From protector to producer: the role of the State in the discursive shift

Transcription

Lang Policy (2009) 8:95–116
DOI 10.1007/s10993-009-9127-x
ORIGINAL PAPER
From protector to producer: the role of the State
in the discursive shift from minority rights
to economic development
Emanuel da Silva Æ Monica Heller
Received: 9 June 2008 / Accepted: 26 January 2009 / Published online: 20 February 2009
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract This paper explores the challenges that neoliberalism and the globalized
new economy present to the politics of linguistic minority movements by ethnographically examining language policy as a discursive process, rooted in political
economy. Following the post-WWII period, as most Western States restructured
from welfarism to neoliberalism, there was a shift away from minority (language)
rights towards economic development. In Canada, where State policy maintains a
French–English ‘‘linguistic duality’’, francophone regions outside Quebec became
sites of discursive struggle, following the collapse of the old economy, between (1)
a focus on the collective reproduction of ‘‘community’’ (maintaining language,
culture and identity), and (2) the State’s focus on facilitating individual economic
reproduction. What emerges is an attempt by the State, and certain community
actors to save the traditional francophone minority collectivity by focusing on the
‘‘community economic development’’ of rural bastions, rather than the economic
integration of individual francophones living in diverse, urban areas.
Keywords Linguistic minorities Neoliberalism Globalization Political economy Francophone Canada Ethnographic sociolinguistics
Abbreviations
FCFA Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada
OLA
Official languages act
E. da Silva (&)
Department of French, University of Toronto, 50 St. Joseph Street, Toronto, ON M5S 1J4, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
M. Heller
CRÉFO, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West,
Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
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HRDC
RDÉE
E. da Silva, M. Heller
Human resources and development Canada
Réseau de développement économique et d’employabilité
Linguistic minorities, language policy and neoliberalism
Linguistic minority movements, such as those in Brittany, Wales, Corsica or
Quebec, have based their mobilization, for approximately the last 40 years, on
discourses of nationhood borrowed from the centralizing States whose power they
resist. In the post-World War II period, Western States were legitimized as welfare
States and addressed the claims of minorities through the negotiation of rights and
the provision of economic support (in the name of their protection or survival). Most
of these States have since turned from welfarism (or welfare liberalism) to
neoliberalism, accompanied by a diminished enthusiasm for minority language
rights and a reorientation towards the development of labour pools and labour
markets (Tickell and Peck 1995; Gee et al. 1996; Castells 2000; Harvey 2005;
Heller 2007). While the link between the welfare State, liberalism and language
policy has a long history, here we focus on the most recent shift and how it has
resulted in one State’s re-defining of its role as protector of minorities to one of
provider, indeed producer, of economic opportunity. This article explores how this
process has unfolded in Canada, with specific regard to State policy concerning the
maintenance of French–English so-called ‘‘linguistic duality’’. In particular, it
concentrates on the tensions between (1) francophone community reproduction (the
maintenance of language, culture and identity) outside the province of Quebec,1
which has been a key legitimating element of the federal government’s attempts to
counter the claims of Québécois nationalists that it is impossible to survive as a
francophone in North America without a francophone nation-state, and (2) the
State’s increasing emphasis on facilitating the economic insertion of individuals into
the globalized new economy that has been emerging since the late 1980s.
This article represents an account of the complications of neoliberalism for the
politics of linguistic minority movements as they have constituted themselves over the
last 40 years or so. It shows how the discourse of ethnolinguistic nationalism has
shifted, in this context, from a discourse focused on the political rights of a nation to one
focused on community economic development, through a long process of mutual
accommodation between structures of the State and community institutions which are
understood to be the State’s primary minority community interlocutors (and which
were in fact created in order to receive the resources the State wanted to be seen
distributing).
Of course, there are other discourses developing in this moment of social change,
and which are increasingly well-documented. Notable among them are the arguments
that linguistic rights need to be understood as human rights (associated mainly with
1
Throughout this article we use the terms: ‘‘francophone Canada’’, ‘‘la francophonie canadienne’’,
‘‘Canadian francophonie’’, and ‘‘francophone minority community’’ or ‘‘collectivity’’ to refer to
francophones outside Quebec: one of the two official language minorities recognized by the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the other being anglophones in Quebec).
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From minority rights to economic development
97
the work of Skutnabb-Kangas, e.g. 2000); and that languages constitute species-like
resources which require protection in an age of uniformization (Mühlhäusler 1996;
Grenoble and Whaley 1998; Nettles and Romaine 2000; Hinton and Hale 2001, but
see also Duchêne and Heller 2007 for a critique). Both of these discursive moves
universalize the argument, taking the concerns of minorities out of the realm of States,
which seem to be losing interest in them for anything other than economic reasons,
and into broader and potentially commensurately stronger discursive spaces.
For our analysis, however, we are concerned with how things unfold within State
policy since, the rhetoric of ‘‘State irrelevance’’ notwithstanding, States remain
important actors of globalization, and the management of diversity is a major
concern for them. We will begin by showing how the economic shifts of the 1980s
undermined both the reproduction of the traditional bastions of francophone
Canadian identity, and the policies and practices of the State meant to bolster them.
We will then track in some detail the discursive struggles in the period 1993–2003
along the following lines: (1) new State orientations away from funding activities
designed to help maintain francophone minority language, culture and identity, and
towards developing a skilled workforce; (2) minority community interests in the new
economy; and (3) continuing interests among both State and community actors in
nonetheless maintaining the idea of a francophone minority collectivity whose
legitimacy remains tied to an older Romantic nationalist ideology based on roots,
rurality and cultural homogeneity. These competing interests resulted in the
establishment of a national program aimed at the community economic development
of the traditional bastions, leaving unaddressed the emerging diversified urban
population of multilinguals who in fact play a key role in the new economy. The
neoliberal State’s focus on individual employability was curtailed by shared interests
in the maintenance of francophone collective identity, harnessing an economic
development discourse to an older one of community reproduction, in which the
community in question was understood to be precisely the rural, homogeneous
communities in economic crisis. The question for the State has therefore become one
of how to help those communities enter the globalized new economy.
Our argument is based on data collected in the period 2004–2007 which consists of:
(1) interviews with ten Canadian federal government civil servants directly involved in
these activities over the period in question, and representing six of the federal
government agencies involved; (2) interviews with eleven members of francophone
lobby groups and community economic development agencies at the national, provincial
and regional levels; (3) analysis of the major reports issued by those ministries and
agencies over the period concerned; (4) analysis of these latter websites; and (5)
participation in State-community or agency-community exchanges, such as a series of
consultations organized by the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages
regarding official language minority community research and on linguistic duality and
immigration; and (6) ethnographic work in several francophone minority communities
across the country, where the kind of economic retooling discussed here is underway.
What emerges is a shift in discourse among both State and community actors
away from rights and towards economic development, but on a collective rather
than individual basis (as the initial neoliberal moves in the linguistic minority sector
would have had it). Furthermore, this collective identity remains anchored in a
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traditional idea of what counts as the francophone community, in ways which
attempt to preserve the gains of the earlier period, but which have the perverse effect
of erasing from consideration human resources and forms of economic development
which are in fact central to the new economy.
The neoliberalization of the State, the growth of the new economy and the collapse
or restructuring of the old, as well as the rise in urbanization and immigration, are
all facets of the transformations of what it means to be a linguistic minority. The
compromises that we observed being negotiated between the State and community
agencies, as well as within State departments, agencies and ministries themselves,
may have reoriented the discourse towards economic development, but fail to
successfully respond to the challenges that change poses to the traditional notions of
community which remain largely intact. These compromises fail to take into account
what it means to transform languages and identities into commodities and citizens into
clients, or what new forms of sociability are emerging in the increasingly ethnoculturally and linguistically diverse urban areas which many policy makers and
francophone community activists (as well as many intellectuals) write off as a lost cause.
At the same time, these struggles show that, while neoliberalism and the globalized
new economy may seem ‘‘inevitable’’, such an assumption, as Fairclough (2000)
argues, is part of the ideology of neoliberalism and naturalizes the processes and
politics of globalization and the commodification/corporatization of ethnicities. This
article also presents, then, a case study in the ambivalent contestation of neoliberalism. The result is that in the globalized new economy, with its penchant for niche
markets and ‘‘authentic’’ cultural products, the State views linguistic minorities less in
nationalist terms, but increasingly as producers of commodified linguistic or cultural
resources to be sold throughout the world. This, in turn, raises questions about who
gets to produce what? (Who is included/excluded?) For whom? (Who are the
consumers?) And with what consequences for our ideas of la francophonie?
The economic crisis of francophone traditional bastions
As it is classically the case for nationalism (Hobsbawm 1990), the idea of the French
Canadian nation is based on the concept of a linguistically and culturally homogeneous
group, united genealogically, with a shared history. While nationalisms are always
constructed in contradistinction to each other, in the case of francophone Canada the
salience of this opposition was heightened by the military conquest and subsequent
political and economic domination by English speakers. Real economic marginalization became connected to the Romantic ideal of a nation associated with nature, with
the positive values of the (simple, honest, spiritual) country opposed to the decadence
of the (putatively anglophone) city (Williams 1973; Heller 2005). The heartland of
francophone Canada (especially outside of Quebec) was quickly constructed as lying
in rural areas where francophones were overrepresented in primary resource extraction
economies (fishing, lumber, mining, agriculture), despite the existence of an urban
working class, an urban middle class and a professional elite (and despite the existence
of anglophones, members of the First Nations and descendants of immigrants in the
supposedly homogeneous francophone communities).
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The real marginalization of francophones in these resource extraction and
transformation zones of the Canadian working class served both to reproduce
those communities, and also to provide discursive legitimization for the political
mobilization towards socioeconomic advancement which characterized most of
Canadian language policy debate from the 1960s to the present. The double effect of
real socioeconomic gains and the restructuring of the primary and secondary sector
economies have destabilized the material and ideological basis of policies aimed at
the reproduction of francophone communities.
Indeed, the rural traditional bastions are in economic crisis: the northern cod
fishery along Canada’s east coast closed in 1992, accompanied by successive
closures of lumber and pulp-and-paper mills, mines and heavy manufacturing
factories across most of the country. Although these phenomena affect all inhabitants
of those regions, the impact on francophones is greater because of their historical
over-representation in the geographic and economic areas in crisis and their
ideological investment in them. At the same time, we see emerging a new economy
of services and information in the form of tourism, call centres and other languageheavy activities, based in urban areas (Gee et al. 1996; Castells 2000; Beaudin 2006;
Dubois et al. 2006; da Silva et al. 2007). The result, not surprisingly, is the loss of
working-age individuals from rural areas, largely to cities, albeit also to new resource
boom areas in Northern Canada and, most recently, the province of Alberta.
By way of illustration, Table 1 outlines the urbanization (and suburbanization) of
the francophone minority population between 1996 and 2001 (detailed census
figures from 2006 on this specialized topic were not available at the time this article
was written, nor were comparative data for the total population of francophones, or
the total population of Canada).
These figures illustrate how francophones have been leaving rural areas (more
than 10,000) for more urbanized areas (where nearly 30,000 have settled). Since
most of those leaving are of employment age, the rural bastions lose the human
resources they would need in order to undertake the kinds of economic restructuring
which the new economy potentially offers (notably in tourism, especially the
combination of heritage or cultural activities with environmental or adventure
tourism). Such a dramatic shift in population problematizes the ideological claim
that the core of the ‘‘community’’ remains rooted in rural areas. Although more than
half of the francophone Canadian population currently lives in rural areas, we
expect the process of urbanization will continue to increase in the future. According
to Statistics Canada (2007), 80% of all Canadians in 2006 lived in an area classified
as urban, up from 78% in 1996 and 76% in 1986. In contrast, just over half the
Canadian population was urbanized before World War II.
It is difficult to track details of mobility for a number of reasons. It only is
traceable if respondents change address, and much recent labour migration involves
seasonal or ‘‘pendular’’ movements in which no address change is involved
(for example, when construction workers leave home for 6 months to work in
Alberta, or when miners work a shift involving 6-weeks-on and 6-weeks-off2). To
complicate things further, the Canadian census collects data on numbers of in- and
2
M. Beaudin, personal communication, November 2008.
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Table 1 Francophones in minority settings, rural/urban evolution (1996–2001)a
Ruralb/Urban typology
1996
2001
Gain (Loss)
Urbanc
307,160
335,718
28,558
1.09
Intermediated
135,843
135,025
-818
0.99
Rural, metro-adjacent regionse
243,070
246,693
3,623
1.01
Rural, non-metro-adjacent regionsf
232,475
222,620
-9,855
0.96
52,093
47,548
-4,545
0.91
970,641
987,604
16,963
1.02
Rural, northern & remote regionsg
Total: Canada excluding Quebec
Rate of growth
a
Analysis by the Research Team, Official Languages Support Programs Branch, Canadian Heritage,
May 2007, based on data from the 1996 and 2001 Census of Canada, Statistics Canada, 20%
sample
b
A ‘‘rural community’’ has less than 150 persons per km2. (Statistics Canada definition)
c
Where less than 15% of the population lives in rural communities (Statistics Canada definition)
d
Where 15–50% of the population lives in rural communities (Statistics Canada definition)
e
Where over 50% of the population lives in rural communities and which contain census divisions
adjacent to metropolitan regions (50,000 or more) (Statistics Canada definition)
f
Where over 50% of the population lives in rural communities and which contain census divisions nonadjacent to any metropolitan region (Statistics Canada definition)
g
Where over 50% of the population lives in rural communities and which contain census divisions that
are entirely or in major part above the following lines of latitude by region: Nfld, 50th; QC and ON,
49th; MN, 53rd; SA, ALB and BC, 54th; and all of the Yukon, NWT and Nunavut (Statistics Canada
definition)
out-migrants by language group and place of origin or destination, but it is
impossible to retrieve the exact shape of migration trajectories. Having said that,
however, we can say that francophones may have a slight tendency to undertake
interprovincial migration more often than the total population (who either stay at
home or move within their province). Alberta has increased in popularity as a
destination (mainly for people from Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick) over the
last census period (2001–2006) (Statistics Canada 2008).
In addition to the economic crisis of the rural areas, the late 1980s also saw a
crisis in heavy industry across Europe and North America. The industrial towns
where many francophone Canadians were concentrated in working-class neighbourhoods saw their possibilities for reproduction threatened. For example,
Welland, one such town in the southern Ontario automobile and steel industry
belt, had one of the highest rates of unemployment in Canada at that time.
The institutions set up in the period of the welfare State to represent francophone
communities, notably the Fe´de´ration des communaute´s francophones et acadienne
du Canada3 (FCFA), could not remain insensitive to this crisis. Indeed, from 1990
to 1992 the FCFA, which historically had focused on lobbying for political rights,
consulted with representatives of the francophone communities across Canada
3
Originally known as the Fe´de´ration des francophones hors Que´bec [Federation of francophones outside
Quebec] when it was founded in 1975, the FCFA considers itself the national and international advocate
of francophone minority communities in Canada (www.fcfa.ca).
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regarding the effects of ongoing economic changes and priorities for the future (see
FCFA 1992 for their report). In 1993, with the consultation results in hand, it
organized a national economic summit, which called for the creation of a national
committee to analyze the problem of labour market training in francophone
communities and pressure the federal government to respond. The State, however,
was on a slightly different path.
The neoliberalization of linguistic duality
From the 1960s the Canadian federal government, in welfare State mode, set up a
variety of programs aimed at bolstering the idea of a ‘‘francophone community’’, with
a specific focus on francophones outside Quebec, as a way to counteract Québécois
nationalism. Programs tended to concentrate on the maintenance of French language,
culture and identity, understood as anchored in rural communities, and were centred
in one particular ministry: Canadian Heritage. However, this system became difficult
to sustain as Canada, along with other Western countries, adapted to the expansion of
the globalized new economy by shifting to neoliberalism.
This shift is characterized more by an emphasis on individual economic
governmentality than on collective identity and collective rights. The initial
neoliberal moves of the State, then, were to focus on setting up programs for helping
individuals to ‘‘acquire’’ the ‘‘skills’’ they were understood to need in order to insert
themselves into the globalized new economy. The FCFA faced a challenge: their
usual interlocutor, Canadian Heritage, was not available for such initiatives, given
that its mandate did not include any form of economic development, whether
collective or individual. The agencies which were responsible for economic
development were mandated to do so for individuals, not collectivities, and had no
mandate at all to respond to government policy on linguistic duality.
Together with public servants committed to the francophone minority cause, the
FCFA had begun developing an argument based on Article 41 of the 1988 Official
Languages Act (henceforth OLA), which underlined the State’s obligation to
promote the development of francophone communities. The key phrase is the
following: ‘‘The Government of Canada is committed to (a) enhancing the vitality
of the English and French linguistic minority communities in Canada and
supporting and assisting their development; and (b) fostering the full recognition
and use of both English and French in Canadian society’’ (Government of Canada
1988, emphasis added). On this basis, the government called on the Ministry of
Human Resources Development Canada4 (HRDC) to sponsor a national committee
focused on francophone economic development, given its mission to adapt and
develop the human resources of the Canadian population.
Set up in late 1993, this new National Committee was initially called the Comite´
d’adaptation des ressources humaines de la francophonie canadienne5 and its goal
4
Although the ministry is today known as Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC),
we use the title used during the period covered in this paper, HRDC.
5
There is no official English translation; our approximate translation would be ‘‘Committee for Canadian
Francophonie Human Resources Adaptation’’.
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was to adapt the existing skills of the francophone Canadian workforce in order to
help individuals to find (better) employment. The committee outlined its strategy in
an important 1995 report entitled Plan Directeur de l’adaptation de la main d’œuvre
de la francophonie canadienne.6 In it, concerns about the contradictions between
the State focus on individual employability and community concerns about
collective identity reproduction were made explicit:
Dans le projet de la re´forme proposeé, on privile´gie une approche favorisant
l’individu et on semble vouloir de´laisser le caracte`re universel des
programmes. […] L’approche individuelle, on le craint, risque d’avantager
des motivations faites pour la majorite´ et par la majorite´.
In the proposed reform bill, preference is given to an approach favouring the
individual which seems to neglect the universal nature of the programs. […]
We fear that the individual approach will favour the decisions made by the
majority for the majority.
[Our translation] (Formatel Consultants 1995:70)
The organized francophone community insisted that the individualist bent of
neoliberal government reforms (pushed by HRDC) did not correspond to its interest
in preserving and developing the collectivities it had worked so hard to construct
since the 1960s or even earlier. Community leaders feared that the values of
‘‘security, equality and uniformity’’, upon which the system of social welfare was
based (as was the legitimating ideology of the rural francophonie canadienne),
would be lost, along with their special minority status.
This tension around community goals to replace individual-focused employability
programs with community-focused economic development ones with the support of
some arms of the government, persisted through the end of the 1990s and into the early
2000s. While programs that were focused on community maintenance mainly folded,
those focused on economic adaptation with individual skill-development mandates
grew. Yet, in response to the strong tension, HRDC used some of these last programs
(like the Employment Insurance fund surpluses) to support francophone community
economic development programs (Forgues 2007), which quickly became unjustifiable. Still in the late 1990s, HRDC also came under fire for the unorthodox use of
public funds for advertising initiatives designed to beef up the image of the Canada
brand in Quebec (known as the ‘‘sponsorship scandal’’). Following these scandals, the
Canadian government introduced major reforms. Under the circumstances, the
government could not afford to risk allowing questions about the coherence between
programs and expenditures and about what money was being used for francophones
and why. In 1997, HRDC restructured its mandate and ended up offloading some
human resource programs to the provinces and territories, which were in the process
of building their own support structure.
The National Committee, which had been set up after the FCFA used Article 41
of the OLA (1988) to call for francophone economic development, changed its
6
Our approximate translation: ‘‘Master Plan/Blueprint for the adaptation of the Canadian francophonie
workforce’’.
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name and mission from ‘‘adapting’’ to ‘‘developing’’ human resources7, coinciding
(nicely) with the restructuring at HRDC. Shortly thereafter, in 1998, this committee
became even more national, as it set up a pan-Canadian group or network of
regional francophone organizations that promoted economic development and
employability, known as the RDÉE or Re´seau de de´veloppement ećonomique et
d’employabilite´8 Canada. This was the State’s first program to specifically target the
economic development of the Canadian francophonie in order to help meet the
objectives of the OLA.
Once again, relying on the Official Languages Act of 1988, the organized
francophone community found a new path towards legitimate support and funding of
community economic development initiatives. This involved a horizontal distribution
of responsibilities for francophone minority community development across
government ministries,9 not just HRDC or Canadian Heritage, and their signing
into a partnership with the RDÉE and the FCFA. The RDÉE was set up as a
government-community partnership structure, with community representatives at
the national level appointed by the FCFA, and each government ministry or
agency involved also contributing one delegate, all under a community-government
co-presidency.
When it was first created, the RDÉE’s mandate stemmed from that of the
National Committee and its focus on employability: helping individuals find (better)
employment by adapting the existing skills of the francophone Canadian workforce.
Originally seen as a regroupement (grouping), before later becoming a re´seau
(network), the RDÉE consists of local (provincial, territorial) groups that work
together to coordinate and deliver support services to francophone community
organizations and businesses (with funding applications, project development,
professional training, etc.) An entrepreneur and important member of the National
Committee remembers the committee’s first president, himself an entrepreneur,
bluntly stating that ‘‘if there aren’t jobs for francophones, then what we’re doing is
useless’’, and that ‘‘it’s all well and good to create businesses, but everyone is
leaving, the children aren’t staying and the villages are becoming empty’’ (Interview
06.10.04).10 That is, he felt that the Committee needed to focus its energy on
7
It became known as the Comite´ national de de´veloppement des ressources humaines de la francophonie
canadienne, which we would translate as ‘‘the National Committee for Canadian Francophonie Human
Resources Development’’ since no official English translation exists.
8
We translate it as ‘‘the Economic Development and Employability Network’’.
9
Including: Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Agriculture
and Agri-Food Canada, Western Economic Diversification Canada, Industry Canada, Canadian Heritage,
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Human Resources and Development Canada, Service Canada, Public
Works and Government Services Canada.
10
Here is a more complete excerpt, in the original French, where the aforementioned quotes are in bold:
(see Appendix A for the transcription conventions)
F:
si on passe pas par l’économie qu’on met toutes nos écoles en place qu’on se bâtisse des beaux
centres communautaires / si y est pas d’emplois pour les francophones / ça sert à rien ce qu’on
fait là pis c’est de là qui est né vraiment l’idée de former une équipe national en développement
économique […] c’est ben beau faire des business mais tout le monde s’en va les enfants restent
pas les villages se vident
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activities which made it possible for young francophones to stay in the rural
communities which are understood to be the backbone of francophone Canada, and
without which, indeed, francophone Canada cannot exist.
As the organized francophone community pressured for community economic
development, the horizontal distribution of State support, through the RDÉE,
involved not only a discursive and practical justification for setting up new
programs in ministries historically uninvolved in linguistic duality issues, but also
accompanying reforms within ministries to allow this to happen. For example, in the
mid 1990s Canadian Heritage briefly restructured its mandate from cultural
preservation to ‘‘cross-cultural understanding and social and economic integration’’
(Dewing and Leman 2006).11 As one former community representative on the
national RDÉE explained, ‘‘Canadian Heritage has always been part of the
francophone Canadian communities’’ (Interview 06.10.04), but when their mandate
shifted, cultural activities were seen as profit-driven and self-sustaining economic
opportunities. What is important for us, however, is not so much the impact of more
or less money, but rather the impact of the changed criteria for its distribution. A
new line of questioning emerged regarding the importance of being able to
maximize the profits from investing in activities in one small community for the rest
of francophone Canada: ‘‘Can the [cultural] performance (le spectacle), which
receives funding from Canadian Heritage, be exported to other provinces? Is it
something that will nourish the community and encourage the emergence of new
artists? Can it be performed yearly?’’ (Interview 06.10.04).12 In another example, in
late 2001, the Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada launched the
Agricultural Rural Minority Language Community Planning Initiative with the help
of Canadian Heritage and its Interdepartmental Partnership with the OfficialLanguage Communities program. This rural planning initiative sought to establish a
vision and a plan for community economic development by and for the rural
communities.
11
A quick look at the Canadian Heritage Official Languages Support Programs Financial Data from the
Annual Reports (1994–2005) available online at http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/progs/lo-ol/pubs/
annual_reports_e.cfm indicates that total spending on official languages dropped considerably from 1994
to 1998/99 (from $292 to $220 million), and that from 1999 to 2003 the spending vacillated from high to
low (averaging $279 million) until the implementation of the Action Plan where spending increased
significantly (up to $341 million in 2005/06). Accessed November 4, 2008.
12
Here is a more complete excerpt, in the original French, where the aforementioned quotes are in bold:
F:
Int:
F:
ah ben Patrimoine y réalise tout d’un coup que y a des façons de faire mieux les choses / t’sais ?
mhm
est-ce que euh ton spectacle qu’y financent est-ce que c’est un spectacle qui pourrait être
exporté dans les autres provinces? Est-ce que c’est un spectacle qui / qui va nourrir la
communauté francophone et à encourager l’émergence de nouveaux artistes ? Est-ce que
c’est un spectacle qui / pourrait revenir d’année en année et qu’on (XX) t’sais ?
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Such shifts occurred across the ministries and agencies called on to be involved
in the RDÉE, in ways that would be understood as transparent and amenable to the
‘‘accountability’’ procedures that were the watchword of the neoliberal government,
especially in the wake of the sponsorship scandal. Indeed, for a period of over a
year, activities were stalled as the government and the FCFA tried to work out the
legal and policy basis that would allow the RDÉE to go forward with a funding basis
which would match its goals, and a means of accountability that would function
despite the horizontal realignment of participation among ministries and government agencies.
All these changes culminated in the Action Plan for Official Languages
(Government of Canada 2003) which sought to support ‘‘the spirit and the purpose’’
of the older Official Languages Act (1988) by strengthening and selling Canada’s
‘‘linguistic duality’’ and developing its Official Language Minority Communities
through an accountability framework and funding along three axes: education,
community development and the federal civil service. During the consultations held by
the federal government to determine the action plan to enforce the older OLA, the
FCFA prepared a document on behalf of the francophone communities (FCFA 2002).
The FCFA felt that the State had to help francophones take charge of their economic
development and it criticized HRDC for its inability to do so, claiming that ‘‘this
department has forgotten to deal with communities in the same way it did before, i.e.,
by considering them a target clientele’’ (FCFA 2002, p. 43 in Forgues 2007). Also in
2003, the National Committee dropped ‘‘human resources development’’ from its
name13 and streamlined itself with the RDÉE, thereby consolidating the focus on
community economic development the FCFA had long struggled for and facilitating
partnerships with other government ministries who saw the activities connoted by the
old name as solely HRDC’s responsibility. Finally, in December of that same year,
HRDC was split into two separate departments: Human Resources and Skills
Development Canada on the one hand, and Social Development Canada on the other.14
The upshot of this lengthy period of restructuring and reorientation (more or less
from 1993 to 2003) was an uneasy compromise between (1) ideological
commitments to reproducing official language communities, understood as organic
ethnolinguistic groups, and (2) the State’s shift from welfare to neoliberal efforts to
support new economy development and programs aimed at adapting the workforce
to that new economy. The RDÉE is the incarnation of this compromise: it supports
economic development, but of traditional bastions, and over the years has managed
to clarify its focus not on human resources but on economic opportunity.
By 2005, the RDÉE was formulating its goal as follows:
RDEÉ Canada favorise, en collaboration avec ses partenaires provinciaux et
territoriaux, le de´veloppement ećonomique et la creátion d’emplois dans les
13
It became known as the Comite´ national de de´veloppement ećonomique et d’employabilite´ or ‘‘the
National Committee of Economic Development and Employability’’.
14
Not long afterwards, on February 6, 2006, these two government ministries were regrouped under the
ministry of Human Resources and Social Development Canada or HRSDC, as it is known today
(www.hrsdc.gc.ca).
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communaute´s francophones et acadiennes du Canada.
[…] Il est pertinent de souligner que plus d’un million de francophones vivent
en situation linguistique minoritaire au Canada. Leur impact sur l’ećonomie
du pays est important. Leur pre´sence dans le domaine des affaires ajoute de la
valeur aux ećhanges et permet une plus grande diversification de l’activite´
ećonomique. Le RDEÉ sert de maillon entre ces francophones du pays.
Les agents du RDEÉ interviennent dans quatre secteurs:
•
•
•
•
De´veloppement rural
Ećonomie du savoir
Tourisme
Inte´gration des jeunes dans le de´veloppement ećonomique
RDÉE Canada, in collaboration with its provincial and Territory partners,
promotes economic development and job creation in the francophone and
Acadian communities of Canada.
[…] It is relevant to underline that more than a million francophones live in
linguistic minority contexts in Canada. [Underlining in the original.] Their
impact on the economy of the country is important. Their presence in business
adds value to exchanges and allows for a greater diversification of economic
activity. The RDÉE acts as a link among these francophones of the country.
RDÉE agents are involved in four sectors:
•
•
•
•
Rural development
The knowledge economy
Tourism
The integration of youth into economic development
(Excerpt from the RDÉE website (www.rdee.ca) accessed on February 2,
2005; our translation)
The RDÉE’s target is clearly the problem of the ‘‘exodus’’ of the young
workforce from rural areas, and the goal of restarting the economies of those areas
through two major new economic sectors: tourism and the knowledge economy. The
texts that are available say little about how the actors understood their work and
efforts, beyond statements of commitment to a certain vision of francophone
Canada and to a new orientation towards economic development. Indeed, as we
shall see in the next section, many of the actors we encountered presented this shift
as normal and natural, in a number of ways.
Naturalizing a discursive shift…
When asked in 2005 to explain why the RDÉE prioritized its four sectors (the rural
economy, the integration of young people, the knowledge economy and tourism), an
important member of the agency said:
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107
A: de´veloppement rural parce que la moitie´de nos communaute´s est dans le secteur
rural donc on avait un proble`me là / l’inte´gration de la jeunesse / comment on va
amener les jeunes à s’inte´resser au de´veloppement ećonomique ou à faire de
l’entreprenariat tout ça / pis trouver des façons de contrer l’exode / l’exode
rurale c’est un proble`me se´rieux chez nous dans toutes nos communaute´s /
l’ećonomie du savoir à l’e´poque / cinq ans passe´s (en 2000) c’e´tait la boule
technologique / tout le monde s’en allait là-dedans on disait si euh / si les
entrepreneurs ne prennent pas le virage technologique dans les prochaines
anneés le tiers va disparaıˆtre […] euh / le tourisme ben le tourisme c’est une
priorite´ nationale pis je veux dire c’est une des industries principales [Our
emphasis]
A: rural development because half of our communities are in the rural sector so we
had a problem there / the integration of the youth / how we are going to make
young people interested in economic development or in business and all that /
and find ways to stop the exodus / the rural exodus is a serious problem for
us in all of our communities / the knowledge economy at the time / five years
ago (in 2000) it was the technological bubble / everyone was getting in on it
and we thought um / if the entrepreneurs don’t adapt to meet the new
technologies in the next few years a third of them will disappear […] um /
tourism well tourism is a national priority so I mean it’s one of the main
industries [Our emphasis, our translation] (Interview 02.02.05)
In other words, it is all self-evident: these are the areas which need help, and
these are the areas which present opportunities. At most, across our interviews, we
would obtain some explanations which focused on the importance of rural spaces as
being the place where ‘‘community’’ naturally exists. The fear of urbanization is,
therefore, ideological. Francophones in the city, on the other hand, are not available
for the construction of the traditional francophone ‘‘community’’ and hence are
politically useless (although they may be economically useful). Even a former
government agent and important member of the National Committee was dismissive
when talking about cities because ‘‘there are some [francophones] in the urban
centres but […that is where] you find more individuals’’ (Interview 29.05.05). No
one we spoke to mentioned moving to cities like Montreal or Moncton, which have
large francophone communities, although we know such moves do happen. At the
same time, both cities have long figured prominently in francophone discourses of
assimilation and contamination, since they are associated with English domination
and with stigmatized working-class vernaculars. Again, these are both phenomena
which not only fail to correspond to the current socio-economic and sociolinguistic
profile of those areas, but also ignore earlier social realities which were effaced by
Romantic nationalist ideals of rural authenticity (Langlois 2000; Heller 2005;
Williams 1973). In that sense, all cities are understood to present the same set of
dangers, whether they have large francophone populations or not, and whatever
sociological evidence we may have to the contrary.
Regardless of the government ministry, the same discourse of the ‘‘rural exodus’’
or ‘‘the city as a source of assimilation’’ (especially for the youth who ‘‘disappear’’
or are ‘‘lost’’ in an insignificant mass of urban francophones) comes back again and
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again, as evidenced in the excerpts below (agent B works for Industry Canada, while
agents C and D work for Canadian Heritage):
B:
B:
un des aspects qui nous inquie`te beaucoup / c’est justement la disparition de
ces petites communaute´s-là / que les jeunes partent / disparaissent / qu’il y a
un exode et qu’ils ne reviennent plus mais finalement ils vont euh / juste
augmenter le nombre de francophones dans les grandes villes / mais sans faire
une diffe´rence remarquable
one of the aspects that worries us a lot / is precisely the disappearance of these
small communities / that young people are leaving / disappearing / that there is an
exodus and that they never return but in the end they will um / just increase
the number of francophones in the big cities / but without making a significant
difference
[Our translation] (Interview 04.10.04)
pour les communaute´s francophones / les jeunes qui s’en vont vont vers les
grandes villes des communaute´s rurales et s’assimilent à la majorite´ / alors ils
perdent vraiment des membres / la geńe´ration d’apre`s ne parlera peut-eˆtre pas
le français
D: puis on des statistiques là-dessus
C: for the francophone communities / the young people that leave go to the big
cities from the rural communities and assimilate themselves to the majority / so
they really lose (community) members / the next generation perhaps will not
speak French
D: and we have statistics on that
C:
And, according to government agents C and D, young people are not interested in
the survival of francophone minority communities:
C:
ils s’en vont pas à Calgary en se disant moi je suis francophone / je vais
essayer de garder ma mon identite´ francophone / ils disent moi je suis à la
recherche d’un emploi […] si c’est un milieu anglophone c’est pas un
proble`me je suis bilingue apre`s ça […] en choisissant la personne à qui ils
veulent se marier / encore une fois leur but à eux c’est pas de t’sais c’est pas la
francophonie canadienne / c’est juste avoir un un e´poux une e´pouse puis de
faire des enfants / puis c’est pas tout le monde qui pense à la survie de la
communaute´ minoritaire francophone
D: des fois l’amour est plus fort que la survie [rire]
C: they don’t go to Calgary saying me I’m francophone / I’m going to try and
keep my francophone identity / they say me I’m looking for a job […] If it’s in
an anglophone environment that’s not a problem I’m bilingual after that […]
when they choose the person they’ll marry / once again their goal is not you
know it’s not la francophonie canadienne / it’s just to have a a husband a wife
then to have kids / so not everyone thinks about the survival of the francophone
minority community
D: sometimes love is stronger than survival [laughter]
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109
The focus on the rural bastions and on the biological reproduction of the community
through its youth is completely naturalized. Cities remain ideologically anglophone,
places where francophones necessarily lose their identity, if not by personal
assimilation, then by creating exogamous families unable to continue the reproduction
of a collectivity that is linguistic and culturally homogeneous and, crucially, kinshipbased. The only thing that needs changing, according to this discourse, is that
francophones in the heartland need to learn how to become entrepreneurs.
The same naturalization is true of how agents account for why this shift happened
in the first place. In all our discussions with key actors, no one mentioned the
economic collapse of the traditional bastions (and the general reconfiguration
brought on by the globalized new economy) as a catalyst for the State’s neoliberal
shift towards an economic approach based on sustainability and profitability.
Instead, government agents and the community representatives that work with them
claim that this shift was necessary either because it was a grassroots initiative (‘‘the
community told us’’), or because ‘‘the ministry of Human Resources wasn’t doing
anything for francophones’’. Others saw the shift as simply an inevitable
progression or ‘‘a normal evolution […from infancy to adolescence]’’ (excerpts
from different interviews with government agents in 2004 and 2005). One agent
from the ministry of Industry Canada described the focus on community economic
development (versus individual skills training) in the following way:
B: (au de´but, les RDEÉs) avaient trouve´ l’argent au sein du ministe`re du
De´veloppement des Ressources Humaines (Canada) / justement pour aider à
tout ce qui tenait au de´veloppement d’employabilite´ […] que les gens
pouvaient eˆtre employe´s c’est les pre´parer pour le marche´ du travail puis tout
ça / mais au fur et à mesure qu’on avance avec eux […] on se rend compte que
maintenant les projets qui arrivent c’est vraiment des projets de creátion
d’emplois / des projets de de´veloppement ećonomique
B: (in the beginning, the RDÉEs) had found money from the ministry of Human
Resources Development (Canada) / to help precisely with everything that had
to do with the development of employability […] getting people employed it’s
preparing them for the job market and things like that / but as things went along
[…] we realize that now the projects we get are really job creation projects /
economic development projects
Somehow, ‘‘as things went along’’, people realized that the community needed to
find a way to rebuild its economic base, and that community economic
development, rather than individual-focused skills training, was clearly the best
path. In this way then, we find both the naturalization of a specific idea of
community itself and of how to legitimize and achieve its reproduction.
… with the appearance of some cracks
Nonetheless, the issue remains as to what it means to take on this strategy of
community economic development. The knowledge-based economy and the tourism
industry exploit the main resources francophone communities possess that are of
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110
value in the new economy: culture and language. In the new conditions of the
globalized economy, local resources like bi- / multilingualism and cultural identities
can be transformed into marketable international commodities to be bought or sold.
On the one hand, we have the production and sale of authentic cultural products and
performances in local, national and international markets (for example, many of the
strategies used for cultural promotion and preservation during the height of Canadian
multiculturalism in the 1970s and 1980s [fairs, festivals, food, folklore, etc.] are now
being repackaged as strategies of community economic development; see also Heller
and Labrie 2003; Malaborza and McLaughlin 2006); and on the other hand, we have
the commodification of language and multilingualism through business, education
and tourism. Language remains a symbol of authenticity, but it is also seen as a skill, a
technical and measurable object; so much so that the Canadian government in its
Action Plan for Official Languages (2003) invested $20 million (CDN) to create a
language industry association to coordinate the industry of translators, interpreters,
etc., and to promote Canadian language products and services around the world.15
At the same time, while the policy focus is clearly on the rural communities, it is
difficult to ignore urbanization, as it is difficult to ignore another process
characteristic of the globalized new economy: geographic mobility, whether
internal to Canada or in the form of immigration.
Cities are important sites of construction of new cosmopolitan discourses of la
francophonie canadienne and the destination of most recent francophone immigrants. These immigrants, in turn, complicate the image of what it means to be
French Canadian (i.e. not white, multi-faith, plurilingual, urban, with multiple
identities, etc.), especially since they are understood as potential solutions for the
labour and demographic shortage in rural francophone communities, as well as
potential links to international (primarily European) markets (although the
immigrants themselves are predominantly from Africa). One of the important
agents of the national RDÉE recognizes these tensions in the following manner:
A:
Int:
c’est sûr que la question rurale on peut pas juste la laisser là puis oublier le
milieu urbain […] on a beaucoup de monde dans le milieu urbain et puis c’est
une approche comple`tement diffe´rente / on ne peut pas faire de de´veloppement
ećonomique de la meˆme façon […] ça nous rattrape je dirais […] depuis le
dernier recensement on se rend compte qu’il y a peut-eˆtre moins de gens des
communaute´s dans le milieu rural qu’on pensait / et puis on a beaucoup de
monde dans le milieu urbain puis avec toute la question de l’immigration aussi /
on s’inte´resse beaucoup à la question de l’immigration aussi
[…] vous voyez ça comment?
15
For even more on the economic impact of the restructuring of the primary and secondary sectors, as
well as the growth of the tertiary sector and especially language-related industries see Beaudin et al.
(1997), Vaillancourt (1996) and the websites for Industry Canada (www.ic.gc.ca), the Canadian Language
Industry Association (www.ailia.ca) as well as the Canadian Tourism Commission (www.canada
tourism.com). On the specific issue of the language industry, see the report by the Conference Board of
Canada (2007) on the economic assessment of the Canadian language industry in 2004. It also highlights
a difficulty we encountered, that ‘‘the language industry is inadequately defined at a statistical level. The
fact that it does not correspond to any single industry classification system code makes it somewhat
fragmented and hard to define (p. 25).’’
123
A:
Int:
A:
A:
Int:
A:
Int:
A:
111
nous on voit ça / naturellement au niveau de la main d’œuvre […] pour
combler les besoins en main d’œuvre dans les euh / dans les communaute´s
[…] et aussi l’investissement [international]
puis à l’international vous pensez quelles re´gions ?
euh / on pense euh / pas nećessairement aux pays de l’Afrique / on pensait
plutôt en termes d’Europe
certainly the question of rural [communities] we can’t just leave it there and
forget about the urban areas […] we have a lot of people in urban areas and so
it’s a completely different approach / we can’t do economic development in
the same way […] it catches up with us I would say […] since the last census
we realize that there are perhaps fewer people from the (francophone)
communities in the rural areas than we used to think / and then we have many
people in urban areas then also with the whole question of immigration / we
are very interested in the question of immigration as well
[…] how do you see that?
we see that / obviously at the workforce level […] to meet the workforce needs
in the um / in the communities […] and also the [international] investment
so at the international level what regions are you thinking of?
um / we’re thinking um / not necessarily Africa / we thought more in terms of
Europe
Despite the realization that ‘‘we can’t do economic development in the same way’’,
it seems, nonetheless, as though the institutionalized francophone Canadian community cannot do economic development any other way for fear of threatening their
symbolic and material markets. Rather than investing in different capital which is
more suitable for new emerging markets, their reaction to the changing conditions is to
save the existing market. For francophone Canada, that means saving the idea of a
homogeneous community fixed in rural locations, and not those francophone
communities in urban areas, because the question of rural communities is such a
central part of the production of legitimizing nationalist francophone minority
discourses. Still, certain ideological presuppositions are being challenged. In the
excerpt below, a former community representative on the national RDÉE discusses the
ideological differences that divide traditional bastions and urbanized communities:
F: dans les communaute´s francophones euh t’as deux ećoles de penseé / t’as les f/ francophones de souche là / les vieux de la vieille (X) qui en ont arrache´ pour
se battre contre le Ku Klux Klan / y en ont arrache´ pour mettre leurs ećoles
sauver leurs e´glises / pis eux pis tout ce qui est pas blanc pis parle pas français
comme twe´ pis mwe´ / ben y font pas partie y sont pas des vrais francophones /
pis t’as des gens de m: ma geńe´ration […] des gens qui viennent de partout qui
travaillent maintenant à R. / qui fondent l’association / communautaire // et ça
c’est une nouvelle ećole de penseé // on fait les choses diffe´remment / trois
quarts vont pas à la messe / il y en a qui ont pas leurs enfants à l’ećole euh
francophone parce que y poussent trop le catholicisme […] t’as toutes toutes
ces choses là / qui sont en train d’e´voluer aussi dans les communaute´s
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112
F: in the francophone communities uh you have two schools of thought / you have
the f- / the ‘‘old-stock’’ francophones / the old-timers (X) who struggled to fight
against the Ku Klux Klan / there are some who struggled to establish their
schools save their churches / and for them anyone who isn’t white and who
doesn’t speak French like you and me [using French Canadian pronunciations
of these pronouns] / well they aren’t part of they aren’t real francophones / and
then you have the people of m: my generation […] people who come from all
over who work now in R. / who found the community / association // and that’s
a new school of thought // we do things differently / three quarters don’t go to
mass / there are some who don’t send their children to francophone schools
because they push Catholicism too much […] you have all all those things / that
are also starting to evolve in the communities [Our translation] (Interview
06.10.04)
While francophone Canada constructs itself as ethnically homogeneous, social
realities like immigration, urbanization and exogamy introduce alternative ways of
being francophone Canadian. We see, therefore, how the current conditions of the
globalized knowledge-based economy open the door for a new kind of cosmopolitan
francite´ (or ‘‘Frenchness’’), but this challenges the ways in which the State and
‘‘community’’-based institutions protect and reproduce traditional forms of legitimacy and authenticity.16
The interdiscursive life of language policy
We have tried to follow two threads in this article. First, we have a substantive one
about the challenges neoliberalism and the globalized new economy present to
mainstream minority language policy; our second thread is more methodological,
treating how language policy itself can be apprehended through tracking links
among acts of discursive production involving the (always) multiple stakeholders,
and unfolding in multiple discursive spaces.
The case of francophone Canada (outside Quebec) illustrates how difficult it is to
sustain the nationalist ideologies that underlie the major part of minority language
policy in the last 40 years or so. In part, this is paradoxical, since the point of much
of this policy has been to facilitate the access of linguistic minorities to modern
political structures and to contemporary modes of capitalist production. To the
extent that such access has been gained, minorities find themselves faced with
the same problem as that of the centralizing States whose power they resist: namely,
the fact that the industrial and primary resource markets which sustained them are
now shifting to more globalized modes of production and consumption beyond the
reach of State control, and to the increasing production of symbolic goods produced
in urban centres by mobile populations. The result, in any case, is the adoption in the
16
Questions surrounding the ideological transformations of the nation, identity and diversity are the
focus of many disciplines including, for example, political philosophy and the works of Kymlicka (2007)
and Taylor (1992), among others.
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113
political field of economic discourses, both as legitimating ideologies, but also as a
means of making sense out of a materially re-worked mode of resource distribution.
Grasping how this unfolds, and with what consequences, is a methodological
challenge. While much can be gained from the analysis of policy documents, which
are forms of discursive acts in and of themselves, we argue here that we cannot
grasp the tensions which move ideologies along (serving to reproduce or challenge
them) without a more ethnographically-informed understanding of the institutional
constraints, the principles of resource distribution and the interests of sociallysituated actors involved. We certainly cannot claim to have found the perfect recipe
for doing so, but we have tried to do a number of things.
First, we have tried to locate the policy process in the political economic
conditions of the time. We argue that in this specific case, we cannot understand
what unfolded without recognizing the process’ links to the very economic basis
which allowed for the reproduction of ethnolinguistic communities organized on the
basis of genealogical principles, and around certain linguistic and cultural values
and practices. In addition, we needed to ask questions about how that idea of
community fits in with the legitimization of the State, on whose resources those
communities depend, both materially and symbolically. Economic and political
discursive spaces bleed into each other, as do those of the State and its agencies with
the institutionalized community structures of francophone Canada.
Second, we have addressed the question as one of processes, unfolding over time
and in linked discursive spaces. The discursive shift turns out to be temporally
locatable, although of course our account has chosen to emphasize the institutional
moments of discursive production (the FCFA’s 1990–1992 community consultation,
the establishment of the National Committee and the RDÉE, the publication of the
Action Plan, and so on), recognizing that they emerge from a more complex set of
actions and interactions which are much more difficult to locate, largely because
they are dispersed and, uninstitutionalized, leave no traces. At best, we can
apprehend them through retrospective interviews with participants.
Finally, we see the language policy process as constituted discursively;
institutionalized texts have material consequences, which shape what can be said
and done by actors positioned by those texts in certain ways, ways which make it
more or less difficult for them to pursue their interests. In the cases we have seen
here, it has so far been possible to sustain a traditional idea of minority communities
and how they should be constructed by the State, largely because the State has an
interest in collaborating in this endeavour. The cracks have appeared, though, and it
remains to be seen to what extent they can be neutralized, or to what extent they will
end up challenging the reproduction of the new economic development discourse of
linguistic minorities.
Acknowledgments The data was collected as part of a project entitled La francite´ transnationale: pour
une sociolinguistique de la mouvance, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada (2004–2008). We are grateful for the support of the other team members, and in particular for
comments on earlier versions of this paper from Lindsay Bell, Philippe Hambye, Bonnie McElhinny,
Mireille McLaughlin, Mary Richards as well as those from the anonymous reviewers. The statistical data
was compiled with the gracious help of William Floch (Heritage Canada); we also thank Kyoko
Motobayashi and Maurice Beaudin for help in interpreting census data. Any shortcomings are our own.
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114
Appendix A
Transcription conventions
The interview data is transcribed following the conventions used in Heller and Labrie (2003) where an
attempt was made to reproduce the recorded speech as precisely as possible without making too many
interpretations on the part of the transcriber, hence the limited use of traditional punctuation. Instead, the
following aspects of speech are represented by the corresponding symbol(s):
Elongated syllable
Intonation
Pauses
:
!?
/ (short pause)
// (slightly longer pause)
/// (longer pause)
Metadiscursive commentary
Incomprehensible utterance
Interviewer
Int
Interviewees
A–F
[laughter]
(X)
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Author Biographies
Emanuel da Silva is a PhD candidate in the Department of French at the University of Toronto
(Canada). His research interests include language ideologies, diasporic communities and the discursive
(re)constructions of identity as seen through a critical, sociolinguistic and ethnographic framework. His
thesis involves a qualitative examination of the Portuguese–Canadian community of Toronto and how
some of its young people negotiate their languages and identities. His most recent publication is
‘‘Bilingualism and the globalized new economy: The commodification of language and identity’’ with
M. McLaughlin & M. Richards in Bilingualism: A Social Approach (ed. M. Heller, 2007).
Monica Heller is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education and the Centre de
recherches en éducation franco-ontarienne at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of
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Toronto (Canada). She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her research interests focus on the role of
language ideologies and practices in the construction of social difference and social inequality; on language,
nationalism and postnationalism; and on language and identity in the globalized new economy. Her sociolinguistic ethnographic work focusses on linguistic minorities in general and on francophone Canada in particular.
Her most recent publications include Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography (2nd
ed., 2007); Bilingualism: A Social Approach (ed. M. Heller, 2007); Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and
Interest in the Defense of Languages (eds. A. Duchêne & M. Heller, 2006); Discours et identite´s. La francite´
canadienne entre modernite´ et mondialisation (eds. M. Heller & N. Labrie, 2003); and E´le´ments d’une sociolinguistique critique (2002).
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From protector to producer: the role of the State in the discursive shift

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