Learning to be a majority: Negotiating immigration, integration and national membership in Quebec

Abstract

Political leaders in Quebec have long grappled with the question of how immigrants and diversity fit into an already contested national identity. This article explores how Quebec’s elites have negotiated immigrant-generated diversity over three decades. The article argues that to make sense of Quebec’s policy-making we need to understand the interplay of different strands of collective identity. Quebec’s policies are shaped both by relational comparisons made with the ‘rest of Canada’ and by the aspiration to be a legitimate actor on the international stage. In contrast to studies suggesting sub-state nations such as Quebec either exclude migrants or are progressively more open to them, the analysis here shows that policies result from political elites’ constant balancing of different conceptions of national identity — as state-like actor, as minority claimant relative to the federal government, as diffident majority defining itself. In turn, migration policy choices themselves are used as a nation-building tool vis-à-vis federal Canada.

Minority nations and attitudes towards immigration: the case of Quebec

“…Our analyses, however, like Barker (2010) in her study of policies towards immigration in Quebec, provides evidence of a shift in trajectory. Since 2006, we observe an increase in the number of Quebecers who would like to see immigration intakes lowered.…”

“…Studies of cases as distinct as Quebec (Gagnon and Iacovino ) and the Basque Country (Jeram ) have argued that political leaders in those regions have increasingly stressed their openness to diversity and to immigration. Finally, a third body of literature has outlined important variations in minority nations' openness to immigration across space and time (see Barker ; Hepburn ; Shafir ).…”

Recalling modernity: how nationalist memories shape religious diversity in Quebec and Catalonia

“…There are also comparative studies on sub‐state nationalisms (Jeram ) and on the ways they feed into particular immigration policies (Zuber ), especially with regard to language skills and acquisition. Barker (: 12) has made the case for exploring the embeddedness of policy‐making in Quebec in multiple identity contexts and argued: ‘On the one hand, Quebec's political debates follow similar contours to debates occurring in many nation‐states about how to balance unity and diversity. On the other hand, however, Quebec's policy is shaped both by the relational comparisons it makes with the “rest of Canada” and by Quebec's aspiration to be a legitimate actor on the international stage.’ Yet, scholars have rarely explored the relationships between religious diversity, minority nationalisms and such ‘relational comparisons’.…”

Immigrant Integration Policies of the Belgian Regions: Sub-state Nationalism and Policy Divergence after Devolution

“…15 The Flemish government's hiring of an "image manager" 16 demonstrates that the Flemish authorities are concerned about their external legitimacy. The Quebec authorities' search for external legitimacy has also been shown to shape their immigration and integration policy making (Barker, 2010).…”

“…on regionalist parties and immigration (Hepburn, 2009;. 3 One exception is Barker (2010). 4 Koopmans et al (2012) do not go in depth into Belgium's co-existence of two party systems in attempt to explain the 'Belgian immigrant integration policy paradox'.…”