Ne sommes-nous pas québécoises? by Rosa Pires (review)

When the leader of the PQ denounced the "ethnic vote" for the loss of the 1995 referendum, Rosa Pires experienced a personal affliction connected to a much larger and growing dynamic: the production of citizenship on the divisive line of "Us" and "Them" (101). An echo of Sojourner Truth's famous Ain't I a Woman? speech, Pires's work centers on the missing voices in the construction of social and political Québécois identity since the 1995 referendum. Pires draws from interviews of ten Québécois feminists representing the second generation of migrant families, and includes her personal experience as a member of the Portuguese community in Montréal, as well as her previous work with the Parti québécois. Her book provides an analysis accomplishing two tasks: 1) She identifies the frontiers and fringes of Canadian and Québécois citizenships and how they appear to be evolving before our eyes; 2) she demonstrates how the transcultural identities of her respondents alert us to these fringes, which pose existential threats to all movements seeking to dismantle hegemonic systems of power. The subjects of Pires's study are Francophone, schooled in Québec, and have pursued higher education, all of which could be considered ingredients for the model Québécois citizen. Yet these respondents continue to find themselves deprived of truly equal citizenship, which cannot be defended in the strictly legal sense, but on its fringes (120–21). These fringes are produced at the intersections of gender, race, culture, and class, and occur within the expectations of the majority as the primary subjects of the citizenship regime—of which Québec has two in conflict (47). Pires has captured various moments in the process of citizenship to elicit meaning in how her respondents experience racism from both identity nationalism and modernizing nationalism—contrary to Ghasson Hage, Pires asserts a distinction between nationalism and racism (104). Focusing on nation-building in Québec, these stories demonstrate the emergence of a neoconservative identity nationalism, in which women (regardless of their origins) are assigned the role of reproducing the culture of the Québécois nation in which la laïcité occupies an all-important place. This identity nationalism situates second-generation women in a struggle between resisting the erasure of their origins and proving their québécitude (114–15). Positioning herself in opposition to authors such as Beauchemin or Bock-Côté, Pires concludes from her interviews that her respondents believe the self-determination project of Québec to be tied to a solidarity among the shifting "We's" (127). While Québécois independence is now less debated, the definitions of its citizenship are salient in the lives of those who, by most criteria, should belong but continually find themselves excluded. Pires proposes that it is not a "Nous" Québec should seek. Rather, it is from the margins, where non-French Canadian voices may lead Québec to the social cohesion it desires (128–29). Pires's work is a relevant read for any discussion on the intersections of characteristics which mark the barriers and fringes of belonging and citizenship.