Introduction: Multiculturalism within a Bilingual Framework

Canadian Ethnic Studies/études ethniques au Canada, 2014

In my admittedly open reading of Eve Haque's remarkable study, she casts a light on the many frayed threads hanging from the bilingualism/multiculturalism discourse in Canada; threads that beg unraveling since their apparent coherence masks a reformulation of national belonging that codifies the racialization and exclusion of people of colour and indigenous peoples. Pulling at these threads is a vital intellectual project, particularly at this juncture when colour-blindness (Bonilla-Silva 2010) and/or racial liberalism (Mills 2008), which define anti-racist analyses as themselves racist or more insidiously, as "reverse racism," gain ascendance in society and the academy. Through her research and analysis, Haque points to the shift from race to culture, from ethnicity to language, and we now know, to the official multicultural logic that makes considerations of the persistent racial inequities in Canada nearly impossible to hear against the din of self-congratulatory cheer. We are, after all, multicultural or in the case of Québec, intercultural -open signifiers that have come to mean anti-racist, in the sense of never openly discussing, let alone tackling racism. For those working to challenge the stranglehold that such fantasies have on our national imaginations, Haque's study offers an invaluable historical and political outline of the construction of state-based racialized logics.

Canadian Diversity/Diversité canadienne, 2012

"This paper argues that normative debates about the relative merits of interculturalism in Québec are evidence of a particular type of nationalism in both Québec and Canada, one that continues to centre the experiences of the “two founding” nations of Canada. In order to resituate this debate, I locate interculturalism within the rise of tolerance discourses in Western liberal democracies since the 1980s. The first section of the paper presents a brief overview of some of the major claims for the rise of interculturalism in Québec. The second section of the paper provides a concise analysis of the racial politics of the intercultural discourse in Québec. By doing so, I argue that despite their respective legitimacy, interculturalism and multiculturalism must be read as continued attempts to manage and limit expressions of racialized diversity in the social and political realms."

Comparative and international education, 2016

2015

The paper seeks to examine the case of multiculturalism in the context of Canada. It aims to introduce the various political and philosophical debates which have enveloped the notion, and then build an argument to suggest the ways in which the ideal of a multicultural nation-state is a “problem”, citing two examples from diasporic literature. Since it is fashionable to tag theoretical concepts with an expiry, a suggestion towards what comes after multiculturalism is made where “post-multiculturalism” is discussed in the light of cosmopolitanism and interculturalism as the two possible alternatives. VOL.5 / NO.1/SPRING 2015 361 | P a g e Key-words: multiculturalism, nation-state, cosmopolitanism, interculturalism, diaspora, Canada. ______________________________________________________________________________ The UNESCO Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001) states, “Culture should be regarded as a set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of socie...

In 1971 Canada was the first nation in the world to establish an official multiculturalism policy with an objective to assist cultural groups to overcome barriers to integrate into Canadian society while maintaining their heritage language and culture. Since then Canada’s practice and policy of multiculturalism have endured and been deemed as successful by many Canadians. As well, Canada’s multiculturalism policy has also enjoyed international recognition as being pioneering and effectual. Recent public opinion suggests that an increasing majority of Canadians identify multiculturalism as one of the most important symbols of Canada’s national identity. On the other hand, this apparent successful record has not gone unchallenged. Debates, critiques, and challenges to Canadian multiculturalism by academics and politicians have always existed to some degree since its policy inception over four decades ago. In the current international context there has been a growing assault on, and subsequent retreat from, multiculturalism in many countries. In Canada debates about multiculturalism continue to emerge and percolate particularly over the past decade or so. In this context, we are grappling with the following questions: • What is the future of multiculturalism and is it sustainable in Canada? • How is multiculturalism related to egalitarianism, interculturalism, racism, national identity, belonging and loyalties? • What role does multiculturalism play for youth in terms of their identities including racialization? • How does multiculturalism play out in educational policy and the classroom in Canada? These central questions are addressed by contributions from some of Canada’s leading scholars and researchers in philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, education, religious studies, youth studies, and Canadian studies. The authors theorize and discuss the debates and critiques surrounding multiculturalism in Canada and include some very important case studies to show how multiculturalism is practiced and contested in contemporary Canadian society.

At the beginning of the 21st century, many countries until the 1990s implemented multicultural policies that have backtracked. This article examines how multiculturalism as an idea and normative framework of immigrant integration evolved in Canada, the country that initiated it. Juxtaposing two recent time periods, the 1990s and the early 2000s, I conduct an analysis of dominant media and government discourses, which are interpreted against the backdrop of relevant policy changes. The theoretical framework underlines the relevance of socioethnic leveraging, which takes places as one group is constructed as socially, culturally, or morally more (or less) deviant from the dominant norm than the other. The outcome of leveraging can be fairly integrative. It can also reinforce minority marginalization. The analysis documents the importance of Québécois nationalism for the construction of Canadian multicultural identity in the 1990s and its relative absence during the reinvigoration of an Anglo-Saxon Canadian national core in the following decade. The article concludes that, from a comparative perspective, multiculturalism in Canada remains strong. However, its meaning has changed from being " about us " to being " about them. " Hence, although it was originally meant to be a national identity for all Canadians, it now risks becoming a minority affair. The fact that even in Canada multiculturalism has lost much of its original meaning should serve as a wake-up all. It suggests, among others, that the relationship between the national majority and minority groups need rethinking.

Review of D. Forbes' Multiculturalism in Canada, *Academic Questions* 34/2 (Summer 2021).pdf, 2021

Canadian Ethnic Studies, Volume 46, Number 2, 2014, pp. 113-117, 2014

This review dossier focuses on Multiculturalism within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race, and Belonging in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012) by Eve Haque, an associate professor of Applied Linguistics in the Departments of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at York University. It began as an "Author Meets Critics" session at the Association of Canadian Studies and Canadian Ethnic Studies Association joint annual conference in October 2012. The session provoked some heated debate about the nature of Canadian and Québécois nationalisms, Canada-Indigenous relations, and racism and forms of belonging under settler colonialism. The many unfinished conversations ultimately led us to collaborate on this dossier of critical commentaries in order to reflect further on Multiculturalism in a Bilingual Framework’s many broad themes. We are pleased that Canadian Ethnic Studies/Études ethniques au Canada has provided us with a venue to continue these important discussions. Eve Haque’s scholarship has coalesced around four intersecting and overlapping research clusters over the years. First, she focuses on the ways in which the binary framing and institutionalization of "multiculturalism within a bilingual framework" effectively obscure racial hierarchies and secure white settler colonialism (Haque 2010). Second, she explores language rights, and the ways in which language policy and planning territorializes identity (Patrick and Haque 2010). Third, she grapples with the role that language plays in the formation of social and national identities, ethnolinguistic nationalisms, and cosmopolitanisms (Haque 2007). Fourth and finally, she considers the roles that teacher education and language training play in the socialization of newcomers (Haque et al. 2007). There are traces of each of these diverse research clusters in her first published monograph, which makes for a rich interdisciplinary tapestry of data and analysis.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2005

2014

This article looks into the history of Canadian multiculturalism by surveying its political and economic background, its roots in political theory, its implementation by policy makers and its impact on Canadian cultural life, as well as the major challenges and criticisms it has been facing since the early 1970s. The government policy of multiculturalism was not an idealistic philosophy but a political necessity which was aimed at establishing a Canadian national identity to be shared by all. Although multiculturalism played an important role in helping minority cultures become visible and recognised by mainstream Canada, the difficulties in creating such a uniform national identity based on the diversity of minority cultures is demonstrated by exactly the works and theoretical debates which arose in the aftermath of the implementation of the multiculturalism policy.