Abstract
This volume offers a critical assessment of the ways in which current filmmakers, authors, policy–makers, and politicians from France and North America discuss notions of citizenship and belonging in the context of worldwide changing views on multicultural societies, national identities, and immigration policies. The 12 peer-reviewed chapters establish a dialogue between countries and disciplines in search of such discursive illustrations and/or opposing discourses regarding recent immigration policies, political and cultural crisis, views on terrorism, and Islamophobia. In addition, the authors are interested in spotlighting different stereotypes and perceptions of the phenomenon from both sides of the spectrum: civic society and policy-makers on the one hand and the Other (regular and undocumented immigrants, refugees, Beurs, female migrants, and Black minorities).
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Notes
- 1.
Robert Bourassa, “Objections to Multiculturalism”, in Immigration and the Rise of Multiculturalism, ed. Howard Palmer (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1975), 151–55.
- 2.
Bourassa, op. cit. p. 152.
- 3.
Louise Beaudouin, member of the Parti Québécois, spoke out against multiculturalism in 2011 when a group of Sikhs protesting Bill 94 (An Act to establish guidelines governing accommodation requests within the Administration and certain institutions [Online]. http://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/travauxparlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-94-39-1.html) were denied entrance to the National Assembly. She was quoted by various publications with: “Religious freedom exists, but there are other values,” she added. “Multiculturalism may be a Canadian value. But it is not a Quebec one.”
“And we haven’t signed the constitution of Canada because it contains this notion of multiculturalism.”
“I think we can be different.” http://www.segacs.com/2011/multiculturalism-is-not-a-quebec-value-beaudoin.html
- 4.
According to Gérard Bouchard, interculturalism “arbitrates within a nation the relationship between a cultural majority and cultural minorities (by emphasizing) integration and promoting exchange and interaction.” (What is Interculturalism, 2011).
- 5.
See especially the most recent books of famous Quebec socialist and columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté, such as Le multiculturalisme comme religion politique (2016) in which he likens Canadian multiculturalism to a “State doctrine” (197). Bock-Côté’s thesis alleges that multiculturalism forces the host country to change according to the immigrants’ needs and requests, rather than vice-versa and asks for the founding cultures of Canada, especially the francophone one to be recognized and allowed to preserve their identity. A response to this theory has been posted by Jocelyn Maclure on the Canadian Public Affairs blog site In Due Course: http://induecourse.ca/le-multiculturalisme-un-despotisme-replique-a-mathieu-bock-cote/
- 6.
In her analysis of the media’s role in covering this phenomenon Maryse Potvin found that “Many journalists contributed to the confusion by grouping reasonable accommodations—which imply an obligation to make changes in a discriminatory situation—with voluntary arrangements or private agreements, which are not born of the violation of a fundamental freedom. Over 75% of the “reasonable accommodations” reported in the media between March 2006 and April 2007 were actually private agreements or random anecdotes that journalists blew out of all proportion.” (Social and media discourse in the reasonable accommodations debate. Our Diverse Cities: Quebec, 7, 78–83. 2010).
- 7.
- 8.
Pieter Bevelander and Raymond Taras, “The Twilight of Multiculturalism”, in Challenging Multiculturalism, ed. Raymond Taras (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), p. 15.
- 9.
French President Emmanuel Macron himself during his presidential campaign and afterward admitted that France is not looking at developing a multicultural policy copied from the Anglo-Saxon model, but is aiming at accommodating the actual culture to the diverse ethnic communities in the nation. For Macron, contemporary France is not a monolith, a univocal culture that cannot be changed and adapted to the new cultural realities, but a pluralist culture. Public declarations such as the one in Lyon during his campaign stating that “il n’y a pas une culture française, il y a une culture en France et elle est diverse, elle est multiple” provoked heated debates in the press and on television.
- 10.
“State Multiculturalism has Failed, says David Cameron,” BBC News online, last modified February 5, 2011, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-12371994
- 11.
Alessandro Silj, ed. European Multiculturalism Revisited (Zed Books, 2010), p. 2.
- 12.
Christophe Bertossi, “Mistaken models of integration?” in European Multiculturalism Revisited, ed. Alessandro Silj (Zed Books, 2010), p. 243.
- 13.
Bertossi, op. cit. p. 249.
- 14.
“Multiculturalism in Europe and in the US, how is it going?”, Nouvelle Europe [online].
- 15.
France is one of the top countries hosting an immigrant population of Muslim faith in Europe, approximately 6 million people, that is, 8% of the total population.
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Mielusel, R., Pruteanu, S.E. (2020). Introduction: The Realities of Multicultural Societies. In: Mielusel, R., Pruteanu, S. (eds) Citizenship and Belonging in France and North America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30158-3_1
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