International Law

Segregation/Balkanization vs. The Canadian Mosaic

By immlawyer

An interesting article by Scott Young.

He argues that the official policy of multicultarlism - that immigrants/minorities can retain their cultural heritage is coming at the expense of integration, resulting in the 'balkanization' of Canada:

Unfortunately, attempting to reveal the perils of segregation is usually buried in simplistic accusations of racism (Remember Bruce Allen?) Canadians revel in the romanticism of Trudeau's multiculturalism, but fail to realize its role in creating ethnic ghettoes.

Jack Granatstein stated: "The [Canadian] state should spend its limited funds on helping newcomers adapt to Canadian society by teaching them the basic knowledge, the symbols, and the ideas that literate, culturally aware Canadians understand . . . . To do anything else condemns immigrants to isolation, to low-paying jobs, to the expanding ghetto of the ill-paid and uneducated."

Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, recently lamented that social capital is weakest where diversity is strongest. He noted that while "the task of becoming comfortable with diversity will not be easy or quick . . . it will be speeded by our collective efforts and in the end well worth the effort."

Putnam cited real benefits of diversity, including higher creative capacities and more rapid economic growth. Diversity is a good thing, but immigrants and Canadians naively fear that integration equals the loss of their individual heritages.

That fear has paralysed Canadian social growth.

Until we acknowledge that our self-imposed mosaic is not a perfect system, we'll never construct a mature, cohesive national identity.

Without a national identity, it remains extraordinarily presumptuous for us to claim to be the world's first modern multicultural society.

Full post as published by Canadian Immigration Blawg on February 14, 2008 (boomark / email).