Race Multiculture And Social Policy

This book examines how teachers, administrators, and educational institutions contribute to racial and ethnic inequality and offers policy and practice suggestions for change. It reviews the literature, the national societal and cultural contexts, definitions of race and ethnicity, family influences, and then explores the topic in relation to teachers, classrooms, school programs, school organization, and district policy making. The book concludes with recommendations on how to integrate current school restructuring with multicultural education.

Canadian society differs from the US - in particular, a central theme is the problem of reconciling Quebec nationalist aspirations within the economic union of Canada and its English speaking majority. While the U.S solution to 'ethnic' diversity has officially been the 'melting pot' model, the Canadian approach has formally been the recognition of diversity and group rights within the contemporary policy of 'multiculturalism.' The policy emerged from a national debate that attempted to conciliate the French Quebec population, but it resulted in the eventual recognition of the 'Other' groups. This book examines the Canadian socio-cultural policies of immigration and 'multiculturalism,' and the impact on socio-economic and spatial differentiation in Canadian society, with Montreal as the case study. The main objectives are to illustrate levels of stratification within Canadian society and to analyze this within a historical and material framework. The book ultimately examines the state of contemporary 'race relations' in the city, offering a critical theoretical framework and assessing various conceptual schools of thought pertaining to issues of social and spatial segregation. It also looks at conceptual questions, such as the construction of 'race' and 'ethnicity' and the role of the state in implementing social policies. Contents include: Setting the Stage: Differing North American Perspectives * Constructing a Theoretical Framework For the Analysis of Race Relations in Multicultural Societies * A Critique of the Dominant Urban Geographical Context: In Relation to Social and Spatial Segregation * Three Marxist Approaches for Examining 'Racism' * Social Policies: The Role of State Intervention * The Canadian Social Policy of Multiculturalism: The Evolution of National Identity * Immigration and Racism: Implications for Canadian National Identity in Relation to Socio-Cultural Policies * Social and Spatial Differentiation in Montreal.

In acknowledging the possibility that as the world changes so too does racism, this book argues that racism is not disappearing, despite claims of living in a post-racial and multicultural world. To the contrary, racisms persist by transforming into different forms whose intent or effects remain the same: to deny and disallow as well as to exclude and exploit. Racisms in a Multicultural Canada is organized around the assumption that race is not simply a set of categories and that racism is not just a collection of individuals with bad attitudes. Rather, racism is as much a matter of interests as of attitudes, of property as of prejudice, of structural advantage as of personal failing, of whiteness as of the “other,” of discourse as of discrimination, and of unequal power relations as of bigotry. This multi-dimensionality of racism complicates the challenge of formulating anti-racism and anti-colonialist strategies capable of addressing it. Employing a critical framework that puts politics and power at the centre of analysis, this book focuses on why racisms proliferate, how they work in contemporary societies, and how the way we think and talk about racism changes over time. Specifically, it examines the working of contemporary racisms in a multicultural Canada that claims to abide by principles of multiculturalism and a commitment to a post-racial society.

In an increasingly ethnically diverse society, debates about migration, community, cultural difference and social interaction have never been more pressing. Drawing on the findings from a two-year, qualitative Economic and Social Research Council funded study of different locations across England, Lived Experiences of Multiculture uses interdisciplinary perspectives to examine the ways in which complex urban populations experience, negotiate, accommodate and resist cultural difference as they share a range of everyday social resources and public spaces. The authors present novel ways of re-thinking and developing concepts such as multiculture, community and conviviality, whilst also repositioning debates which focus on conflict models for understanding cultural differences. Amidst highly charged arguments over the social relations of belonging and the meanings of local and national identities, this timely volume will appeal to advanced undergraduate students and graduate students interested in fields such as Race and Ethnicity Studies, Sociology, Urban Studies, Human Geography and Migration Studies.

And political foundations of the welfare state, and indeed about our most basic concepts of citizenship and national identity

Does multiculturalism ‘work’? Does multiculturalism policy create social cohesion, or undermine it? Multiculturalism was introduced in Canada in the 1970s and widely adopted internationally, but more recently has been hotly debated, amid new concerns about social, cultural, and political impacts of immigration. Advocates praise multiculturalism for its emphasis on special recognition for cultural minorities as facilitating their social integration, while opponents charge that multiculturalism threatens social cohesion by encouraging social isolation. Multiculturalism is thus rooted in a theory of human behaviour, and this book examines the empirical validity of some of its basic propositions, focusing on Canada as the country for which the most enthusiastic claims for multiculturalism have been made. The analysis draws on the massive national Ethnic Diversity Survey of over 41,000 Canadians in 2002, the most extensive survey yet conducted on this question. The analysis provides a new and more nuanced understanding of the complex relation between multiculturalism and social cohesion, challenging uncritically optimistic or pessimistic views. Ethnic community ties facilitate some aspects of social integration, while discouraging others. For racial minorities, relations within and outside minority communities are greatly complicated by more frequent experiences of discrimination and inequality, slowing processes of social integration. Implications for multicultural policies emphasize that race relations present important challenges across Quebec and the rest of Canada, including for the new religious minorities, and that ethnic community development requires more explicit support for social integration.