It’s go again. For the past few days, the issue of immigration has dominated our media and political space. We observe transfixed this curious spectacle. A first observation is obvious: the ideological diversity that feeds the narrative tension almost never says its name.
On the one hand, the capitalists tell us about the virtues of increasingly temporary, “flexible” immigration, adapted to the needs of employers. They show us the organized precariousness of human life as an important machine for economic development (preferably regional). In their vision, immigrants are first and foremost useful. They speak of our families as numbered tools, whose productivity, quality and relevance are measured through a bureaucratic evaluation grid that we seek to “modernize” according to the trends of the times. Make no mistake: just because capitalists want more immigration doesn’t mean that our full citizenship is necessarily desirable to them — or that our humanity, in all its deeply useless dimensions, is even visible.
On the other hand, nationalists are primarily concerned with the preservation of an “us” in the face of immigration. The problem is that no one agrees on the criteria for joining “we”.
According to a first definition, some tell us that all people who live in Quebec are Quebecers.
According to a second, others believe that Quebecers are Quebecers who speak French.
According to a third still, still others count the Algerians, Senegalese, Haitians or Lebanese who came to Quebec because they are French-speaking as “allophones” who are pushing back French in Montreal. The real Quebecers here are the Quebecers who speak French — and only French — at home.
But that’s not all. According to a fourth definition, we wonder if these immigrants who speak French should not better convey Quebec culture (which of course we never define) before calling themselves Quebecers. This is often where religion comes into play.
And finally, according to a fifth interpretation, some will still want to put in “their place” all the stakeholders in the public space with an immigrant background with whom they do not agree, citing an insurmountable incomprehension of what “our ancestors have lived. When it is argued that a person of immigrant origin who nevertheless identifies himself as a Quebecer “despises the Quebec people”, we are most often barely covered in this fifth definition, which is particularly exclusive.
In the public debate, we thus perpetually slip between the criterion of belonging to civic (definition 1) or linguistic Quebec — sometimes broader (definition 2) or more purist (definition 3) —, the cultural criterion (definition 4), then that of blood (definition 5). The latter has been coming out of the margins more and more often in recent years.
It is in this ideological brouhaha that an affirmation like “Quebecers could be demographically drowned in Canada” takes on all its power.
We can launch it because we are concerned about the regional balance in the federation (definition 1), because we are worried about the “entombment” of “Quebecers of stock”, often referred to more modestly as “majority historical” (definition 5), or the whole range of nuances between these two poles. To understand the meaning of the sentence for a specific actor in public life, we must therefore look at what he has already said or written.
But already, the use of a term as emotionally charged as “drowning” acts as a call from the foot (dog whistle) to the extremes, regardless of the opinion of whoever utters it.
When we fall into the register of “collective suicide”, “political genocide” or “planned disappearance”, we then know that we are dealing with a person who does not bother with support from the political margins – and who knows how to use the dictionary of synonyms to avoid naming the “great replacement” theory too directly.
Since this ideological diversity within our public figures is rarely named as such, ambiguity sets in, benefits some and harms others. And since most of our capitalists are also nationalists (and vice versa), the oscillation between these two main logics often gives rise to internal tensions. The so-called “reasonable” posture in immigration will attempt to bring together the two types of vocabulary. At the end of the great debate, it is those who wear it who stand to win.
Meanwhile, the experiences of immigrant families and their loved ones remain on the margins of the deliberations. There are indeed a few model celebrities who will be invoked, here and there, as proof in support of one argument or another. But the reality of ordinary people, at best, will remain presented as sentimental details.
The pain of being portrayed as a threat to the society one has chosen (or even the only one one has ever known). The fatigue of never being enough, of always having to prove yourself. The anger of children who have seen their parents burn out for them — parents who, despite their sacrifices, see their children still being treated by some of the population as guests who have an interest in remaining polite. The anxiety of those who watch all this wondering whether or not we will end up giving them their papers. And the exasperation of all those who have built families, friendships, communities, mixed visions of the world and who take the headlines like so many internal tears.
For the public debate to make a place other than marginal to these realities, nothing less than interrupting the text, rethinking the staging and breaking the fourth wall would be necessary.