The Way Forward: African Francophone Immigrants Negotiate Their Multiple Minority Identities

Abstract

This article explores multiple affiliations that first-generation Francophone sub-Saharan African immigrants in Alberta build with their communities of origin, the Francophone community in general, and the broader Canadian society. This article posits that dominant racial and ethnic ideologies generate feelings of exclusion from multiple communities. It also sheds light on major challenges faced by this population in the process of integration and illustrates how these barriers are related to racism and linguistic discrimination. At the same time, we observe that African Francophone immigrants reinterpret their social identities in inclusive ways that draw our attention to alternative means of approaching identities. In addition to immigrants' identity strategies, some initiatives have been implemented within the mainstream of the Francophonie and the broader Alberta society that allow us to identify ways of avoiding identity exclusion and increasing equity.Keywords Francophone immigration . Alberta . Africa . Racism and language discrimination . Identity exclusion . Equity We challenge, culturally and politically, an old group narrative that fails at the beginning of this new century to capture even a fraction of our rich diversity and heterogeneity.

Reverse Inclusion: Black Francophones in the Interface between Anti‐Black Racism and Linguicism

“…As I stated earlier, CRT validates the “experiential knowledge” of the marginalized, and my content analysis pointed to these aspects in participants’ narratives such as “Our credentials are not recognized regardless of the language of instruction… But we know that the same credentials of other people [whites] are recognized.” These factors also indicate that the participants’ expertise was neither accepted in Anglophone Canada nor in Quebec where some participants settled first before moving to Alberta. Again, this outcome is not confined to the participants as literature on immigration and the Francophonie has documented similar findings in larger Alberta society (Madibbo 2016) and in other Canadian provinces, including Quebec (Girard, Smith, and Renaud 2008).…”

“…In addition, Breton (2005) contends that commitment or shortcomings on the part of “people” and “the collectivity” determine the outcomes of the phases, and this aspect is also shaped by power relations that in turn influence the segmented assimilation. However, literature on the Francophonie reminds us that these iterations are largely based on the experiences of English‐speaking immigrants, overlooking Francophone immigrants, including Blacks (Hébert 2003; Madibbo 2016), whose subjectivity and marginalization further illuminate our understanding of racialized immigration. This aspect expands oppression from racism to linguicism, understood as “the ideologies, structures, and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources between groups which are defined on the basis of language” (Phillipson 1992:47).…”

Challenging Antiblack Racisms and Sociology for Black Liberation

“…I have always known myself as African’” (quoted in Wane 2009:66). However conceptualized and contested, what we are calling “blackness” and “black communities” includes a diversity or multiplicity across sexuality (Crichlow 2004; Silvera 1992; Wane 2013), gender (Elgersman 2014; Walcott 2009; Wane, Deliovsky, and Lawson 2002), religion (Ibrahim 2010), class (Galabuzi 2006), centuries‐old black presence (Cooper 2000), and recent immigrants (Tettey and Puplampu 2005), and, for instance, the intersections of gender, language, and immigrant experience (Madibbo 2016; Mianda 2018), as well as black social locations that are still emerging areas of study around homelessness and disability.…”

“…As contributor Madibbo (2016) insists with respect to antiblack racism, “Ce racisme persiste encore dans notre société contemporaine et se manifeste sous diverses formes : systémique, structurelle, institutionnelle, culturelle et individuelle.” As our contributors describe, the university is not separate from but part of these systemic, institutionalized, cultural, and individual sites of racism. This is a fact but not a fatality.…”

“…This is a fact but not a fatality. Madibbo (2016) draws on diverse francophone African theorists to remind us that the university need not be so. She writes about a possible world where “la Négritude deviendrait un miroir de la francophonie, où la francophonie est un reflet de l'humanisme, et le fait canadien est entrelacé avec les identités francophones et noires.” There is no contradiction, essential or otherwise, between francophone black existence and humanism, or between Canadian, black and francophone identities.…”