Citizenship and Belonging in France and North America

Multicultural Perspectives on Political, Cultural and Artistic Representations of Immigration

Ramona Mielusel, Simona Emilia Pruteanu, Ramona Mielusel, Simona Emilia Pruteanu

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030301576
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030301583
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Cultural Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The first decades of the new millennium have been marked by major political changes. Although The West has wished to revisit internal and international politics concerning migration policies, refugee status, integration, secularism, and the dismantling of communitarianism, events like the Syrian refugee crisis, the terrorist attacks in France in 2015-2016, and the economic crisis of 2008 have resurrected concepts such as national identity, integration, citizenship and re-shaping state policies in many developed countries. In France and Canada, more recent public elections have brought complex democratic political figures like Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau to the public eye. Both leaders were elected based on their promising political agendas that aimed at bringing their countries into the new millennium; Trudeau promotes multiculturalism, while Macron touts the diverse nation and the inclusion of diverse ethnic communities to the national model. This edited collection aims to establish a dialogue between these two countries and across disciplines in search of such discursive illustrations and opposing discourses. Analyzing the cultural and political tensions between minority groups and the state in light of political events that question ideas of citizenship and belonging to a multicultural nation, the chapters in this volume serve as a testimonial to the multiple views on the political and public perception of multicultural practices and their national and international applicability to our current geopolitical context.

© The Author(s) 2020

R. Mielusel, S. E. Pruteanu (eds.)Citizenship and Belonging in France and North Americahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30158-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Realities of Multicultural Societies

Ramona Mielusel¹ and Simona Emilia Pruteanu²

(1)

Modern Languages Department, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, USA

(2)

Department of Languages and Literatures, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

Ramona Mielusel (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Simona Emilia Pruteanu

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

In 1971, Pierre Eliott Trudeau announced to the House of Commons the creation of multiculturalism as an official Canadian policy, based on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. In the 1970s–1980s, multiculturalism was first understood in the context of recognizing cultural diversity and perceiving it as being positive and desirable. Cultural groups, other than French and English Canadians, were encouraged to maintain their identity within the bilingual framework. Trudeau’s initiative was presented as an end to racial and ethnic inequality, so it came as no surprise that it was accepted unanimously by all parties except for the strong objections of Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, which were formulated in an open letter to Trudeau and first published in Le Devoir on November 1971.¹ Bourassa would not accept that French-Canadians were placed on the same level as other ethnic groups in Canada and concluded in his letter that since the federal government was taking charge of “all the other cultures which are to be found in Canada, Quebec must take on within its own territory the role of prime defender of the French language and culture”.² This is why, to date, Quebec still rejects what Jocelyn Maclure defines as “the imposition of Canadian-style multiculturalism in Quebec”,³ a policy which is seen as encouraging ghettoization and fragmentation, and as conflicting with Quebec’s own integration policy, that is, “interculturalism” (“After the Bouchard-Taylor Commission” 31).⁴ The reaction against multiculturalism in Quebec has sparked numerous debates on ethnic, cultural, and religious values⁵ and culminated in what has become known in the media as the “crisis”⁶ of “reasonable accommodations” (2006–2008). While the Bouchard-Taylor Commission came to a more optimistic conclusion in 2008 regarding the lack of danger surrounding the foundations of collective life in Quebec, many have been quick to point how this debate helped the agenda of entities such as the Parti Quebecois or extreme right-wing groups, which are openly anti-immigration , such as Maryse Potvin notes:

This debate also revealed a sort of backlash to legitimate, inclusive, egalitarian discourse in the social fabric of Quebec. It left the field open for racializing discourse that inverted the values enshrined in the charters and human rights legislation. The persistence of the UsThem barriers became obvious, as did the feeling among some members of the public and elected officials that their identity was threatened. (“Social and Media Discourse”)

The Canada Multiculturalism Act of 1988 legally acknowledged multiculturalism as a key feature of Canadian society which allowed all individuals to celebrate their cultural heritage with no impediments to their participation in Canada’s social and political scenes. While other countries with a similar influx of immigrants seemed to be promoting assimilation, Canada was the first country in the world to officially advocate for integration. This ‘cultural mosaic’, to reprise John Murray Gibbon’s 1938 title, was also glorified in contrast to the American ‘melting pot’ ideal, with some researchers pointing to the fact that it is easier to avoid assimilation when one does not have a strong identity model by which to be assimilated: “the absence of a national type and the absence of a clear and specific national faith which all Canadians could profess, meant that there was nothing to which an immigrant could be required to assimilate”.⁷

Since the 1970s, a version of this model of inclusiveness, anti-racism, and opening toward other cultures has been adapted more or less successfully by other highly ethnic and diverse European countries like England, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In another category, we have France, Germany, Denmark, and Italy, countries which Pieter Bevelander and Raymond Taras refer to as multicultural societies without multiculturalism, “that is societies that are characterized by diversity despite the absence of a policy specifically promoting multiculturalism”.⁸ France, one of the most culturally diverse countries in Europe due to its colonial past, has never adopted the term multiculturalism as it would clash with its republican core model.⁹

This political model does not recognize minority groups as such, be they ethnic or religious. The archetypal republican model of integration , where citizens are considered to be equal political actors independent of specificities (cultural, ethnic, and religious), is of prior importance in the Hexagon. Jeremy Jennings (2000) brings into discussion an interesting point of view in this sense, stating that France, despite an astonishing level of cultural as well as ethnic diversity and despite being an immigrant society, has remained a monocultural society (575). He shares this opinion with other specialists in the field by stressing the idea of individual rights and equal opportunities for the French nationals without any exception of race, gender, or social class: “Multiculturalism is […] un-French. It sanctions unequal rights. It countenances communities closed upon themselves. It places culture before politics, groups before individuals” (589).

Therefore, after several failed attempts to apply multicultural principles to French society, politicians and theoreticians alike concluded that it was not a proper policy in the French context. History attests there has been no clear institutional recognition of the differences and of the pluralism of identities in French society. Jennings believes that for the French citizen, belonging to the French Republic constitutes a political act, one that also brings into the light a vocation toward universalism and secularism (577). The educational and military systems have always been seen as the principal sites, or locations, of individual emancipation and national acceptance. However, they have started to be perceived by new generations with an immigrant background as a form of European ethnocentrism that is nothing else but a form of domination and an imposition of neo-colonial rules (579). Sophie Duchesne, in Citoyenneté à la Française, proposes two models which serve to characterize distinct self-representations of French citizenship in contemporary France: citoyen par héritage and citoyen par scrupules. In this line of thought, French citizenship is tied to a specific culture and a specific national past (581).

Nevertheless, the universalism and secularism of the French Republic have been put into question over the last 20–30 years by the reality of Islam . For example, for the young people of France, Islam has come to signify the construction of a certain identity within French society. The recent public debates/laws around the wearing of distinctive religious signs while in the public sphere (most of them aimed at the veiled Muslim women or bearded integrists) have opened the discussion on Jacobin values such as laïcité , integration, and freedom of expression. According to Gaspard and Khosrokhavar, in their co-signed book Le Foulard et la République (1995), for young French Muslim women, the veil has turned more into an expression of identity than a sign of Islamic fundamentalism. It represents, for a great majority, a desire for integration without assimilation, an aspiration to be French and Muslim.

These recent debates raised the reasonable question that comes to French nationals’ mind: “How can France adapt and how far should it go in modifying the basic principles of republicanism to include the ethnic diversity on its soil but keep its Jacobin founding principles?” Dominique Schnapper, a member of the Constitutional Council of France from 2001 to 2010 and a renowned sociologist, suggested a modernizing republicanism where the Republic has to become a “community of citizens” (cited in Jennings, 589) who share common republican values while preserving their specificities as part of their heritage.

Joël Roman, in his book Un Multiculturalisme à la Française (1995), proposes a model of multiple French identities that would reflect the diverse ethnicities on French soil. In his opinion, the French people must give up this idea of France being an exception when it comes to dealing with diversity and starts to recognize the diversity of society and of the groups of which it is composed. The state must give French nationals, by adoption, legal recognition (droit de cité) while also promoting dialogue between the groups to bring dynamics of equality into society.

Regardless of the terminology, we can conclude that the French model has been challenged by the events that took place in recent years, and major changes in its core principles are required in order to align with contemporary multicultural practices and new perceptions of citizenship and belonging in the new geopolitical realities. For the time being, as Taras and Bevelander aptly point out, it is, perhaps paradoxically, “within this group of states […] that we find today the bitterest repudiations of multiculturalism” (15). Thirty years after the Canada Multiculturalism Act came into effect the enthusiasm about multicultural societies seems to have faded out. As a consequence of the recent events in the west (the 2008 global financial crisis, increasing waves of refugees, and the disassembling of the European Union, among others), multiculturalism is perceived and especially presented by certain political leaders as a detrimental factor in the country’s cohesion rather than one of the founding principles of Western democracies. While visiting Munich in 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron painted stat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: The Realities of Multicultural Societies
• Part I. Citizenship and Integration: Espousing or Combating Official Political Discourses on Multiculturalism and National Identity
• Part II. How Can One Be Muslim, Immigrant and French? Literary and Cinematic Expressions of Belonging in France and Québec
• Part III. Framing Identity and Nationality: Crimmigration, Islamophobia and the Politics of Ethnic Exclusion
• 13. Navigating Diversity: Multiculturalism as a Heuristic
• Back Matter