I would like to reflect on the way in which we talk about immigration, and above all, on the way in which the population that comes from it finds its place or not in common representations.
Posted yesterday at 10:00 a.m.
The last campaign clearly showed that the issue of immigration remained sensitive, that the words of our representatives had weight, that certain unfortunate (and fundamentally inaccurate) phrases could hurt and had the power to halt years of effort by nourishing the impression that the presence of immigrants threatened the very integrity of the nation.
What struck me, much more than the remarks themselves, is that immigrants and the children of immigrants have been more or less kept out of this debate, as if they were some sort of passive spectators, had no voice in the matter. I don’t know if it was voluntary, or even conscious; the fact remains that the discussion seemed to take place in a separate space, reserved for members of the majority, taking place “between us”, if I may say so.
The debate on immigration thresholds is legitimate and it is useless to ban the slightest questioning by suggesting that the supporters of lower thresholds are intolerant, while the supporters of higher thresholds are virtuous.
This primary reasoning prevents us from reflecting serenely on the famous question of the capacity for reception and integration. But participating in the debate also requires living up to the responsibilities that come with it. We cannot invariably present immigration as a problem, point relentlessly in the direction of a danger or a risk, as is the case with certain media players who never have anything good to say about the subject, without this ultimately affecting the perceptions of the majority and their relationship with the immigrants themselves. Nor can we think that immigrants do not hear and do not read what is said about them. We can’t pretend they weren’t there.
If I insist on this question, it is because immigration does not only concern the future of Quebec, but the present. It is not an external and distant phenomenon, which it would be possible to accept or refuse; she is here already. For 25 years, I have been teaching literature (and French) in Montreal, at secondary and college level, in classes made up mostly of students from immigrant backgrounds or immigrants themselves. I meet them, I hear them, and I am struck by one thing: the vast majority of them have a sincere desire to integrate, to play a role in society, to be part of this “we” who is redefining itself before our eyes.
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten used to a new phenomenon: several of my best students in French are called Zhang, Regoli, Wrzesien, Vaithyanathasarma, Wang, Mohammed, Yip, Pavaluca, and so on. Of course, there are also Tremblay, Otis, Lavoie, Béland, Gratton, Martin, but the evolution that I report deserves to be underlined. Some of my students, who arrived 5 or 10 years ago, from Korea, China, Brazil or Romania, master the language at an astonishing level, love literature, are interested in politics, in the same way that “natives” would do. So much so that in truth, it seems to me less and less relevant to mark the difference between one and the other.
The reality that I am describing is not anecdotal. It is experienced by my colleagues in Greater Montreal, and is gradually spreading throughout Quebec. Such a change should remind us that we have not missed everything for 40 years. The courageous political decisions have borne fruit, and it is quite logical to want to strengthen the measures adopted with the aim of promoting living together and creating “common”. I am thinking in particular of francization, which must once again become an absolute priority, of the extension of Bill 101 to the college network, of the regionalization of immigration.
But in doing so, we must at all costs avoid falling into resentment, playing “them” against “us” again, giving in to negativism by seeing only problems where there are also solutions.
Because in this game there is a risk of alienating those who are already there, of alienating their contribution by making them believe that their presence is disturbing and can cause harm.
I insist: the evolution I am talking about does not only concern the Montreal region, but all of Quebec, which is in the process of changing. This “new” Quebec is neither worse nor better than the old one, it is simply different. In Drummondville, where I grew up in the 1980s, I only knew one immigrant, a boy from Laos named Eddie; and when my family moved to Shawinigan in the early 1990s, there was only one immigrant around me again, who turned out to be Eddie’s cousin! Today, when I return to these cities, the change is visible. And from the Magdalen Islands to Gatineau via Sherbrooke, Quebec and Trois-Rivières, immigrants work, speak the language, participate in local life.
To the point where we have to get out of the habit of asking young people of immigrant origin where they come from and where they learned to speak French, as if that were an extraordinary phenomenon. Because most often, they come from here, they speak the language here; they are with us, are part of us.