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Workshops & seminars, Conferences & lectures

Boundaries of the Nation and their Implications in a Multinational State: Comparing Quebecers and Other Canadians’ Perspectives on National Identity


Date & time
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
12 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Speaker(s)

Antoine Bilodeau

Cost

This event is free

Where

Henry F. Hall Building
1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Room H-1220

Wheel chair accessible

Yes


Nationalism defines members of a nation in opposition to “others” (Druckman, 1994). By doing so, it draws the informal boundaries of the nation. Typically, scholars have identified two types of boundaries, those that are civic and those that are ethnic (Lecours, 2000). These different criteria to define who belongs to the nation have been associated with important implications for social and political dynamics. On the one hand, populations in countries with more ethnic conceptions of who belongs (in comparison to more civic ones) appear to express with more negative views about immigration (Kunovich, 2009). On the other hand, immigrants in countries with more civic conceptions of who belongs appear to express stronger sense of belonging (Simonens, 2016).

Although international comparisons have examined how different countries draw those informal boundaries and their implications for views about immigration, little attention has been paid to how boundary drawing can vary within a nation, or more specifically how boundary drawing might vary between minority and majority nations in plurinational states. How much do majority and minority nationalisms differ in the way they draw their boundaries of who belongs? And what are the implications in shaping their relationships with immigration and ethnocultural diversity? This paper explores these questions by examining the cases of Quebecers and other Canadians.

In order to explore these different questions, the paper relies on a survey of 5000 respondents conducted in the fall 2017 measuring how Quebecersand other Canadians define who belongs to the nation (respectively Quebec and Canada).

 

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