Transforming Citizenship: Power, Policy and Identity

Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour—we’re more like celery as a flavour.

—Mike Myers, Canadian Actor and Screenwriter

If Mike Myers is correct that Canada is as ‘subtle’ as celery, it might seem an academic conference focused on the theme of Canadian citizenship would be a gathering around the bland. In actuality, the 23rd conference of the Canadian Ethnic Studies Association (CESA), and the fourth one sponsored jointly with the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS), demonstrated otherwise. Held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from October 24-26, 2013, the conference was devoted to the theme of “Transforming Citizenship: Ethnicity, Transnationalism and Belonging in Canada.” The papers, formal presentations, and informal discussions (some continuing long after the conference ended) reflected on the dynamism of Canada and Canadian citizenship in the twenty-first century. They also reflected on the riveting questions that can arise from a consideration of migration, belonging and political community “across the pond,” “north of the 49th parallel,” in none other than Canada.

This special issue of Canadian Ethnic Studies contains articles originally presented as papers at the 2013 joint ACS-CESA conference. As a package these articles underscore the many ways in which “transforming citizenship” in Canada cuts into longstanding issues, as well as contemporary discussions of citizenship in relation to power, policy, and identity. Each issue will be discussed in turn.

Power

That a focus on Canadian citizenship is far from subtle when it comes to social power should not be surprising. By merely replacing one word in one stanza of the English version of the national anthem, Indigenous activists have powerfully reminded settlers that Canada is not merely a “home and native land,” but a “home on native land.” These different phrasings point to the history of Canada’s foundation and evolution as a settler-colony and by extension, the complex and shifting power relations which result from contestations over power, as well as discussions of ‘home’ and belonging in Canada.

Since the foundation of the modern state in 1867, social relations of power in Canada include a division between indigenous peoples and settlers; a division between two (unequal) European groups (articulated sometimes as the hegemony of ‘English’ over ‘French’); a racialized division between ‘whiteness’ and ‘non-whiteness’; a division between the foreign-born and the native-born; and a division between those who hold legal citizenship and those who do not (Abu-Laban 2014a). Important inequities relating to institutional and cultural power as well as socioeconomic status continue to shape Indigenous struggles for land and rights (Coulthard 2014), the marginalized labour market position and discrimination experienced by recent immigrants as well as racialized minorities (Galabuzi 2011), the precarity of growing numbers of non-citizens entering the country as temporary foreign workers (Goldring and Landolt 2013) along with lingering uncertainties regarding the political status of the province of Quebec, and inequalities experienced by francophones—especially francophone immigrants outside of Quebec (Noël 2010; Abu-Laban and Couture 2010).

Policy

The country’s reliance on successive waves of immigrants and refugees, as well as shifting admission criteria have been regulated by immigration and citizenship policies. Historically, legislation at municipal, provincial and federal levels, such as that relating to the franchise, worked to deny Canadian citizenship to specific collectivities already in the country—including women, those without property and indigenous people (Strong-Boag 2002, 40-41). For example, owing to The Indian Act of 1876, until 1960 one could not simultaneously maintain state recognition of ‘Indian’ status and citizen status with voting rights in national elections.

At the level of intake, for much of its history, Canadian immigration legislation was explicitly discriminatory favouring British Protestants for entry and permanent settlement. It was only in the 1960s—as a result of the human rights revolution and new emphases on non-discrimination, coupled with the continued perceived need for immigration—that legislation shifted from being explicitly discriminatory, to formally embracing the idea of ‘non-discriminaton’ on ethnic/racial grounds...