Chapter 2 – The Contribution Phase: Integration in Both Directions
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As we enter the final phase of immigrant integration, a time when language and employment needs should have been resolved for the most part, immigrants will need to truly feel at home within the minority community in order for them to be able to contribute back to the community. Finding a place for newcomers in a community's collective identity is a long-term process. To illustrate some of the difficulties that a process of reciprocal identification involves, let us consider a seemingly innocent question: Can an immigrant become a Canadian? The answer seems so obvious that one hardly dares to ask the question. After all, much of what Canada is about is the ability for immigrants to become Canadians, and in ways that far exceed carrying a Canadian passport.
But ask yourself whether an immigrant can become Acadian, and you might find yourself hesitating--and you probably do so for a good reason: integrating into or even only participating within a minority community is never as easy as doing the same within the majority community,10 even if, for example, one speaks French and lives in New Brunswick. By way of example, we will focus here on two communities--Francophones in New Brunswick and in Manitoba--in order to understand the challenges of integrating diversity into a community's identity.
An immigrant from Ivory Coast who has lived in New Brunswick for more than 20 years spoke very candidly when he said: "Acadian nationalism is so strong that I will never be accepted as an Acadian." For any minority community who is deeply attached to their collective identity, diversity can be problematic. As long as assimilation into the majority society is considered a threat, there is a natural tendency to try and maintain the community from within. And particularly where such a community's history is one of injustice, as is the case with Acadians, community boundaries are likely to be drawn even more vigorously. Therefore the prospect of a community's identity being redefined through immigration can be daunting. But so can be inaction. New Brunswick's Francophone population has the lowest percentage of immigrants of any Anglophone or Francophone provincial population in Canada at 1.08%. And it receives less than half the number of Francophone immigrants that Alberta receives, even though Alberta has a Francophone population one-fifth the size of New Brunswick's. Change, therefore, is not only needed but inevitable--and it is already taking place.
Francophones living in culturally diverse urban areas see themselves, individually and collectively, very differently from Francophones living in relatively homogeneous rural areas.
(FCFA 2001, pg. 11)
[our translation] There are problems with inserting oneself and belonging to the Francophonie because the community's fragmentation and legitimating ideology of its institutions leads to their [the immigrants'] exclusion (which itself is the result of these institutions having become the protected property of French-Canadian Francophones). Some [immigrants] therefore prefer to associate themselves with Anglophones.
(Chambon et al. 2001, pg. 5/7 on the Haitian community in Toronto)
[our translation] The Acadia of the 21st century is much different from the cliché of "Gabriel and Évangéline." (...) The first nationalists said: "We are Acadian, we are French and Catholic!" But now, who are we? (...)
The Catholic values of yesteryear are less likely to seduce youngsters. (...) We should not underestimate the importance of this new Acadian culture. It allows one to feel Acadian and international at the same time.
(Roussel 2001)
New Brunswick's SAANB (Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau- Brunswick) is taking concrete steps towards the integration of Francophone newcomers. The SAANB and New Brunswick's Conseil des minorités multiculturelles Francophones have jointly established a working committee and in June 2002 held a first focus day on settlement and integration issues of Francophone newcomers. The goal was to give a platform to the voices of multicultural Francophones and to plan concrete steps towards better integration. During the committee's first meeting, attended mainly by immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, everyone expressed their desire to strengthen and support the Francophone cause in New Brunswick, but voiced doubts as to whether an Acadian identity could ever truly encompass them. Asked what could be done to promote a more integrated Francophone community, they agreed that a sense of inclusion in the networks of local Francophones must be achieved, particularly in order to address the central concern of immigrant employment. As one participant put it: "Immigrants get a sense of self-worth from their work." The difficulties are not unfamiliar to SAANB's president, Jean-Guy Rioux: [our translation] "Not having a strategy for when immigrants arrive obviously does not help. Immigrants are left to their own devices and they end up going to large cities because that's where they find their communities of origin who are already settled there." (Ricard 2002) The SAANB's focus day concluded that Francophone networks need to be opened up to Francophone immigrants in order for them to succeed economically and develop a sense of true belonging to the Franco- phone community.
The challenge is now to initiate a dialogue between newcomers and Acadians that will allow both sides to retain central aspects of their origins while finding enough common ground to forge a complimentary and less ethnically exclusive identity for all Francophones in New Brunswick. This is not, however, just a demographic issue born of the need to entice more Francophone immigrants to come and stay in New Brunswick. A truly pluralist community will accept and welcome heterogeneity and renewal as an essential element of its existence.
Immigrants cannot successfully enter the final contribution phase of integration, unless the community is ready to receive their contribution. In this sense, contribution is much less about the mechanics of integration like the three prior phases and much more about the spirit of integration. For immigrants to contribute to a minority community the community needs to see the inspiration and sometimes challenges that new members provide as a healthy sign that their community is not standing still, but evolving and progressing. Immigration is, after all, a process that redefines both the newcomer and the community.
One particularly encouraging example comes from Manitoba: In the autumn of 2001, about one hundred and fifty representatives from a variety of community groups, including Francophone newcomers, came together for a focus day that had been organized by the Société franco-manitobaine. Their goal was to find an answer to the challenging question under which the meeting took place: How to enlarge the Francophone space in Manitoba? The objective was to create an enlarged Francophone space that would bring together three groups that have traditionally occupied separate spaces within the local francophonie:
- Traditional Francophones,
- Francophone immigrants, and
- francophiles.
The last group may include families where only one parent is Francophone or bilingual Anglophone Manitobans who are sending their children to French Immersion schools.
The plenary session clearly identified the tasks:
- Develop a capacity to become involved with the new demographic groups without losing the "heart" of the Francophonie.
- Adopt new ways of being and living in French that are distinct from current community responses. [our translation]
(Société franco-manitobaine 2001)
In these two statements we can clearly see the difficulties inherent in the maintenance of an historically evolved community ("the 'heart' of the Francophonie") and its redefinition as a more linguistically defined community ("new ways of being and living in French that are distinct from current community responses"). One of the initiatives discussed at the gathering was, not surprisingly, the possibility that the community rename itself:
[our translation] ... there may be a need to revisit the Franco-Manitoban identity, which in the eyes of some people suggests a particular ethnic and cultural origin. Instead, a wider and more inclusive theme could be explored such as "Francophones of Manitoba" or "Manitoban Francophonie."
(Société franco-manitobaine 2001)
Follow-up Report to Manitoba's Focus Day
[our translation] "Becoming familiar with Franco-Manitoban culture is not something that happens overnight. It can be difficult for people from the outside who enter an environment where people have known each other forever or are living the life of a highly connected extended family. (...) Over the past decades Franco-Manitobans have worked very closely together to safeguard their accomplishments and obtain more rights in a minority context. This has created tightly knit communities of established Franco-Manitobans that are characterized by great tenacity. The arrival of an increasing number of immigrants is a new reality. We find ourselves facing this reality with very little information and we have only very limited tools to act upon it. We are relatively unprepared in spite of a great desire within our community to welcome newcomers."
(Therrien and SFM 2002)
Francophone minority communities across the country are at varying stages on their journey to embracing diversity. This is a sensitive process in which nothing can be accomplished through recrimination and everything has to be based on greater knowledge and appreciation of the realities of the other. But will more diverse minority Francophone communities stand the test of time? Will the children of today's Francophone immigrants continue to lead their lives in French and contribute to the community? The signs from Canada's metropolitan centres are encouraging. Children of immigrant Francophones are beginning to create their own Francophone media and organizations that respond to the specific challenges that they are facing. The conditions under which this new francophonie will flourish are different from those under which Canada's francophonie has existed to date. Not only does the new cultural and ethnic diversity change the appearance of the community, this new community also needs to address difficult socio- economic circumstances. On the other hand, it offers the opportunity to build bridges with the countries of origin of its new members.
It is essential for newcomers to be aware of the history and challenges that their host society is facing if they wish to become truly integrated.(Comment made by a participant at SAANB's focus day, SAANB 2002)
An eloquent symbol of this new Francophone space is a magazine launched in Toronto in 2002. Taloua meaning "young woman" in Agni, a language spoken in Ivory Coast, is specifically targeted at the realities of young immigrant Francophone women in Canada (http://www.taloua.com/
(in French only)). The leading editorial of its first issue captures the spirit of a francophonie that allows young Francophone immigrant women to feel included:
[our translation] In a world undergoing deep changes, the cultural origins of young women are varied, demanding and complex, and so are their needs. That's why we felt the need to start up a new publication for women. (...) Taloua will be an efficient response to the needs of a readership that is increasingly demanding and wide-spread. (...) I want to send you a message of hope because, yes, it is possible to realize one's dreams if you have the courage and the tenacity and if you know how to surround yourself with honest and competent people to help you bring your projects to fruition. (Tchatat 2002, pg. 5)
While directed at young Francophone immigrant women, the message of hope that Taloua sends out, is, in fact, not an unfamiliar one for Canada's minority Francophones: after all, is it not courage and tenacity that have allowed minority communities to flourish across time and distance in Canada?
More and more young Acadian women have children with members of visible minority communities and are worried for the future of these children. The children are in danger of encountering the same problems as their fathers if there isn't more openness and dialogue within the Acadian and Francophone community.
(Comment made by a participant at SAANB's focus day, SAANB 2002)
10 The diversity within the Anglophone minority community in Quebec may appear to contradict this statement but as part of the large Anglophone majority in Canada and North America, their collective identity as Anglophones is far less precarious than that of Francophone minorities outside Quebec, causing them to feel less of a need to delimit their community.
