Foreword
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Foreword
Every year, between 200,000 and 250,000 people are making Canada their new home every year. This constant influx of immigrants is of great value. It helps the country to prosper economically and maintain its demographic stability. It should also reinforce the social and linguistic fabric according to its core values. Unfortunately, this is not always the case: the specific focus of this study are communities where an official language is spoken in a minority context and where there are currently too few immigrants compared with the national average. At present, this shortfall of immigrants is a major concern for Francophone minority communities. In these communities the proportion of immigrants is less than one quarter of the proportion within English-speaking communities.
But looking at immigration only in terms of numbers is like seeing the world as it appears from an airplane. You get a great overview but can make out very little detail. The overview approach is necessary and useful but it often fails to give us a taste of what life on the ground is really like. Immigration means thousands of families from all over the world setting foot in Canada, often for the first time, and having to contend with the challenges that a largely unfamiliar environment presents to them. It means thousands of people having to find new homes, schools, jobs, places of worship and medical care. And many of them will also have to contend with a new linguistic environment.
This study touches on the policies and demographics of immigration but is mostly focused on the stories behind the immigration experience. While it gives broad statistical overviews and reviews recent changes to immigration legislation, it is mainly concerned with the lived experiences of new immigrants and the communities into which they settle. The author conducted close to 60 in-depth interviews with immigrants, community members as well as community leaders and government representatives1. Some of these interviews only took an hour but many lasted considerably longer. A planned short meeting with one member of an immigrant family can easily turn into an entire evening with additional family members providing their perspective. Such an ethnographic approach provides a researcher with more than just information. It is an occasion to empathize with an immigrant’s journey to and then in Canada, while maintaining a critical distance.
What emerges is a composite picture of immigrant and community experiences. Across some differences occasioned by region and type of community a clear pattern evolved of the major challenges faced by most immigrants as they settle into an official language minority community. Additional information from government sources and community organizations confirmed that the settlement phases and dimensions that are profiled in this study capture the path of many immigrants across the country.
The study addresses itself to three different audiences for two main purposes:
- Immigrants, who will see their own struggles reflected in the personal stories showcased here.
- Official language minority communities, who should be able to better appreciate the challenges and opportunities that immigration presents to their communities’ future.
- Government representatives, who will gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of immigration within official language minority communities.
The dual purpose of this study is to produce an enhanced awareness and sensitivity to immigrant realities in minority communities while providing concrete proposals as to what governments and communities should do to attract and retain more immigrants. A clear understanding of immigrant realities, it is hoped, will produce the kind of personal commitment and institutional mobilization that is needed to ensure that immigrants and communities become new partners. If dialogue and cooperation prevail and each other’s sensitivities are well-understood, immigrants, communities and Canadians in general will be able to accomplish the objective which is common to all of us: strong and vibrant communities whose diverse membership is united in its commitment to giving daily and vocal expression to Canada’s linguistic duality.
1 In-depth interviews were conducted in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. This selective approach reflected the desire to include Canada’s major regions but was obviously constrained by the resources available. The report is also not an exhaustive overview of all services available to immigrants but highlights some examples of promising initiatives. The general tendencies outlined and observations made in this study are, however, of importance to most official language minority communities.
