Québec cherche Québécois pour relation à long terme et plus: comprendre les enjeux de l’immigration by Tania Longpré

Reviews 229 Longpré, Tania. Québec cherche Québécois pour relation à long terme et plus: comprendre les enjeux de l’immigration. Montréal: Stanké, 2013. ISBN 978-2-76041107 -4. Pp. 199. $27,95 Can. With one of the major current policy discussions in the United States being immigration reform, this book, which deals with issues of immigration in Quebec, has arrived at a timely moment for those of us south of the Canadian border. It would be interesting to see the similarities and differences in how we accept immigrants. Alas, this is not a scholarly work, but rather one very long op-ed piece and so must be read with that caveat. There is no attempt to contextualize immigration either in historical or geographical terms, no analysis or even summary of how previous generations of immigrants fared, little mention of how other countries deal with immigration, and no understanding of the usual arc of assimilation (over three generations). Most of the information is either from the Statistiques Canada website, various newspapers (mostly Le Devoir and La Presse), or anecdotal (“un collègue/une amie/une étudiante m’a affirmé que...”), and not from scientific or scholarly studies. Rather, Longpré writes from the point of view of a cours de francisation teacher for immigrants, who helps them learn French and assimilate into Québécois society. For the author, assimilation means accepting three premises: French is the language of Quebec; women are equal to men before the law; Quebec is a secular society. She adds to these three items knowledge of Quebec history and traditions, as well as of certain Francophone cultural figures, such as Régis Labeaume or Julie Snyder (these last requirements also pertain to Anglophone Quebeckers, who, no matter how well they speak French nor for how many generations they have lived there, will never be québécois otherwise, at least by her reckoning). She argues, convincingly, that immigrants can better assimilate if they do not cluster in Montreal but instead settle in other parts of the province. To that end, the provincial government should ensure that services for immigrants are in fact widely available outside that city. The author also describes the process for selecting immigrants, the types of immigrants who come to Quebec, and the services that are available to them. She talks about the outdated materials that the francisation teachers must use. If the author had limited herself to those issues, this would be a worthwhile book. However, the aforementioned nuggets of information are buried in tirades against the Canadian and provincial governments,Anglophones, and those whom she sees as resistant to assimilation, with Muslims being the major target of her ire. It is unfortunate that this book will do little to clarify the immigration debate or add to understanding between the Néo-Québécois and the Québécois pur-laine. Arizona State University Helene Ossipov ...

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