Services for immigrant women: an evaluation of locations

The Toronto region receives one‐quarter of new immigrants to Canada and they become widely dispersed throughout the metropolitan area. Most immigrants arrive with language, social and cultural needs, creating demand for social services from existing agencies. ‘How can agencies choose locations that meet the needs of new immigrants?’ is the central focus. The results of a study in Metropolitan Toronto of 68 nonprofit agencies that provide a variety of settlement services for immigrant and refugee women are discussed. Immigrant and language groups and the agencies serving them are mapped; the locations of agencies are evaluated. While service agencies are responding to the arrival of new groups and the spatial dispersion of new immigrants, more services in the northern portions of the study area are required. The spatial dispersion of some language groups means that they have poorer access to services than groups that are concentrated in the traditional immigrant reception area. La région de Toronto accueille le quart des immigrants au Canada, et ceux‐ci sont dispersés dans l'agglomération torontoise. La plupart d'entre eux ont des exigences linguistiques, sociales et culturelles qui augmentent la demande en services sociaux dispensés par les organismes en place. Ce document porte essentiellement sur la façon dont ces derniers determinent les lieux de prestation de services qui répondront le mieux aux besoins des immigrants. II est également question des résultats d'une étude menée dans la communauté urbaine de Toronto auprés de 68 organismes à but non lucratif offrant un éventail de services d'établissement pour les immigrantes et les réfugiées. Les immigrants et les groupes linguistiques, ainsi que les organismes qui les servent, y sont répertoriés géographiquement. La localisation de ces organismes fait aussi l'objet d'une évaluation. La plupart répondent déjà aux besoins des nouveaux venus et tiennent compte de leur dispersion mais, selon cette étude, il faudrait plus de services dans le nord de l'agglomération torontoise. En raison de cet éparpillement, certains groupes linguistiques ont plus difficilement accès à des services que d'autres qui se trouvent dans les zones d'ancrage habituelles.     

Beyond structure and agency: Rethinking political identities in Iraq after 2003

This paper examines ethno‐symbolic and instrumental explanations of ethnic and sectarian identities placed within the constructivist turn in the study of political identity, both in the abstract and how they have been deployed to explain the increasing contemporary influence of ethnosectarian mobilisation in Iraq and the wider Middle East. The paper identifies explanatory value in these approaches but finds their focus on either ideational structures or individual rationality too narrow to provide a comprehensive explanation of what happened to political identities in Iraq after 2003. Instead, the paper deploys what can be termed a ‘Bourdieusian method’, in an attempt to get beyond the polarities of structure and agency. It uses Bourdieu's conceptions of political field, principles of vision and division and symbolic violence to understand the influence that de‐Ba'athification, the creation of the Muhasasa Ta'ifia or sectarian apportionment system and national elections had on political identities in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.     

Home stories: immigrant narratives of place and identity in contemporary Ireland

This paper discusses immigrant identity and place in contemporary Ireland. It draws from a longitudinal research project that involved recent immigrants to Ireland. Participants in the project came from 18 different countries, and ranged in age from 22 to 68. Their reasons for moving to Ireland were varied, and included work, adventure, and personal relationships. Combining insights from sociolinguistics and human geography, the paper first considers the different ways in which immigrants to Ireland narrate place and identity, paying particular attention to content and linguistic strategies. It then provides a more detailed discussion of the relationship between immigrant identity and place through a focus on the concept of “home,” highlighting the linguistic strategies and means that immigrants used to discursively construct notions of home and identity in their interviews. The paper concludes by arguing that detailed discourse level analysis of people's narratives of place offers new insights into the relationship between immigrant identity and place.     

Commoditizing the safari and making space for conflict: Place,identity and parks in East Africa

Increased resource scarcity, the social construction of nature, the disintegration of moral economy and associated policy shifts are often cited as the main drivers of resource conflicts in East Africa. Research in geography, anthropology and rural sociology has unveiled how common explanations of resource conflicts overlook multi-scalar political, economic, social, cultural and environmental tensions. The purpose of this study is to provide more nuanced explanations of resource conflicts by incorporating three disparate but related threads of literature. Using literatures on the commodification of nature, multi-stranded notions of identity and geographical conceptualizations of ‘place’, I demonstrate how three transformational moments structure and propagate conflicts between herders and protected area managers around a national park in Kenya. I argue that the rise of a commoditized form of nature tourism coupled with idealized notions of ‘nature’ and ‘wilderness’ have altered the micro-geography of interaction between herders and protected area managers. These altered geographies of interaction have diluted the shared history and traditional relations of reciprocity, created new social milieux, and lead to the creation of binary identities among herders and protected area managers. The enforcement of these binary identities culminates in conflict.     

PLACES AND SPACES OF DISLOCATION: LADY ORACLE'S TORONTO

In this paper we explore some of the issues relating to place, identity, and ideology in Margaret Atwood's third novel, Lady Oracle, first published in 1976. Simply, Lady Oracle relates the story of the writer Joan Foster as she struggles to come to terms with her multiple identities. In so doing, the novel depicts some of the many social and spatial changes taking place in Toronto from the 1940s to the 1970s. Herein we focus on the representations of home and city, and how Joan's search for identity is embedded in the reconfiguration of these geographical spaces and places. Home assumes negative connotations as it is associated both with the suburbs and with a mother who relinquished her own needs and desires for motherhood. The city, on the other hand, is an ambiguous landscape; we suggest, however, that it is precisely this ambiguity that encourages and permits Joan to explore alternative identities. By way of conclusion, we will point to some of the novel's assumptions and silences. Dans cet article, nous examinons comment Lady Oracle (le troisième roman de Margaret Atwood, publié pour la première fois en 1976) traite les questions de place, d'identité et d'idéologie. Simplement, Lady Oracle ra- conte l'histoire de l'ecrivain Joan Foster, qui rencontre des difficultés d se reconcilier avec ses identities multiples. En même temps, le roman dépeint les transforma- tions sociales et spatiales A Toronto entre les annees quarante et les annees soixante-dix. Ici, nous portons principalement sur les représentations de la maison et de la ville, et comment la reconfiguration de ces places et espaces géographiques est integree à I'enquéte pour une identité entreprise par Joan. ‘La maison’ acquiert des connotations negatives, vue qu'elle est associee a la fois aux banlieux et à une mere qui renonce à sa propre volonte et à ses propres besoins pour se vouer à la maternite. Par contre, la ville est un paysage equivoque: nous proposons cependant que c'est precisement cette equivocation qui permet à Joan d'explorer des nouvelles identites. Enfin, nous examinerons les presuppositions et les silences du roman.     

‘Stepbrothers from the Middle East’: negotiations of racial identity among Jewish-Israeli immigrants in Toronto

This paper explores the complex negotiations of racial identity experienced on migration. Working from a series of 48 interviews with racially diverse Israeli immigrants to Toronto, and drawing on literature on the assimilated Canadian-born Jewish population, I contrast the racial histories of Canadian and Israeli Jews – groups whose identities have historically crossed intersections of race, ethnicity and religion. By exploring the participants’ accounts of being differently whitened and blackened in Israel and Toronto, and their own interpretations of and responses to these processes, I expose the spatial contingencies of racial hierarchies, meanings and identifications. I also introduce the under-studied Mizrahi/Sephardi Jewish community – who are demographically prevalent in Israel yet largely unknown in North America, and are subject to complex racial and ethno-cultural tensions in both spaces – into discussions of Canadian Jewishness.     

BEFORE THE DELUGE: CANADIANS ON FOREIGN OWNERSHIP, 1920–1955

More Americans now reside in Canada than at any time since the Vietnam War. This article documents and analyzes the migration, settlement, and identity of US-born residents in three Canadian cities. My work helps fill the gap in the scholarly literature on issues related to international migration at the Canadian–US borderlands. The article's overarching goal is to illustrate that transnationality, as exhibited by US immigrants in Canada, is far more complex than prior studies of transnational identity have indicated. Findings from this study indicate that transnational linkages and identities are geographically and temporally contingent and are, as such, a reflection of both time and place. My comparison of the shifting identities of American migrants who reside in three different metropolitan areas in Canada allows a more critical analysis of the ever-shifting terrain of transnational identities as they are expressed in different contexts. Data analyzed for this study were compiled from the Canadian census for the years 1961 through 2006, survey questionnaires, unstructured and structured interviews, and on-site field work.     

American Girls and French Jeunes Filles: Negotiating National Identities in Interwar France

This essay is a transnational and comparative study of how gendered national stereotypes structured the experience of American women who studied in France in the 1920s and 1930s and how this cross‐cultural exchange contributed to cultural internationalism. In both the French and American popular imaginations, American girls and French jeunes filles connoted opposite modern and traditional notions of femininity. In the process of negotiating these two competing identities in popular consciousness and in daily life, some American women students came to appreciate the limitations of the stereotypes, as well as more complex underlying cultural differences, notably in their encounters with French youth's heterosocial practices and with French women students. I argue that the outcome of this process included women's construction of alternative identities for themselves and a new tolerance and appreciation for cultural difference that represents a distinctive development toward cultural internationalism. This study challenges the cultural asymmetry of United States and European relations between the wars and locates gender and women at their centre.     

A Disgruntled Tourist in King Arthur's Court: Archaeology and Identity at Tintagel,Cornwall

Abstract

'Welcome to Tintagel, the birthplace of King Arthur' is a phrase often repeated at this small village on the north coast of Cornwall where legend, childhood stories and merchandise all serve to attract thousands of visitors per year. As 'a place to go', the area provides stunning coastal scenery, a romantic ruined castle and a highly commercialised village. Tintagel Island, owned by the Duchy of Cornwall but managed by English Heritage, plays centre stage as the 'birthplace' in question. On-site, the character of Arthur is largely debunked as a literary phenomenon and, furthermore, a survey of day-trippers revealed that visitors were left in an interpretive limbo — arriving with ideas of Arthur and leaving knowing little about Tintagel.

Whilst the aesthetics of the castle and scenery go some way towards mitigating against disappointment, on site encounters with kitsch representations of the past combine with more amorphous senses of pseudo-spiritual atmospheres as well as experiences of walking, eating and drinking to ultimately provide a 'grand day out'. The marketing ephemera and heritage presentation all serve to create, reinforce and suppress different identities of place which are revealed as being a fairly cohesive package of Celtic-Arthuriana. This paper questions the ways in which visitors' expectation and imagination are mediated through experience of place.     

Evo's jumper: identity and the used clothes trade in ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ Bolivia

Since the election of Latin America's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005, Bolivia's ruling party, the ‘Movement Towards Socialism’, has nationalised resources and instituted a ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ constitution that emphasises the importance of recognising cultural, linguistic and economic plurality. This article explores gendered economic identities in this context via the case study of an informal trade that is explicitly excluded from this vision of development: the globally controversial used clothes trade (UCT). In Bolivia, political debate on the trade demonstrates gendered tensions inherent in the government's ‘post-neoliberal’ agenda of nationalisation, protection of cultural identity and the well-being of the poor in an increasingly liberalised and globalised market place. Working with women in the city of El Alto, this article examines how women's involvement in the UCT challenges understandings of identity and development in post-neoliberal Latin America and the dynamics involved in women's continued marginalisation from global economic and political processes.     

Les deux identite´s de la France

Regionalism is an important element in the representation of French identity. Often considered as a right-wing ideology, it appeared as a left-wing movement in the 1960s, and references to regionalism are to be found in much French political discourse today. This article highlights the place of the regionalist element in French identity by advancing the hypothesis that for more than a century there has been a dual French identity. The Third Republic asserted that France was 'one and indivisible', but also that the country was richly diverse. The exaltation of diversity permitted the reaffirmation of French superiority over other nations. In order to develop a mass education grounded on patriotic feeling, those responsible for education declared that this had to be based on children's spontaneous affection for their 'petite patrie'. The regional identities celebrated in republican France are not at odds with national identity. The process of constructing national identities in Europe led to the creation of a 'check-list' forming the basis of all national identities. Regional identities were constructed on the basis of a dual relationship between the local and the national: the model of the national as a perfect mosaic of diversity, or the model of the 'mise en abyme', that is, the local representing the national in miniature.     

Discourse on migration and ethnic identity: interviews with professionals in Hong Kong

"This paper has revealed a complex set of relationships between migration, place and ethnic identity [in Hong Kong]. On the one hand, ethnic identity is shaped by the places where people have lived, particularly the places where they have spent the early years of their life; on the other [hand], places--being the context for socialization--provide the milieux where people learn who and what they are and how to act...." The authors note that "while legislation clearly regulates levels of immigration, international migration is also self-regulated by potential migrants in relation to interpretations of their ethnic identities and their perceptions of 'other' places."     

Signs of Masculinism in an 'Uneasy' Place: Advertising for 'Big Brothers'

'Big Brothers' is an international, philanthropic fraternal organisation dedicated, in its own words, 'to match boys seven to seventeen from lone-parent female families with mature male role models over eighteen … toward contributing to the healthy development of these children'. A primary objective of this 90 year-old institution is thus to instil a masculine culture and nurture a masculine identity in male children by providing an adult male presence, 3-4 hours a week, in the lives of boys without a male role model. This article asks, which kinds of masculine identities are promoted as acceptable and why? Drawing upon the geographies of feminism, masculinity, and advertising, the article presents a socio-semiotic analysis of the format, content and signs employed by 'Big Brothers' of Canada and the USA in their recruitment campaigns. Using printed promotional material spanning the institute's history, as well as an interview with the Marketing Director of a recent Big Brother recruitment campaign, the slogans, icons, and gender-myths used to represent males and same-sex friendships in the symbolic spaces of their advertisements are critiqued. Results exemplify the instability of the 'masculine gaze' and suggest that the discourse of patriarchal masculinity situates the Big Brothers institute itself in an 'uneasy' place, one where the masculine gender-myths may be collapsing but are nevertheless evoked to ensure volunteers and society at large that a 'legitimate' form of homosocial masculinity prevails, one that does not transgress 'out of bounds' and into the 'homosexual'.     

Placing immigrant identities

In this afterword to our special issue on immigrant identity and place, we explore the importance of place and context in forming immigrant identity, as well as the various ways in which immigrants make places. Discussions of immigrant adaptations often just consider reception at the national scale, whereas immigrants move into particular cities and towns. This article details some of the different ways that immigrants interact with their places, how the process of immigration introduces hybrid identities, and the differences in the immigrant experience by gender, status, and color.     

Minority nationalism and immigrant integration in Canada

Immigrant integration is currently a prominent issue in virtually all contemporary democracies, but countries in which the historic population itself is deeply divided – particularly those with substate nations and multiple political identities – present some interesting questions where integration is concerned. The existence of multiple and potentially competing political identities may complicate the integration process, particularly if the central government and the substate nation promote different conceptions of citizenship and different nation‐building projects. What, then, are the implications of minority nationalism for immigrant integration? Are the added complexities a barrier to integration? Or do overlapping identities generate more points of contact between immigrants and their new home? This article addresses this question by probing immigrant and non‐immigrant ‘sense of belonging’ in Canada, both inside and outside Quebec. Data come from Statistics Canada's Ethnic Diversity Study. Our results suggest that competing nation‐building projects make the integration of newcomers more, rather than less, challenging.     

Democracy and the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

This paper explores the difficulties faced by European secularism in dealing with a Muslim diaspora of unprecedented size in the continent's history. It shows how this presence has highlighted contradictions in European conceptions of the religious and of the public-private divide. The paper does this by comparing Europe to Latin America where a quite different process of secularization seems to have taken place.     

Immigrant hosts and intra-regional travel

ABSTRACT

A large number of tourism-related experiences involve a personal relationship between a visitor and resident host. As immigration continues to be an increasingly integral experience for many people and communities, and advances in technology make relationship maintenance more accessible, the traditional distinctions of travel types based on ‘pleasure’, ‘visiting friends and relatives’ (VFR), and even ‘business’ become blurred and detrimental to conceptual understandings for large numbers of tourism experiences and their impacts. The purpose is to explore the experiences of immigrants with intra-regional travel when they host VFRs. Constructionism was used as a guiding epistemology in this narrative analysis. The research co-constructed narratives with nine participants in Toronto, Canada about their hosting and intra-regional travel. The hosting experience is powerful, linking old and new worlds, and challenging traditional discursive tourism binaries such as home and away. The experience of intra-regional communities through side-trips with VFR guests added additional context where the host was in a non-routine place on vacation, with a guest who brings expectations of participating in leisure, but in a place that has cultural links to the participant's ongoing integration and connection to the broader sense of Canadian culture. Hosting both inspired intra-regional travel, and enhanced the memorable co-construction of meaning associated with the experience as links and distinctions to the culture of origin were more easily made due to the co-presence of their guest. Implications for integration, place making and marketing are discussed.     

'Cheese Makers Are Always Women': Gendered representations of farm life in the agricultural press

Drawing upon the 'Farmlife' pages of Farmers' Weekly, the most significant farming publication in the UK, this article assesses the ways in which gender identities in farming are represented in text and images. Lead articles from 1976 and 1996 issues of 'Farmlife' are taken as the research focus to determine how representations have altered in line with restructuring of the agricultural industry. Reference is made to Connell's notions of hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity to inform the analysis about the ways in which these gender identities are (re)produced through the British farming media. A simple typology is derived from the articles, which assists in revealing a remarkable degree of consistency in the portrayal of gender identities over time. Case studies reveal that hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity are perpetuated through the farming media, but in increasingly subtle and fragmented ways. The limitations of Connell's conceptualisation are revealed, particularly in its ability to accommodate multiple constructions of femininity. Suggestions are made for research that investigates the consumers of these media products.     

Constructing contemporary artistic identities in Toronto neighbourhoods

This paper examines the role of the neighbourhood in the construction of artistic identities. Drawing upon in‐depth, semistructured interviews with Canadian visual artists from Toronto, I identify some of the common features of downtown Toronto neighbourhoods where artists congregate. I demonstrate that artists are drawn to neighbourhoods that have not been gentrified and do not directly reflect current dominant values in society. I focus, in particular, on the importance of marginal niches of improvisational space within the urban fabric. Marginal spaces, often neglected and overlooked, weakly classified and in a state of becoming, I argue, are essential to the development and sustenance of an artistic identity .