(RAE1b) Race, Ethnicity, and Migrant Integration Experiences in Canada

In this session, panelists discuss how race, ethnicity, and migrant integration experiences extend our understanding of racism, whiteness, racialization, culture, identity construction, and employment in Canada. Presentations from panelists include examinations of how marginalized identities are socially produced, how whiteness shapes Pakistani newcomers’ perceptions of ‘’Canadianness” (e.g. national identity, authenticity, belonging), how 'Hispanic' and 'Latinx' terms are fluid, and what multiculturalism and diversity mean to the Afghan diaspora and Francophone skilled migrants in Canada. Tags: Canadian Sociology, Equality and Inequality, Race and Ethnicity

Organizers: Carlo Handy Charles, University of Windsor, Manzah-Kyetoch Yankey, University of Alberta, Jamilah Dei-Sharpe, Concordia University; Chair: Carlo Handy Charles, University of Windsor

Presentations

Abu Haque, York University

The cultural mediation of the margin

Identities are never fully unified but are considered fragmented and are a process of becoming rather than being, in which the process of identification privileges some and excludes others. Identities also become complicated through the cultural and technological mediation of the dominant ideologies within the mechanisms of power and control. Hence, it requires a cross-cultural fluidity to unpack the alienation and entanglement brought about by the everyday spatial practices of the hegemonic culture into a space that is also occupied by other ethnocultural groups. The research challenges the discursive practices perpetuated by the dominant ideologies that shape the identities of marginalized groups in an otherwise hybrid living in Canada. The research used a triangulation of methodologies: a visual narrative, an analysis of images from two newspapers, and participant interviews to explore the cultural mediation of the margin. The visual narrative analyzed images shared by the participants and photos taken by the researcher. It analyzed the images used in the two newspapers. The images shared by the participants explore their homes, workplaces, and social spaces including their culture, festivals, family life, leisure activities, etc. The analysis of the images supplements the interviews, while the visual narrative provides an introspection of the marginal space along with their struggle. The significant findings of the study suggest the existence of the hegemonic culture, a set of ideologies and body politics that privilege the dominant group(s) to reproduce a specific national discourse including in the pedagogy. Representations of space, as the study of two newspapers reveals, show consistent systematic biases of marginal representations. Representational spaces, on the other hand, demonstrate that the space of the margin is ambiguous and a space of struggle, which is also a space of resistance expressed through a myriad of ways. However, a hybrid form of living also constantly challenges this narrative to facilitate the voices of the other: the marginalized, the displaced, and the immigrants. The research has expanded our knowledge of the cultural production of identities within the national discourse of the so-called multicultural Canada.

Shirin Shahrokni, York University, Glendon Campus; Estelle Ah-Kiow, York University; Fanny Teissandier, McGill University

Not a single story: trajectories and experiences of racialized francophone immigrants in Canada

“Canada wants us for its statistics, but once we are here, we feel unwanted. We are not numbers. We are humans with real lives”. These are the poignant concluding words of Heba, an Algerian woman who, in early 2023, after a three-year-long application process, fulfilled her dream and migrated to the province of Ontario, with her spouse. This migration project which she spent over a decade financially and administratively preparing, has so far been met with repeated barriers and a resulting sense of disenchantment and loss. Despite countless job searches, language and employment workshops, and already, an experience of internal migration within the province, the highly-skilled engineer in her late thirties pains to secure a job interview, let alone a stable position. As a practising Muslim wearing the headscarf, Heba further notes that she cautiously navigates francophone networks, avoiding physical and digital spaces in which she senses hostility. Drawing on ethnographic and in-depth interviewing methods with approximately 40 highly-educated, francophone immigrants coming from European, North and West African countries, who settled in Canada outside of Quebec over the past five years, this paper documents highly differentiated trajectories in a range of social sites, not least in the labour market. In a context in which, in recent years, the federal government has sought to increase francophone migration outside of Quebec with the aim of offsetting the “demo-linguistic decline” of French-speaking communities across its provinces, gaining a fine understanding of the unique resources and barriers differentially shaping the lives of members of these new migrant populations and appreciating the inequalities structuring their pathways becomes politically vital. To do so, building on critical race and postcolonial approaches, the paper unpacks the relationship between migration regimes, racialization, and imperial logics, through a close examination of the trajectories of members of three subsamples of francophone migrants: 1. racialized migrants coming from Europe, particularly France; 2. their white counterparts from these same countries of provenance; 3. racialized migrants coming from North and West African countries. Far from representing an internally homogeneous group, it indeed suggests the migrants’ geopolitical locations of departure within the francophone world and their locations within domestic hierarchies of race, significantly shape their trajectories, particularly in the realm of work, presenting members of each sub-group with a set of specific resources, opportunities, and structural barriers. From the operation of opaque educational credential assessments to the issue of lacking “Canadian experience” to more covert exclusionary logics from employers and/or recruitment agents, the paper thus uncovers the multiple mechanisms which contribute to creating differential access to decent and fair employment, and more broadly to decent living conditions, among the respondents. Further, it shows that these stratifying forces do not only structure post-migratory experiences. Rather, distinct migration regimes place migrants in different channels from pre-migration stages, notably through the differential recruitment politics Canada establishes across francophone regions, placing European francophones at a significant advantage via greater exposure to informational and relational resources than their African counterparts, such as year-long Destination Canada Forum Mobility’s workshops organized across European cities and the multiple migration programs such as the Work Holiday Permits (WHP) through which young Europeans may temporarily migrate and gain educational and work experience in Canada. Drawing on the concept of racial capitalism and its entanglement with migration regimes, in its discussion section, the paper therefore points to the differentiated costs of migration, material, relational, and emotional, across these three subgroups, and delves into the range of strategies – internal migration, professional retraining, family separation, exit from francophone communities, among others - many have engaged in to find a place in their new society. In its concluding remarks, the paper notes that while racialization processes continue to shape their experiences in Canada, for many racialized francophone migrants, first-hand experience of, and/or knowledge about racism in Europe, through the increasing normalization of far-right anti-migrant and racist public discourse and policies in countries like France, has in fact constituted a central motivation to contemplate, and embark on migratory to Canada, a country that has so far succeeding in creating and circulating globally the image of a tolerant, open, and racially inclusive society. Yet, to many, the migratory journey has revealed deep-seated gaps and contradictions between this widespread national narrative and the exclusions shaping their experiences.

Ferdouse Asefi, University of Toronto

"It's all I know": Navigating the Afghan and Canadian identity

The Canadian government often promotes multiculturalism, diversity, and the welcoming of refugees as part of Canadian national identity and pride. Recently, the Canadian government surpassed its milestone of accepting 40,000 Afghan refugees since the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Within the larger confines of Canadian immigration, the Afghan diaspora is still a relatively recent immigrant group. The intended objective of the Multiculturalism Act is to embrace the diversity and contributions of racial and ethnic groups in Canada. Certain scholars view Canadian multiculturalism as a form of classification that serves to manage minorities and construct identities. Yet, the Act shows how limitations of multiculturalism stokes discourses of Muslim and Afghan otherness, particularly from effects of racialization perpetuated by the “War on Terror” that impacts the identity formation processes of many Muslims, Brown people, and immigrants. Canada’s participation in the “War on Terror” played a role in creating the current circumstances of Afghan refugees amid ongoing Islamophobic anxieties within the Canadian public sphere. The contradictions between ideals of diversity, openness, multiculturalism, and Islamophobic anxieties in Canadian politics and public opinion (re)shape and complicate what it means to be Afghan in Canada. Drawing on interviews with Afghans in Ontario, I use critical race theory to build a model of racialization to illustrate how the paradox meets the daily lived experiences of the community, their everyday interactions and experiences of racism, and how negotiating their identities is understood in the backdrop of the geopolitics in Afghanistan. In doing so, I examine what multiculturalism and diversity mean for those in the Afghan-Canadian diaspora, while residing in a nation that participated in the U.S. and NATO occupation of Afghanistan. I argue that that the diaspora is not a homogenous population as they work to demonstrate alternative identities and unsettle narratives of what it means to be Afghan and Canadian within a racial hierarchy that promotes ideals of multiculturalism.

Hammad Khan, University of Toronto

"Goron Ki Jannat" (White People's Heaven)": How Whiteness Informs Perceptions of 'Canadianness' For Pakistani-Newcomers

Drawing from 52 topical life-history interviews with Pakistani-newcomers (< 5 years) to suburban Greater Toronto Area, I show how internalized narratives of whiteness as authentically Canadian (re)produce a model of inherently white ‘Canadianness’ that remains out of reach for Pakistani-newcomers to Canada. Through direct accounts of lived experiences, I find that perceptions Canadianness (i.e. national identity and belonging) for Pakistani-newcomers are limited, and informed by a logic of ‘whiteness as authentic’ in Canada. Consequently, national belonging and becoming Canadian are contingent on coming to terms with this limitation. The rhetoric of Canada as an authentically white space also extends transnationally to ambiguously defined notions of the ‘West’. The implication of these perceptions is that Pakistani-newcomers, and racialized newcomers from post-colonial settings more broadly, exist as perpetual outsiders in Canada. Perceived limitations to authentic ‘Canadianness’ as white reify racializing mechanisms of inequity, and function as a latent form of discipline. I conclude by discussing the implications of this discipline in the context of ‘Canadianness’, and citizenship more broadly.

Susan Goli, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Beyond binary: exploring fluidity in using 'Hispanic' and 'Latinx' terms

Enlightenment meant to liberate humankind from slavery, fear, and inequality. However, its prominent figures strongly believed in racial demarcation with which the Bourgeoisie was seeking equality and freedom like the French and American revolutions. Thinkers and agents of these revolutions were White Middle-Class European men. Therefore, freedom and equality were limited to them. This trace is evident in today’s social interactions, especially in labeling people with race. As Critical Race Theory (CRT) argues race categories are socially constructed, hence, they are subject to change. For instance, ethnic groups in the US context, such as Hispanics, can be defined by authorities, government officials, and scientists. The term “Hispanic” was adopted to fulfill the requirement “to unite all people with a similarity in backgrounds and language and color into one great big unit, one political force” (Gomez, 1992). It could be assumed that these categories were created based on origin, while the so-called “Whites” and “Hispanics” came from a single continent (Dávila, 2012). However, scholars recommended using “Latino” over “Hispanic,” emphasizing geography and political considerations. On the other hand, the population referred to by “Hispanic” expressed no preference in using the term, although they slightly favor “Hispanic” over “Latino.” While working on the online representation of Hispanics/Latinxs’ social mobility and struggling to use these terms correctly, I found that “Hispanic” and “Latinx” are the two ends of a spectrum of an identity with which people associate. Using symbolic interactionism as the theoretical perspective and netnography as the methodological framework, I analyzed the content of three Hispanic/Latinx organizations on Facebook from 2016 to 2019 to examine the use of language and the context of using “Hispanic” and/or “Latinx” in the meso-level of analysis. I did not find adequate literature on a middle ground between the macro- and micro-level research on the usage of these terms. My research fills this gap by focusing on the meso-level analysis. I offer a nuanced understanding of how these terms are used and perceived within Hispanic/Latinx organizations on Facebook by employing symbolic interactionism and netnography. This approach allowed me for an exploration of the societal interactions, meanings, and symbols attached to these identity labels within specific communities. Further, my study contributes to the broader discourse on race and identity construction by highlighting the fluidity and complexity of racial categories, particularly within the Hispanic/Latinx community. It provides insights into the meso-level dynamics of identity formation and representation, bridging the gap between micro- and macro-level analyses and advancing our understanding of the complexities regarding racial and ethnic identities in contemporary society. Regarding the theme of the RAE1 session, I believe my work is related to this session as it makes us rethink the nature of racial and ethnic labels creating a history of discrimination, stereotypes, and hatred. Highlighting the fluidity of racial and ethnic identities, it encourages critical reflection on the socially constructed labels and indicates how communities navigate these constructions to take initiatives to represent their identity. Further, it emphasizes intersectional attributes of racial and ethnic categories by examining how various factors, such as politics, perceived social status, and education can impact the usage of the racial and ethnic labels.

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Non-presenting author: Saeed Ebadi, University of Tehran