought-provoking explanation of some of the reasons for France’s “exceptionalism” and the arguable failure of its integration model:

France’s distinctiveness arises in part from the ideological strength of the idea the nation has had of itself since the French Revolution, including an assertive form of republicanism and an open distrust of all religions, beginning, historically, with Catholicism. This model has been knocked around over the years, first by decolonization, then by decades of economic hardship, the growing stigmatization of cultural differences, the fervent individualism of new generations and globalization, which has narrowed the state’s room for maneuver.

Above all, France hasn’t been able to solve the problem of economic and social exclusion. Its system, which is too protective of those people who have jobs and not open enough to those who don’t, breeds angst all around. Young people in the banlieues, marginalized and with few prospects, feel like victims. They become prime targets for jihadist propaganda, often after a stint in prison for petty crimes.

Neither Germany nor Britain faces the banlieues phenomenon, at least not on such a scale. The German town of Dinslaken, which is partly ghettoized, has become a hotbed of Islamist radicalization. The same goes for Dewsbury, in West Yorkshire, and the Molenbeek district of Brussels. But France seems to alienate many more of its citizens and residents, well beyond those who actually join the Islamic State.

One reason is that France’s vision of citizenship, which strongly insists on adherence to a few exalted political values, has seriously eroded over time. By the 1980s, the republican ideal was floundering: It had promised equal opportunity, and that now seemed to be in short supply. The French Communist Party, which had long brought dignity to disadvantaged groups by proposing to fight injustice through class struggle, also greatly weakened during that period, partly because of the demise of the Soviet Union.

Postwar Germany, on the other hand, chose a far more modest and prudent vision: economic progress. Today, Germany has a rather muted foreign policy toward the Muslim world, and it displays no desire to unite all its citizens around universal principles. Britain isn’t trying to create a monocultural society either. It has opted for multiculturalism, which can abide hyphenated identities and communal behavior.

France, however, remains resolutely universalist and claims it still has both the desire and the power to enforce inclusion. Yet its assimilationist ambitions are increasingly at odds with everyday reality, and this growing gap is a source of pervasive distress.

And so the strength — the weight — of France’s national identity has become a problem. It only heightens the discontent of young people with foreign origins, especially North Africans or their descendants, all the more so because the Maghreb’s decolonization occurred in pain and humiliation: When France withdrew from Algeria, it left behind hundreds of thousands dead and created scars in the collective unconscious that remain to this day. British decolonization seems almost painless in comparison.

Certainly, Britons and Germans also express fears about immigration and Islam. Such concerns help explain Brexit. Acts of sexual harassment in Cologne around the new year, apparently committed by immigrants, sparked a heated debate in Germany (and beyond). But both Britain and Germany give non-local minorities ample leeway to publicly express and practice their religious and communal preferences.

France insists — in the name of republicanism — that religion should remain a strictly private affair. An ideological nation par excellence, it focuses on symbolic issues like wearing headscarves or holding collective prayers in public places. But restricting such practices causes wounds that go much deeper than the prohibitions themselves: It allows Islamists to exaggerate the implications and accuse France of Islamophobia. In fact, France is no more Islamophobic than its neighbors; it’s just more frontal in the way it handles Islam in the public sphere.

French-style integration has had some successes. Most notable among them is a high rate of mixed marriages. The French public school system, by helping uplift the lower classes and, therefore, many children of North African parents, has also been a tool of integration (although lately it has seemed less effective). Sometimes precisely because they have faced prejudice in the job market, which has long been stifled by unemployment, children of immigrants have found refuge in state institutions like the army and the police, which recruit through anonymous competitive exams.

Although France has managed to integrate many immigrants and their descendants, those it has left on the sidelines are more embittered than their British or German peers, and many feel insulted in their Muslim or Arab identity. Laïcité, France’s staunch version of secularism, is so inflexible it can appear to rob them of dignity. An additional factor is France’s muscular foreign policy, which seems to target mostly Muslim countries, such as Libya, Syria and Mali.

Source: Jihad and the French Exception – The New York Times

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Samara initiative to increase political engagement of new Canadians

2016/07/22 Leave a comment

Another good and interesting initiative:

What happens when you ask newcomers to Canada what they care about, add a question about democracy, and then give everyone some playdough? 

They talk, discuss, collaborate, and create. Ultimately, they build confidence in their democratic voice.

For the last year, that is exactly what has been happening in one of the most diverse regions of Canada. North York Community House (NYCH) and Samara, with the support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, have undertaken a major initiative to strengthen democratic engagement by training almost 50 staff members and engaging over 600 community members. 

NYCH_Collage_1.jpgServing newcomers and residents of northwest Toronto for over 25 years, NYCH has come to recognize that improving democratic engagement is essential to helping build strong, healthy communities. By helping participants of all ages and backgrounds find and develop their political voice, Samara’s Democracy Talks has proven an effective tool for engaging and empowering NYCH’s diverse membership.

Democracy Talks takes a different approach than many civic education programs. Instead of inviting participants to a class to learn about Canada’s political system, Democracy Talks activities are integrated into a wide range of existing programs – English conversation circles, citizenship classes, youth programs, and even cooking classes.

NYCH_Collage_2-1.jpg

As a result, in North York alone, the program has engaged participants from over 34 different countries and ages 13 to 65. Many participants reported that, prior to this initiative, they had no opportunities to discuss issues they care about in a non-partisan and safe environment. What participants learned was simple but profound. In the words of two participants:

“It’s not just the Prime Minister that has the power, we have the power too.” 

“I learned that things can change.”

Most heartening of all, we have begun to witness a shift in culture such that both NYCH staff and community members value democratic life and have confidence in their political voice. Illustrating this shift on a beautiful evening in May, over one hundred community members packed into the Change Fair, hosted by NYCH and Samara, to talk with each other, share what they had learned, and make sure their political voice was heard. (For more on the event, check out our blog.)

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Douglas Todd: Immigrant workshops in Vancouver face up to difficulties of integration

2016/07/22 Leave a comment

Good initiative on the “soft knowledge” concerning integration:

When Mohamed Ehab arrived in Vancouver from Egypt six years ago, he knew nothing about Pride parades or the Grouse Grind.

The 40-year-old pharmacist, who now enjoys hiking up North Vancouver’s Grouse Grind trail, wishes other immigrants and refugees would get up to speed earlier on such cultural matters — so that they can avoid self-isolation and integrate more fully into Canada’s liberal-democratic culture.

Aware that many immigrants and refugees arrive in Canada from patriarchal societies in the Middle East and Asia, outgoing Ehab and his philanthropic supporters are gearing up to have him lead workshops that would ease newcomers’ often-difficult transitions.

“When I arrived in Canada I wanted to become part of the Canadian community, not just the immigrant Arab or Egyptian communities,” says Ehab, who has for the past few years used Facebook to organize informal foreign-film events in Vancouver.

While Ehab intends his workshops to be enjoyable and practical guides to Metro Vancouver and Canada, they will also take on some of the serious issues that he believes sometimes push newcomers into confining themselves to ethno-cultural “pockets.”

Ehab’s course will explain Canadian customs regarding such things as homosexual couples, trusting police officers, accepting common-law relationships, paying a fair share of taxes, wearing revealing clothes and sexist behavior.

“New immigrants and refugees don’t have to agree with everything they will find here. But they should know that those things are part of what it means to be in Canada,” Ehab said.

The Vancouver workshops, which will run for four hours a day for a week, loosely echo programs in European countries such as Norway and the Netherlands.

That’s where some asylum seekers are learning in classes to discuss such things as Western women, mini-skirts, sexual boundaries and domestic violence, with the refugees often reporting they take the programs so they will find it easier to fit in.

Homosexual relationships in the West, Ehab says, are especially difficult for many immigrants and refugees to comprehend.

Mohamed Ehab (centre) is a pharmacist originally from Egypt, now residing in Vancouver. He helps immigrants and newcomers to Canada helping them try to understand the Canadian way of life. Ehab is pictured on the Grouse Grind in North Vancouver, BC Wednesday, July 20, 2016. Ehad is pictured with Farooq Al-Sajee (left) and Farzin Jamatlou.

“In the Middle East, if somebody comes out as gay, they will be thrown in jail. It’s a crime there,” he says.

Ehab knows of an isolated couple from the Middle East, who have lived in an ethnic enclave in Ontario for almost five years, who recently asked, “What’s the LGBT community?”

Similarly, many immigrants from the Middle East and elsewhere could gain from being informed about heterosexual sex outside marriage, divorce and women and men sharing public spaces, including exercise classes.

“We would inform newcomers about how dating works here, for instance. That it’s not taboo,” said Ehab.

Many immigrants, he noted, come from nations where it’s almost unheard of to engage in male-female relationships beyond one’s own ethno-cultural or religious group.

Asked about recent refugees from Syria who are refusing to be seen by Canadian doctors of a different sex, or to work with language interpreters of a different sex, Ehab said it’s better for newcomers to “not be surprised” about Canadian expectations about such things.

The workshops, which will operate out of immigrant-support organizations, are being paid for by people who have long worked with institutions devoted to multicultural understanding, such as the Laurier Institute, SUCCESS and outreach arms of the RCMP.

“The sponsors of these workshops are immigrants who feel there is a lack of education about the understanding of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and about the need for people to reach out beyond their communities,” says one sponsor, Farid Rohani, who recently chaired the Laurier Institute and the Institute of Canadian Citizenship.

“Many Canadians feel immigrants seem to live in their own castles. The new arrivals on the other hand are afraid of making contact; they fear making a mistake or offending someone,” said Rohani, whose family arrived from Iran.

Rohani said the trouble with the way many new immigrants meet each other in Canada — in English-as-second-language classes — is that they often tend to form into “cliques of uninformed people. They often don’t learn how to integrate.”

Clarence Cheng, former chief executive of the SUCCESS Foundation, which supports immigrants, said the workshops will include guest speakers such as police officers, judges and tax department officials.

The speakers’ tasks, among other things, is to educate immigrants that they have come to a new land where it’s worthwhile to generally trust agents of the government and to cooperate with them.

Ehab readily acknowledged it’s common, for instance, for people in Middle Eastern countries to be deeply suspicious of the police, and fear police favouritism and brutality. “In many Middle Eastern regions, the police are a country unto themselves.”

Despite the gravity of some of the issues that will be explored, Ehab said a goal of the workshops will be on finding ways to overcome the alienation and sense of “coldness” immigrants often feel in new countries and cities.

“We want to offer practical advice on finding jobs and new ways to make friends. And we want to make the workshops a fun and happy experience. I’m very excited.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Immigrant workshops in Vancouver face up to difficulties of integration

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Québec dit avoir été trop «passif» | Le Devoir

2016/07/13 Leave a comment

Suspect the reasons are deeper than what a small advertising campaign can fix:

La désaffection des immigrants envers les cours de francisation est en partie la faute de Québec, a reconnu lundi la ministre Kathleen Weil, qui dit que le gouvernement « a été passif ». Pour corriger la situation, Québec mise sur une campagne estivale de promotion des cours.

Québec investira 250 000 $ d’ici le 30 août en publicité dans différents journaux, radios et sites Internet — de même que dans le métro et les autobus de Montréal — pour inciter les immigrants à s’inscrire à des cours qui, souligne-t-on, ne coûtent rien. « Apprendre le français, c’est gratuit et c’est gagnant », vante ainsi le slogan de la campagne.

L’objectif est d’augmenter de 10 % le nombre d’immigrants qui suivent des cours de francisation, a indiqué la ministre de l’Immigration. Selon le rapport annuel de gestion 2014-2015 du ministère de l’Immigration, de la Diversité et de l’Inclusion [MIDI], 26 109 personnes ont participé à un ou des cours de français l’an dernier.

C’est là une baisse de 6,1 % par rapport à l’année précédente — résultant notamment d’un recul de fréquentation des cours de français à temps plein (-6,3 %) et des cours en ligne (-30 %). Dans les faits, si l’objectif est atteint, Québec retrouvera le niveau atteint en 2011-2012, mais demeurera sous celui de 2012-2013 (29 200 personnes).

En janvier, Le Devoir révélait que près de 60 % des immigrants adultes qui ne connaissent pas le français en arrivant au Québec refusent de suivre des cours. Or, si l’apprentissage du français est évidemment important pour l’intégration à la société québécoise, il l’est aussi pour aider à la rétention des immigrants. Une étude du MIDI dévoilée en avril montrait que 46 % des immigrants admis entre 2004 et 2013, sélectionnés en raison de leurs qualifications professionnelles et ne parlant pas français à leur arrivée, avaient quitté le Québec en 2015.

Méconnaissance

« Nous avons noté que pas assez de personnes immigrantes se prévalaient de notre offre en francisation », a indiqué Mme Weil. Elle a fait valoir que cette offre est « complète, variée et flexible » en fonction des besoins et des horaires, et que le gouvernement offre jusqu’à 115 $ par semaine à ceux qui sont inscrits à temps plein et ne peuvent donc pas travailler en même temps. « Ces éléments sont méconnus », pense Mme Weil.

Source: Québec dit avoir été trop «passif» | Le Devoir

Filed under Immigration, Integration Tagged with ,

A Close Look at Brussels Offers a More Nuanced View of Radicalization – The New York Times

2016/04/21 1 Comment

Interesting contrast between Turk and Moroccan-origin communities, and the impact of failing to deliver on integration expectations:

At a Turkish mosque in Molenbeek run by Diyanet, Turkey’s state-controlled religious affairs agency, the imam, who speaks only Turkish, expressed revulsion at the March attacks in Brussels and said that he and his worshipers never tolerate extremist views. He stressed that his congregants respect and follow the law.

Worshipers at a nearby Moroccan mosque angrily shooed away reporters, accusing them of fanning “Islamophobia” and stigmatizing their neighborhood as a haven of jihadists.

In contrast to Belgium’s Turks, the Moroccan community is far more divided and resistant to authority, in part because many of the early immigrants came from the Rif, a rebellious Berber-speaking region often at odds with the ruling monarchy in Morocco. “When emigration to Europe started, the king was happy to get rid of these people,” said Bachir M’Rabet, a youth worker of Moroccan descent in Molenbeek.

Another source of anger in his community, he added, is that many Turks often speak poor French and no Dutch, Belgium’s two main languages, and cling to their Turkish identity, while most Moroccans speak fluent French and aspire to be accepted fully as Belgians. This, he said, means that many Moroccans feel discrimination more acutely and, at least in the case of young men on the margins, tend to view even minor slights as proof that the entire system is against them.

Philippe Moureaux, who served for two decades as Molenbeek’s mayor, described this as “the paradox of integration.” A less-integrated Turkish community has resisted the promise of redemption through jihad offered by radical zealots. Yet, a Moroccan community that is more at home in French-speaking Brussels has seen some of its young fall prey to recruiters like Khalid Zerkani, a Moroccan-born petty criminal who became the Islamic State’s point man in Molenbeek.

“The Turks suffer much less from an identity crisis,” Mr. Moureaux said. “They are proud to be Turks and are much less tempted by extremism.”

Suspicion of and hostility toward authority, particularly the police force, run so deep among some North African immigrants in Molenbeek that when the police mobilized in the area this month to prevent a group of anti-immigrant right-wing hooligans from staging a rally, local youths, mostly young men of Moroccan descent, began hurling abuse and objects at the police.

Molenbeek immigrants of Turkish or other backgrounds generally have a less hostile view of the police. A Turkish shopkeeper who runs a general store near the police station said he feared not the police but aggressive North African youths who accuse him of being a bad Muslim because he sells alcohol. He noted that the youths steal, which is also forbidden.

Emir Kir, the Belgian-Turkish mayor of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, a heavily immigrant Brussels borough that is worse off economically than Molenbeek, said the only Turk he knew about who had tried to go to Syria was a young man who had fallen in love with a girl of Moroccan descent. He got as far as Istanbul before being sent back. “This was a love affair, not an act of extremism,” he said.

Source: A Close Look at Brussels Offers a More Nuanced View of Radicalization – The New York Times

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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