Ethnicity and the Internet Use of Barbadian and Franco-Ontarian Minority Young People

Abstract

The Internet has been analysed as an instrument of cultural assimilation/homogenisation and as a means of promoting the maintenance of ethnic specificities. Considering examples of three types of minority ethnic communities (one Barbadian and two Franco-Ontarian) from a larger study, this paper examines patterns of Internet use by senior high school students in each, exploring this use as it relates to the students’ status as cultural minorities, and how they use the Internet to keep in touch with their geographically dispersed (diasporic) communities. The paper ends with an exploration of the role of sex and socio-economic status on patterns of Internet use and how these two dimensions could, individually or together, influence students’ status as cultural minorities and their use of the Internet to develop and/or maintain contacts with their geographically dispersed (diasporic) communities. Such Internet use may be indicative of their interest in the cultural specificity that is potentially associated with their minority status.

Keywords:

• Barbados
• Ethnicity
• Francophone Ontario
• Internet Use
• Intersectionality
• Young People

Acknowledgements

Ann Denis wishes to acknowledge with thanks the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the invaluable contributions of the project's research assistants, Marguerite Cummins Williams, a graduate student at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, and Jean-François Durocher, Sidikat Fashola, Sylvie Giraud, Elena Kiriloff, Anabel Paulos, Diana Reis, Émilie Sartoretto and Jianwei Zhong, graduate students at the University of Ottawa and Kaitlyn Watson, an undergraduate student there. She thanks the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, for welcoming her as Visiting Professor during her 2004–2005 sabbatical year, and facilitating her sabbatical work, including data collection for this project. Thanks also to the School of Education, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, which welcomed her as a Visiting Professor during the autumn of 2006 and facilitated her further data collection for this project. This paper draws on data collected as part of the SSHRCC-funded research project in which the late Michèle Ollivier, University of Ottawa and Anthony Layne and Eudine Barriteau, both of University of the West Indies, were co-investigators with Ann Denis. This is a revised version of a paper presented in the RC05 session on New Ethnicities at the World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Göteborg, Sweden, July 2010.

Notes

1. For example, a few students, learning Spanish as a second language in school, reported using it on the Web, and a non-Japanese student accessed Japanese anime cartoons on the Web.

2. For additional technical information, interested readers are invited to consult Denis.

3. The overall study also included 3rd-form Barbadian students in 2004–2005. All participating Barbadian students were followed up in 2006–2007 with a subsequent questionnaire, while semi-structured interviews were conducted with samples of teachers and of students who had by then completed secondary school. A limited number of focus groups were conducted with students who were now in 5th form.

4. Such use of French by non-Franco-Ontarian students would be exceptional.

5. Unlike Canada, no local call involves long distance charges.

6. The lack of significant ethnic differences may reflect the facts that (a) the sample of ‘whites’ is very small and (b) lower (predominantly black) classes in Barbados have often invested heavily in education to promote the upward mobility of their children, including by computer purchase, which has been encouraged fiscally by the government.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann Denis

Ann Denis is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Université d'Ottawa, Canada. Her current and recent research examines the effect of state policies on women in the Commonwealth Caribbean and Canada, the use of the Internet by minority young people in Barbados and francophone Ontario, and the effects of society-centred educational practices on women studying engineering. She recently co-edited The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology and a special issue of Journal of Intercultural Studies on “Women, Intersectionality and Diaspora”. She is president (2010–14) of the International Sociological Association's research committee on ethnicity (RC05)

Anabel Paulos

Anabel Paulos is a doctoral student in sociology at Université d'Ottawa. Her main research interests include women's and feminist movements, transnational movements, social network analysis, social inequalities and information technologies