The Paradox of Pluralism: Municipal Integration Policy in Québec

Abstract

Researchers in social sciences have become increasingly interested in how pluralism is used in the context of local government, especially with regards to municipal administrations’ efforts to make cities more inclusive. What can municipal action show us about the evolution of pluralist thinking? How do cities in pluralist societies mobilize the principles of pluralism in their attempts to ensure greater social cohesion as urban spaces become more and more diverse? This article proposes the use of a systemic framework to show how municipal governments in the predominantly French-speaking province of Québec have attempted to go beyond the paradoxes that structure pluralism in rapidly diversifying urban settings.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 I would like to thank the following people for their contributions and comments: Nicolas Arias Garcia, Anne-Sophie Raymond, Sophie Thibodeau and Roukayatou Abdoulaye. I would also like to thank Elke Winter and the anonymous evaluators who gave suggestions for revisions. All errors and oversights remain mine. Sections of this chapter were first published in French and translated for use here (B. W. White, “Pensée pluraliste dans la cité: L’action interculturelle à Montréal,” Anthropologie et Sociétés 41, no. 3 (2017): 29–57.).

2 White, “Pensée pluraliste dans la cite."

3 G. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1972).

4 In this text I will use the expression “municipal integration policy” to refer to a broad category of actions undertaken by municipalities which aim to facilitate the integration of immigrants and refugees into the larger host society. This includes but is not limited to policies, laws, programs, projects, and frameworks. The term “integration” has been increasingly criticized as being a masked form of assimilation, but I have chosen to keep this term since it is still a part of common usage in municipalities throughout Québec.

5 L. Emongo, “Introduction à l’épistémologie de l’inter-cultures,” in L’interculturel au Québec: Rencontres historiques et enjeux politiques, edited by L. Emongo and B. W. White (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014), 221–50, 148.

6 See Emongo, “Introduction à l’épistémologie de l’inter-cultures,” in L’interculturel au Québec.

7 K. Das, “Summary of the Colloquium: Pluralism, Here and Elsewhere,” InterCulture 154 (2008): 7–16.

8 J.-L. Nancy, Être Singulier Pluriel (Galilée: Paris, 1996).

9 R. Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics-Cross-Cultural Studies (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 199.

10 Ibid.

11 I. Berlin and S. Lukes, “Isaiah Berlin: In Conversation with Steven Lukes,” Salmagundi 120 (1998): 52–134, 2.

12 G. Leroux, Différence et liberté (Montréal: Éditions Boréal, 2016), 19.

13 J. Grondin, “Ricoeur: The Long Way of Hermeneutics,” in The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics (Boca Raton, FL: Routledge, 2015), 149–59.

14 For a detailed description of this model, see White, “Pensée pluraliste dans la cite." I subsequently validated this analytical model with colleagues from my research team, with students in several university teaching contexts and later in a number of applied research settings in collaboration with local city governments and city-based networks (see UNESCO, “City Policies on Living Together” (2019), https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000368169).

15 D. Côté, “The Notion of ‘Diversity Advantage’ According to the Council of Europe,” in Intercultural Cities: Policy and Practice for a New Era, edited by B. W. White (Londres: Palgrave McMillan, 2018), 329–45.

16 C. Taylor, “Interculturalism or Multiculturalism?,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 38, no. 4–5 (2012): 413–23.

17 M. Paquet, Province Building and the Federalization of Immigration in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019).

18 F. Rocher and B. W. White, “L’interculturalisme Québécois Dans le Contexte du Multiculturalisme Canadien” (IRPP no. 49, 2014).

19 E. Winter, Us, Them and Others: Pluralism and National Identity in Diverse Societies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).

20 Ibid., 199–200.

21 UNESCO, “UNESCO for Sustainable Cities” (2018), https://en.unesco.org/unesco-for-sustainable-cities.

22 S. Vertovec, “The Social Organization of Difference,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44, no. 8 (2021): 1273–95.

23 B. W. White, “Multiculturalisme et interculturalisme au Canada: Destin commun ou rencontre impossible?” in Jorge Enrique Gonzalez Multiculturalisme et interculturalité dans les Amériques (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2019).

24 Rocher and B. W. White, “L’interculturalisme Québécois."

25 M. Schiller, “Paradigmatic Pragmatism and the Politics of Diversity,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38, no. 7 (2015): 1120–36; R. Zapata-Barrero, T. Caponio, and P. Scholten, “Theorizing the ‘Local Turn’ in a Multi-Level Governance Framework of Analysis: A Case Study in Immigrant Policies,” International Review of Administrative Sciences 83, no. 2 (2017): 241–6.

26 S. Larouche-Leblanc, “La gouvernance de proximité en contexte interculturel : villes et intégration des immigrants au Québec” (Mémoire de maitrise, Université de Montréal, 2019), https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/21907.

27 A. Flamant, A.-C. Fourot, and A. Healy, “City Network Activism and the Governance of Migration,” Local Government Studies 48, no. 6 (2021): 1–10.

28 To learn more about this network, see www.remiri.net.

29 Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

30 F. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1969); Sylvie Genest, “Constructivismes en Études Ethniques au Québec: Retour à la Notion de Frontières de Barth,” Anthropologie et Sociétés 41no. 3 (2018): 59–85.

31 B. W. White and S. Genest. 2020. “Système,” Anthropen. https://doi.org/10.47854/DIEL6672.

32 White, “Multiculturalisme et interculturalisme au Canada

33 A. Krol, B. W. White, N. Ewane, C. Mompoint, and R. Langevin et J-C St-Louis, “Politiques interculturelles à l’échelle municipale: une perspective comparée,” in Villes interculturelles au Québec: Pratiques inclusives en contexte pluriethnique, edited by B. W. White and J. Frozzini (Montréal: PUQ, 2022), 442–58. and B. W. White, “Nouvelles tendances dans les politiques municipales en matière d’immigration et des relations interculturelles” (Research report for the City of Sherbrooke, Québec, 2022), 21, www.labrri.net.

34 Another solution has been the use of a pluralist model based on the French-language notion of “vivre-ensemble” (Azdouz, 2018), for example in the municipal administration of Montreal mayor Denis Coderre. This model, which may be seen as hybrid, makes it possible for cities to talk about difference without mobilizing either multiculturalism or interculturalism.

35 Emongo, “Introduction à l’épistémologie de l’inter-cultures,” in L’interculturel au Québec

36 For a summary of this report in English, see: https://ocpm.qc.ca/sites/ocpm.qc.ca/files/pdf/P99/resume-reds_english.pdf

37 V. Armony, M. Hassaoui, and M. Mulone, “Portrait de Recherche Sur Les Interpellations Dans Le Dossier Profilage: Rapport Présenté à La Ville de Repentigny” (2021), https://cridaq.uqam.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Rapport-Armony-Hassaoui-Mulone-SPVR.pdf.

38 B. W. White, “City-Based Inclusion Networks in a Post-Multicultural World: The Intercultural Cities Programme of the Council of Europe,” Local Government Studies (2021): 1–21.

39 Preliminary research for this project was conducted in collaboration with the Service for Sports, Culture and Community Life at the City of Sherbrooke in Québec. For more details on this research, see White, “Nouvelles tendances dans les politiques municipales."

40 R. Azdouz, Le vivre-ensemble n’est pas un rince-bouche (Montréal: Édito, 2018).

41 Larouche-Leblanc, “La gouvernance de proximité en contexte interculturel."

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bob W. White

Bob W. White is a professor of anthropology at the Université de Montréal. He has done research and published extensively on popular culture, pluralism, intercultural communication, municipal integration policy and ethnographic methods. His most recent publication is Villes interculturelles au Québec: pratiques d’inclusion en contexte pluriethnique, co-edited with Jorge Frozzini.