When I read certain articles or listen to certain analyzes on the issue of immigration to Quebec, in particular everything related to the defense of language (or the right to pronounce the word that begins with an “n” ), I always find myself wondering if the people behind these articles or analyzes know racialized people. I wonder if they rub shoulders with them on a regular basis, not just during a taxi ride, a transaction at the convenience store, at Adonis or even a visit to Grandma’s CHSLD.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
Do these people have racialized friends? Oh yes, I know, they traveled. They chatted about politics with locals in Havana where they already drank mint tea with locals in Morocco. Perhaps they briefly slept in the arms of the stranger in a hostel in Argentina. These people are apparently very open to the world. But what do they know of the experience of those who come to settle here? Too often, in Quebec, I see white people who comment on the “file” of immigration – which they sometimes qualify without embarrassment as massive – by referring to the writings of other white people who look like them. Same social class, same cultural referents, same life experiences; from hot summers lulled by the melodious flights of Harmonium to harsh winters strewn with the ashes of hearth fires and a national dream aborted twice rather than once.
Through the eyes and the feathers of these white people who grew up in a homogeneous environment, “the immigrants” – invariably a monolithic block without regard for the different waves of migration, the reasons for their exile, their socioeconomic status before, during, after said exile and the socio-historical baggage of their country of origin hashtag colonization – represent a vague, abstract concept that it is good to set up as a scarecrow. Sometimes vultures (seems that they steal jobs and/or live on welfare), sometimes gravediggers (seems that they kill the language [pourtant colonisatrice] by “creolizing” it and destroying the dominant culture with a halal lunch), immigrants represent a threat, that of extinction.
However, thanks to the contribution of immigration, there are children who are born every day in Quebec. These children are born in homes where people speak Creole, Italian, Arabic and Vietnamese. And these children will speak Creole, Italian, Arabic and Vietnamese with their parents and cousins. This will not prevent them from going to daycare in French, listening to cartoons in French, doing their elementary school in French, reading books from the editions of The Short Scale in French, going to see shows at the Maison Théâtre in French. They will then enter high school in French and will perhaps have the opportunity to party to the music of the latest French-speaking pop or rap sensation of the hour, cleverly placed between two American hits, with similar beats, by a algorithm. They will certainly listen to some bad American series dubbed in bad French. These young people will then have the choice of stopping their studies or pursuing them in French, English or both. They will then have the choice to decide if they want to become the next Horacio Arruda or the next Joanne Liu. Perhaps they will want to perform on a springboard like a Meaghan Benfeito or on the boards like an Anglesh Major. Some young girls may be inspired by the wave of women who are slowly making their way into politics, like Reine Bombo-Allara at the municipal level in Longueuil or like Sophika Vaithyanathasarma at the provincial and federal levels.
By the way, these people I name are not UFOs among immigrants. They reflect a trend. Our integration policies are not flawless, but according to the work of sociolinguist Calvin Veltman, retired from UQAM and recently relayed in Newsthe level of language transfer among allophones rises to more than 70% when we take the trouble to focus not on the language spoken at home, but on the language towards which we are moving and that we adopt on a daily basis: at school, at work, with friends at the bar.
A large majority of children born into bilingual or trilingual homes in multicultural neighborhoods of Greater Montreal will not become unilingual Anglophones upon contact with English. They will be multilingual and will have an adequate command of the French language, far removed from the alarmist discourse that is rooted in fear and resentment.
Speaking of mastery of the language, a woman has already thanked me and congratulated me for “my mastery of the French language”. I was 18 years old, I was behind the cash register of a big box store in the small Maghreb in Montreal which employed as many Johannes as Yesenias as cashiers as well as Miguels and Minhs as fruit and vegetable clerks and this woman was waiting for me to answer her compliment with at least a smile. In response to the protests of her daughter who accompanied her and who muttered that it was not said, the mother had replied, picking up her bags: “Well, I congratulated her, you have to tell them when you see them! »
While the woman began to walk with a determined step towards the exit, her offspring stayed behind, profusely apologizing, explaining to me that her mother did not often come to Montreal. “It’s not her fault, she comes from Gaspésie. she told me. I looked at her with compassion. Of course not, it wasn’t his fault, but it had nothing to do with Gaspésie. For this woman, it was inconceivable that a young black woman spoke “good” French. This perception probably came from what she read or heard about “immigrants”. Fourteen years have passed since then, but once in a while white people invite themselves into my private messaging service to ask me what I know about the history of Quebec, assuming that I know nothing of its pride, its pitfalls and his scoured tongue. Yet, I am here at home.
The face of Quebec has changed and conversations about language cannot take place as if we were still in the political and social context of L’Osstidcho.