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Minority nationalism and immigrant integration in C anada
Author(s) -
Banting Keith,
Soroka Stuart
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
nations and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.655
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1469-8129
pISSN - 1354-5078
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8129.2011.00535.x
Subject(s) - immigration , citizenship , nationalism , politics , government (linguistics) , sociology , political economy , political science , population , identity (music) , gender studies , law , philosophy , linguistics , demography , physics , acoustics
Immigrant integration is currently a prominent issue in virtually all contemporary democracies, but countries in which the historic population itself is deeply divided – particularly those with substate nations and multiple political identities – present some interesting questions where integration is concerned. The existence of multiple and potentially competing political identities may complicate the integration process, particularly if the central government and the substate nation promote different conceptions of citizenship and different nation‐building projects. What, then, are the implications of minority nationalism for immigrant integration? Are the added complexities a barrier to integration? Or do overlapping identities generate more points of contact between immigrants and their new home? This article addresses this question by probing immigrant and non‐immigrant ‘sense of belonging’ in C anada, both inside and outside Q uebec. Data come from S tatistics C anada's E thnic D iversity S tudy. Our results suggest that competing nation‐building projects make the integration of newcomers more, rather than less, challenging.