Discourse, immigration, and identity (original) (raw)

Being and Becoming " A New Immigrant " in Canada: How Language Matters, or Not

Based on a four-year ethnography and informed by poststructuralist theories of identity and language, this article examines how, through lived settlement experiences in Canada, a young man from Mainland China gradually became an immigrant in the folk sense of the term. Though he was considered a success in terms of the diaspora community, he was disempowered in the host society. Highlighting one vignette, I illustrate how he came to understand that language, in the form of various texts and everyday interactions, constitutes an important terrain upon which socioeconomic inequality and immigrant identity are negotiated, resisted but reproduced.

Branding 'Canadian experience' in immigration policy: Nation-building in a neoliberal era

This paper examines the branding of ‘Canadian experience’ in Canadian immigration policy as a rhetorical strategy for neoliberal nation-building. Since 2008, the Canadian government has introduced an unprecedented number of changes to immigration policy. While the bulk of these policies produce more temporary and precarious forms of migration, the Canadian government has mobilized the rhetoric of ‘Canadian experience’ as a means to identify immigrants who carry the promise of economic and social integration. Through a critical discourse analysis of Canadian print media and political discourse, we trace how the brand of ‘Canadian experience’ taps into the affective value of national identity in an era of global economic insecurity. We also illustrate how the discourse of CE remains ideologically deraciailzed, such that the government’s embrace of CE as an immigrant selection criterion dismisses the discriminatory effects this discourse has shown to have for racialized immigrants in Canada.

'They can learn to say my name': Redistributing Responsibility for Integrating Immigrants to Canada

Newcomers to Canada whose names index identities other than “white” and “English” face pressure to alter their names to facilitate integration. Some immigrants oppose the forces of conformity and refuse to assimilate their names. In interviews, they explain this stance using discourses of agency centring on a belief in true names, a moral obligation to get names right, and a need for a strong self. Focusing on ideologies of identity and language in their meta-agentive discourses, I argue that the act of immigrants keeping their ethnic names is a political move to redistribute responsibility for the integration of newcomers into the host society.