The Black, continental African presence and the nation-immigration dialectic in Canada

Abstract

How is the Canadian national identity constructed? What are the relationships between the national identity and the immigration policy of Canada? And how has the Black presence in Canada influenced Canada's national identity formation and immigration policy? This paper examines the extent to which Black, continental Africans are implicated in the nation-immigration dialectic of Canada. It sets various conceptions Black African identities in Canada against notions of Canadian national identity, using the dialectical principles of negation and sublation. As the number of Black Africans continues to grow, it is important to understand the interplay between the social construction of ‘blackness’ and the national identity formation of Canada.

Keywords:

• Canadian identity
• Black Africans
• immigration
• dialectics
• negation
• sublation

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada for its financial support of this study.

Notes

1. The law of the transformation of quantity into quality posits that, under certain conditions, a small quantitative change can lead to a big transformation or a qualitative change. The law of the interpenetration of opposites (or the law of the unity of opposite) is the belief that power, motion, or any effect at all is possible only when there is unity of opposites as in light/darkness, capital/labour. The law of the negation of the negation contends that development occurs through a complex transcendence, by which what is already negated is subject to another negation, but at a higher level. For more on these ‘laws of dialectics,’ consult Engel's (1940) and Grant and Woods (2003).

2. It bears noting that, as used here, the term ‘refugees’ does not refer to ethnic German refugees who were displaced as a consequence of World War II, but to people from other countries who have sought refugee status in Germany.