Immigrant Integration in Quebec

Several days ago I had the pleasure of commenting on Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor's excellent report on immigrant integration in Quebec in Harvard's Tsai Auditorium. The case is unique, since Quebec's integration policy legitimates its self-determination vis-a-vis the rest of Canada. The report focuses on the policy of "reasonable accommodation" which the state uses to determine whether minorities face "undue hardship" in maintaining their cultural practices under existing immigration protocol. The result is a unique blend of pragmatist philosophy and sociology of inter-group relations which straddles academic and policy audiences quite successfully.

Since several people asked me to post my comments they are available below:

First, let me thank Gerard and Charles for inviting me to comment on their report this evening. Hopefully, they will accommodate my criticism as patiently and carefully as they have diagnosed the “crisis of perception” in Quebec.

As the report notes, Quebec is not the only Western democracy struggling to create social cohesion between natives and newcomers. To this conversation I bring a panoramic perspective of Europe’s “philosophies of integration,” and Britain in particular. While I agree with Gerard and Charles’ conclusion that Quebec is not as deeply divided as its European relatives, I fear we may have only witnessed the awkward “teenage years” of the debate about reasonable accommodation. Therefore, Quebec may still have much to learn from its Aunt France, where the suppression of the debate about accommodation has been blamed for “ethnic” riots in the suburbs; or its distant uncle Britain, where a particularly generous model of accommodation has been accused of facilitating “home-grown” terror.

My comments will focus on Quebec’s “Inter-cultural” model, which is distinct from traditional forms of multiculturalism in that it demands cross-cultural interaction as well as cross-cultural tolerance. According to the authors, the promise of Interculturalism has not yet been fully realized in Quebec. Indeed, Gerard and Charles attribute the “crisis of perception” to a lack of contact between natives and newcomers. Because it is my task to be provocative, I want to question this conclusion along three lines. First, I will argue that only certain types of inter-group contact are likely to reduce prejudice. Second, I will discuss the limitations of the institutions that shape prejudice in the absence of such contact. And finally, I will argue that government attempts to mediate inter-group contact can actually decrease social cohesion if not properly designed and executed.

The “contact” hypothesis suggests stereotypes and misunderstandings are amplified like a children’s game of “telephone.” Such distortions can only be corrected through meaningful interaction between majority and minority groups that disproves misconceptions. The Bouchard-Taylor Report describes a number of factors that have prevented meaningful contact between natives and newcomers in recent years. Among them, 1) residential segregation; 2) the decreasing number of immigrants fluent in French; and 3) a general decline in civic life that began even before immigrants arrived.

But we must be careful not to romanticize contact theory. It was designed long ago to explain a unique system of American race relations where inter-group boundaries were clearly defined—and even codified by law. In contrast, anthropologist Steven Vertovec might describe Quebec as a society characterized by “superdiversity.” With more than 100 religions, languages, and countries represented in Montreal alone, it is no surprise that Quebecers struggle to define the boundaries of “us” and “them.” And yet certain groups—particularly Muslims—continue to be placed firmly outside the collective project despite their remarkable diversity. How can this be?

The answer, it seems, is that most natives and newcomers encounter one another through virtual contact. While the report is careful not to blame media exclusively for the accommodation crisis, it provides little explanation of why media continues to get the story wrong. One factor is that certain immigrant groups have greater capacity to defend their collective identity than others. Precisely because of their diversity, Muslims have less capacity than other immigrant groups. Yet the central principle of unity in Islam gives marginal groups a sense of legitimacy to speak on behalf of the entire religion. In times of crisis, media is inevitably drawn toward a “minority of the worst,” not only because of its urgent need for information, but also because the “moderate majority” is unorganized.

Why is the moderate majority unorganized? Many immigrants—particularly those who escaped totalitarian regimes—view the media as an extension of the state. This has had two unfortunate consequences in many European countries. First, many immigrants consider views expressed in the media as the views of the state; and second, many immigrants do not engage the media for fear of persecution by the state. The result is that a minority of immigrants angrily react to the media in order to challenge the state, and their anger attracts further media attention in turn. Meanwhile, those immigrants with more moderate views are justifiably fearful that speaking to the media will attract unwanted attention from the state. Indeed, many immigrants with moderate views escaped states that persecuted them for such views. This process might explain the media frenzy surrounding Imam Said Jaziri, whose views appear completely disconnected with the broader Muslim community in Quebec.

So can states control the “virtual contact” produced by the media? Unfortunately, media is necessarily skeptical of states’ attempts to manipulate collective identity. Testifying before a government hearing on multiculturalism, the Editor of a prominent British newspaper expressed the frustration of his industry: The British Secret Service, he said, “circulates disinformation about…individuals… being arrested by labeling them as an Al-Qaeda cell. Then,… journalists publish the information…implying…they had investigated the matter... Then the Government cites the mass media reports as evidence of a terrorist threat and as evidence of public concern, which the Government itself has encouraged.” In other words, media is forced to discriminate between representations of collective identity produced by the state and immigrants themselves with little time to conduct the research necessary to adjudicate between the two. The result is that Quebecers will almost always receive imperfect information about immigrants.

But let us not be too quick to blame stereotypes on the inevitable distortion of immigrants in the media. As Herbert Blumer argued many years ago, stereotypes also protect certain privileges attached to majority group status. Now that overt racism has been stigmatized, it has been replaced by symbolic forms of racism based on language or culture. This “new nativism” might explain the case of Herouxville, a remote town in Quebec which vowed not to entertain accommodation requests despite having no immigrant population of its own. Surely this gesture was not simply the product of misinformation about immigrants, but an indication that the townspeople feared they had something to lose.

Such feelings of threat may only increase in the midst of the deepening economic crisis. We have already seen a backlash in Spain, where the government has offered 10,000 Euros to immigrants willing to leave the country as soon as possible. And last week’s “ethnic strikes” in Britain, will probably reignite the old refrain “British jobs for British people.”

So what should states do? First, let me give an example of what states should not do. In early 2001, the British government produced a document not unlike the Bouchard-Taylor report that explained violent riots in its Northern cities using contact theory. The Home Office subsequently invented a remarkable “community cohesion” program that regularly measured the state of social capital in British municipalities using public opinion surveys. They even dispatched “pathfinder teams” to create social capital in “problem areas” by facilitating neighborhood meetings and events.

The well-intentioned policy has produced no tangible results. To the contrary, three of the young men who attacked London on July 7th, 2005 lived in a neighborhood with one of the highest levels of social capital in the whole country. Even more inconsistent with the contact hypothesis was the revelation that the young men were avid cricket players, social workers, and supporters of the famous soccer team Manchester United.

Surely, Quebec does not face the same challenges currently crippling Britain. I remain unconvinced, however, that the Bouchard-Taylor Commission has resolved the accommodation crisis in and of itself. While I cannot disagree that many people benefitted from the numerous public meetings facilitated by the Commission, I am deeply concerned about those who did not attend these meetings. In Britain, those who do not attend community cohesion meetings are precisely the ones most likely to benefit from meaningful contact with other ethnic groups. Many of these people already feel oppressed by the state because of their class, and therefore see little incentive to participate in uncomfortable discussions where they may be accused of racism. In short, they do not join the debate because they think the terms of the discussion require them to forfeit the already fragile privileges attached to their status.

To convince these people that “dialogue makes a difference,” Quebec must eradicate the metaphor of a “slippery slope” of cultural relativism. An appealing alternative, I believe, is for Quebec to promote itself as a web of ethnic groups. This metaphor takes its inspiration from Georg Simmel, who defined identity as the unique combination of group affiliations. The web metaphor underscores the reality of interconnectedness, but also the centrality of French Canadian identity. Instead of balancing group interests, the web provides incentives for entrepreneurs who bridge the weakest parts of the web. It also acknowledges that differences between immigrants themselves threaten the integrity of the entire web. Consider, for instance, that Hindus are responsible for most hate crimes against Muslims in Canada; or that Muslims commit the majority of hate crimes against Jews in France.

In closing, the web metaphor might convince Quebecers that collective identity is not only about shared values, but more importantly a sense of shared fate.