Canada In A North American Perspective

The northern and southern borders and borderlands of the United States should have much in common; instead they offer mirror articulations of the complex relationships and engagements between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In North American Borders in Comparative Perspectiveleading experts provide a contemporary analysis of how globalization and security imperatives have redefined the shared border regions of these three nations. This volume offers a comparative perspective on North American borders and reveals the distinctive nature first of the overportrayed Mexico-U.S. border and then of the largely overlooked Canada-U.S. border. The perspectives on either border are rarely compared. Essays in this volume bring North American borders into comparative focus; the contributors advance the understanding of borders in a variety of theoretical and empirical contexts pertaining to North America with an intense sharing of knowledge, ideas, and perspectives. Adding to the regional analysis of North American borders and borderlands, this book cuts across disciplinary and topical areas to provide a balanced, comparative view of borders. Scholars, policy makers, and practitioners convey perspectives on current research and understanding of the United States’ borders with its immediate neighbors. Developing current border theories, the authors address timely and practical border issues that are significant to our understanding and management of North American borderlands. The future of borders demands a deep understanding of borderlands and borders. This volume is a major step in that direction. Contributors Bruce Agnew Donald K. Alper Alan D. Bersin Christopher Brown Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly Irasema Coronado Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera Michelle Keck Victor Konrad Francisco Lara-Valencia Tony Payan Kathleen Staudt Rick Van Schoik Christopher Wilson

North America is steering a new course, with the United States, Canada, and Mexico moving toward continental economic, integration. This book examines basic value changes that are' transforming economic, social, and political life in these three countries, demonstrating that they are gradually adopting an increasingly compatible cultural perspective. A narrow nationalism, dominant since the 19th century, has slowly been giving way to a more cosmopolitan sense of identity. As old economic boundaries become outmoded, a North American perspective makes greater sense. To what extent, then, do the three North American publics - I each with its own heterogeneities and tensions - share a common culture? That question can only be answered if we have some yardstick by which to measure their cultural similarity. These societies are far from identical. But data from the 1990- 1991 World Values survey, drawn from 43 societies around the world, show that on crucial topics, the core values of the American public are significantly closer to those of the Canadians and (to a somewhat lesser extent) to those of the Mexicans, than they are to those of most other peoples in the world. Furthermore, time series evidence indicates that the values of the three North American publics have been converging. This book draws on a unique body of directly comparable cross-national and cross-temporal survey evidence to show that what Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans want out of life is changing in analogous ways. These changes, coupled with sociostructural transformations, are reshaping peoples' feelings about national identity, about trusting each other, and about the balance between economic and non-economic goals. North American economic integration is being reinforced by the gradual emergence of increasingly similar cultural values.

This volume represents a first attempt at holistically classifying and mapping ecological regions across all three countries of the North American continent. A common analytical methodology is used to examine North American ecology at multiple scales, from large continental ecosystems to subdivisions of these that correlate more detailed physical and biological settings with human activities on two levels of successively smaller units. The volume begins with an overview of North America from an ecological perspective, concepts of ecological regionalization. This is followed by descriptions of the 15 broad ecological regions, including information on physical and biological setting and human activities. The final section presents case studies in applications of the ecological characterization methodology to environmental issues. The appendix includes a list of common and scientific names of selected species characteristic of the ecological regions.

Immigrant Geographies of North American Cities is unique in that most chapters are written by both an American and a Canadian scholar, drawn from among the top scholars in both countries. This textbook gives students access to a wide variety of scholarly perspectives, to help create a foundation for their study and research. This book also fills a gap in scholarly literature on immigrant geographies, by providing a text book that compares and contrasts immigrant experiences in the Unites States those experiences in Canada. Part I examines the history of immigration in both countries, and the current immigration situation in the major receiving centres in both countries. Part II examines the imprint of immigration on North American cities and suburbs by looking at the barriers and opportunities immigrants face in obtaining accessing housing, achieving socioeconomic and economic parity with the native-born population, access to quality health care, and improving rates of political incorporation. Part II also looks at the settlement patterns of newly arrived immigrants, compares current patterns to historical trends, and evaluates the role that gender plays in forming these patterns. Part III examines the specific patterns of immigration for four non-European immigrant groups. The first three chapters in Part III look at the experiences of Asian, Latin American, and Black immigrants by comparing and contrasting specific countries of origin and specific receiving centres for each group in both Canada and the United States. The last chapter focuses on cross border migration between Canada and the United States and the impact that these immigrants have on their new countries.

Compares the cultural productions of Canada and the US - literature, but also film, opera, and even theme parks - providing a reassessment of Canadian Studies within a comparative framework.

The essays address problems of constructing new political arrangements, practical questions about the viability of multiple governments within one political system, and epistemological questions about recognizing and understanding the "other.""--BOOK JACKET.

In this important report, a distinguished group of Canadian, Mexican, and American experts explore key issues including economics, regulatory policy, security, the developing gap, and tri-national institutions. It also offers a vision for the relationship among the three countries for the next ten years. French and Spanish versions included.