EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Prioritising Community Cohesion to Promote Immigrant Retention: the Politics of Belonging in Canadian Francophone Minority Communities

Suzanne Huot (), Luisa Veronis, Leyla Sall, Nathalie Piquemal and Faïçal Zellama
Additional contact information
Suzanne Huot: University of British Columbia
Luisa Veronis: University of Ottawa
Leyla Sall: Université de Moncton
Nathalie Piquemal: University of Manitoba
Faïçal Zellama: Université de Saint-Boniface

Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2023, vol. 24, issue 6, No 7, 1144 pages

Abstract: Abstract The Canadian federal government is aiming to increase Francophone immigration in order to support Francophone minority communities (FMCs), but retention remains a key challenge. Given their minority context, FMCs must not only be open to the growing demographic diversity resulting from increased immigration but must also support community cohesion by addressing potential barriers related to inclusion and participation of immigrants to engage them as full members of the community. Informed by the broader literature on social cohesion, our study focused on the politics of belonging at the local scale. We adopted a qualitative case study methodology to examine the experiences of community members in three mid-sized Canadian cities located in distinct provinces: Winnipeg (Manitoba), Ottawa (Ontario) and Moncton (New Brunswick). We conducted focus groups in each city with members of the local FMC, including those born in Canada and abroad, to understand their daily experiences of living in smaller communities experiencing demographic diversification. We share findings in relation to two central themes. First, we outline the facilitators of social participation in the FMC that participants described as enabling their community engagement. Second, we unpack the perceived role of Francophone spaces for supporting community cohesion. Our findings can inform efforts to support community cohesion and promote retention among FMCs, as well as additional linguistic minority communities in other countries.

Keywords: Social cohesion; Francophone minority communities; Immigration; Politics of belonging; Retention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12134-023-01021-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joimai:v:24:y:2023:i:6:d:10.1007_s12134-023-01021-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... tudies/journal/12134

DOI: 10.1007/s12134-023-01021-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Migration and Integration is currently edited by Lori Wilkinson

More articles in Journal of International Migration and Integration from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-20
Handle: RePEc:spr:joimai:v:24:y:2023:i:6:d:10.1007_s12134-023-01021-z