Faith Makes Us Live: Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora 9780520944510, 9780520260368

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. “Faith Makes Us Live”
Chapter 2. Comparing Religion and Immigration Cross-Nationally
Chapter 3. Miami “Jesus Came with Us on the Boat”
Chapter 4. Montreal “Hold on Tight, Don’t Let Go”
Chapter 5. Paris “I Would Be Dead without the Church”
Chapter 6. What Lies behind the Mountain?
Appendix A. Methods
Appendix B. Ayiti Cheri: Notes on the Haitian Homeland
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

Faith Makes Us Live

Faith Makes Us Live Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora Margarita A. Mooney

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley

Los Angeles

London

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2009 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mooney, Margarita A., 1973–. Faith makes us live : surviving and thriving in the Haitian diaspora / Margarita A. Mooney. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-26034-4 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-520-26036-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Haitians—Foreign countries—Religion. 2. Emigration and immigration—Religious aspects— Catholic Church. 3. Social service—Religious aspects— Catholic Church. 4. Church work with immigrants— Catholic Church. 5. Social work with immigrants. I. Title. BX1695.H2M66 2009 305.6'820899697294—dc22

2008050485

Manufactured in the United States of America

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This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.

To my parents, Vincent and Eulalia

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix Chapter 1. “Faith Makes Us Live” 1 Chapter 2. Comparing Religion and Immigration Cross-Nationally 33 Chapter 3. Miami “Jesus Came with Us on the Boat”

49 Chapter 4. Montreal “Hold on Tight, Don’t Let Go”

105 Chapter 5. Paris “I Would Be Dead without the Church”

151 Chapter 6. What Lies behind the Mountain? 195

Appendix A. Methods 227 Appendix B. Ayiti Cheri: Notes on the Haitian Homeland 249 Notes 255 References 273 Index 285

ACK NOW LEDGMENTS

Conducting the research for this book generated numerous unforgettable memories and forged many friendships. Emilio Travieso helped me with my fi rst introductions to the staff at Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami. Father Reginald Jean-Mary of Notre Dame in Miami welcomed my project and my presence with great enthusiasm and support. The other residents of Notre Dame during the time I did my research there—Monsignor Gérard Darbouze, Father Marc Présumé, Jean-Robert François, Sister Romanie Guillaume, and Sister Guerda Saintfort—all helped improve my Haitian Creole and answered my endless questions. I was truly amazed at the warmth with which I was received by all the members, leaders, and staff of Notre Dame. There are too many people to name them all, but each one of you has left an imprint on these pages and in my heart. Mwen pral janm bliye nou. Father Maurice Hollant in Montreal and Father Romel Eustache in Paris also welcomed me into their communities. The laypeople of the Haitian Catholic missions of those cities taught me much about generosity, including inviting me to their homes. After answering hours of questions from me, I was often fed a big meal, sent home with extra Haitian food, and then even given a going-away gift before I left town. Ann nou bay louanj pou Bondye. Writing up this research first as a dissertation and then as a book, ix

x /

Acknowledgments

I learned the meaning of the Haitian proverb “Dèyè mòn, gen mòn” (Behind every mountain is another mountain). Often, no matter how hard I worked, I seemed to end up at the base of another mountain. One important lesson I learned from nearly two years living among Haitian immigrants is not to get discouraged. The inspiration of the people I met helped me fi nish this project first as a dissertation and second as a book. The academic support I received from my dissertation committee members, Alejandro Portes, Michèle Lamont, and Robert Wuthnow, was indispensable to this project. Amanda Alexander and Russ Nieli provided close copyediting. Many other colleagues provided helpful comments on drafts, including (in alphabetical order) Sada Aksartova, David Ball, Brooke Blower, Wendy Cadge, Emily Calvacanti, Carlo Dade, Elaine Howard Ecklund, William Haller, Ashley Lucas, Hilary Levey, Ann Morning, and Fred Wherry. My editor at the University of California Press, Naomi Schneider, never hesitated in her enthusiasm for this project. Various sources of funding supported the research and writing of this project. A Presidential Fellowship from Princeton University provided funding for the first four years of my studies at Princeton. Princeton University Graduate School provided additional summer funding that allowed me to dedicate myself full-time to this project. In addition, several research centers at Princeton University gave me grants for fieldwork and data analysis: the Center for Migration and Development, the Center for the Study of Religion, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Council on Regional Studies, the Program in Canadian Studies, the Program in African-American Studies, and the Center for Health and Well-Being. I also received generous external support for this project from: the Council for European Studies, the Louisville Institute, the Aspen Institute’s NonProfit Research Sector Research Fund, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, and the Witherspoon Institute.

Acknowledgments / xi

Partir c’est mourir un peu. Finishing this project leaves me with mixed emotions. Although I present my most significant findings and insights in what follows, this book nonetheless represents only a portion of what I learned during my research for this project. I hope that what remains unsaid can be brought to life in new ways.

Ch a pter on e

“Faith Makes Us Live”

“Faith makes us live, but misery divides us.” Wilbur, one of the 150 people I interviewed during the sixteen months I lived in the Haitian communities of Miami, Montreal, and Paris, used this proverb repeatedly to capture the cycle of hope and suffering that characterized his life. After numerous years teaching agricultural conservation and imparting religious instruction in Haiti, Wilbur finally felt forced to flee his homeland in 2000 when the violence and economic stagnation there made it impossible for him to support his family. Still out of work nearly two years after coming to Miami, Wilbur struggled to make ends meet and resisted the temptation to give up hope. Like many other Haitians in Miami, he turned to Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood for inner spiritual strength, for a community, and for guidance in the many steps necessary to adapt to a new home, such as looking for a job, learning English, and applying for asylum. How do people like Wilbur use religious narratives to interpret their migration and adaptation experiences? How do Haitian immigrants create moral communities that aYrm their faith and channel their social justice initiatives? How do leaders of Haitians’ religious communities interact with other institutions—governmental and civic—in 1

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three different contexts of Miami, Montreal, and Paris? What, if any, impact do these narratives, moral communities, and religious leaders have on Haitian immigrants’ adaptation?1 This introductory chapter foreshadows how I answer these questions in the remainder of the book. After describing one particular event at Notre Dame d’Haiti that illustrates how this institution has mediated for Haitian immigrants in Miami for more than twenty years, I turn to interview excerpts from Miami, Montreal, and Paris. These examples from each of my field sites demonstrate that, although Haitians may show similar forms of religious piety in different places, how their faith helps them confront the often miserable conditions that surround them depends on how their leaders interact with other institutions in the United States, Canada, and France. By the end of the book, readers will see that, although Haitians’ religious piety undoubtedly provides a great source of hope in all three countries, it is only in Miami that the Catholic Church is poised to make a long-term impact on the socioeconomic adaptation of Haitian immigrants. Understanding the political conditions that have allowed the Catholic Church to pursue its social justice mission for Haitian immigrants more successfully in Miami than in Montreal and Paris draws us into long-standing debates about how religious institutions, as a fundamental part of civil society, contribute to a well-functioning democracy and to people’s sense of meaning and well-being.

H A ITI A N INDEPENDENCE DAY, 2004

On January 1, 2004, I traveled to the Miami neighborhood called Little Haiti to attend services at Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church. On this date, Haitians all around the globe—both in Haiti and in the many cities of the Haitian diaspora, including Miami—gathered to commemorate two hundred years of Haitian independence. January 1 is also an important Catholic holiday—the feast of Mary, the Mother of God—and

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Haitian Catholics practice strong devotion to the Virgin Mary. Given the ethnic and religious importance of this holiday, I was not surprised to see close to 4,000 Haitians gathered on the lawn of Notre Dame d’Haiti for an outdoor Mass that lasted three hours. But what explains why, on this day, Cuban American and African American political leaders from Miami also gathered for the celebration at Notre Dame? Why did press coverage of Haitian Independence Day in the Miami Herald highlight the Mass at Notre Dame? Why did the archbishop of Miami, John Clement Favalora, make such an effort to celebrate the Mass in Haitian Creole? Why did so few people attend the civic festival that occurred later in the day just two blocks from Notre Dame? As described more fully in chapter 3, most Haitians came to Miami under extremely disadvantaged circumstances. The influx of tens of thousands of Haitian boat people to Florida, in particular in 1979–81, caused nothing short of a humanitarian crisis. Under the leadership of both American and Haitian priests, the Catholic Church used its financial resources to create a home for Haitians at Notre Dame. Building on the experience of Catholic Charities in Miami, Notre Dame’s leaders then began social programs specifically for Haitians at the Pierre Toussaint Center, a service center that shares a ten-acre piece of property with Notre Dame. Over time, the Toussaint Center attracted millions of dollars in mostly government funding for its programs. Because of its religious and social significance, both politicians and the press in Miami see Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center as the most important institution in Miami’s Haitian community. When something important happens in Haiti or in Miami’s Haitian community, politicians and the press look to Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center.2 Although Haitian Catholics brought strong religious piety with them to Miami, incorporating Haitians into the Catholic Church there required a concerted effort by members of its hierarchy. First, Archbishop Eugene McCarthy (1976–94) and then Archbishop John Clement Favalora (1994–present) recognized Haitians’ deep Catholic

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piety and responded to their desire for religious services in their native language—Creole. In addition to learning some Creole themselves— at least enough to celebrate Mass—these bishops also invited numerous priests from Haiti to serve Haitians in Miami. In order to ensure continuing and expanding religious services for Haitian Catholics, the archdiocese of Miami sponsored numerous visas for Haitians to study at Miami’s seminary. These Haitian priests and seminarians—now numbering more than twenty—surrounded Archbishop Favalora on the important holiday of January 1, 2004. The celebration at Notre Dame on January 1, 2004, marked not only two hundred years of Haitian independence but also a significant amount of progress in the Haitian community in Miami. In the 1970s, Catholic leaders in Miami celebrated Mass for thousands of Haitian asylum-seekers being detained in Krome Detention Center and opened their doors to thousands of boat people who showed up at the church doorstep seeking help. Today, some twenty-five years later, Haitians in Miami have overcome tremendous prejudice in their journey from being what the sociologist Alex Stepick has called “the refugees nobody wants” to becoming proud Haitian Americans with their own community organizations, elected political leaders, religious institutions, and distinct cultural identity. Severe political unrest, albeit with interludes of calm, has plagued Haiti since the 1980s. Although many Haitians eagerly anticipated the celebrations marking the bicentenary of their independence, political conditions in Haiti had soured to the point where, by the time the eagerly awaited holiday came, few people participated in the civic celebration held down the street from Notre Dame later on January 1, 2004. Attendance at most civic events for Haitians in Miami pales in comparison to such special events at Notre Dame, and even compared to the regular crowds at Notre Dame’s five Sunday Masses. Despite similar expressions of Catholic piety among Haitians in Miami, Montreal, and Paris, the institutional importance of the Catholic Church in Miami is not paralleled in the Haitian community of

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either Montreal or Paris. Differences in the Catholic Church’s financial resources and different relationships between Catholic leaders and state representatives in the three cities—explored in detail throughout this book—help explain the Catholic Church's unique institutional contributions to Haitians’ adaptation in Miami.

THREE I M MIGR A NT PROFILES

Institutions such as Notre Dame can be understood in at least two different ways. First, Notre Dame’s leaders give a public voice to perhaps the least influential immigrant group in Miami, and they founded a social service center to facilitate their adaptation. Second, Notre Dame provides individual immigrants with a moral community in which they can nourish their faith and aYrm their dignity. During my sixteen months of fieldwork for this project, I interviewed around 150 Haitians in Miami, Montreal, and Paris and spent countless hours observing activities at the Haitian Catholic mission in each city, as well as attending social, political, and cultural events in these three Haitian communities. My research design allowed me to move between various levels of analysis: from individuals’ faith to moral communities and then to interactions between institutions of the secular and religious spheres. The three profiles that follow tell us much about each of these levels of analysis and about important cross-national differences in Haitians’ adaptation. The Haitian community in Miami has a large number of boat people from very humble origins in Haiti, but census and immigration data show that Paris and Montreal also have an increasing number of low-skilled Haitians who have fled Haiti’s economic misery and continuous political upheavals. Many Haitians in all three cities thus face similar hurdles to their adaptation, including diYculty in obtaining legal papers, the burden of working in low-wage jobs, the general handicap of being a racially distinct minority and, as such, a frequent object of discrimination, and the problems associated with living in poor and often crime-ridden neighborhoods.

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Although the narratives used by the three people profiled here to describe their struggles are similar, the success with which leaders of the Catholic Church mediate on Haitian immigrants’ behalf with their host societies varies greatly. In a highly globalized world where millions of people cross international boundaries every year, we should not be surprised to fi nd that international migrants often express similar religious sentiments across vast oceans. Therefore, if we are concerned with how such religious sentiments are transformed into institutional support to help immigrants adapt to life in a new home, we would do well to pay attention to how government agencies interact with religious institutions and their aYliated social service centers. The relationships between mediating institutions and state agencies equate with cooperation in the case of the Haitian community of Miami, conflict in the case of the Haitian community in Montreal, and invisibility in the case of the Haitian community of Paris. A cross-national comparison suggests that Haitians are likely to have greater economic mobility and well-being in Miami than in either Montreal or Paris. The proverb “Faith makes us live, but misery divides us” simultaneously points to the centrality of faith for Haitian immigrants and to the need to alter the social structures that perpetuate conditions of misery. Questions about how immigrants adapt to a new home are ultimately questions at the heart of what C. Wright Mills identified as the core task of sociology: how do we make sense of the lives of individuals as part of historical processes? Based on a sociological understanding of how political conditions in the three countries affect the institutional actions and interactions that influence Haitian immigrants’ adaptation, this book allows a number of them to tell their stories in their own words. In answering questions about Haitian immigrants’ adaptation in the three cities, I also suggest that sociologists interested in studying religion in a global world should pay attention to how both religious narratives and religious institutions influence modern society.

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“W E H A ITI A NS K NOW HOW TO SURV I V E”

During my fieldwork in Miami, I lived at Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church, which greatly facilitated my becoming fluent in Haitian Creole and having regular contact with members of this church and the political leaders who often visited there. Although community leaders generally could speak to me in English or French, I had to take many more steps in order to be able to conduct interviews with the members of Notre Dame, many of whom have very limited contact with Americans of any background. Learning Creole, visiting Haiti, living in Little Haiti, going to Mass at Notre Dame—all things few non-Haitians do—were all crucial to building the mutual trust needed to conduct these interviews. I first met Donald after Mass one Sunday at Notre Dame, and I had many more informal conversations with him during my first two months at Notre Dame.3 One afternoon, to conduct a more formal interview, I accompanied Donald to his home, which is within walking distance of Notre Dame. Like many other Haitian homes I visited, the living room of Donald’s one-story house contains pictures of his family and religious images. As he described the many struggles he faced in coming to the United States and adapting to a new society, Donald employed his religious beliefs to construct a narrative of hope. He always kept his eyes on his goal—his children’s eventual success in the United States. For Donald, coming to the United States provided an escape from the extremely diYcult living conditions in Haiti. Life is so hard in Haiti, that, as he put it, “It’s like they drop you off in a forest for thirty days with only a fork and they tell you that you have to survive.” Donald first opted to migrate across the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where at least a half a million Haitians live. There, he met a Haitian woman and had four children. However, for Donald, being a Haitian in the Dominican Republic was full of humiliations—for

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example, Dominicans openly denigrate Haitians on radio and television. Furthermore, he had few hopes that his children could succeed there, because the Dominican government denies citizenship to children of undocumented Haitians born in the Dominican Republic.4 Although Donald would have preferred to return to his home country, he saw no future for himself or his family in Haiti. First he and then, a few years later, his wife made the treacherous boat journey to Miami. For the first few years, he struggled to survive—moving from place to place, shuZing from low-wage job to low-wage job. Once his wife joined him, they rented a small home and began trying to save money to bring their children over. As Donald recounted, “Many times we would go without eating, or have our electricity or water cut off, so we could send money to Haiti, save to buy a house here, and bring our kids over. It wasn’t easy. But you know, we Haitians know how to survive.” Long conversations such as this one allowed me not just to identify what hurdles Haitians face—I could see that from census and immigration data and from interviews with leaders—but also to understand how they developed strategies of action to confront those challenges. Interviews with Donald and many others drilled home how many Haitians rely on their faith quite literally to stay alive. Feeling forced to leave Haiti due to extreme poverty and political instability, many Haitians in Miami arrive on boats without legal papers, without education or urban work skills, or without knowing English. In this majority-immigrant and majority-Latino city, Haitians in Miami begin at the bottom of the ethnic ladder. Although not all of the more than 100,000 Haitians in South Florida are poor, Haitian immigrants in Miami nonetheless have lower levels of education than both American citizens and other immigrants there; as a result, they often wind up at the bottom of the income scale. Further complicating their adaptation, Haitians in Miami are often the brunt of racial and ethnic stereotypes and employment discrimination.5 When one first visits Little Haiti—an ethnic neighborhood that emerged in the 1970s and early 1980s as thousands of people like

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Donald arrived in Miami—its bungalow-style homes and dilapidated cars reflect its poverty. According to data from the 2000 U.S. Census, more than 50 percent of households in Little Haiti are below the poverty line; 46 percent have less than a high school degree, about half of whom do not even have nine years of schooling. Despite his family’s poverty, Donald, his wife and children find support from both the religious and ethnic organizations that dot Lit tle Haiti’s landscape and provide crucial assistance for newcomers’ settlement and adaptation. To the extent that he and his family are on the way to achieving the American dream of middle-class status, they are bolstered by their religious beliefs, their strong ethnic community, and opportunities for education and work. Although Donald was not particularly religious before he migrated to Miami, he began attending church regularly in order to find the strength not to give in to his frustration at the many bumps in the road. “You know, I work so hard, I am a good person. But some other guy, he does nothing and he gets ahead. How does he do it? I don’t know, by selling drugs or something. So when I felt frustrated, or when I lost my job or had to move, I would go to church and pray, and that would give me the strength to keep being a good person.” I developed the notion of cultural mediation to indicate how Haitians’ religious faith provides them with narratives of hope in situations where they have little status or political voice. I chose the term “cultural mediation” because the metaphor of mediation seemed to capture how the people rely on their religious beliefs to guide them through struggles in this world, with their eyes all the while fi xed on eventually entering another world. Because as newcomers, and often not yet citizens or even legal residents, Haitian Catholics’ religious belief and practices bring them into a community in which an established institution of the host society attempts to speak, or mediate, on their behalf with the local and national governments, I also use the term “mediating institution.”6 Although Donald had largely accepted that he would never move out

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of the low-wage labor market in Miami, he emphasized that, despite his low socioeconomic status, his four children were at the top of their classes at the local public high school, and that the eldest two had won full scholarships to Florida State University. Like many other Haitian parents, Donald emphasized that he had moved to the United States to give his children access to a better education than he had had in Haiti. He also wanted his children to be part of a supportive religious community, so that they would learn how to make the most of that opportunity. Notre Dame, which has approximately 2,000 regular members, also provides support to many young Haitians who were born in the United States to Haitian parents or who came here as teenagers, like Donald’s children. Every week, thousands of Haitians from Little Haiti attend one of the five Catholic Masses celebrated in Haitian Creole at Notre Dame d’Haiti. As this church was founded precisely to provide a home for Miami’s poorest immigrant group, both its members and many outside observers refer to it as “the heart of the Haitian community in Miami.” Every Sunday and often during the week, Donald’s children participate in one of Notre Dame’s youth groups. Leaders of these youth groups try to build a protective wall around young Haitians to keep them from falling prey to gangs, drugs, and delinquency. Although not all Haitians are as successful as Donald and his children, Donald’s experience indicates that, to the extent that Haitians in Miami have overcome their disadvantages, many have done so by spending time in religious groups, regularly attending church, and praying together at home. Much historical and contemporary literature on immigration to the United States describes how, over time, the descendants of immigrants generally join the middle-class mainstream.7 The ideas of the American melting pot, Canadian multiculturalism, and French republicanism all theoretically offer immigrants and their descendants the possibility of becoming part of both the cultural and socioeconomic mainstreams. At least for the United States, much research presents ample evidence

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that indeed not all immigrants and their descendants have joined the middle class.8 To challenge the idea that all immigrants enjoy upward mobility, albeit over different lengths of time, Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut developed a theoretical perspective called segmented assimilation. Segmented assimilation theory predicts that whereas the children of some high-skilled immigrants, such as Koreans or Cubans, may well achieve rapid upward economic mobility, others, such as some Mexicans, Southeast Asians, and Haitians, undergo downward assimilation, joining a relatively permanent underclass sector of society characterized by crime, drugs, and delinquency.9 The segmented assimilation model also helps specify the mechanisms by which lowskilled immigrants can nonetheless achieve upward mobility, such as by relying on ethnic institutions to provide social norms and solidarity. Research has shown that religious institutions often provide one of the strongest sources of ethnic solidarity, and leaders of those institutions frequently give a public voice to disadvantaged immigrants such as Haitians.10 Thus, just looking at how the individual faith of people like Donald provides cultural mediation only tells part of the story of Haitians’ adaptation in Miami. During the 1980s, Notre Dame earned a reputation for social activism both within and outside the Haitian community, because its pastor at the time, Father Thomas G. Wenski, vocally defended the Haitian boat people who were arriving by the thousands. Not only did he build up the religious community at Notre Dame, he founded a social service center, the Pierre Toussaint Center, which quickly became the largest service provider to Haitians in Miami. In the beginning the Toussaint Center relied on volunteers from the Haitian community and start-up resources from the archdiocese of Miami. Over the past twenty years, however, it has attracted millions of dollars in outside funding, most of it from the government, enabling it to expand its services— among them, programs in Creole and English literacy, acculturation, and job training, as well as legal services—and to expand the number of people it reaches. The regular interactions between leaders of both

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Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center with government oYcials, as well as the abundant government funding that the Toussaint Center has earned for its social programs, demonstrates how government agencies and religious agencies have cooperated to work toward a common goal, thereby strengthening each other’s efforts. Although they occupy the same ten-acre property, donated by the archdiocese of Miami, Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center are administratively separate entities. However, the spiritual mission of Notre Dame complements the social mission of the Toussaint Center. Leaders of the Toussaint Center see the center as much more than a conduit of state funding for Haitians; no amount of funding could solve all of their problems. These leaders see themselves as members of the community they serve, not just as providers of badly needed services, but also as examples of hope and encouragement in a long-term struggle. Their clients see the leaders of the Toussaint Center as people who understand them and sympathize with them, whereas they often perceive government agencies as generally unfriendly and intimidating. For these reasons, Donald turned to the Toussaint Center when he needed a specific form of help—like applying for asylum or taking Creole literacy or English classes. Although government agencies or secular community agencies can and sometimes do provide similar services, Haitians feel not only helped materially but also understood culturally at Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center. These closely linked institutions meet both their spiritual and material needs and do so in a way that aYrms their dignity and strengthens their sense of control over their own lives. Haitian Catholics in Montreal and Paris use similar religious narratives as a kind of cultural mediation to interpret their migration experience. As in Miami, leaders of the Haitian Catholic missions of Montreal and Paris founded community service organizations. These institutions and their leaders mediate for Haitians in important ways, such as by meeting with government oYcials to help them understand the types of social problems in their communities. However, given the

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different church-state relations in France and Canada, they have not been nearly as successful as the Toussaint Center in securing government funds for their social programs, or even in getting the government to acknowledge their potential contribution to Haitians’ adaptation.

“JESUS IS YOUR FR IEND”

The story of Robert, a Haitian immigrant in Montreal, on the surface seems similar to Donald’s, but it relates to a very different historical process, in which the state has gradually cut ties to religious institutions, thus weakening their capacity to support immigrant adaptation. As part of my research in Montreal, I joined the choir at the Haitian Catholic mission in Montreal, which goes by the same name as its counterpart in Miami, Notre Dame d’Haiti. Being a regular choir member gave me opportunities to visit other members’ homes, in addition to observing informal conversations and interactions in the choir, which met on Friday and Saturday evenings for prayer and rehearsal. After one Saturday night rehearsal, Robert, a choir member, celebrated his fiftieth birthday by inviting all forty of his fellow choir members to his home in Saint Michel, a working-class neighborhood in Montreal, where about 10,000 of the city’s 80,000 Haitians live. In the 1960s, the Quebec government recruited high-skilled Haitian migrants to come to Montreal to work as professionals in education and health services, among other things. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the same forces that led increasing numbers of Haitians to head to Miami also led thousands of middle- and working-class Haitians like Robert to move to Canada. In recent decades, some Haitians have moved to Montreal by taking advantage of work visas and family reunification policies, whereas others have entered Canada as tourists and overstayed their visas, leaving them in a precarious legal situation. In the 1960s, only a few thousand well-educated professionals and students lived in Montreal, but by the time of the 2001 Canadian census, around half of the Haitians in Montreal had less than a high school

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education. Through steady migration over the past thirty years, Haitians have grown to be the largest black community in Quebec and one of the largest of all recent immigrant groups to Montreal. Unlike Miami, however, there is no “Little Haiti” where Haitians constitute the majority of residents in a neighborhood. Although highly educated Haitians had little diYculty adapting in Montreal, in areas like Saint Michel, where Robert lives, even the majority of two-parent Haitian families live under the poverty line. Robert, together with his wife and their nineteen-year-old twin sons, who were born in Haiti, live in a small, three-room rented apartment in the basement of a townhouse duplex. For Robert’s birthday party, about forty people crowded into two tiny rooms, where everyone bumped elbows trying to move around. Despite the tight space, the choir members spent the evening fighting over the microphone to sing Haitian church songs—either alone or in groups—while the musicians took turns playing the electric piano. A few of Robert’s sons’ friends joined the party, and their hip-hop style of dressing—baggy jeans, Raiders jackets, and Yankees caps—introduced into the party a bit of what many Haitians in Montreal call “North American black culture,” which contrasts with the style of dressing most common among less acculturated Haitians, namely, ironed slacks and collared shirts. Apparently recognizing that his sons’ friends might feel like outsiders at such a religious gathering, at one point in the evening, Robert grabbed the microphone, pointed right at the youths, and sang a song saying, “Jesus is your friend, won’t you come meet him?” Robert was well aware of the different social context that surrounds his children compared to how he was raised in Haiti, and he pointed to an important difference as well between Miami and Montreal. Before choir rehearsal at Notre Dame the following Saturday night, Robert explained why he had sung these words to the teenage boys. “A lot of youth today are leaving the church. We have to try to bring them back. Thanks be to God that my two sons still come to church with me. My family and I do everything together. We go to church together; we pray

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together at home. We can overcome diYculties if we have God in our lives. With God, there is always something you can do to help your situation.” Robert’s words echo much of what Donald had said: when facing diYculties, many Haitians turn to prayer and wait for a better opportunity. Both Donald and Robert fear that without the patience that comes from prayer, their children will fall prey to temptations or crime. Robert also believes in miracles; for example, he believes that divine intervention saved his life in Montreal when he had what he called an “accident.” He had been brutally attacked while at work as a night janitor in Montreal. Tears welled up in his eyes as Robert recalled how a few men had broken into the store where he worked and “beat me like savages and left me for dead.” Fortunately, someone found him and he was rushed to the hospital. He believes his wife’s fervent prayers of intercession helped save his life. As I listened to him, I wondered if the tears rolling down his cheeks represented hope, sadness, or a bit of both. His words expressed great pain, but Robert also focused on how his “accident” had led him to greater faith rather than to despair. “God tells us that not a hair of our heads will fall without him knowing about it. We can overcome our diYculties with prayer. With God, things will always work out. Kenbe fèm, pa lage, pa dekouraje [Hold on tight, don’t let go, don’t get discouraged].” Haitians often string together these last three phrases to describe how they fi nd the hope to continue in their ongoing struggles. Robert has never been quite the same since his “accident.” He is more physically limited, but feels spiritually empowered. “God saved my life. I always went to church, but since my accident I have dedicated my life more fully to God in thanksgiving for what he did for me.” Although Robert believes a miracle saved his life, he also knows that, to get ahead, he has to take many small steps. Aware that many young Haitians fail to make the transition from high school to college, and wanting his children to beat this trend, he encourages his sons to attend

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church with him and pray at home with him, reminding them that Jesus is their friend and will help them through the hard times. Was the violent attack on Robert part of a broader trend of prejudice against blacks in Montreal? He thought not. Since his attackers did not yell any racist insults, he did not attribute this violent act to racist feelings against Haitians or blacks more generally; he simply believed he had been in the way of an attempted robbery. Other Haitians in Montreal often echoed Robert’s sentiments that their economic troubles, or even the social distance they felt from non-Haitian Quebecois, were not due explicitly to racism. However, perhaps because Haitians in Montreal live further from each other than in Miami, loneliness was a more common theme in my interviews in Montreal. Despite the fact that the U.S. and Canadian governments differ in their immigration and welfare policies, regardless of location, Haitians like Robert and Donald are concerned about the same things—jobs, housing, and getting their children to finish high school and go on to college. Even though there are less stringent black-white racial boundaries in Canada than in the United States, Haitians’ low human capital, compounded by the lack of legal channels for low-skilled Haitians to migrate to Canada, and relatively high unemployment rates in Montreal, means that many Haitians in Montreal face similar socioeconomic struggles as those in Miami. For example, even though government transfers supplement the income of low-income Haitians in Montreal, as in Miami’s Little Haiti, more than half of the Haitians in Robert’s neighborhood of Saint Michel and other neighborhoods with many Haitians nonetheless have incomes that fall below the poverty line. In other words, government transfers may buffer the sting of poverty, but government welfare alone does not achieve what Haitians moved to Montreal seeking—a life free of poverty. Even the ability to get a good free education does not guarantee that all young Haitians in Montreal will do so; in fact, many young Haitians in Montreal have fallen into delinquency and dropped out of high school, much to the chagrin of their parents and community leaders.11

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The challenges Robert’s family faces show that government social services alone do not guarantee Haitians’ successful adaptation. In the 1970s, recognizing that many Haitians needed extra support for their adaptation, the leaders of the Haitian Catholic community of Montreal founded a service center—the Bureau de la communauté chrétienne des Haïtiens à Montréal (Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community of Montreal). Like the Toussaint Center, the Bureau’s founders organized volunteer work, mobilized funds from other Catholic agencies to support social programs for Haitians, and lobbied the government to regularize the status of undocumented Haitians. People like Robert benefited greatly from this advocacy, because he first came to Quebec on a tourist visa in the late 1970s, but later his wife acquired legal papers through a relative, which then allowed Robert to legalize his own status and bring their children over to join them. Academics and government oYcials in Montreal all recognized the Bureau’s important contribution to Haitians’ adaptation. However, the Bureau has had a very different trajectory than the Toussaint Center in Miami. Whereas the Toussaint Center expanded from a church-based voluntary organization to a full-blown service center bolstered by millions of dollars in public and private funding, the Bureau’s initial scope of activity has decreased, and it struggles to fi nd funding to continue its programs. The Bureau’s initial success in supporting Haitians’ adaptation has waned in part due to the Quebec government’s preference for funding secular organizations. Like the French Revolution more than 170 years earlier, the 1960s Quiet Revolution in Quebec displaced the Catholic Church from its formerly dominant position in culture, education, and social services.12 In the United States, President George W. Bush’s creation of an OYce of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2000 largely strengthened the long-standing tradition of government support of private social service organizations, not the least of which is Catholic Charities.13 In contrast, in Quebec, the 2003 government proclamation that it prefers to cooperate with secular community

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organizations rather than faith-based ones drove another nail into the coYn of what had already been a decades-long process of government disengagement with any organization that can be related to the historical influence of the Catholic Church. This progressive disengagement creates an environment in which religious institutions and government institutions, even when concerned about similar social problems, appear to be in confl ict with each other in how they address those problems. But differences in government funding of organizations such as the Toussaint Center and the Bureau only tell part of the story about the differences between Miami and Montreal. Canadian multiculturalism policies and Quebec’s similar interculturalism policies recognize ethnic pluralism, like the ideal of the American melting pot. Given the historic English-French ethnic tensions in Quebec, the provincial government works hard to protect a unique Quebecois identity. One of the measures the government has taken to protect this identity is to favor cooperation with mixed-ethnic organizations rather than organizations like the Bureau that clearly identify themselves with one group of immigrants. Quebec’s rapid secularization over the past forty years and the imperative of protecting the province’s cultural identity have created a great gap between the state’s approach to immigrant adaptation and the strategies of many new immigrants like Haitians. In the United States, ethnicity and religion are understood to be frequently closely intertwined, and the leadership of Haitians’ ethnic and religious organizations in Miami overlaps quite substantially. However, Quebec’s policy of funding only multiethnic secular organizations makes little sense to people like Robert whose social networks are tied closely to their church and ethnic community.

“THE LORD H AS A LWAYS BEEN GOOD TO ME”

Moving our analysis to France provides further evidence of how individuals’ narratives intersect with the historical dynamics that surround them. Although Haitians in France construct narratives similar to

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those of Haitians in Canada and the United States, the religious institutions they belong to operate in a vastly different political context, which severely limits the ability of their religious leaders to advocate on their behalf and connect them to badly needed social services. Relative to Canada and the United States, only a modest number of Haitians (around 25,000) live in France, notwithstanding the two countries’ historical ties.14 As in the case of Montreal, the first contemporary Haitian migrants to arrive in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s were students and professionals, but Haitians who have migrated to France since the 1980s in particular come from the lower socioeconomic classes of Haiti. Little research has been conducted on Haitians in France, probably because they constitute a relatively small immigrant group compared to the much larger numbers of North Africans who live in France. Just as in Miami and Montreal, I gained insights into how Haitians adapt in France by conducting ethnographic work at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris (Haitian Catholic Community of Paris). As in Montreal, I sang in this church community’s choir, attended Sunday and weekday religious services, and often interviewed church members in their homes. One Saturday in the spring of 2003, I took the train to visit Marlene Pierre, a forty-five-year-old Haitian widow, at her home in a high-rise apartment in Saint-Denis, a suburb just outside Paris. Walking between high-rise buildings to fi nd Marlene’s apartment, I passed numerous stores catering to immigrants’ needs, such as African hair salons, convenience stores selling international calling cards and foreign-language newspapers, and ethnic food markets and restaurants. The types of goods sold in Saint-Denis clearly reflect the ethnic makeup of this neighborhood. Even in the middle of the afternoon, few people were on the sidewalk, and as I look white, I stood out just as much as I had in Miami’s Little Haiti.15 My visit to Marlene’s apartment drilled home the reality of how a widowed immigrant mother of two girls tries to survive in one such banlieue. During the many times I interacted with Marlene at the Com-

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munauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, she struck me as particularly joyful and friendly, but her behavior changed to extreme caution once we entered her neighborhood. To illustrate this rather remarkable change in behavior, as we talked leisurely and cheerfully inside her apartment, someone knocked on the door and Marlene’s face became very serious. She only opened the door a crack and then curtly replied to the person in the unlit hallway, “No, no one from Mali lives here!” Noting my surprise, Marlene explained that she does not know her neighbors, many of whom are from places in Africa such as Mali, and is careful not to interact much with them. Because many more immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa than Haiti live in France, Marlene mentioned that people often think she is African. Although one might expect Haitians to form some connections to their black African neighbors out of racial solidarity, Marlene and others said they do not feel they have much in common with their African neighbors. Even though their skin color may be the same, many people pointed to numerous ethnic and religious differences, not only between Haitians and Africans, but even among Africans of the same nationality. As Marlene put it, “People from Mali do not even share the same ethnicity, religion, or language. If they don’t have many things in common even though they are from the same country, what do I have in common with them?” When I was leaving her home, Marlene did not want me to walk back alone to the train station after dark, because she thought it was too dangerous, so we walked out of her apartment toward her car. As soon as we went outside, Marlene covered her head with the hood of her coat, and she did not greet anyone we passed, not even her neighbors whom we saw in the dark, dingy courtyard of her building. Because Marlene lives in an immigrant neighborhood with high unemployment and many people barely scraping by in the informal economy, her neighborhood can be dangerous, both in terms of crime and in terms of people seeking to take advantage of unmarried women like her who

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have legal papers. To avoid trouble, she simply chooses not even to make eye contact with anyone—much less talk to them. The 2005 riots in the immigrant suburbs around various cities in France confirmed for me that Marlene’s fears are not unfounded. The social isolation and economic deprivation in France’s immigrantdominated banlieues became undeniable after the more than fourteen nights of consecutive rioting and violence in late 2005. Mostly firstand second-generation immigrant youth turned their anger against symbols of the French state—like school buildings and buses—as well as cars. The French government declared a state of emergency in order to restore order. Once the violence was quelled, the government began to reconsider its policies toward immigrant adaptation, which have long focused on encouraging immigrants to quickly adopt a French identity and lose ties to their own religious and ethnic communities. Despite different ideologies surrounding immigrant adaptation, immigrants in France suffer many of the same problems as in the United States. It is harder to know reliably about the long-term trajectories of immigrants in France, however, because French republican ideology has influenced the kind of research done on immigrants in France and few oYcial data directly compare the socioeconomic status of descendants of immigrants with that of other French citizens. Nonetheless, like Marlene, most Haitians in Paris live in poor neighborhoods such as those where the riots took place, and their levels of poverty resemble those of Haitians in Miami and Montreal. In addition, Haitians exhibit extremely high unemployment rates in France—28.4 percent, according to the 1999 census. Although the French government formally halted all labor immigration in 1973, the numbers of new immigrants to France have not declined substantially, much less to the level of zero immigration proposed by some. Without many visas available for low-skilled immigrants to France, thousands of people, Haitians among them, enter France as tourists and then overstay their visas, whereas others enter

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clandestinely. Regardless of the mode of initial entry, thousands of Haitians in France request asylum annually. Although many Haitians legalized their status in France during regularization programs for undocumented immigrants in the 1980s, no more such programs are currently on the horizon, thus making nongovernmental support for immigrant adaptation—such as that provided by ethnic and religious associations or even by Catholic Charities—even more crucial. It is hard to see how the French republican model of immigrant adaptation—which sees citizenship as the key to successful adaptation—can work when so many immigrants may never be citizens and when even those who do become citizens have such high rates of unemployment. Some amount of conflict about immigrant adaptation must—and has— arisen in such a scenario. Although she lives in a crime-ridden banlieue, Marlene is fortunate in other ways. She has a steady job as the supervisor of several domestic servants who all work for a wealthy family. She will soon receive French citizenship, and inasmuch as her daughters were born in France, they will become French citizens when they turn eighteen. Even so, Marlene relies on strong ties to her family, her religious community, and her ethnic community for numerous forms of support. Like Donald and Robert, Marlene answered my questions about her legal status and work with rather matter-of-fact answers as we chatted in her apartment. However, her countenance always lit up when she returned to her favorite topics—her family and God—topics apparently much closer to her heart than French citizenship. Marlene’s older sister helped her get a tourist visa to visit her in France, and Marlene then stayed. With many civil society organizations, the most prominent being the Catholic Church, pressing for a legal way for people from confl ictridden countries to regularize their status,16 Marlene acquired legal residence during an amnesty program in the early 1980s. For Marlene, as for Donald, Robert, and so many others, belonging to a church community fortifies their individual faith and provides a supportive environment for their families. Marlene married a Haitian

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man she met at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, and they had had two daughters, but her husband had died at the age of forty, and since then Marlene has struggled to raise the two girls— Katrine, aged fifteen, and Julia, aged ten—while working long hours. Although an outsider might see Marlene as a powerless single mother holding a low-wage job and living in a poor and dangerous neighborhood, Marlene finds empowerment in her faith, insisting with a loud voice and a big smile that “the Lord has always been good to me.” Like Donald and Robert, she tries to pass on her faith to her children, despite the much more secular climate in France than in Haiti. As a young woman, Marlene participated actively in her parish in Haiti, both singing in the choir and belonging to a Catholic prayer and service group called the Holy Family. Despite the fact that Christianity first came to France in the fourth century, when she arrived in the country that first sent Christian missionaries to Haiti, she did not find a vibrant religious spirit in her local neighborhood parish. But when her sister took her to the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, she finally felt spiritually at home. On Sundays, she attends afternoon Mass at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, which is about a forty-minute drive from her neighborhood. In addition to the many activities she participates in at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, at the request of the priest in a neighborhood parish, she now leads a Saturday morning prayer group there. As in Haiti, Marlene spends all of her free time in France attending church services and participating in different church groups. So far, her daughters seem to be following in her footsteps, because they both belong to a youth group and sing in the youth choir at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris. Although there are not enough Haitians in Paris who belong to the Charismatic Renewal to start a regular group like the Haitian Charismatic groups in Miami and Montreal, Marlene’s intense prayer experiences are reminiscent of Charismatic prayer experiences and provide her with a narrative that keeps up her hope. During pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem, she received visions of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary

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telling her that her family would be alright. As she was having trouble conceiving a child at the time, she also thinks that the Virgin Mary interceded for her to become pregnant with her second child. Although the strength of Marlene’s beliefs surprised me at fi rst, she spoke so strongly about her experiences that I knew she was convinced that she had received special messages from God and Mary to strengthen her in her struggles. Regardless of whether or not one believes supernatural visions or miracles can occur, such experiences profoundly shape the individual behavior and social interactions of many Haitians like Marlene. However, Marlene and the other members of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris who share her faith nonetheless recognize that their prayer lives and beliefs in divine intervention do not automatically resolve social problems. The priest and lay leaders of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris expressed concern about the same types of problems as leaders in Miami and Montreal—obtaining legal papers for the undocumented, finding employment, overcoming language barriers, and preventing juvenile delinquency. One of the lay leaders who helped found the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris—René Benjamin—also runs a nonprofit agency, called Haïti Développement (Haiti Development), that functions as a mediating institution, like similar institutions in Miami and Montreal, attempting to support Haitians’ settlement and adaptation in France by drawing outside resources into the community. For the past twenty-five years, Benjamin has run Haïti Développement out of his own apartment, largely as a one-man show. Despite his fund-raising efforts, he has acquired very little outside funding for staff or programs other than helping Haitians navigate the complex paperwork required to file for asylum status, such as proving that they experienced physical harm or the threat of serious harm that forced them to leave their country. Haïti Développement’s only regular source of outside funding comes from the OYce français de la protection des réfugiés et des apatrides (French OYce for the Protection of Refugees

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and Stateless People), a government agency. As an illustration of how civil society groups can work with the state while also challenging the state’s boundaries and rules, Benjamin receives money from the French government to help Haitians apply for asylum after entering France clandestinely or overstaying their tourist visas. In other words, the French government funds a civil society organization, and one led by a lay leader of a Catholic religious mission at that, to help undocumented immigrants normalize their status vis-à-vis the government. Other than on the issue of legal status, Haïti Développement and other Haitian associations in France have not been able to obtain much funding for social programs they wish to start to assist Haitians’ adaptation. In fact, one Haitian leader asserted that Haitian associations in France are practically invisible to the government. The modicum of government support Benjamin has won for Haïti Développement is largely overshadowed by the French government’s general lack of interest in cooperating with Haitian organizations. Although people like Marlene may regularly turn to leaders of their own religious and ethnic community for support they need, those leaders have relatively little voice with the government. Perhaps recognizing how important mediating institutions can be in immigrant communities, on numerous occasions, including after the 2005 riots, the French government has announced that it would provide greater funding to immigrant community organizations, and that government leaders would meet with religious leaders, including a council of Muslim religious leaders, the Conseil français du culte musulman (French Council of Muslim Religion). However, my research among Haitians indicates that communication between the state and community organizations or religious leaders remains very weak compared to the United States, and, what is perhaps not unrelated to this, concerns about the successful adaptation of immigrant youth continue to grow in France. These three examples show how immigrants such as Haitians rely on their religious faith in numerous ways to support their adaptation.

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However, the ability to successfully transform their faith into actions depends on local and national contexts, in particular the success of mediating institutions in working with state representatives and institutions. Although Haitians in all three cities express similar types of beliefs and engage in similar religious practices, the cross-national differences clearly emerge when we examine the response of the host society to institutions founded by leaders of religious communities that attempt to mediate between individuals and the state.

THE BOOK’S CONTENTS

Chapter 2 explores the sociological theories about immigrant adaptation, religion, and civil society that guided my inquiry. Classical research and theories about immigrant adaptation in the United States emphasized that religious communities frequently form the center of immigrant communities, providing both cultural resources and institutional support for immigrants’ adaptation. However, in recent decades, the central contributions of religious beliefs and institutions to immigrant adaptation have been overlooked as decades of sociological research focused more on explaining differing socioeconomic outcomes across various immigrant groups. This book contributes to the renewed interest in religion and immigration by comparing one immigrant group and one religious tradition in three vastly different political contexts. Not only do I move between the individual, community, and interinstitutional levels of analysis, I also explore how historical processes influence the ways in which similar types of institutions engage the public sphere in three different nations. The extent to which religious institutions engage the public sphere in any given society depends in part on government policies that regulate the public functions of religious institutions and on how governments regulate the public expression of religious beliefs. Compared to France and Canada, government agencies in the United States frequently cooperate with civil society institutions, including faith-based

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institutions, to provide social services. Differences in church-state relations and the public expression of religion are crucial to understanding why the scope of the Catholic Church’s social programs for Haitians is greater in Miami than in Montreal and Paris. The notions of cultural and institutional mediation guide our understanding of Haitians’ religious faith, their moral communities, and interactions between religious and government institutions. From the point of view of many Haitian immigrants, their successful adaptation is as much about creating a moral community centered on their religious faith as it is about creating social capital or achieving economic progress. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 consider Haitian Catholics’ religious beliefs and their religious communities alongside other elements of their adaptation in Miami, Montreal, and Paris, respectively. I look at census and immigration data, the history of the Haitian community, that of other Haitian associations, and how government representatives in each country address questions of immigrant adaptation. I also use extensive interviews and ethnographic observations to focus attention on how Haitian immigrants understand their adaptation. Next, I relate these narratives to the broader social and historical context in each city and nation. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 each present numerous examples of how Haitians use their religious faith to make sense of their migration and adaptation experiences. The ethnography in each of these chapters builds a vibrant picture of Haitian Catholic religious piety. For example, readers will see how, from the perspective of my interviewees, the meaning behind reenacting the death of Jesus on Good Friday is related to the struggles and rebirths experienced by immigrants. Interview excerpts illustrate recurring themes such as loving one’s enemies, pleading from one’s knees for God’s help, talking to Jesus all day long, and believing that one’s dignity lies in being a child of God. All of this ethnographic evidence supports the argument that religious ideas and narratives are unique sources of cultural mediation that occurs at the Haitian Catholic missions of Miami, Montreal, and Paris.

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Using secondary sources and interviews with religious and community leaders, as well as government oYcials, in each of the three cities, in chapters 3, 4, and 5, I explain the factors that helped or hindered the institutional mediation of the social service agencies founded by leaders of the three Haitian Catholic communities. Chapter 2 presents arguments about how religion contributes to immigrant adaptation in the United States, thus establishing the context in which to understand Miami’s Toussaint Center, which I analyze in chapter 3. Chapters 4 and 5 contain lengthy discussions of religion and civil society in Canada and France, respectively, that help explain the different trajectories of the Bureau in Montreal and Haïti Développement in Paris. Although Haitians in Miami, Montreal, and Paris express similar religious beliefs, and despite their leaders’ efforts in each city to found social service institutions to support their adaptation, the interactions between those institutions and the government vary from cooperation in Miami to conflict in Montreal and invisibility in Paris. What are the consequences of these different types of interactions between religious institutions, their aYliated service agencies, and the government? In the absence of cross-nationally harmonized longitudinal surveys with large enough samples of Haitians and questions on religion, I can only speculate about how religious practice or religious institutions influence Haitians’ long-term economic adaptation. Nonetheless, the various pieces of evidence presented throughout this book are consistent with the argument that Haitians experience a greater sense of well-being in Miami than in Paris or Montreal, and that one of the reasons for this difference is the Catholic Church’s greater cultural and institutional mediation there. As shown by the Haitian Independence Day celebration at Notre Dame in 2004 discussed above, Haitians in Miami have created a large moral community, with shared understandings and numerous ways of caring and sharing. This shared moral meaning is complemented by the social work done at the Toussaint Center and the political advocacy of members of the church hierarchy. Although similar institutions exist in the Haitian communities of

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Montreal and Paris, they lack the scope and the impact of Notre Dame in Miami and the Toussaint Center. In chapter 6, I discuss how the concepts of cultural and institutional mediation contribute to larger debates about civil society and a well-functioning democracy. First, the cultural mediation in the three Haitian Catholic communities reminds us that, although one can certainly imagine that communities of moral meaning might emerge around different types of shared meanings, religious meanings present a potent source to organize and sustain moral communities. Second, much evidence from the United States overwhelmingly shows that people who are active in religious communities experience numerous psychological, social, and even health benefits.17 Therefore, we have reason to be concerned if membership in religious communities declines, as I suspect it will for second-generation Haitians in Montreal and Paris because of the more secular environments there. This argument about how Haitians’ cultural adaptation impacts their political incorporation and socioeconomic mobility underlies the entire book. To reinforce my expectations about the future of the Haitian communities of Miami, Montreal, and Paris, chapter 6 examines how the same the three people I introduced in this chapter—Donald in Miami, Robert in Montreal, and Marlene in Paris—perceive their children’s future. These parents each described his or her own journey as a great struggle to survive. Yet all three Haitian parents expressed equally high aspirations for their children to graduate from high school, fi nish college, and fi nd middle-class occupations. They also know that if they want their children to thrive, they must work with their religious leaders to form a protective environment around their children. What will happen to their children if these parents’ religious commitments and supporting institutions do not carry over into the second generation of Haitian immigrants? These Haitian parents fear that without strong religious commitments and thriving religious communities, their children will succumb to the pressures that have led other Haitians in their neighborhoods into criminal behavior and dropping out of school.

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These immigrant parents are not neutral about their children’s religious faith, nor do they want their faith to conflict with or be invisible to the government. Yet, in practice, their view of what their children’s success consists of often clashes with that of the state. Appendix A supplies greater detail about the ethnographic and case study methods I used to study these three Haitian communities. In this appendix, I discuss the strengths and limitations of focusing on a single religious institution in three sites rather than comparing the different kinds of religions Haitians may practice. In particular for readers with little prior knowledge about Haitian society and religion, Appendix A further addresses the complex religious landscape in Haiti, where three main religions—Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou—are practiced with great intensity.18 Despite the fact that numerous sources indicate that many more Haitians practice Christianity than Vodou, more scholarship exists on Vodou than on Haitian Christianity. The detailed ethnography of Haitian Catholics presented in this book helps fill the void of scholarship on Haitian Christians, in particular on fran katolik—Haitian Catholics who do not practice Vodou. The devotions and beliefs described here—such as the beliefs in the incarnation of God as man in Jesus Christ, that Jesus’ suffering is redemptive, and that God can forgive sins—distinguish Haitian Christianity from Vodou. Appendix B presents background information on the political and economic conditions in Haiti that have led 20 percent of the nation’s population to emigrate in the past forty years, many of them to North America and Europe. In Appendix B, I also describe liberation theology and the various faith-based social movements it gave rise to in Haiti, movements that later crossed borders and were transformed into new initiatives in the Haitian communities of Miami, Montreal, and Paris.

“GOD IS GOOD”

Theology matters for social action. Although there is much renewed scholarly interest in religion, we are a long way from unlocking the

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black box of religion to see what, specifically, about religion matters for social phenomena we want to explain or predict. To answer this question we also should ask what people believe about the nature of God— their theology—and how they live out their obligations to God—their specific acts of piety. Beliefs about the nature of God and how God acts in the world simultaneously constrain strategies of action and suggest particular paths to follow. This book shows how, for Haitian Catholics, pondering God’s promises of justice in the Bible, promises already made evident for believers by the life and death of Jesus Christ, is a great inspiration to work for justice in this world. In other words, theology provides an inspiration, a channel, for the struggle for social progress. When I first visited Haiti, I was struck by how frequently people said, “Bondye bon,” which means “God is good.” Understanding the meaning behind this saying provides insight into Haitians’ faith. During the time I spent traveling in and studying Haiti and in three Haitian communities of the diaspora, I struggled to see the good that lies beneath the layers of poverty. As I listened to how Haitians used this proverb “Bondye bon,” I began to see how their understanding of who God is— their theology—influences their actions in this world. When Haitians say “God is good,” they are not aYrming a belief in a God who created the earth and then withdrew, but a belief in a God who continuously acts in this world right in the midst of their poverty and suffering. The God of Haitians is a good God, a God who intervenes in this world. The abundant hope and boundless energy to fight for change among Haitians finds a potent source of renewal in a theology of a good God. Without denying the bad in Haiti, we have to look—sometimes very hard—for the good as well. If we think of Haitian immigrants simply as carrying with them the marks of poverty, repression, and disorder, we might easily conclude that they bring no resources with them to help their adaptation abroad. At the very least, however, they bring with them the hope and determination produced by their belief that God is good. This belief in God’s goodness, which many Haitians hold to be an unchangeable certainty, represents a constant in the midst of

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an unpredictable and harsh social and political reality. Without a firm belief that social structures can be changed, notwithstanding ample evidence apparently to the contrary, we would be unlikely to see such enthusiastic engagement in efforts to achieve social justice among Haitians. Thus, as the title Faith Makes Us Live implies, throughout this book, a theological imagination accompanies the sociological imagination.

Ch a pter t wo

Comparing Religion and Immigration Cross-Nationally

When immigrants such as Haitians move to the United States, Canada, or France, they encounter very different understandings of how they should adapt to their new societies, understandings we would expect to influence how they organize ethnic and religious communities. For example, in the United States, much popular and scholarly understanding of immigration centers on the melting-pot thesis, which posits that immigrants can become American without giving up their distinct cultural and religious identity.1 Similarly, Canadian multiculturalism policies treat ethnic diversity as part of Canadian identity.2 The American concept of the melting pot and Canadian multiculturalism emerged in what are commonly thought of as “new” nations that were founded by immigrants, and these approaches to immigrant adaptation contrast greatly with those in many nations of the “old” world like France. French republicanism posits that immigrants should adopt a “core” French national identity, and French laws long discouraged foreigners from forming ethnic and religious associations such as those that are common in the United States.3 Of these three ways of understanding immigrant adaptation, the American idea of the melting pot gives the most weight to religion as a factor influencing immigrants’ economic and cultural adaptation. Writing in 1955, Will Herberg even argued 33

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that because members of different ethnic groups married across ethnic lines, but generally not across religious boundaries, the United States was really made up of three melting pots: one for Catholics, one for Protestants, and one for Jews.4 In addition, different countries of North America and Europe, including the United States, Canada, and France, have developed different models of church-state relations. In the United States, constitutionally protected religious freedom has helped produce a diverse religious marketplace. The same principle of religious freedom also guarantees religious institutions a wide degree of latitude to organize their social and religious initiatives. In both France and Quebec, the Catholic Church long enjoyed an oYcial or quasi-oYcial status as the established church. The French Revolution and the Quiet Revolution in Quebec both removed the Catholic Church’s privileges and set up numerous structures that essentially limit many kinds of religious engagement in the public sphere.5 How might these different ways of understanding immigrant adaptation and different histories of church-state relations affect the adaptation of immigrants from a single country who settle in three different countries? Haitian Catholics’ religious beliefs and piety seem very similar in Haiti, Miami, Montreal, or Paris, but how their faith helps them confront the misery that surrounds them depends on the state’s interactions with religious congregations and the faith-based service organizations frequently found attached to Catholic immigrant missions. Political contexts shape, but do not completely determine, how immigrants turn their religious piety into social action.

CULTUR A L A ND INSTITUTIONA L MEDI ATION

Scholars in the United States long ago noted that religious institutions occupy a special mediating position between immigrants and the host society. For example, a sizeable body of research describes how the Catholic Church supported the adaptation of nineteenth- and early

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twentieth-century immigrants to the United States from Ireland, Poland, Italy, Germany, and Slovakia, to name just a few countries, by providing social services and generating social norms that helped create ethnic solidarity.6 In his classic Assimilation in American Life (1964), Milton Gordon describes how “the immigrant subsociety mediates between the native culture of the immigrant and the American culture. The recognition of this fact is the indispensable prerequisite for the effective use of the communication channels and influence networks of the immigrants’ communal life to aid and encourage the achievement of worthwhile acculturation goals.”7 Gordon emphasizes how, within ethnic communities, religious communities provide a central meeting place for immigrants as well as a context that outsiders can easily identify with a particular ethnic community. Gordon’s use of the concept of mediation seems aptly to capture what I observed, for example, on New Year’s Day 2004 at Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami.8 The term “mediation” also appears in literature on the interactions between agents of the welfare state and the recipients of welfare. Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus contrast mediating structures, which they define as “those institutions standing between the individual in his private life and the large institutions of public life,” with megastructures of the state, the economy, and public bureaucracies, which frequently seem distant and even alienating to the poor. Berger and Neuhaus argue that megastructures of the state “are not helpful in providing meaning and identity for individual existence. Meaning, fulfillment, and personal identity are to be realized in the private sphere.” They use the term “mediating structures” to denote community and religious institutions that help bridge gaps between the poor and the state, while also creating meaning and moral order that empower the poor to pursue common interests.9 Simply put, mediating structures help bridge the gap between individuals and the state, creating a space where people can fashion their identities and create meaning in their lives. Building on these insights, “cultural mediation” describes the

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meaning-making that occurs at the Haitian Catholic missions of Miami, Montreal, and Paris, while “institutional mediation” describes the work done by the social service centers aYliated with these missions. The theory I develop emphasizes two essential interdependencies: first, the interdependence between cultural and institutional mediation, and second, the interdependence between mediating institutions and the state. The cultural and institutional mediation of the Catholic Church in the Haitian communities of Miami, Montreal, and Paris are inseparable and complementary. Other ethnic institutions certainly attempt to mediate between Haitian immigrants and their new society, but religious communities provide a unique sense of belonging to a moral community. Thus, they have greater legitimacy in their interactions with the state than other kinds of ethnic associations. Interactions with representatives of state institutions and secular civic institutions may create some kind of meaning, but those interactions do not help answer fundamental questions about the existence of God or how God relates to human beings, questions that preoccupy many people. Cultural and institutional mediation also complement each other, in that cultural mediation can open the door to institutional mediation by creating a new meaning attached to an exchange. For example, cultural mediation within Haitian Catholic communities gives needy immigrants a sense that they are givers, not just recipients. In aYrming themselves as children of a God who loves them, they enter into a moral community with others around them, leading them to seek to serve others. Once they have entered into this moral community with others, into this sharing and caring community, they become more likely to accept material help—or institutional mediation—when they need it, because now this material help is embedded in relationships that aYrm their dignity. Directly obtaining help from a state agency or civic association is most often a one-way exchange from the more powerful to the less powerful and thus creates a sense of alienation or helplessness rather than one of dignity and empowerment. Many

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people quite simply seek to avoid the humiliation of asking a stranger, or a relative stranger, sitting in the oYce of a state agency or community association for help. But asking for help from someone they identify as another servant of God, such as a lay leader or a clergyman at church, or one’s friend from a prayer group, carries a fundamentally different meaning. Cultural mediation, such as seeing oneself as a dignified child of God, cannot alone change the course of immigrant adaptation. However, strong expressions of religious faith, often ritually enacted through retelling narratives of Jesus’ suffering and linking his suffering to that of Haitian immigrants, provide indispensible cultural mediation for the political advocacy and faith-based community organizing of the leaders of the Haitian Catholic missions of Miami, Montreal, and Paris, and the social service programs established by them. Thus the cultural mediation of religious communities makes their leaders potentially more effective institutional mediators, that is, political advocates, community organizers, and social service providers. Ultimately, however, the effectiveness of institutional mediation depends, not only on the relationships between the leaders of those institutions and the people they seek to serve, but also on the leaders’ relationships to representatives of state institutions and other civil society organizations. Mediating institutions interact very differently with representatives of the state depending on their location. In Miami, Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center became central to the Haitian community, and their leaders cooperate regularly with state oYcials to support Haitians’ adaptation. In contrast, leaders of the Haitian Catholic community and its service centers described their relationships with state representatives in Montreal as conflictual, and they saw themselves as invisible in Paris. Several things help explain these cross-national differences. First, the Quiet Revolution in Quebec and the French Revolution both sought to separate the realms of the church and the state and produced an ideology where religious activity was expected to be strictly private.

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Even though organizations like Catholic Charities exist in Quebec and France, government oYcials there quite simply often overlook the work done by such organizations, frequently aYrming that the state alone is responsible for guaranteeing welfare. In fact, another difference is that, even if Haitians create similar types of service agencies in Miami, Montreal, and Paris, the larger share of welfare services provided by the state in Canada and France relative to the United States creates fewer opportunities for organizations like the Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community of Montreal and Haïti Développement in Paris to access outside funding for their initiatives. Do these cross-national differences in how Haitians access needed services—either from government or from private agencies—simply mean that, all things considered, Haitians face equally good chances at successful upward mobility in Miami, Montreal, and Paris, albeit along different paths? Chapters 3–5 show that by no means are all Haitians rapidly entering the middle class in any of these places. To make sweeping claims about differences in Haitians’ upward economic mobility in the three cities would be to ignore the reality that the successful upward mobility of most Haitians will likely only occur, if at all, over several generations. It is diYcult to conclude definitively where Haitians are adapting better now, or where they will adapt better in the long term, in the socioeconomic sense. However, Haitians in Miami expressed the greatest confidence in their future, in large part because of the cultural and institutional support they have received from the Catholic Church. Thus, we might expect that Haitians in Miami will experience greater long-term upward mobility, and that the greater strength of their religious institutions in Miami explains part of this cross-national difference. It is also likely, though diYcult to show conclusively with the data at hand, that second- and third-generation Haitians in Miami will retain a stronger ethnic identity than their counterparts in Montreal and Paris. Much research suggests that a strong ethnic identity contributes positively to the adaptation of second- and third-generation immigrants.

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As religion forms such an important part of the culture of many firstgeneration Haitian immigrants, regular religious participation helps strengthen intergenerational ties. Leaders of Miami’s Haitian Catholic community have already taken many steps to expand their outreach to second-generation Haitians, but it is not as evident that such an expansion or transition will occur in Paris and Montreal. Religion will thus likely serve as a protective factor for a greater number of secondgeneration Haitians in Miami than in Montreal or Paris.

RELIGION, CI V IL SOCIETY, A ND THE STATE

Examining the links between mediating institutions and the state, as I do in this book, places us squarely within larger debates about the importance of civil society—understood as that space outside states and markets comprised of secular and religious voluntary associations, such as churches, unions, and self-help groups—to a well-functioning democracy.10 The concept of meditating institutions provides one way to theorize the interdependence between the state and civil society. Comparisons of civil society organizations across different democracies are by no means new. Dating back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s nineteenthcentury writings that analyzed the fledgling American democracy in order to provide his French countrymen with lessons about the strengths of democracy, political theorists have heralded the importance of civil society to a well-functioning democracy, while also noting that the structure of civil society differs across democracies.11 As the relationship between religious associations and the state varies across modern democracies, examining interactions between faith-based organizations, other civil society associations, and the state becomes even more important for understanding immigrant adaptation outside of the United States, where a certain level of cooperation has long existed. As we saw in the examples in chapter 1, the legacy of the French Revolution and Quebec’s Quiet Revolution have affected the levels of religious practice in those countries, weakened relationships between state representatives and religious

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/ Comparing Religion and Immigration

leaders, and also limited the ability of faith-based organizations, and in some cases also ethnic associations, to access public funds. My cross-national comparison confirms what we would perhaps have expected—that, relative to the United States, state agencies in Canada or France provide more social services for Haitians not only than private agencies such as faith-based institutions but also secular ethnic institutions. Because of its high levels of religious practice and relatively large share of social services provided by church-related organizations like Catholic Charities or the Lutheran Brotherhood, the United States has long been held up as an exception to secularization theory among North American and European nations. However, even in France and Canada, religious institutions still mediate between individuals and the state in numerous ways. Because of the larger welfare state, institutional mediation in Canada and France more often means political advocacy or representation rather than government funding of social programs run by faith-based institutions. For example, in all three cases, when the state wanted to know more about the Haitian community in order to expand its social services to them, it relied on leaders of faith-based institutions such as the Bureau in Montreal and Haïti Développement in Paris to provide it with information. Thus, even where the welfare state is larger, public institutions still depend on voluntary associations, including faith-based ones, for some kinds of information about the individuals and communities they serve. Rather than concluding that institutional mediation occurs exclusively in the United States, the least secularized country of the three I studied, my research therefore indicates that institutional mediation varies across nations in its breadth and depth. Secularization may have altered church-state relations in the West, but the U.S., Canadian, and French governments still depend on communities of faith and their aYliated service organizations in fundamental ways. I also challenge the religious economies perspective, which attributes religious vitality to individual rational choice and free religious markets and thus predicts that government funding of religion would dampen

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the dynamic functioning of religious markets that lead to high levels of individual religious participation and the vitality of religious institutions.12 I tell a different story. Although evangelization or religious instruction were not part of the social services at the Toussaint Center, the simple proximity of the social service institution to the community of faith at Notre Dame and the overlap in their staff clearly strengthened the mission of each. Even without funding religious instruction or evangelization, as government funding helped the Toussaint Center expand its services, this government funding also indirectly enhanced the vitality of Notre Dame as a mediating institution of the Haitian community of Miami and likely increased religious participation among Haitians in Miami. My explanation of how the archdiocese of Miami channeled resources to build up Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center, along with my depiction of how church leaders lobbied government oYcials to garner public social support for Haitians, helps elucidate the mechanisms that may lie behind Phillip Connor’s findings that, for a national sample of immigrants to the United States, their religious participation is higher in cities where existing religious institutions are stronger.13 In Montreal and Paris, government regulation against funding faithbased community organizations also indirectly hurts the vitality of faith communities by marginalizing the institutional mediation of those faith communities’ leaders. The types of interactions between religious and government leaders in Quebec and France described in this book help us understand how the dynamics of governmental support or hostility toward faith-based social services influence the vitality of religious communities more generally. My findings about Haitians are supported by Connor’s work with national samples of immigrants in Quebec and Europe showing that the greater secular climate there works against immigrants’ ability to reconstruct the religious vitality of their home countries. In looking at how the religious context influences immigrants’ religious participation in Quebec, Connor’s analysis of longitudinal data for new immigrants to Quebec found that, relative to their levels of religious practice in their country of origin, immi-

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grants’ religious participation declined after they moved to Quebec. He attributes at least part of this decline to the more secular environment in Quebec compared to the places of origin of most immigrants there.14 With regard to Europe, Connor fi nds that the greater the hostility Muslims perceive toward them, the higher their levels of religious participation.15 The kind of reactive religiosity Connor fi nds corresponds well to my fi nding that although many Haitians who are highly educated in France may indeed assimilate to the secular norm, those Haitians who live in the crime-ridden banlieue embrace their faith as a tool to resist their social and symbolic exclusion. The difference in the vitality of Haitians’ religious institutions across sites, therefore, is the result not so much of individual-level differences, but of contextual differences, that is, the degree to which state institutions acknowledge Haitians’ mediating institutions and cooperate with their leaders. In theorizing about the long-term adaptation of Haitians and other immigrants, we should think not just about state policies toward immigrants, like citizenship, access to housing, and education, but also about how immigrants work together to create mediating institutions to support their adaptation. Haitians left their home country under duress, and they do not yet see themselves as a part of a moral community of citizens in their new place of residence. Thus, it is not surprising that when they need assistance, they turn to institutions in their own community—and in particular, to moral communities like churches—rather than to state agencies. Part of the reason that some institutional mediation remains present in Canada and France is that Catholic clergy and lay leaders around the world see it as an essential part of their mission to represent their communities’ needs, and the needs of the poor in general, to the state.16 In places where the state is weak and ineYcient, such as Haiti, the Catholic Church directly provides most education and health services. In wealthier countries and stable democracies, Catholic agencies provide many fewer services, yet they still advocate for immigrants and seek to represent their needs to state authorities. In fact, immigration

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is one key arena in which the Catholic Church is reasserting its public voice in modern democracies and developing new ways of engaging the modern state.17 In its advocacy work, the Catholic Church draws on its local, national, and supranational structures.18 The Catholic Church’s hierarchical structure, a characteristic shared by few other Christian and non-Christian faiths, strengthens its mediation on behalf of immigrants. Yet the Catholic Church’s institutional mediation is greatly affected by the political context. Catholic institutions’ public influence is not totally absent in Canada and France, but this influence is less pronounced than in the United States.

SOCI A L CA PITA L A ND MOR A L COM MU N ITIES

Are religious communities unique? If they are unique, what is the consequence of their strength or their erosion? Religious beliefs, practices, and institutions are a potent source of social capital precisely because religious communities are a unique kind of a moral community. Their erosion causes a rip in the moral fabric of society upon which durable social progress rests. One reason for the renewed scholarly interest in religion could be concerns about the breakdown of social capital, which for many people they acquire by belonging to a moral community. Robert Putnam’s claim in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) that religious institutions are the largest producers of social capital in the United States, generating what he estimates to be half of the country’s stock of social capital, aroused much interest in how religious institutions differ from other kinds of voluntary associations. In order to further explore this question, Robert Wuthnow analyzed numerous sources of data in Saving America? Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society (2004) to explore if, why, and how religious communities generate social capital, and how much of it they produce.19 Wuthnow concludes that within religious congregations, shared meaning, clear social norms, regular participation in rituals, and the readily available

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narratives about caring all enforce a sense of morality, thus helping generate social capital.20 Wuthnow admits that it is harder to demonstrate that religion produces social capital than that it is simply highly correlated with it. However, the correlation between religious participation and numerous outcomes is quite substantial and holds true for different age and racial groups and for both men and women. Thus, Wuthnow forcefully states that these relationships suggest that participating in congregations may, among other things, be a source of meaning and belonging that keeps older people healthier, perhaps even adding to their longevity, and that the social norms reinforced by churches discourage teenagers from engaging in behavior such as using drugs or joining gangs that use drugs. Other research, although not always producing consistent results, has suggested beneficial effects of churchgoing such as lower rates of teen pregnancy, better grades in high school, fewer negative results on children from parents’ divorcing, greater satisfaction with one’s job, and a more general sense of personal well-being. . . . If congregations do function in these ways, then the possibility that participating in congregations is eroding becomes a matter of broader social concern and not just a concern to religious leaders or to others who happen to care about religious beliefs.21

The Haitian Catholic missions of Miami, Montreal, and Paris very evidently create social norms and shared meaning, and do so to a greater extent than secular organizations. Whereas certainly all kinds of civic and ethnic activities generate some kind of shared meaning, many fewer people attend those events than those who regularly attend church and observe religious obligations. Secular events also lack the power of traditions that are thousands of years old, structured rituals, clear leadership, and divinely inspired books. In all three cities, leaders of Haitian associations and most government oYcials did not dispute that, among Haitians, whether they are Catholic, Protestant, or practice Vodou, religious communities are the strongest moral communi-

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ties, and that their religious commitments are held more deeply than political or social commitments. Some might have disputed what good it does to go to church or believe in God, but they did not deny that Haitians are overwhelmingly highly religious. Understanding why religious communities create more social capital than other kinds of institutions leads us back to the question about what makes religious communities unique, namely, that they are powerful moral communities. Many sociologists, such as Christian Smith and Peter Berger, have argued that humans come to understand themselves through narratives that include a sense of moral understanding.22 For example, Christian Smith states that all of the social practices, relations, and institutions that comprise human social life generally themselves together dramatize, ritualize, proclaim, and reaYrm the moral order that constitutes social life. Moral order embodies the sacred story of the society, however profane it appears, and the social actors are believers in social congregation. Together they remember, recite, represent, and reaYrm the normative structure of their moral order. All of the routines, habits, and conventions of micro interaction ritualize what they know about the good, the right, the true, the just. This is simply the way of moral, believing animals.23

But are religious communities unique moral communities? The difference between religious communities and other possible types of moral communities is that much qualitative evidence, such as that presented in this book and in the work of scholars like Robert Wuthnow and Christian Smith, demonstrates that religious communities provide unique tools that people draw on to generate meaning and a commitment to serve others. Religious faith gives men and women tools to make sense of the world, a way to order chaos and construct a meaningful picture of reality. These narratives both guide individual choices about how to live and shape how people form communities. Understanding the powerful force of religious narratives thus helps us understand why state institutions cannot take the place of religious institu-

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tions—the narratives produced by belonging to a particular political community often do not embody a profound, supernatural meaning for human lives. Deeply held religious beliefs profoundly influence social action and the narratives that surround that action. In many cases, but admittedly not all, this qualitative difference in meaning-making, bond-creating, sharing, and caring between religious communities and other kinds of human communities produces a quantitative and positive differences in outcomes such as educational attainment, physical health, and mental health, and diminishes highrisk behavior like drug use. Thus, the persistence or erosion of religious communities among immigrants such as Haitians will likely impact their long-term well-being, understood in terms of both their socioeconomic adaptation and their subjective sense of meaning and belonging, or moral order. Despite the social and economic benefits often associated with religious practice, the ethnographic observations and interview excerpts found in this book highlight that the main thing people sought in their religious participation was simply more faith. People prayed to increase their belief in God, to obtain greater hope in what they cannot see, to build strength to go on struggling and trust that, in the end, God is good and he will work things out, even if how he will do so is often quite beyond their imagination. For a social scientist who sees clearly the obstacles disadvantaged immigrants face, such a viewpoint certainly appears to be faith in the impossible. In these narratives, Haitian immigrants construct a sense of moral order out of what appears to be misery. If religious participation was just or even primarily about gaining the material benefits often associated with the term “social capital,” people might have given up praying, because their supplications greatly outnumbered the responses they received. Despite their fervent prayers, many people had not seen their social standing change drastically. Even those who had experienced substantial improvement still pointed to more problems that could be solved easily. Nearly all worried about their children’s and grandchildren’s future. Few thought they were

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guaranteed entrance into heaven, no matter how much they prayed. Praying and doing good for others was not an instrumental give-andtake between individuals and God, as might be implied by the rational choice perspective on religion that points out how the process of calculating risks and benefits and seeking to maximize gains—including supernatural rewards—influences people’s religious choices and behaviors.24 Rather, again and again, the people interviewed for this book emphasized that prayer and worship are obligations and that they have a duty to give thanks to their creator for giving them life, even with all its struggles. They explained that God gives out his consolations— spiritual and material—as he sees fit, and not as rewards for what we do. To judge one’s moral standing with God by the quality of the spiritual or material gifts he gives you (i.e., having acquired spiritual or material gifts because of prayer) would be beyond the imagination of the people I interviewed. People turned to their faith for understanding and a sense of purpose when they could not easily see one. Their sense of moral order thus allowed them to turn on its head how society sees them—as black, impoverished, and foreigners—and see themselves as children of God, striving to do what is morally correct in their own lives and seeking to serve others. For example, further explaining the meaning of the saying “Faith makes us live,” Wilbur said, “If I made it on a boat from Haiti to Florida, even when I thought I would die, then God must have a purpose for my life.” Observations such as this one and many others are consistent with Smith’s argument that Christian faith gives people tools to unite the narrative of their own lives to a grand narrative. As Smith explains, Christianity de-centers the individual subject by centering God instead. It is not fi nally people’s job to make meaning. Meaning flows from God and people merely drink deeply of it. In the end, human life is also not about being important and fulfilled, but rather about loving and glorifying God. By displacing individual selves from the center of attention and obligation, Christianity

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relieves believers of the burden of discovering and upholding the entirety of life’s significance. Christians are free to be and to bear no more or less than they are intended to, for it is God who fi nally is and does the bearing. The yoke, as Jesus said, is easy and the burden is light. Christians can therefore go about the routines of ordinary life with an assurance that all reality is significant— sometimes obviously more so, sometimes so mysteriously as to be understood only by faith.25

Haitian Catholics’ religious beliefs provide tools to create a meaningful narrative guiding the everyday decisions about life, work, and family that influence their adaptation in a new home. In the end, Haitian Catholics do not make meaning from nothing, but rather seek to uncover the meaning of events in their lives from the perspective of God’s providence. Given the high levels of immigration to the United States, Canada, and France, it is important to ask: Who are immigrants forming close bonds with that may become social capital? How do immigrants generate a sense of meaning, a moral order, in societies that are so ethnically and racially diverse? What are the consequences of immigrants’ social bonds and moral order for the larger society? What would happen to future generations of immigrants like Haitians in the absence of robust communities of faith? Without the sense of moral order created in religious communities, one would be more likely to see indicators of downward assimilation among Haitians, in part because of decreased social capital, but also because of the loss of a meaningful narrative to give a sense of purpose to the struggles many Haitian immigrants face.

Chapter three

Miami “Jesus Came with Us on the Boat”

One morning at Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami, I asked a woman named Josette to explain a mural on the wall inside the church. The mural depicts the Virgin Mary in the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help looking down upon a boat of Haitian migrants heading to the United States. Images of the Virgin Mary take many forms around the world, and the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is the most common such image in Haiti.1 During my fieldwork, I turned to visual clues around us—such as this intriguing mural—to spark informal conversations. First, Josette told me the obvious, that the mural depicted the Virgin Mary protecting Haitian boat people. This comment provided an opening for me to ask her what I really wanted to know: had she come to Miami by boat? “Yes,” she said. But she quickly added, “You know what? Jesus came with us on the boat too.” She then referred to Scripture, saying, “Remember that passage in the Gospel when the disciples fell asleep on the boat and they woke up to a storm and felt very afraid? Well, Jesus told them that if they had faith in him, they would be okay. Jesus was with us on the boat too.”2 Religious traditions may seem to provide ready-made beliefs and meanings, yet Josette and many others at Notre Dame also actively reconstruct religious meanings in their new settings. Catholic theology 49

50 / Miami

refers to interpreting the Gospel in light of one’s concrete circumstances as inculturation of the faith.3 Inculturating the faith, however, would not make any sense without reference to a theological principle called the incarnation: the Christian belief that God became man. Josette’s comments penetratingly illustrate the power of these two theological concepts—incarnation and inculturation—in helping people interpret their experience of migrating from one country and settling in another. Her comment that “Jesus came with us on the boat” indicates a firm belief that God enters the world of poor immigrants just as he entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. The mural that depicts the Virgin Mary’s mediation in saving Haitian boat people is just one of many visual depictions of Catholic devotions and biblical narratives practiced at Notre Dame. Together, these beliefs and devotions constitute cultural mediation, capturing how Haitian immigrants like Josette construct meaning and moral order by linking supernatural beliefs to specific events in their lives. As I seek to show in this chapter, belief in the incarnation—that God truly became man in the person of Jesus Christ, who then died to save mankind from sin—gives Haitians a supernatural motive to try to improve, not simply endure, their place in this world. As I heard over and over again, God speaks to them in their concrete circumstances, their struggles, their joys, their desires, and their fears. While applying a sociological analysis to this community, I also pay close attention to the theology—their particular understanding of who God is—a God who meets them where they are, such as on a treacherous boat journey from Haiti to Florida. Understanding people’s religious beliefs and seeing how they tie those beliefs into a meaningful narrative about their lives then unlocks the cognitive strategies that underlie the numerous social and political engagements of this community. Drawing on interviews and observations of religious services at Notre Dame, I illustrate how religious beliefs, specifically Christian beliefs such as the incarnation of God as Jesus Christ and Catholic beliefs such as his real presence in the Eucharist, provide Haitian migrants with a narrative that helps create a

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sense of place and meaning in their new home. One priest summarized the dominant theme of his ministry at Notre Dame as instructing the faithful in a “theology of grace and hope,” an approach I elucidate with observations from Mass and interviews with members of Notre Dame. The concept of cultural mediation captures such individual- and group-level construction of moral order. I then link the individual and group levels of analysis to a structural level of analysis, in particular by analyzing interactions between leaders of religious institutions and their associated service agencies with government oYcials. The concept of institutional mediation describes the political advocacy, participation in a faith-based community-organizing movement, and the social service center that all, in one form or another, grew out of efforts by leaders of Notre Dame to engage the public sphere and address Haitians’ social needs. Each section of this chapter builds on the concepts of cultural and institutional mediation and illustrates the continuity between these two forms of mediation. For example, observing activities at both Notre Dame and the Pierre Toussaint Center allowed me to see how Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center share, not only the same piece of property, but also leaders, who participate in Notre Dame’s cultural mediation. Although one might think of a church as a private space and a social service center as a public space, the leaders of the Toussaint Center and Notre Dame move back and forth daily between these spaces, thus challenging the stark boundaries between the private and public functions of religious institutions. In fact, Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center are unique among Haitian associations in Miami precisely because the Toussaint Center’s public actions remain rooted in the private realm of Notre Dame. In other words, Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center are most powerful because they combine cultural and institutional mediation. Although state or secular voluntary associations may indeed provide some of the same symbolic and material resources for Haitians, no organization other than Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center brings together in a single place the cultural and

52 / Miami

institutional resources that help Haitians bridge the many gaps between themselves and their new society. This book is a cross-national, comparative ethnographic enquiry, in which Haitians in Miami are the first of three cases studied. The successful adaptation of Haitian immigrants is influenced by various factors in each of the three cases. Understanding how government oYcials in Miami cooperated with leaders of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center to support Haitians’ adaptation requires looking at both the historical context in the United States and the political context in Miami. Church-state cooperation in providing social services is rather common in the United States; in addition, Catholic leaders filled a void of political representation for the most disadvantaged members of the Haitian community in Miami and sought to create ties between that community and the government. As a consequence of this cooperation, over the past few decades, many thousands of Haitians in Miami received the crucial social support they needed to build new lives in the United States. In subsequent chapters, we shall see that the variation across the three cases emerges, not at the individual or group levels of analysis, but at the structural level—how the institutions Haitian immigrants create interact with government institutions in Montreal and Paris. Haitians’ religious piety appears remarkably similar across the three sites, and Catholic leaders in Montreal, Paris, and Miami followed similar paths in creating service institutions to support Haitians’ adaptation. What differs across the three cases is that the historical and political contexts in Montreal and Paris discourage church-state cooperation in social affairs, creating confl ict between faith-based Haitian associations and the government in Montreal and rendering Haitian community institutions invisible to the government in Paris. Working in parallel but not necessarily joining efforts, state and church attempts to support the successful adaptation of Haitians in Montreal and Paris lack what Milton Gordon termed the indispensible prerequisite to successful immigrant adaptation—institutional mediation between the immigrant’s society and the native society.

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“THE REFUGEES NOBODY WA NTS”

Understanding how government agencies responded to Haitian migration and settlement in Miami helps show why the Catholic Church’s political advocacy, social service provision, and community organizing can be described as institutional mediation. In the 1960s, most Haitians who migrated to North America went to New York or Montreal, not to Miami, but by 2000, Miami had become the largest city of the North American Haitian diaspora.4 Patterns of Haitian migration began to change in the 1970s, when as a result of the deepening economic crisis that struck Haiti’s rural areas, many Haitians of mostly humble rural origins began to arrive in Miami.5 Many of their wealthier compatriots had already used their social ties to settle in New York, Montreal, or Paris; members of the Haitian upper middle class and professionals had migrated to these cities since the 1950s. Although it is hard to know exactly how many Haitians arrived by boat in Miami, Alex Stepick, who has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Haitian community of Miami, has estimated that during 1977–81 alone, around 50,000 to 70,000 Haitians arrived by boat.6 Their arrival in such numbers was unplanned, and they were largely unwelcomed. With much justification, Alex Stepick has called the Haitian boat people who arrived in Miami “the refugees nobody wants.”7 To deal with the 1980s boat crisis, the U.S. Coast Guard attempted to interdict vessels carrying Haitian boat people, and, after often very brief examinations to see if anyone had a legitimate asylum claim, most boat people were repatriated to Haiti. Despite these efforts, thousands of Haitians arrived on undetected boats, but upon their arrival they were already stigmatized by negative publicity about conditions in Haiti. For example, the Centers for Disease Control labeled Haitians one of the main carriers of AIDS, a new disease in the early 1980s. Under public pressure, it later withdrew that claim, but Haitians were nevertheless stereotyped as having exacerbated public health problems—AIDS and tuberculosis—in South Florida.8

54 / Miami

Jean-Claude Duvalier’s flight from Haiti in February 1986 occurred after a series of cataclysmic events there. The massive upheavals in Haiti were combined with an international campaign to diminish Duvalier’s legitimacy, and he ultimately lost domestic and international support. Numerous Haitian transnational groups based in the United States, Canada, and France contributed to those countries’ decisions to withdraw support for Duvalier because of his human rights abuses, but Haitian organizations of the diaspora were less successful in convincing those same governments that Haitian migrants who had fled the violence should be recognized as refugees or given asylum, and thus automatically granted residence. Haitians, like citizens of any other country, are allowed to apply to foreign embassies in Haiti to receive refugee status. Alternatively, they can try their luck entering a foreign country as tourists, or clandestinely, and then seek political asylum in order to remain. Given the tense political climate in Haiti, and the fact that rural Haitians in particular cannot travel easily to Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, the latter strategy appealed to thousands of people. Thus, despite international condemnation of widespread political violence in Haiti, the thousands of Haitians who fled in the 1970s and 1980s had to file individual asylum cases and prove that they had personally experienced political repression. Relatively few Haitians accomplished this task, leaving many thousands of people in undocumented status. Despite the lack of legal channels to settle in Miami, the push to leave Haiti was so strong that thousands of Haitians have continued to arrive in Miami over the past few decades. It would not be an exaggeration to say that many Haitians in Miami began their adaptation without many financial or human resources or much power vis-à-vis the state. Haitian migration to Miami occurred because of a series of crises in Haiti. The arrival of thousands of Haitian boat people generated crises among local, state, and federal government agencies in Miami. If Haitians were going to have a chance at successfully adapting in Miami, someone had to step in to make the political climate more welcoming to them. The very acceptance of Haitians in the United States depended in

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large part on the mediation of actors more powerful than them. One of these was the Catholic Church, which drew on its national structures to lobby for Haitian immigrants’ rights—in particular, those of boat people.9 The concept of mediating institutions best captures how certain types of institutions intervene between what seems to be the all-powerful state and apparently weak and powerless individuals. As I show in this chapter, leaders of Notre Dame and the Pierre Toussaint Center simultaneously met Haitians on their own terms and also constantly reached out to local political authorities, thus altering the context into which Haitians were received in Miami.

L AK AY NOU: NOTRE DA ME D’H A ITI

What makes mediating institutions different from market forces or the state is that mediating institutions meet people where they are— in their own neighborhoods, in their own regular places of meeting and worship. Echoing this idea, many Haitians refer to Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center as a kafou, or crossroads, where they come to worship, to meet other Haitians, and to find useful information about adapting to their new society.10 The location of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center in the heart of Little Haiti, in the geographical center of which they occupy ten acres of property, at the intersection of two of the main thoroughfares, Northeast Second Avenue and Northeast Sixty-ninth Street, greatly facilitates their mediation. On Sundays, more than 2,000 Haitians attend any one of five Masses celebrated at Notre Dame in Haitian Creole. Upon entering the grounds of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center, one enters a space where for a moment immigrants can feel at home, lakay nou.11 Beyond providing a space for Haitians to meet and feel at home, these two institutions also constitute a geographic space that outsiders have come to recognize as one of the main centers of the Haitian community. During the week, the Toussaint Center’s different social programs—English-language proficiency, day care, and Creole literacy,

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among others—draw nearly 1,000 clients.12 The Toussaint Center began as a volunteer effort organized by the leaders of Notre Dame. Over time, the Toussaint Center benefited by becoming part of the archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Charities and by attracting state funding for its programs, which serve the entire Haitian community. Haitians who arrive in Miami now encounter a concentrated ethnic neighborhood with mediating institutions like Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center, undoubtedly a vast improvement over the hostile environment they encountered in the 1970s. However, the residents of Little Haiti still occupy the last position of Miami’s so-called ethnic queue. Although ethnic enclaves can sometimes allow first-generation immigrants upward mobility, immigrants who primarily work in low-wage service jobs, such as Haitians, have few immediate chances at achieving a middle-class lifestyle. Unlike those in Miami’s Little Havana, where for many years Cuban immigrants have built ethnic businesses and employed others of their own nationality, allowing for relatively quick mobility into the middle class, the businesses in Little Haiti are too small to offer large-scale employment or much upward mobility. Thus, the concept of an ethnic enclave in which immigrants achieve upward mobility by starting businesses that largely employ and sell to members of their own ethnic group does not apply well to impoverished immigrant communities like Little Haiti.13 Some elements of an entrepreneurial spirit can be seen in Little Haiti. Although culturally and economically distant from aZuent and touristy areas of Miami, Little Haiti is nonetheless just a few miles from both Miami’s business district and Miami Beach. Because Miami lacks an eYcient public transportation system, small-scale Haitian entrepreneurs drive vans, called jitneys, up and down the main thoroughfares of Little Haiti, taking people to work in the downtown business district just a few miles to the south. Other Haitians get on buses or jitneys to go work at the hotels and restaurants that serve Miami Beach’s thriving tourist industry east of Little Haiti. Unlike Cubans in Miami, Haitian workers have not largely been incorporated into ethnic enterprises;

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rather, Haitian laborers fill a demand for low-wage work in service and tourism. Many previous immigrants to the United States joined an organized and unionized labor force, and some contemporary immigrants avoid the low-wage labor market by working in an ethnic enclave. Lacking these opportunities, Haitians, however, largely occupy the bottom rung of Miami’s employment hierarchy. To illustrate, census data clearly show that Haitians in Miami fall below the rest of the city’s population in nearly all socioeconomic indicators. The census almost certainly undercounts Haitian immigrants, but census figures nonetheless provide a good starting point from which to examine the overall socioeconomic status of Haitians. The 2000 census counted 233,881 Haitians in all of Florida, about half of whom live in Miami–Dade County. 14 I examined data for the five census tracts that most closely match the boundaries of Little Haiti and found that 42 percent of Haitians in Little Haiti have less than a high school education and only 2.4 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher.15 In 2000, Haitians in Little Haiti had a 17.4 percent unemployment rate, compared to 8.7 percent for Miami–Dade County as a whole. Haitians’ low levels of education and their limited English and Spanish skills in a largely bilingual English-Spanish city like Miami probably help explain why Haitians are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as others in Miami–Dade County.16 Even those Haitians in Little Haiti who are employed can best be described as working poor: the average household income for Haitians in Little Haiti is just under $16,000, and more than 45 percent of all Haitian households in Little Haiti fall below the poverty line.17 Knowing that Haitians who settle in Little Haiti come from the poorest strata of Haitian society, such data are not surprising. Census data from 1980 and 1990 show that, although socioeconomic conditions in Little Haiti had not changed much by 2000, census figures for Haitians in all of Miami–Dade County indicated greater socioeconomic diversity in 2000 than in 1980 or 1990. This suggests, not only that some Haitians have moved out of Little Haiti and into

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more middle-class neighborhoods, but, in addition, that middle-class Haitians who first settled elsewhere—such as New York or Montreal— may have more recently moved to Miami, thus diversifying the class structure of Haitians in Miami–Dade County. At the same time, as Haiti continues to suffer political instability, more Haitian immigrants continue to arrive and must start from the bottom, which may mask the relative progress enjoyed by some Haitians who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike some other immigrant groups, Haitians arriving in Miami beginning in the 1970s had little political or economic influence upon which to begin their settlement and adaptation into American society. Understanding Haitians’ extremely weak economic and political position in Miami helps explain why the actions undertaken by Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center constituted institutional mediation. Leaders of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center understood that their efforts alone would be insuYcient for Haitians to adapt successfully in Miami. Thus, while building an ethnic and religious community, they also met with government oYcials, explained the social conditions Haitians faced, and sought funding to support their social initiatives. The institutional mediation of the Catholic Church and the cooperation they encountered from the government combined to give many more Haitians a chance at successfully adapting to life in the United States. This kind of institutional mediation to support immigrant adaptation is not new to the Catholic Church in the United States. In fact, the experience of Haitian Catholics in Miami in many ways mirrors that of earlier Catholic immigrants. In welcoming immigrants in the United States, the Catholic Church long followed the national parish model, in which new parishes were created that grouped together immigrants of similar national and/or linguistic heritage.18 Driving through any major city of the Northeast one still sees these former Polish, German, Slovakian, and Italian parishes.19 The role of such national parishes in forging immigrant identity and as places where immigrant culture was

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refashioned has been extensively studied.20 Outsiders, including representatives of local government, went to such parishes to establish ties with these new communities.21 Catholic service agencies, including schools, health care facilities, and numerous other kinds of social programs, emerged alongside these national parishes.22 Over time, these social services helped support the massive upward mobility of many Catholic immigrants into the middle class. Thus, Catholic parishes and Catholic service agencies have a long history of mediating between immigrant society and native society, and this mediation constituted one crucial factor in the eventual assimilation of millions of immigrants into the American middle class. The hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church—unique among most Christian faiths and world religions—facilitated the mediation of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center. Many Haitians undoubtedly brought deep religious piety with them to Miami, as evidenced by the numerous Christian churches and Vodou temples found in Little Haiti. However, Notre Dame was built, not just by spontaneous religious energy, but also by the concerted efforts of clergy and lay leaders who wanted to create a home for Haitians in South Florida. Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center flourished because they created a space where Haitians could rekindle their religious piety. Their leaders knew how to use the Catholic Church’s political and economic resources to support Haitians’ adaptation. Notre Dame’s founding in 1981 and its subsequent growth were the result of a combination of spontaneous religious piety and concerted outreach. In the mid 1970s, Haitian Catholics in Miami first began to gather at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in an African American neighborhood, where a newly ordained white priest of Polish origin— Father Thomas G. Wenski—had been given his first pastoral assignment. By chance, or, as Father Wenski says, by providence, he was serving at Corpus Christi when Haitian Catholics wanted to organize Mass there in Creole. Although he had never studied Creole, Father Wenski learned enough to celebrate Mass in Creole, and he let Haitian lay leaders orga-

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nize the rest of the liturgy, such as the songs. Since the Haitian population of Miami was rapidly growing, Father Wenski immersed himself in this particular ministry. In 1979, Archbishop Edward McCarthy sent Father Wenski to Haiti for six months to study Creole in order to serve the Haitian immigrant community better. Although numerous Haitian priests eventually also served Haitians in Miami, during the first twenty years after Notre Dame’s founding, Father Wenski was the most prominent clergyman representing Miami’s Haitian community. During his two decades at the helm of Miami’s Haitian Catholic community, Father Wenski skillfully mobilized resources within the Catholic Church, organized Haitian lay leaders and volunteers, and secured substantial outside funding for the Toussaint Center to support Haitians’ adaptation. In addition to becoming a pastoral leader of the Haitian community, he was particularly adept at influencing the local political system to Haitians’ advantage—both through lobbying local oYcials and by finding external funding for his many social projects. He was also instrumental in getting clergy from Haiti to join him in his ministry at Notre Dame, such as Father Gérard Darbouze, who was one of the first Haitian priests who came from Haiti to work in Miami, and who eventually took over as pastor of Notre Dame when Father Wenski became a bishop.23 Father Wenski sympathized with much of the social struggle going on in Haiti, and he clearly supported some elements of liberation theology, but he tried to stay clear of the controversial aspects of liberation theology that had divided members of the Catholic Church in Haiti, such as harsh critiques of the church hierarchy.24 Although his accomplishments in social work and political advocacy were quite remarkable, Father Wenski emphasized that his first priority was, not to start social programs, but to provide spiritual care for the community: “Social programs are added on to the pastoral mission. I always start with the pastoral care. I begin a mission with Mass, then I add on social programs. My thinking was that you build the community starting with the Eucharist.”25 Father Wenski and numerous

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other clergy who have served at Notre Dame all believe that efforts to resolve social problems within the Haitian community will have little lasting effect unless they are rooted in a living religious faith. They acknowledged that, despite all their efforts, they would not be able to solve everyone’s problems all the time. They feared that if people abandoned their faith, their desperate situation might push them to do things—such as committing crimes—that would create even greater problems. Under Father Wenski’s leadership, two of the strongest tendencies in Haitian Catholicism—the expressive and emotional prayers characteristic of the Charismatic Renewal and the emphasis on social action—both found room to flourish. Father Wenski’s ability to combine a spiritual and a social mission allowed him to win a following of Haitian Catholic faithful and the support of other Haitian clergy and lay leaders. In fact, emphasizing in word and in deed that in his ministry the spiritual precedes the social may well have been an attempt to correct the tendency of some liberation theology projects in Haiti, where social action often took priority over deepening spirituality. Without being rooted in a community that creates meaning for its members, an institution that publicly represents a particular group can easily become distant from the daily lives and needs of the people it claims to represent, and thus may come to represent solely or mostly its own interests—whether those interests lie in attaining power, resources, or some other symbolic or material commodity. But simply finding people where they are—in the case of Haitians, their religious communities—was not suYcient to make Notre Dame a mediating institution. Rather than waiting for people to come to him, Father Wenski went out to meet Haitians wherever they were settling in South Florida. Before permanent Haitian Catholic missions were established in other parts of South Florida, such as Fort Lauderdale and Homestead, Father Wenski and Haitian lay leaders like Alice St. Jean traveled around South Florida to celebrate Mass in Creole and administer the sacraments. Father Wenski even learned to fly a small airplane

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so that he could reach different corners of Miami–Dade County and Broward County in order to say Mass for Haitians on weekends. In the 1980s, he helped bring clergy from Haiti to staff the different missions, while he focused his efforts on Notre Dame. Although Father Wenski traveled all through South Florida ministering to Haitians, in the heart of Little Haiti, he sought to create an all-Haitian ethnic parish modeled on the national parishes that had welcomed previous waves of Catholic migrants from Italy, Germany, and his parents’ native Poland. As part of his seminary studies, Father Wenski became familiar with how, largely through national parishes, the Catholic Church had assisted the assimilation of millions of European immigrants to America in the early twentieth century. Quoting Father Joseph Fitzpatrick, a Jesuit who wrote extensively on the Catholic Church and immigrants, 26 Father Wenski said he strongly believed that the national parish model had allowed previous waves of Catholic immigrants in the United States to adapt from a position of strength, that is, to have a set of community resources with which to adapt into their host society. In fact, although the social services of the Catholic Church have largely evolved from programs intended to serve immigrants, 27 such services are not necessarily in place when new immigrants arrive. Building a home for Haitians in Miami was no easy task, fi nancially, culturally, or otherwise. Although Catholic bishops in the United States have generally moved away from establishing national parishes, Father Wenski was determined to try to replicate this model for Haitians in Miami. He feared that, given the widespread hostility to the Haitians’ sudden and massive arrival in Miami, they would not fully be able to recreate their spiritual life if they were simply given a particular time and place to worship at an already-existing Catholic parish. After Archbishop McCarthy assigned him to the Haitian community, Father Wenski began to look around for a parish that would offer more room to the Haitian ministry. First, he moved the ministry to St. Mary’s Cathedral,

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about a mile from today’s location of Notre Dame, which offered some oYce space in which to create a welcoming center for Haitians. The first Haitian Catholic Center at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Miami followed the more common contemporary model of ethnic ministries within an already-existing parish. However, because Haitians were so disliked and discriminated against in Miami, Father Wenski felt strongly that they needed their own parish, following the national parish model, and he found a sympathetic ear in Archbishop McCarthy. By “divine providence,” Father Wenski said, Notre Dame Catholic High School for girls, just one mile away from St. Mary’s Cathedral, merged in 1981 with Archbishop Curley High School, an all-boys school. Seeing an opportunity to create a more permanent home for Haitians in Miami, Father Wenski asked Archbishop McCarthy to grant the property for the Haitian ministry. Basically we were asking [the diocese] for our own place, and we were looking around at different things in the area. [Moving into the former high school] was the easiest solution because it was an already-made type of thing. It didn’t require any big outlay of funds—you can imagine what it would have cost to purchase ten acres of land and build on it. So it was a godsend. It was divine providence, because as I said, had Notre Dame Academy merged with Curley five years before or five years after, it would have probably been sold.

Thus, practically overnight, the group that Alex Stepick calls “the refugees nobody wants,” and whom Irwin Stotzky has called the most discriminated-against refugee group in recent American history,28 had ten acres of prime real estate in the geographic center of Little Haiti on which to build their religious and social ministry. “For a community that is being told six days a week that they didn’t belong, that they were unwelcomed when they got on the bus, when they got to school, when they got to work, at least on Sunday they could feel at home,” Father Wenski observed. Such an accomplishment would be inconceivable if we just thought about all immigrant religion as voluntary congrega-

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tions and overlooked the fact that Catholic parishes and ethnic ministries are part of a hierarchical structure with its own land and financial resources. Once settled in Notre Dame, a home they could call their own—lakay nou—Father Wenski, the Haitian clergy, and a staff of lay religious and social leaders channelled both the piety and voluntarism of Haitians, as well as the institutional resources of the Catholic Church, to gradually build their church and social service center. At a time when Haitians’ societal and governmental reception can be characterized as one of rejection or hostility, the skilled leadership of Father Wenski, combined with the support he received from the church hierarchy, allowed Haitians in Miami to build their own institutions. Haitians’ religious piety was aYrmed in the community of faith at Notre Dame, and the push for social justice was channeled into various forms of institutional mediation.

COM MU N ITY TIES A ND PERSONA L TR A NSFOR M ATION

Not only are the external challenges to their adaptation that Haitians face quite evident, but divisions as old as the founding and independence of Haiti still rear their ugly heads at times in Miami’s Haitian community. The Haitian Revolution of 1804 sought to establish a black republic with equal opportunity for all, but Haiti remains marred by divisions of skin color between light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks, divisions of class between the wealthy and the peasants, divisions of language between French and Creole speakers, and divisions of politics between supporters and opponents of Aristide, just to name a few. Aware of the many divisions in Haiti, religious celebrations at Notre Dame frequently focused on personal transformation to leave behind these divisions and form solidarity within the community. The structure of Notre Dame also focused on creating a home that would welcome those Haitians most likely to be rejected, not only by the host society in Miami, but even by some of their own more well-to-do compatri-

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ots. In other words, Notre Dame was to be a home for dark-skinned, Creole-speaking Haitians of peasant origins. For example, knowing that some Haitians speak in French to exclude Creole speakers from decision-making or participation, not just in politics but also at church, Father Wenski conducted all meetings and religious services at Notre Dame in Creole and nothing in French.29 Whereas all priests ordained in Haiti are required to learn French and frequently use some French in celebrating Mass, Father Wenski never learned to speak French, only Creole, which made it easier for him to insist that all meetings and activities be conducted exclusively in Creole. Thus, he used his position as an outsider to avoid some of the issues that divided Haitians. Many members of Notre Dame had suffered political repression, violence, robbery, and some even rape by the various groups jostling for political control in Haiti. Although migrating to the United States removes Haitians from some of the worst types of violence, new types of division emerged in Miami: the pressure of being poor, perhaps unemployed and perhaps undocumented, forges divisions between husband and wife, parents and children, and siblings raised in Haiti or in the United States, as well as among members of the same household or extended family who have converted to Protestantism and struggle to convert their Catholic relatives. Notre Dame’s cultural mediation included, not only nurturing people’s individual faith and thus providing narratives of hope, but also directly trying to replace divisions that worsen misery with community solidarity that lifts people up. To illustrate, one interviewee, Wilbur, emphasized just how much division existed among Haitians, recounting how, as liberation theology gained ground in Haiti in the 1980s, he had become increasingly engaged with home-based prayer groups, as well as community-organizing movements where priests and lay leaders strongly preached the Catholic Church’s social justice teachings. Wilbur, who was a small-scale farmer in Haiti, led a Catholic Church–sponsored project that worked with farmers on agricultural conservation projects and then marketed their goods. Several days a week, he also traveled into the countryside to teach school-

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children. But the Duvaliers, in Wilbur’s opinion, distrusted the church’s social projects, fearing that with more literacy and education, people would begin to demand their rights. For example, Wilbur described how, under the military regime that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide, peasants had begun fighting among themselves over their support or lack thereof for the latter’s return. Despite the political violence and downward spiraling economy, Wilbur at first stayed in Haiti, hoping to be able to do something for his country. However, the continuing economic misery and political violence eventually put an end to much of his social work and his dreams of helping his country. Finally, no longer able to support himself and his family, and increasingly afraid of the violence around him, he came to Florida by boat in 2000, joining several relatives. He repeatedly used two words in Haitian Creole—kraze and kanpe—to describe how his dreams had been crushed and political violence had stopped his social work in its tracks. Now in the United States, a country with great opportunities, Wilbur relies on his brother and his son to survive, and he feels unable to help his neighbors. He keeps coming to church in order to maintain his love for God and keep up his desire to help others—even if he cannot do much to help anyone as long as he is without a job. So much misery has divided Haitians that leaders of Notre Dame have to work to ease these many tensions within their own church and ethnic community. Many of the leaders and members of Notre Dame were disappointed with the results of the liberation theology–inspired political and social movements in Haiti of the 1980s and the 1990s. Although these movements achieved some laudable social goals, often movements inspired by liberation theology focused so much on radically changing social structures that the Christian message of personal transformation got lost. For example, Father Reginald Jean-Mary often preached about social justice at Notre Dame, but he consciously tried to tie his message about social action to a stronger message about the need for continuous personal transformation that would allow Haitians to demonstrate solidarity. To illustrate, in one sermon delivered by Father Jean-Mary, he

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chided his parishioners for not being more generous with each other. Father Jean-Mary pointed out that even Haitians who regularly attend church may sometimes act selfishly toward their brothers and sisters. Referring to the biblical story of the transfiguration, in which Jesus reprimands his disciples for their lack of generosity,30 Father Jean-Mary reprimanded the faithful at Mass with the following words: Sometimes, like Peter, we say, My Lord, I feel good! If today we have been able to buy a little house here in the United States, we forget the people suffering in Haiti. If today we find a job, we say, “Zafè kabrit pa zafè mouton” [What concerns the goat doesn’t concern the sheep]; we trample on other Haitians. If we go somewhere else to get a job, we keep stepping on others so they don’t rise up too, because we are comfortable the way we are. Once we fi nd a good position, we feel so good, we forget God, because we are comfortable where we are.

In this and many other sermons, Father Jean-Mary seemed to be saying that one could mistakenly use religion to separate oneself from others. He used the example of Peter’s reaction to Jesus’ transfiguration to show how even the Apostles were tempted to give thanks to God for the good he did for them while at the same time ignoring everyone else. Too often, he explained, those Haitians who fi nd success in the United States do not accept the responsibility for helping others that comes with having moved up the ladder.

HOLY W EEK AT NOTRE DA ME D’H A ITI

Collective meaning, one basis of community solidarity, was further fostered through group rituals at Notre Dame, such as those during Holy Week. Perhaps not surprisingly, numerous scholars who have studied immigrants’ religious communities in the United States have discovered that migrants frequently focus upon biblical narratives related to exile to reinterpret and find meaning in their own situation.31 For Catholics, the days of Holy Week—a series of liturgies that begin with

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Palm Sunday and culminate a week later on Easter Sunday—are the most important religious celebrations of the year. All religious activities at Notre Dame intensify during Holy Week, and biblical stories are often theatrically reenacted. At this time of the year, one can see more vividly how Haitians interpret the messages of Christianity and apply them to their own situation as materially impoverished migrants. Furthermore, the particular religious theme of Holy Week—the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—powerfully demonstrates a significant trope of this book: how Haitians’ piety helps them find hope in the midst of suffering and thereby inspires them to community solidarity and social action. In liturgically and theatrically celebrating Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection as a community of faith, Haitians inject into these universal Catholic practices their own personal and community sufferings and desires for redemption in this world and the next. They lift up the problems of their families, their community, and their two nations—Haiti and the United States—and they call out for God’s help. They do not believe that their cries fall on deaf ears; rather, their prayer both provides them with supernatural aid and gives them the human strength to confront their individual and community problems. The strong expressions of religious beliefs, ritually enacted through narratives such as Jesus suffering and coming to life again, provide indispensable cultural mediation for the political advocacy, faith-based community-organizing, and social service programs linked to Notre Dame. This cultural mediation sets the stage for the institutional mediation by the organizations linked to Notre Dame that seek legitimacy to represent Haitians in the public sphere.

“O Cross, You Will Save Us” In many parts of the world, Catholics commemorate Good Friday— the day on which they believe Jesus received a death sentence—with readings and meditations about his passion and crucifi xion. For many

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Haitians, suffering is an inescapable daily reality. Commemorations of Jesus’ passion exalt suffering as a necessary step toward redemption. At 2 p.m. on Good Friday at Notre Dame, about five hundred people dressed all in white gathered in the parking lot of Notre Dame to participate in an outdoor celebration of the Stations of the Cross. Some men set up speakers in the bed of a white pickup truck to lead the procession and broadcast meditations and songs sung by clergy and laypeople. One young man played the part of Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns and carrying a cross. Several other young men from Notre Dame were dressed as guards persecuting Jesus. As the truck started rolling down the streets of Little Haiti, Father Jean-Mary read the meditations for each station of the cross into the microphone. The crowd walked behind the young man dressed as Jesus carrying his cross surrounded by soldiers beating him (with plastic baseball bats). In between stations, the crowd sang some songs in French and others in Creole. One often-repeated refrain in French says, “Victoire, tu régneras, O Croix, tu nous sauveras” (Victory, you will reign, O Cross, you will save us). This refrain symbolically turns the idea of suffering on its head. Although in the eyes of the non-Christian world, the cross symbolizes defeat, for the Christian, the cross provides the way to salvation. Another popular refrain in Creole that was sung on Good Friday and all the preceding Fridays of Lent says, “Redi, redi, lavi a pa fasil zanmi, pa pè, pa pè, Granfrè ou la” (Fight, fight, life is not easy, my friends, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, your big brother is there). Special holidays such as Holy Week bring to the forefront how Notre Dame’s religious activities at times expand into the landscape of Little Haiti. As the procession moved slowly through Little Haiti, cars passing by stopped to watch, some people came out of their homes to observe, and others even distributed water to the people. A few idlers even joined the procession. After stopping at particular places to commemorate each of the traditional fourteen Stations of the Cross, the procession ended about two hours later back at Notre Dame. The crowd celebrated the fi nal

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station at an outdoor cross originally erected by Father Wenski to commemorate Haitian boat people who have died at sea. Images of desperate boat people trying to reach the United States provide bountiful material for others in Miami to ridicule Haitians. This outdoor crucifi x on the front lawn of Notre Dame, erected high for all who pass by to see, makes the experience of being a boat person into a symbol of unity with Christ, even if others see it as folly. Even if the government or other groups in society reject Haitians, or even when Haitians lose their lives at sea trying to reach more hospitable shores, the narrative of the cross and this outdoor crucifi x offer Haitians in Miami a sacred meaning for their suffering. The outdoor procession ended with Jesus dead on the cross, the guards standing by, with their weapons in hand, and the faithful women looking on, lamenting the evil the world had done. Building on the religious fervor of this special day, the priests provided messages of solidarity and hope to the crowds that had gathered for the procession. Father Darbouze reminded the people to welcome their brothers and sisters who continue to arrive from Haiti. Christians have the duty to love and to help others, and so they have to fight against the jealousy that rears its head in communities. Father Jean-Mary then led the crowd in praying for specific wishes. First, he prayed for many of the same things often mentioned in most other Catholic parishes: for the pope, all priests, sisters, and religious. In addition, he prayed for the alleviation of many of social problems in the Haitian community— unemployment, youth in gangs and prostitution, division and greed among Haitians. Father Jean-Mary also invited the faithful to pray for the problems in Haiti, for its president, for political parties, and for all elected oYcials. These prayers demonstrate the powerful inculturation of the faith taking place at Notre Dame. Universal Catholic prayers and rituals are expressed in a particular cultural style familiar to Haitians, and the Haitians at Notre Dame pray for both the universal Catholic Church and specific communities’ needs, thus identifying themselves as both a global and a local people.

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A Pilgrim People Perhaps no Catholic ritual better expresses the theme of sorrowful exile than Holy Saturday. In Catholic theology and practice, Holy Saturday is a day of waiting, when the faithful keep vigil for the promised resurrection of Christ. The liturgies of the three-day Easter Triduum move from sorrow to joy, but this transition progresses slowly and in stages. Holy Saturday is a day of penance, sorrow, and waiting in darkness. Saturday evening’s vigil began outside the main door of the church. As in Catholic parishes around the world, Father Darbouze lit the Easter candle, carving out the symbols alpha and omega on the candle and writing the year 2002. The faithful then lit their candles from the Easter candle and followed the clergy into the church, where all the lights were extinguished. Easter Vigil Mass begins in complete darkness—the only light came from the candles. Easter Saturday’s darkness reminds Haitian boat people of nighttime at sea. The worst part of the boat journey to the United States is at night. Sometimes, you can barely see your hand in front of your face. The absolute darkness drives some people to madness; some get so desolate that they throw themselves off the boat out of desperation, drowning in the ocean. Light from the moon and stars sometimes pierces the darkness of the night, offering some hope and guidance to the Haitian boat people. The darkness of the vigil reminded many people at Notre Dame of their nights at sea, and the flickering light of the candles reminded them that they must not give up hope. Once everyone was seated, Father Jean-Mary and Father Pierre Louis together sang the Exsultet, the annunciation of the resurrection of Christ. After the Exsultet, the priests and parishioners sing the Gloria—a prayer of rejoicing, which is excluded from Catholic liturgies from the beginning of Lent until Holy Saturday. After forty days of penance and waiting, and after five minutes of listening to the Exsultet in darkness, the faithful at Notre Dame seemed to explode, joyfully singing, “Viv Jezu ki fe nou, Aleluya, viv Jezu ki sove-n, Aleluya” (Long

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live Jesus Christ who created us, Alleluia, long live Jesus Christ who saves us). After the Exsultet and the Gloria, the next part of the liturgy contains eleven biblical readings that trace the history of the Christian people from their Jewish predecessors up to the Apostles of Christ. The overarching theme of these readings emphasizes the people of God as a pilgrim people, a theme that a discriminated-against immigrant group can easily identify with. Holy Saturday’s readings reminded the faithful at Notre Dame that the Jewish people suffered exile from their homeland and persecution by foreign enemies. However, Holy Saturday’s readings also emphasize how, in the midst of their sorrows, the Jewish people never ceased believing that they had a covenant with God, who came to save them again and again. The readings end by illustrating how Jesus Christ fulfilled God’s promises to save his chosen people. But rather than liberating the Jewish people from political oppression by the Romans, Christian salvation came through the suffering and death of Jesus. In his homily at that Holy Saturday Vigil Mass, Father Jean-Mary emphasized that only in following Jesus to the cross do Christians find their salvation. Jesus founded a church, he said, but this church remains in exile until the second coming of Christ. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead won his followers entry into heaven, but life on earth is not an end state, but a journey. As Josette and others commented, at times being a Christian in the world is like being on a boat rocking perilously back and forth in utter darkness. Holy Saturday’s homily, like many other homilies at Notre Dame, drew parallels among the suffering of the Jewish people, the life of Christ, and the suffering of Haitian migrants. In a loud voice, Father Jean-Mary preached a message of love, forgiveness, and God’s mercy. As on many other occasions, he talked frankly about problems in the community—such as drugs, divorce, prostitution—and reassured the people that God was with them and would save them. People nodded and clapped and cheered many times, in particular when he recognized

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the social problems of the community and emphasized the need for hope despite these tribulations. All the elements of the liturgy at Notre Dame—the songs, readings, and preaching—moved back and forth seamlessly between universal Christian messages and culturally specific, timely issues. The inculturation of the Catholic faith into, not only the Haitian Creole language, but migrant-specific and even Miami-specific events represents a cultural mediation, assisting Haitians in linking together their broken experiences and finding meaning in their suffering that drives them to keep fighting back the darkness and cling to hope. Christians are pilgrims in this world, and pilgrims must undergo heartaches and danger to reach their goals.

From Caterpillar to Butterfly By 8 a.m. on Easter Sunday, crowds poured in to Notre Dame from all over South Florida to attend the outdoor Mass. Because Haitians throughout South Florida see Notre Dame as an important symbol of their community, two to three times as many people attend Mass on Easter Sunday as on other Sundays. Like other large celebrations at Notre Dame, because of lack of space inside the church, Easter Sunday Mass was celebrated on an altar constructed in the church’s backyard. Father Wenski, by then a bishop, presided over the ceremony, which further made this Easter Sunday at Notre Dame a special occasion. Like those of the other priests at Notre Dame, Father Wenski’s homily echoed Father Jean-Mary’s “theology of grace and hope” and focused on personal transformation through faith in Jesus. Perhaps referring to the progress that some Haitians have experienced, Father Wenski emphasized that personal transformation does not end when one gets what one asked God for. For a Christian, Father Wenski said in his sermon, dying to sin and being reborn in the faith does not happen just once in a lifetime, but must recur continuously. Before the crowd of 3,000 people, Father Wenski explained that Christian hope comes from a belief in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrec-

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tion. In Christian belief, God became a human person—what Catholics refer to as the doctrine of the incarnation. Even God-made-man had to undergo death, thus no other human can expect to escape suffering, but Christian belief emphasizes that the suffering of Good Friday is always tied to the rejoicing of Easter Sunday. As reiterated by Father Wenski, Father Jean-Mary, and the other priests at Notre Dame, Christian hope rests on belief in the incarnation. The Christian God is not far away or removed from people's problems, but encounters people in their everyday struggles and gives them strength to continue. As Father Wenski said on Easter Sunday: “God’s last word has a face and a name, and that is Jesus. God’s word became man just like us so that we humans could come to resemble him, and so that we can always have hope. . . . We know we can have hope in God, life in God, love in God. We can live because God raised Jesus from the dead and brought him back to life. We must hope because God has given us proof [in the resurrection].” Even though fear overcame the apostles after Jesus’ crucifi xion, the resurrection proved that God does not abandon his people, Father Wenski explained. Therefore, he added, even if their prayers are not answered immediately, they do not hope in vain. To illustrate how Christianity leads people to a personal transformation, Father Wenski, in his Easter Sunday homily, recounted a story of a caterpillar (French chenille) named Jacques. Alluding to the poverty and prejudice many Haitians in Miami confront, Jacques the caterpillar laments how his small stature allows bigger animals to trample repeatedly on him. Father Wenski told the crowd that, even though others look down on him, Jacques desires to be something better than a caterpillar. It does not take much imagination to see how this story appeals to Haitians at Notre Dame, who, no matter how others treat them, still feel in their hearts that God did not intend for them to suffer humiliation and prejudice. From his lowly position, Jacques admires the butterfl ies’ beautifully colored wings and longs for the ability to fly. As Father Wenski described

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this beautiful butterfly of Jacques’s imagination, a real butterfly flew right in front of him on the altar and paused for a moment for all to see. Eager to become like the butterfly, Jacques contemplates buying plastic wings, coloring them, and attaching them to himself with scissors and glue. In this way, he hopes others might think he is a butterfly rather than a caterpillar. Upon further thought, however, Jacques becomes discouraged when he realizes that, despite appearances, plastic wings will not enable him to fly. Jacques then encounters a wise man, who tells him that he is not crazy to dream that he is meant for something greater than life as a caterpillar. To achieve that better life, however, the wise man tells Jacques that he has to die as a caterpillar in order to be born again as a butterfly. Jacques spins a cocoon in a tree for the winter, and when spring comes, he wakes up as a butterfly, an outcome reminiscent of Christian imagery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Many Haitians at Notre Dame may often find themselves living in miserable conditions and being humiliated by others. In this sermon, Father Wenski acted as the wise man, telling them that their desires to be something greater are not crazy dreams. However, Father Wenski also cautioned them not to go, in a rush to achieve their dreams, for a superficial solution that only changes outward appearances: “It is too easy for us to live by appearances. We can walk with the Bible under our arm, wear a cross or a medal, but that doesn’t mean we are really Christian and that doesn’t mean we are really Catholic. We become a Catholic Christian when we participate in Christ’s death and resurrection, when we accept to die to our lives as caterpillars [which will be transformed into butterfl ies], to our lives of sin. . . . It is not our color, nor our culture, that we have to change; we have to change our heart[s].” Feeling that their class position, their dark skin color, or their language mark them as different and inferior to others, Haitians in Miami may be tempted to try to effect a quick change in their outward appearance. But Father Wenski’s homily emphasized that the most important transformation one must undergo takes place in the heart. He also

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challenged the faithful not to use Christianity as simply an external show of belief for others to see and reminded them that all Christians must constantly examine their hearts and choose to die with Jesus on the cross. Father Jean-Mary’s use of a “theology of grace and hope” as an essential element of cultural mediation makes little sense without some understanding of Christian theology, in particular, belief in the incarnation. In the Easter Triduum, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, we see one element of the inculturation of the faith that occurs at Notre Dame. The liturgies, sermons, and spontaneous prayers during Holy Week celebrations at Notre Dame also represent the recurring cycle of suffering, death, and rebirth in Christian faith. Although cultural narratives may come from many sources, the narrative of an incarnate God who suffers a human death and rises from the dead is a uniquely Christian one, with many parallels to Haitian migrants’ experiences.

PR AY ER AS GI V ING TO OTHERS

Every week, approximately fifteen prayer groups meet at Notre Dame. Although some meet during the week, most meet on Saturday afternoon or after Sunday Mass. Most of these groups replicate prayer groups or youth groups common among Catholics in Haiti, such as the Legion of Mary, the Holy Family, and the Missionaries of Jesus Christ. In addition to weekly prayer meetings, most of these groups also encourage members to be active in the community—whether that means helping with volunteer work around the church, visiting the sick in the community, or welcoming newcomers to the parish. Small groups also often meet for prayer in people’s homes. The dominant theme that captures the essence of individual prayer and prayer groups is that praying—whether as individuals, at one of Notre Dame’s prayer groups, or at Mass or other group celebrations— is a way of giving to others, not just a form of supplication for one’s own needs. Members of Notre Dame attended church in part because they

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see worship as an obligation to God and also because prayer represents one potent way for them to give to others. Not everyone in the community can give material support to others, Wilbur, Josette, and others pointed out, but they can all pray together. Even extremely needy Haitians said that through praying together, they transformed themselves into givers and not just recipients of aid. When they become givers and not just receivers, they infuse their social situation with a different meaning, a meaning that inspires them to become actors in their own drama rather than falling into despair or hopelessness. Although some may see praying as a fl ight from one’s problems, members of Notre Dame said praying encouraged them to give of themselves first, and then they became more willing to accept help when they needed it. Leaders at Notre Dame—both lay leaders and clergy—encourage people to pray together to break their sense of isolation and powerlessness. Many leaders of Notre Dame underscored that people are afraid to ask for help, even when they desperately need it. By attending Mass and joining a prayer group, they begin to feel empowered and also become more willing to accept help, whether such help comes in the form of money to pay the rent or advice on family problems. When someone needs help, Father Jean-Mary and several lay leaders, such as Gérard Péan and Alice St. Jean, first try to convince that person that he or she can do something to help the situation. When church resources cannot resolve the problem, the leaders send the church members to the Toussaint Center or another agency that can help them. The Toussaint Center exists to solve problems that go beyond what the community of faith can accomplish, but many leaders emphasized that encouraging people in their prayer life is nonetheless an important strategy to make external interventions more successful. To illustrate, Charismatic prayer meetings can occur in small groups of eight to ten people in someone’s home, or among much larger groups, sometimes reaching several hundred people at the weekly Charismatic prayer sessions at Notre Dame that end with Mass. During such meet-

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ings, people recite prayers together, such as the rosary. Some people pray in tongues, others then state their wishes out loud and ask for intercessory prayers. Some come forward to give testimonies and some recount how, through God’s grace, they were able to overcome a serious problem. Seeing someone in a similar position who has overcome his or her problem gives others hope that they will be able to solve their own problems. Participants in Charismatic prayer sessions are invited to come forward, pray over others, and have others pray over them. They may state their needs out loud or simply express their wishes in their hearts, in the confidence that God hears them. Although the emphasis on emotional expression typical of the Charismatic Renewal movement might lead one to question whether this movement represents a retreat from social action, in particular, the kinds of social and political projects associated with liberation theology, Charismatic prayer and social action can complement each other in several ways. First, individual and group prayers allow the people praying to become givers. Christianity demands solidarity with one’s neighbors, but, often, the only things people as poor as Wilbur or Josette can give to others are their care and prayers; all they may receive in return is a smile from others and a feeling of appreciation. As illustrated above in my interviews with Wilbur, and further shown below, praying about one's personal needs and those of others changes one’s mental situation from one of resignation or struggling alone to one of fortitude and feeling supported in one’s struggles. As long as they persevere in their prayer, people like Wilbur believe God will eventually lead them to a solution for their problems. As Gérard, Father Jean-Mary, and other leaders of Notre Dame emphasized, giving people a vision and showing them a way they can give to others despite their material poverty is a necessary first step toward greater social actions. Notre Dame has numerous social-action-oriented groups, all of which are closely tied to one or more of the prayer groups. For example, small home-based Charismatic groups have formed cells of the citywide faithbased community-organizing movement in which Notre Dame partici-

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pates. Prayer as a source of support for social-action groups is certainly one way in which religious faith strengthens immigrant adaptation. But even those members of Notre Dame who do not participate in a socialaction group perceive their continual prayer as a service they provide to the community, albeit an emotional, psychological, or spiritual one.

“Have Confi dence in God” When people discussed their personal prayer lives, they touched upon the same themes—suffering, hope, personal transformation, helping others, perseverance in prayer. Like Josette, Georgina frequently attended daily Mass. After Mass at Notre Dame, and before the 9 a.m. English class at the Toussaint Center, Georgina often prayed in front of the tabernacle. She is from the south of Haiti and traveled by land to the northwestern city of Port-de-Paix, from where she boarded a boat to join her husband in Miami. Although she came without papers, Georgina was able to regularize her status and worked first in a sewing factory. After the factory closed, she worked for a time as a maid, but she had a bad fall and a stomach operation and had not been able to work since then. Georgina had separated from her husband, who was being unfaithful to her, and her daughters, now in their twenties and thirties, supported her. Georgina openly told me of her struggles, constantly returning to the subject of her faith. “God always takes care of me. If you don’t have God, you don’t have anything.” Since I had seen her praying so many times in front of the tabernacle, I asked her what she prayed for. Slowly and reflectively, she replied: “First, I ask for forgiveness. Then I give thanks. Then I pray for everyone else. I pray for people I know, and for people I don’t know. I pray for people who don’t pray. Only then do I ask God for what I need. We are not supposed to be selfish in our prayer. I ask God to give me more confidence, more trust in him.” Imagining that many of her prayers must go unanswered, I asked her if she ever got discouraged. A tinge of sadness came across her face, and she said: “Yes,

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I get discouraged often. And that’s when you have to pray more. You have to have confidence in God. Jesus said, ‘Whoever believes in me is already saved.’ God always helps me. But you have to persevere. If you don’t have faith, you don’t have anything.” How does she know whether God has answered her prayers? When pushed to give an answer to this question, she described some help from a friend or a service agency, but she always attributed that help to God answering her prayers. For example, she said, “Well, one time when I separated from my husband, I went to social services, and they gave me food stamps and some money to pay rent for a few months. I also have my daughters supporting me now. And they support my mother in Haiti.” In other words, in Georgina’s mind, even the help she receives from social services or from her daughters can be attributed to God’s providence. The fact that Georgina, Josette, Wilbur, Donald, and so many others attribute good breaks in their luck to God’s providence does not mean they sit back and just wait for a miracle. On the contrary, faith that God can intervene in this world and that he can give them greater strength is not an excuse to be inactive, but rather a source of energy, reassurance, and aid in their long-term struggle. As the Haitians at Notre Dame attempt to solve their seemingly endless problems, their faith in God helps them to persevere and keep seeking solutions—often by asking others to help them—rather than giving up. Whether they seek to solve their problems by asking for help from a family member, a priest or nun, a secular or faith-based service agency, or a government agency, the important thing in their minds is attaching a meaning to that help: God’s goodness, or Bondye bon. Constantly attributing acts of charity to God’s goodness enables them to be able to receive help without losing their dignity, regardless of the source.

“God Works through Other People” Another member of the English class at the Toussaint Center, Erasma, who is sixty years old, has five children, and has not been able to find

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a job, stated, “I live by faith. I trust in God. I know he won’t abandon me. Life on earth is never easy. Every time you solve a problem, ten more come.” In other words, Erasma believed God was helping her even when she continued to face problems. “Having problems doesn’t make me lose my faith. When you have problems, you pray more.” Nearly everyone at Notre Dame insisted that their struggles were too big to overcome quickly or easily—as Erasma said, every time you solve one problem, ten more come along that you cannot solve, and another ten you cannot foresee are coming soon. Erasma and many others used the Haitian proverb “Dèyè mòn, gen mòn,” which translated literally means “Behind the mountain, there is a mountain” to describe their never-ending struggles. Although one might expect someone to give up on God because overcoming one mountain just places them at the base of another, these materially impoverished Haitian Catholics all emphasized how, when they need help, they hold on tighter to their faith. However, their interpretation of how God answers their prayers is often quite broad—they admit that God does not always answer their prayers as they would have expected or as quickly as they might like. For example, even though Erasma often asks God for what she needs when she prays, “It doesn’t happen right away. You have to be patient. You are also obligated to pray for others, to pray for problems in the world. We pray for peace, for peace in Haiti, we pray for people who have had accidents or who have died. Without God, you have nothing. God can do everything for you.” Erasma kept emphasizing God’s goodness, so I asked her to give me a concrete example of how she saw this goodness in action. She began to tell me about family members who had helped her at different times, but she reminded me that, in her view, “God works through other people to help you, but it is God who helps you. If God doesn’t touch people’s heart[s], they won’t help you.” Like Georgina, Erasma attributes someone’s solidarity with her to God’s influence in their lives. Thus, when she faces another problem, prayer helps her be patient until others who have been moved by God come forward to help her. For Erasma and many others, it is easier to

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receive help from a priest, friend, or the Toussaint Center when they perceive that these are fulfilling a religious duty rather than just acting of pity.

“I Know God Will Help Me” Another common theme in the individual and collective prayers at Notre Dame was praying for one’s enemies, a theme often related to the Gospel narrative of Jesus forgiving those who persecuted and killed him. My interview with Stephanie clearly demonstrates the power of the Christian narrative of forgiving one’s enemies. Stephanie never planned to come to the United States, but felt forced to do so because of political persecution. She proudly recounted that she had received a good education at a Catholic school. Then she had begun to run farmers’ cooperatives near her home in Jacmel, a city in the south of Haiti. During the 2000 elections, supporters of Aristide’s party asked her to encourage the farmers in her cooperative to vote for Aristide. When she refused, they told her she deserved to die. Her eyes swelled with tears as she recalled how, in retaliation for her refusal, a group of men broke into her house, raped her, and stole her belongings. After this incident, she left town for a few months. Even though her neighbors told her it was not safe for her to return, she went back anyway, determined not to be forced out of her village and country. Attempting to intimidate her again, the criminals returned to her house and burned her car. She was further motivated to leave Haiti when one day, as her daughter was walking to school, people from different political parties began arguing and throwing Molotov cocktails at one another. Her daughter got caught in the cross fire and a bottle hit her, causing severe cuts and burns. At the end of her rope, Stephanie fled to Miami with her six-year-old daughter, who obtained U.S. citizenship through her American-born father. Stephanie had hoped to return to Haiti, but as the political situation there only seemed to deteriorate, she applied for asylum in the

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United States. When I met her, the status of her asylum application was still unclear, and she had not yet found a job. She lived with friends and received a bit of money from her sister in New York, which helped her to get by. Her incredibly sad story and quite precarious position did not square with the joy she continuously expressed in English class.32 Next, Stephanie talked about her personal prayer. “I ask God for patience. I ask him to help me solve my problems, to get asylum. I know that God will help me. I just have to wait.” What about when things do not go her way, I asked her, does she lose her faith? She replied, “No. Because I know only God can help us.” Apparently not wanting to give me the impression that her suffering has made her bitter, she wiped away her tears and said: I am a very positive person. I am lucky because the religious sisters who educated me in Haiti taught me to love everybody. So I love everyone, despite color, money, or anything at all. I also pray to God to change the heart of the people who hurt me. People who do bad things, like the people who burned my car, they know when they are doing something wrong. So it is up to God to touch their heart[s] and change them. If someone hurts you, you have to pray for them. If someone hates you, you have to love them.

Important as it is for Stephanie to gain legal status in the United States, her words express that she has perhaps an equally great or even greater need for spiritual and psychological healing. Other than going to the Haitian Refugee Center for help with her asylum application, Stephanie refused to ask any agency for help for herself. “I have never asked for help at any agency. I don’t want to ask. That would be a humiliation. I don’t have a job, and I don’t have health insurance, but the only thing I ever asked for was Medicaid insurance for my daughter.” Given the complexity of Haitians’ social condition, belonging to a church community allows people like Georgina, Erasma, and Stephanie to encounter God and find hope and strength to persevere. For someone like Stephanie, having faith is by no means an excuse not to take concrete action. Drawing on Gospel narratives and religious teachings

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she received in Haiti, she seeks personal transformation, including forgiving those who violently attacked her, but she also tries to fi nd material assistance. Once individuals are drawn into the community and find a source of hope amid their diYculties, its leaders believe, it then becomes easier to try to address their social problems. Prayer helps people keep going in what seems like a never-ending mountain range of problems. One day after English class, Stephanie was talking with several other women and said—paraphrasing James 2:26—“A faith without works is no good.” The “theology of grace and hope” at Notre Dame, the emphasis on personal transformation, community solidarity, and prayer as giving to others all illustrate powerful forms of cultural mediation at Notre Dame.

THREE FOR MS OF INSTITUTIONA L MEDI ATION

Cognizant of the need for concerted social action, leaders at Notre Dame went beyond this cultural mediation and established or engaged in three forms of institutional mediation: (a) a faith-based communityorganizing movement, in which many of Notre Dame’s members participate; (b) political advocacy carried out by clergy, including some archdiocesan oYcials, on behalf of Haitian migrants; and (c) a social service center, the Toussaint Center. Examining the institutional and public activities of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center point us back to debates about civil society and democracy. Some have argued that faith-based community organizing contributes to democracy in a fundamentally different way than faith-based social services, such as those provided by Toussaint Center. Notably, Richard Wood argues that whereas faith-based social service agencies primarily act as channels for government social services, faithbased community-organizing movements seek to reshape government policy. Wood also argues that faith-based community-organizing

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movements do not emphasize moral change as much as structural change.33 In the case of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center, no such sharp distinction is made either between government partners and government critics or between moral and structural change. In fact, Notre Dame’s leaders did not just act as a channel for government funds; they alerted the government to the needs of the politically weak community they represent, thus acting as political advocates. Furthermore, Notre Dame’s leaders saw moral and structural change as complementary tasks. Leaders of the faith-based community organizing at Notre Dame focused, not just on acquiring external support for needy populations, but on changing how people in need understand the circumstances around them.

COM MU N ITY-BASED ORGA N IZING MOV EMENTS

PACT —People Acting for Community Together—is one of several ways in which members of Notre Dame link faith and social action. Many of the members of Notre Dame’s prayer groups put their faith into action through acts of service to other community members. The Saint Vincent de Paul Society, for example, conducts fund-raisers and then distributes emergency aid to families that request it. In addition to meeting every week to pray together, members of the Legion of Mary, to which Josette belongs, reach out to families in trouble in their neighborhoods, help care for one another’s children, and visit the sick in the hospital. PACT is unique, however, because it goes beyond charitable actions and aims at mobilizing people to participate in politics. Notre Dame’s representative in PACT, Gérard Péan, saw his main task as a leader at Notre Dame to motive people in the church community to work together to solve their problems, and in doing so, to see themselves as serving God. “People need a vision or else they will perish,” he said in a passionate voice. Although religious visions

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often inspired people in their personal prayers, Gérard was talking about “vision” in the sense of providing people, not only with hope, but with some concrete means to improve their situation. Before getting people involved in social action, Gérard emphasized that members of the church community needed to work together to cope with the sense of isolation many Haitians feel. Many Haitians who leave their homeland often lose their sense of identity, because they have given up the community where they have lived all their lives and feel they do not have a place in their new society. The church is often the first place Haitians turn for help. According to Gérard, many people come to church seeking the consolation of participating in a religious community. However, he felt that as a leader, he was charged with getting people to think beyond their immediate survival and about how to solve their long-term problems. “The church usually deals with a crisis,” he explained. “A person has a problem, like they can’t pay their electricity, or rent, one month. So the church will pay it for them. But that is not solving the real problem. The real problem is the context that does not let them find a way to solve their own problems, to pay their own rent. So we have to think long-term.” To help create this long-term vision, Gérard has dedicated his life, first in Haiti and then in the United States, to motivating people to change their situation and organizing them into groups to tackle their problems together. Confirming what many others had said, Gérard emphasized that the first step toward social action was giving people a sense of meaning and hope rooted in their religious faith. Gérard’s answers to my question about the relationship between faith and action, though not unique, were among the most eloquent. Gérard grew up in a very religious family in Haiti—his sister is a nun and his brother is a priest. For Gérard, his personal religious faith and working for social justice have long been intertwined. “Ever since I knew I was Gérard, I knew I was in the church. I was bathed in the church, I always worked for the church, I breathed the work of the church.” Although he always felt called to serve God and even prayed about

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a vocation to the priesthood, Gérard decided to remain a layperson in part because he wanted to give greater attention to his passion for political and social change. He further emphasized that whereas priests’ primary responsibility lies in providing spiritual guidance and celebrating the sacraments, laypeople should take the lead in social and political projects. Gérard, like Wilbur, Father Jean-Mary, and many others at Notre Dame, participated actively in the liberation theology movement in Haiti. As part of Project Alpha, one of the largest projects that came out of the liberation theology movement, Gérard traveled around the Haitian countryside teaching literacy and organizing social projects. Like Wilbur, he also worked at an agricultural training institute, and he participated in the Christian Base Community movement, which mobilized peasants for political action, helping to topple Jean-Claude Duvalier. After the 1991 coup d’état against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, however, the military government of Raoul Cédras targeted participants in various liberation theology–linked movements, and Gérard felt forced to flee Haiti. After Gérard and other lay leaders with experience in social justice projects left Haiti and came to Miami, the size and scope of social projects grew at Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center. Notre Dame’s reputation as a home for Haitians in Miami had reached Haiti, and Gérard had visited Notre Dame on previous trips to the United States. Gérard wanted to continue doing the type of work he had done in Haiti as soon as possible after he arrived in Miami, and he asked Father Wenski how he could help at Notre Dame. First, Gérard started a Creole literacy program at the Toussaint Center that used a methodology similar to Project Alpha in Haiti. After running that program for three years and eventually securing funding for it from the Miami–Dade County government, Gérard got another opportunity to continue doing community-organizing work similar to what he had done in Haiti. When PACT approached Father Wenski about joining, Gérard was the natural person to lead their involvement. After several years rep-

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resenting Notre Dame in PACT, Gérard became one of its four fulltime staff members. As in many other community-based organizing movements, rather than the leaders deciding the priority issues, PACT invites its member congregations to come up with annual priorities, which then become the agenda for the larger movement. Organizations like PACT have learned that, by soliciting congregations rather than individuals to join, participation remains steadier over time. Thousands of people across Miami regularly participate in congregations and small prayer groups, and PACT’s leaders believe that the trust generated in these small religious communities provides a strong basis for identifying problems and mobilizing collective action to address them. In order to address the concerns identified in the small-group process, PACT organizes citywide political events that encourage people from various congregations to bring their social needs to the attention of public oYcials.34 How did a church whose members mostly speak Creole, have low incomes, lived under authoritarian rule in Haiti, and may not be citizens or legal residents of the United States come to be the largest active congregation in this faith-based organizing movement? There are two main reasons. First, there is the commitment of Notre Dame’s leaders to this kind of democratic participation. Father Wenski, Father JeanMary, and other priests at Notre Dame have actively supported PACT, and Notre Dame makes a large contribution to it. (According to Ariel Dorfman, the leader of PACT for all of Miami, leaders of some other congregations refuse his invitation to join PACT, and others may join but do little to actively support their congregation’s participation.) Second, PACT emphasizes small group meetings, rather than large gatherings. As Gérard explained, it is easier to get the Haitians he serves to break their isolation and build trust if he can get them talking and praying together in groups of fewer than ten people. Gérard explained that just inviting people churchwide to participate in something like PACT probably would not work: “Even if people see each other at church, they do not always know what another’s problems

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are, because they don’t necessarily talk about it. That’s why PACT emphasizes a one-on-one process, because people have to get to know each other. You have to trust one another, or else we can’t talk about our problems. We need to have icebreakers, to create an environment where we can talk.” In addition to the over two thousand people who attend Mass on weekdays and on Sundays, numerous different prayer groups meet at Notre Dame. Being in an all-Haitian parish—lakay nou—allows the lay faithful to replicate the prayer groups to which they belonged in Haiti, including the Legion of Mary, the Holy Family, and the Charismatic group. According to Gérard, the numerous small prayer groups within Notre Dame bring people together, make them aware of other people’s problems, and get them to work together. As a result, Notre Dame has the largest number of participants—sometimes hundreds—who attend PACT’s citywide events. As Richard Wood argues, the greatest contribution of faith-based community-organizing events may not be the particular political victories they claim or the number of people they motivate to attend political events, but simply the fact that such groups place great value on political participation, and thereby “get people to think politically, fi nd meaning in being politically engaged, and invite others to an understanding of human life that makes politics interesting and compelling.”35

Political Advocacy Another form of political advocacy is done, not at the grassroots level, but rather by members of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy and clergy. Advocacy on behalf of Haitian migrants began in the late 1970s, before the Toussaint Center and Notre Dame were oYcially founded. Perhaps one of the unique features of the Haitian community of Miami compared to other Haitian communities such as those of New York, Montreal, or Paris is that, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the rapid influx of Haitian boat people created a humanitarian crisis. In fact, so

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many Haitians came by boat to South Florida that by 1978, thousands were being held in the Krome Detention Center in Miami awaiting adjudication of their asylum claims. Space became so tight that many of the asylum-seekers had to be housed in outdoor camps. Religious leaders can sometimes transition between public and private spaces in unique ways. In the late 1970s, the archbishop of Miami was moved to greater action by a visit to the Krome Detention Center, exemplifying how members of the Catholic hierarchy became involved with political and human rights issues in the Haitian community. One day at Notre Dame, Alice St. Jean, a longtime staff member, recounted how one day in 1978, she had accompanied Archbishop McCarthy to celebrate Mass for Haitians being held in detention, with their fate in the United States unclear. Not all of the Haitians could be accommodated indoors, so Archbishop McCarthy celebrated Mass for the refugees out among the tents that had been set up to lodge them. Alice described how, during the consecration of the Eucharist, the most sacred part of the Catholic Mass, the skies opened up and rain started pouring down, forcing the archbishop to halt the Mass. Standing in mud and water up to his ankles, the archbishop seemed to realize more than ever before that these Haitian boat people could not be kept long in such harsh conditions. Archbishop McCarthy’s personal encounter with the Haitians’ miserable conditions strengthened his advocacy for Haitians, and he joined other voices in Miami, including those of some African American pastors and leaders of Haitian organizations, in publicly advocating for Haitians’ human rights, in particular their right to be considered for political asylum and to be treated more humanely while their fate was being determined. The archbishop’s requests were not unique, but the Catholic Church’s hierarchical structure and its preexisting network of charity programs contributed to making it stand out among other institutions and leaders that emerged in support of Haitian refugees. After World War II, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops organized a section on Migration and Refugee Services to monitor immigration

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policy and work with the legislative and executive branches of government on specific laws or particular cases.36 In the case of Haitians, for example, relying on information from clergy and the archbishop of Miami, the staff of Migration and Refugee Services helped the U.S. Catholic bishops issue several important statements about the plight of Haitian boat people, which helped make the political climate more welcoming to Haitians.37 On several occasions, the staff of Migration and Refugee Services at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, DC, arranged for Archbishop McCarthy and other clergy to travel to Washington to speak directly with federal legislators on behalf of Haitian refugees. The personal relationships between the staff of Migration and Refugee Services at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, and the recognition that their public statements arose out of private interactions with those concerned, gave Catholic leaders a strong voice in the debates about government policy toward Haitians.38 In addition to their national-level lobbying, leaders of the Catholic Church also worked with local political leaders in Miami to create a more welcoming climate for Haitians. According to Irwin Stotsky, a University of Miami law professor who played a prominent part in the legal proceedings that advocated greater rights of Haitian boat people, the lobbying and testimony of Catholic Church oYcials in Miami served as a great support for the pending litigation in support of Haitian boat people. As religious leaders, clergy like Archbishop McCarthy or Monsignor Bryan Walsh, the head of Catholic Charities in Miami during the 1980s, could gain access to the centers where Haitians were detained and then inform journalists and even judges and politicians about their conditions. Clergy also helped explain to the public the political causes of Haitian migration, which considerably strengthened popular sympathy for Haitians’ asylum claims.39 Their status and legitimacy as religious leaders allowed them to go back and forth between the public and the private realms. Catholic leaders not only advocated for Haitians’ rights but also mobilized their own resources to help resettle those Haitians who

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were granted asylum or at least released pending a decision on their cases. The local Miami oYce of Migration and Refugee Services began directly to help resettle those Haitians who did have legitimate asylum claims. Meanwhile, Archbishop McCarthy gave Father Wenski financial resources and a building to found the Toussaint Center, which then grew steadily over time. As the pressures causing people to leave Haiti have waxed and waned since Haitian refugees first started coming to Miami in the 1970s, advocacy and social services were pursued simultaneously. Like other undocumented immigrants in the United States, and as with Haitians in Montreal and Paris, the enormous amount of political lobbying on their behalf has achieved only modest results in obtaining legal status for those claiming refugee or asylum status. Despite the fact that lobbying by the Catholic Church and numerous other groups helped produce several key legal victories for Haitians, many thousands more Haitians have not had their asylum cases resolved and remain undocumented migrants. Thus, the need for different forms of institutional mediation—political advocacy as well as social services—is likely to continue.

Opening the Toussaint Center As mentioned earlier, the Toussaint Center and Notre Dame were founded at the same time, by the same people, and as part of a unified vision to bring both social and spiritual care to the Haitian community. Although it started with few resources, the Toussaint Center quickly grew to be the largest service center of any kind in Little Haiti. Understanding how preexisting structures of the Catholic Church channeled resources to the Toussaint Center and how the Center developed cooperative relationships with government oYcials and charitable foundations helps explain its success. Even though Catholic leaders of the Haitian communities of Montreal and Paris founded similar types of agencies to support Haitians’ adaptation, the weaker collaboration with government agencies there limited the success of their efforts.

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Several factors contributed to the Toussaint Center’s growth, including work by volunteers and skilled lay leaders at Notre Dame, financial support from the archdiocese of Miami, and the eventual cooperation of local political oYcials. The Toussaint Center first opened its doors by combining volunteer work from the Haitian community itself with resources from the archdiocese, but it grew because its leaders were increasingly able to obtain local, state, and government funds for their projects. When thousands of Haitians began to arrive annually in Miami in the late 1970s, virtually no government agencies were working directly in the Haitian community or funding Haitian community organizations. The financial resources and building space donated by the archdiocese of Miami gave the Haitian community a small foundation upon which to build its own faith-based and community-based institution to mediate their adaptation. People like Alice St. Jean, Gérard Péan, and numerous other lay leaders had ample experience working in social programs in Haiti and helped Father Wenski start and build numerous programs. The Toussaint Center initially brought together these resources—Haitians’ volunteer work, a physical space (buildings), and the financial resources of the Catholic Church—that provided this poor immigrant group with a welcoming structure to support Haitians’ initial settlement and adaptation. Next, we also have to look outside the Haitian community to the political advocacy and mediation of Archbishop McCarthy and Father Wenski. The leaders of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center knew they had to attempt to change the broader social context if they were to better address Haitians’ adaptation in the United States. As described already, church leaders became advocates for more favorable immigration policies toward Haitians, and the same leaders also developed social programs and looked for opportunities to obtain government funding for those programs. Although the church mobilized volunteer work and provided start-up resources, the acquisition of outside funding—most of it from various government agencies—allowed the Toussaint Center to grow. In order to ensure that government funds only go to support

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social services, and not to religious services, the Toussaint Center and Notre Dame are administratively separate entities, even though for many years, Father Wenski directed both. When it was started, leaders of the Toussaint Center had only a general idea of their objectives. Its growth came from utilizing first archdiocesan and then government funds to turn grassroots, volunteer initiatives— like teaching English and teaching Creole literacy—into structured programs. For example, the Toussaint Center’s English-language program began meeting at St. Mary’s Cathedral even before the Haitian community had their own church, but it grew substantially when this program obtained funding from Miami–Dade County and moved into the Toussaint Center. Second, given that so many Haitians arrived in Miami undocumented and applied for asylum, the Jesuit Refugee Service paid for a lawyer to begin a legal services program at the Toussaint Center. Randy McGrorty, who began the legal services project at the Toussaint Center and still directed it during my fieldwork in 2002, recounted to me how he had begun the Legal Services Project with three volunteers, some small funds from the Jesuit Refugee Service, and a shared desk and a single telephone at the Toussaint Center, saying: [When we began] we really had no desks, just sort of extra desks and telephones. We didn’t even really have a plan. We just set up shop and people came, and we got paid with some money that we made [from modest client fees], at first. But there was such a need. . . . When people really wanted to provide legal services and funding became available and they wanted to target the Haitian community, we were there and operating, and so we were a beneficiary of that. That’s really how we got our first state funding. It’s hard to get money for start-up [NGOs], because you never know if it’s going to succeed. But we had somehow survived for a couple of years, and then it just grew and grew.

By 2002, the legal services agency that had started with volunteers at the Toussaint Center had grown to thirty-five staff members and had expanded its oYces to two other locations in Miami–Dade County. It

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now serves immigrants of all nationalities, although its oYce in Little Haiti near the Toussaint Center serves mostly Haitian clients. Under the umbrella of Catholic Charities of Miami, the Legal Services project receives funding from Catholic Charities, along with federal funds and money from several private foundations. A third program, Job Placement Services, started at the Toussaint Center, grew so large that by 2002, with the aid of county and state funding, it moved into its own building in Little Haiti with a staff of fifteen and a weekly clientele numbering in the hundreds. A fourth program, the day-care center, followed a similar pattern. When the Haitian community first converted a Catholic girls’ high school to become the home of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center, the archdiocese already had a small day-care center nearby, mostly serving Haitian children. Seeing an opportunity to expand it, archdiocesan oYcials moved the day-care center into the spacious first floor of the former high school building. Although the day-care center began with just two classrooms of children, once it opened its doors, word spread around Little Haiti, and the demand for enrollment increased rapidly. The director of the day-care center described to me how the center applied for and received funds from Head Start and United Way; meanwhile, the archdiocese invested more than half a million dollars to renovate the day-care facilities. By 2002, the day-care center had ten classrooms, with twenty children in each, for a total of two hundred children, 95 percent of whom were Haitian. A fifth program was the Creole literacy program, which, like other programs at the Toussaint Center, began small with volunteer workers and then expanded, attracting substantial outside funding. When he arrived from Haiti, Gérard Péan, Notre Dame’s liaison with PACT, replicated the Creole literacy program he had learned about in Haiti. After a few years, Miami–Dade Public Schools provided funding for this program, in addition to funding the English-language instruction. Other instructors who, like Gérard, had participated in Project Alpha in Haiti, continued to teach Creole literacy classes.

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These five programs—English, Creole literacy, job placement, legal services, and day care—are the largest programs that have been started at the Toussaint Center. The Toussaint Center’s other programs, although they do not have as many clients, include elderly services, emergency services, youth development, and acculturation–civic education. Before legal services and job placement moved to separate locations, more than 1,000 clients came to the Toussaint Center daily. During the spring of 2002, the traYc at the Toussaint Center had slowed to around 600 clients a day, though this number may have decreased a bit more when later the English-language program merged with another nearby English-language school. Over time, the Toussaint Center has come to rely less on volunteer work and more on paid employees and government support. According to both Father Wenski and the director of the Toussaint Center, Emile Viard, by 2002, around 80 percent of the Toussaint Center’s funding came from government funds. However, without the numerous forms of support provided by Catholic Charities of the archdiocese of Miami, such as building maintenance and rent-free land and buildings, the Toussaint Center probably would never have flourished. Perhaps most important to the Toussaint Center’s ability to compete for and obtain outside grants is the fact that the accountants at Catholic Charities administer all of the funds the Toussaint Center receives. Thus, with the support of professional charitable organizations like Catholic Charities, which has long been in the business of cooperating with the government, the Toussaint Center can overcome one of the major obstacles blocking many small organizations from obtaining outside funding.40 If most of the funding for the programs at the Toussaint Center currently comes from government sources, is the Toussaint Center really necessary? In other words, couldn’t government agencies simply set up shop in Little Haiti and have the same growth and success in reaching those in need? Let me offer several responses to this important question. When Haitians first began arriving en masse in Miami, government agencies

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simply were not working with Haitians—it was the church’s volunteers, skilled lay leaders, and clergy who initiated needed programs among a largely unwelcomed and isolated immigrant group, and, at least initially, church funding paid for these programs. Once the government turned its attention to the Haitian community, the Toussaint Center had already opened its doors, established trust with the Haitian community, and successfully served thousands of people in its many programs. Government agencies could not so easily have established this trust among Haitians. First of all, because of the often repressive government in Haiti, Haitians are accustomed to turn to the church rather than the state when they need help. Haitians like those profiled in this chapter identify the Toussaint Center as part of their own culture and community; it is part of lakay nou. The state and its bureaucracies seem far away and unfriendly. Second, undocumented immigrants are unlikely to turn to a state agency for support, because they fear being deported. Even the many Haitians who do have legal status know that they are more likely to undergo severe questioning at a government agency than at the Toussaint Center, and they prefer to avoid these diYculties. In contrast to the distance between Haitians and state bureaucracies, the Toussaint Center and Notre Dame share the same property, and most of the program directors at the Toussaint Center are familiar faces at Notre Dame’s religious services, which generates trust among the population they seek to serve. Although much of the Toussaint Center’s funding comes from the government, because the programs are administered by the Center, its clients often perceive that it is the church, not the government, helping them. To illustrate how many Haitians see the two institutions as really one entity, many clients call the director of the Toussaint Center “Father Viard” even though he is not a priest. Not all of the clients of the Toussaint Center are Catholic, and no one is required to attend any religious services in order to have access to its social services. However, many of the clients at the Toussaint Center clearly seek to strengthen their spiritual life at Notre Dame on Sundays; others attend daily Mass or a prayer group during the

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week when they come for English class, Creole class, or to drop their children at day care. Although no one is obliged to attend church in order to receive services from the Toussaint Center, having the two institutions in one place strengthens the missions of each. Even a large government welfare agency could not combine the spiritual and material care provided for in this dual institutional setting. The Toussaint Center is thus located in the geographical and spiritual heart of Little Haiti and at the center of a network of secular resources (such as United Way), church entities such as Catholic Charities and Jesuit Refugee Service, and government agencies such as Head Start, FEMA, and the Miami–Dade Public Schools. Mediating institutions combine a strong local community with substantial outside financial support to bring an isolated group into contact with its host environment and improve their chances at successful adaptation. If church leaders had gone no further than to provide spiritual guidance, they would not have fulfilled their mission to influence the social context around them. Without the political advocacy of the mediating institution, in this case, the Catholic Church, it is not clear the state would have been able to bridge the class, race, and language divides between its institutions and new Haitian residents of Miami. In fact, in the Haitian communities of Montreal and Paris, the state’s approach to Haitians’ mediating institutions is best characterized as conflict and invisibility, respectively, and the bridge between newcomers and the native society remains largely unconstructed, hampering Haitians’ successful adaptation. What, if anything, makes the Toussaint Center unique among other service organizations in Little Haiti? First, as already noted, the donation of land and buildings from the archdiocese of Miami clearly provided a large, stable base from which to operate. As leaders of other associations said, no other secular agency in Little Haiti could rely on church subsidies to begin operating; no other agency could be immune to worries about paying rent. Second, although the secular agencies and the Toussaint Center share the same potential clients, even the leaders of the secular agencies agree that the close association between Notre

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Dame and the Toussaint Center makes the Center more accessible to most clients. For example, Ringo Cayard, who has been working in the Haitian community since 1975, and who has served as the director of the Haitian-American Foundation, Inc., explained, “[In Haiti] the church is like sacred. You don’t mess with the church. That’s the Haitian mentality.” Haitians are more likely to trust the church than a secular or government organization, he aYrmed, and on top of that, Notre Dame and Father Wenski had earned such a reputation for defending Haitians that everyone arriving from Haiti hears of Notre Dame, and many go there first when they need assistance. Local government oYcials in Miami consciously sought out cooperation both from the leaders of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center to support their own efforts. For example, Dr. Lumane Claude, a firstgeneration Haitian immigrant to the United States, directs the Miami City government’s oYce in Little Haiti that tries to increase contact between residents and the government. In order to carry out her job of making Little Haiti’s residents understand how the government can serve them, Dr. Claude relies heavily on information and contacts provided by leaders of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center. Although she believes firmly that in order for Haitians to adapt successfully to American society, they need to learn to trust the government, she also understands that mediating institutions often help individuals learn to trust the state. Both because of the history of past political repression in Haiti and because of how the U.S. government initially treated the Haitians in Miami, she recognized, Haitians trust the church more than the government. Dr. Claude explained: “The church is the only place people can really trust. . . . You see the priest if you don’t have food. Hey, you’re not going to the government, you’re not going to the social services. It’s a shame to go to those places, but it’s okay to tell the church that you have a problem. They [Haitians] are not thinking of social services, they’re thinking of the church.” Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center are successful because they combine the cul-

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tural mediation of religious beliefs and practices with the institutional mediation of the advocacy and social services of the Toussaint Center. Although other churches in Little Haiti strive to form similar types of programs, Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center are unique because of the range and size of the programs they offer. Government oYcials and leaders of secular agencies know that Haitian immigrants trust the church. In essence, they recognize the important cultural mediation of the church, so they look to the church when they want to reach the community, not just for programs, but also for symbolic recognition. For example, during my research at Notre Dame, people such as Dr. Claude and other political and civic leaders frequently came to speak with leaders of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center to solicit support for their civic or social initiatives. On numerous occasions, local politicians also attended religious services at Notre Dame on important Haitian or religious feast days, such as January 1 (Haitian Independence Day and an important Catholic holiday), May 18 (Haitian Flag Day), or the bicentenary of Haitian independence celebrated on January 1, 2004. The presence of government oYcials at numerous of these religious and civic festivals signifies that the mediating function of the Toussaint Center and Notre Dame cannot be reduced simply to a partnership in providing social services. Rather, recognizing the importance of religion to creating meaning in the Haitian community, local politicians visit these communities as a sign of their acceptance of them in Miami and as a way to reach out to Haitians in their own environment. Given how government agencies initially treated Haitians in the 1970s, one might not have predicted that Anglo and Cuban American politicians would sit through a three-hour ceremony in a language they cannot understand. The political lobbying and social service provision at Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center thus helped Haitians adapt in Miami both by bringing in needed social services and by representing them in the public realm. What else makes Notre Dame unique? Compared to other types of Haitian ethnic associations, such as a theater group, hometown asso-

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ciation, or nonprofit service agency, Notre Dame has regular, stable membership, which helps build trust between members. In addition, Notre Dame defi ned its mission as being a church for the poorest Haitians who were rejected elsewhere—not only by the host society but also by other Haitians. However, because of its special mission to provide a welcoming place for the poorest Haitians, many middle- and upper-middle-class Haitians attend Notre Dame as well and lead youth groups, Sunday catechism classes, or civic participation groups. Such cross-class interaction rarely occurs in other kinds of associations. Other events, such as cultural events organized as part of Haitian heritage month, or a dance organized by the Jacmel Hometown Association, or a civic rally, share some characteristics with activities at Notre Dame. They are generally conducted in Creole, celebrate some element of Haitian culture, and can bring together several hundred people. However, many of the secular cultural events I went to had low attendance and did not appeal across classes and generations. In addition, as Richard Wood argues, although many organizations claim to represent and organize members of poor communities, a shared culture has to be very strong to withstand all of the ups and downs of political organizing.41 Few organizations other than churches can create such strong interpersonal bonds to overcome the numerous class, race, language, and political divisions in the Haitian community. The bonds among members at Notre Dame did not come so much from sharing a political vision as from sharing a belief that God helps you and also requires you help others. Leaders of civic or cultural events do not command the same kind of authority among Haitians as a religious leader, a fact recognized by many secular leaders in Miami, Montreal, and Paris themselves. Furthermore, even though secular events certainly attempt to provide a sense of meaning, this meaning constructed at religious events goes right to the heart of questions about existence, suffering, and struggle, all things in the forefront of Haitian migrants’ minds. For example, the cycle of suffering, death, and resurrection epitomized by the Easter celebrations has no clear parallel in secular terms.

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CONCLUSIONS

For people with little material or political power, their faith that God takes care of them, and that the Virgin Mary hears their prayers and intercedes for them, gives them the strength to continue in their struggles. Leaders of Notre Dame—both ordained clergy and lay leaders— try to shape Haitians’ Charismatic Renewal–inspired religious piety and their liberation-theology-inspired social-action movements into one combined spiritual and social mission. Father Jean-Mary's “theology of grace and hope,” Gérard’s statement that “people need a vision,” and Stephanie’s comment that “faith without action is no good” all point to the close ties between prayer and action, or personal transformation and social justice. Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center represent two elements of a closely tied mission: one a spiritual transformation and one a social transformation. Members and leaders of Notre Dame spoke of social transformation needing to occur alongside spiritual transformation, and they prayed for this transformation for themselves, their families, and their enemies. In talking about their adaptation in the United States, members of Notre Dame generally spoke in narratives about prayer, faith in God, and waiting patiently while trying to fight for important social goals. Faith that transforms disadvantaged immigrants into givers forms an indispensable element of their adaptation. Many Haitians at Notre Dame have little money, do not speak English well, and know that others look down on them. Contact between Haitians and secular ethnic associations or government agencies—if and when it occurs—flows in one direction: from the person with more resources to the one with less. In a church community, everyone can—indeed must—give something, even if that something is nothing more than volunteer time and prayers for others. Thus, even if parishes or congregations become involved in groups like PACT or their leaders found social service agencies like the Toussaint Center, such political action and social service provision

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does not capture the most unique contribution of religion to immigrant adaptation: providing a place for individual and collective prayer that opens the door to individual and group transformations. Although one might be tempted to think of mediating institutions simply as a way to provide material resources to the poor or immigrants, mediating institutions like the Toussaint Center are linked to communities of worship like Notre Dame that provide a sense of meaning and identity, especially for those who see state institutions as distant and unfriendly megastructures. It is first by maintaining close connections to the dominant forms of cultural mediation in a particular community that mediating institutions can claim to be legitimate public interlocutors for those they claim to represent. Notre Dame illustrates one way in which social action and intense prayer experiences can complement rather than compete with each other. If in some cases prayer detracts from social action or vice versa, we might find that the reason lies more in the leadership style of the pastors and lay leaders rather than in a contradiction between prayer and action. Although clergy and lay leaders at Notre Dame admitted that some people may use prayer as a refuge from having to confront problems in their lives, prayer gave the majority of people greater courage to face their problems as individuals and as a group. The people I interviewed did not think it was irrational to call on supernatural grace to bring about change in this world; in their minds, prayer precedes rather than supplants action. Thus, the Toussaint Center is best understood, not just as one social service agency among others in Little Haiti, but as the public face of a two-tiered institution. If Notre Dame is lakay nou, the home and heart of the Haitian community, the Toussaint Center stands firmly with one foot inside the Haitian community and one foot outside: mediating with local, state, and federal government oYcials on behalf of Haitians. It is hard to separate out the public activities of the Toussaint Center and the private worship and faith of members of Notre Dame, because the leaders of the two institutions set out to create a place simulta-

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neously of private worship and of public advocacy and social service. As there were no government structures to welcome Haitians in the beginning—only to examine them and return them—it is also hard to separate advocacy and service provision. What has been the impact of this mediation? First, the Catholic Church’s institutional mediation—political advocacy, social services, and faith-based community organizing—dramatically altered the context that welcomed Haitians in Miami. Although Haitians have by no means already all moved into the middle class, there is no doubt that this institutional mediation has kept many more Haitians out of the worst forms of poverty and misery. The term “mediating institution” points to the fact that such nongovernmental efforts are just one part of the larger adaptation of Haitian migrants. Government policies in health, education, and many other areas clearly influence Haitians’ adaptation, and the leaders of the Toussaint Center understand that their mission is to connect the Haitian community to valuable external resources. The strength of religious and service institutions like Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center is itself a sign of Haitians’ successful adaptation, because having a public presence gives them a sense of belonging in their new society, and this sense of belonging interacts positively with their socioeconomic adaptation. How do the forms of mediation and their impacts differ across national contexts? Might the state alone in other contexts be able to bring about similar cultural and institutional mediation for Haitian immigrants? As subsequent chapters on Montreal and Paris will show, despite a larger welfare state and more state-sponsored programs to welcome immigrants, Haitians in those cities face growing challenges of unemployment and school failure. The dominant models of churchstate interactions in the other two cases explored in this book impede the types of institutional interactions that have helped Haitians in Miami lay the groundwork for better socioeconomic outcomes and a greater public voice and sense of belonging.

Ch a p t er fou r

Montreal “Hold on Tight, Don’t Let Go”

Despite remarkably similar forms of cultural mediation across national borders, the institutional mediation of Catholic leaders in Montreal and Miami differs greatly. Cultural and institutional changes in Quebec radically altered both levels of private practice of religion and how religious institutions—in particular, the Catholic Church—engage the public sphere. A long history of English-French ethnic tensions in Quebec eventually led to the 1960s Quiet Revolution in Quebec, which among other things, caused the Catholic Church to retreat from the public sphere and produced gradual governmental disengagement from religious institutions. Although some Catholic leaders initially mediated on behalf of Haitians in Montreal, the Catholic Church’s institutional mediation weakened substantially over time because of the underlying church-state conflict. Despite differences at the level of institutional interactions, like Haitians in Miami, Haitians in Montreal employ religious narratives as a kind of cultural mediation to find a sense of belonging in their new homes. As in Miami, Jesus’ suffering and resurrection occupy center stage in the theology of Haitian Catholics in Montreal, who often noted that their Christian faith enables them to give to others spiritually, creating a sense of self-worth. 105

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As in Miami, Catholic leaders in Montreal, too, perceive a dual responsibility to care for both Haitians’ spiritual and social welfare. Yet mediating institutions like the Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community of Montreal face increasing diYculties in obtaining state support. As community leaders in Montreal express growing concern about the long-term adaptation of Haitians in Montreal, in particular, second-generation Haitian youth, it is unclear what kinds of community mediating institutions could support their successful adaptation.

“I GET DOW N ON MY K NEES A ND PR AY”

One afternoon, I sat down at a coffee shop in Montreal North with Arnaud, the choir director at Notre Dame d’Haiti in Montreal. Arnaud migrated to Montreal in 2001 when he was twenty-eight. During the first hour of our conversation, he answered my questions about his education, his social networks, and his involvement with the church in Haiti and in Quebec. After I turned off my tape recorder and we prepared to leave, he shuZed his feet and looked down, acting like he wanted to tell me something else but was having a hard time saying it. He stammered a bit when he asked whether I had heard of a journalist who had been brutally murdered in Haiti a few years prior. Arnaud’s previously joyous and inspired expression now appeared sullen. The real reason he had come to Montreal was not to pursue more education or better work opportunities, but rather because he had feared for his life after that journalist, who was his cousin, was dismembered with a machete by a gang of hoodlums unhappy with his critiques of Aristide’s government. For someone like Arnaud, an intellectual and a leader forced to leave Haiti out of fear, successfully adapting to life in Montreal does not mean just finding a job; he also longs to create a sense of meaning that links his past and his future. Leading the choir at Notre Dame d’Haiti in Montreal helped him construct a meaningful narrative about his life while he searched for opportunities for social mobility.

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Despite the sub-freezing temperatures during nearly six months of the year, nearly forty Haitians journey every Friday and Saturday to Notre Dame d’Haiti for choir rehearsal led by Arnaud. Arnaud himself admitted that he finds it extremely hard to venture out in the below-freezing weather, but said he makes the effort to attend Mass and choir rehearsal, because the choir members rely on him. Even when he is feeling down, he always goes to Notre Dame anyway. He finds warmth there—by which, he explained, he meant close human relations, not just an escape from the cold temperatures. Our interview took place shortly after one particularly snowy Friday evening in mid-November, and Arnaud marveled at the high turnout at rehearsal just a few days prior. He emphasized that people attend choir rehearsal to reinforce their faith, or simply their relationship with God. “If they [the choir members] didn’t have a strong faith in God, I don’t know why they would have gone [to choir rehearsal]. Despite all their diYculties, they go to rehearsal because they know that, in the end, the Lord is the source of truth.” Like Wilbur in Miami and many other Haitians in Montreal, Arnaud drifts between hope and frustration. Given his inability to fi nd paid work in Montreal, he constantly fights discouragement. When talking about how he deals with discouragement, his countenance became very serious and he said, “The best solution [for discouragement] is to talk with God. When I feel frustrated, I get down on my knees and pray to the Lord. I ask God to give me strength and he does. I ask God to make direct interventions in my life. Even before I have fi nished praying, I feel like he has given me strength already.” To illustrate how God always answers his prayers, Arnaud explained how a friend once called while he was in the middle of a desperate plea to God, and just hearing his friend’s uplifting voice on the other end of the line felt like an answered prayer. Not only does Arnaud use his faith to create a personal narrative, as a composer, he writes songs for the choir at Notre Dame, which have become part of the community’s repertoire of meaning. For more than a month before Christmas in 2002, the choir practiced a song Arnaud

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had written that questions the meaning of Christmas. Arnaud’s song asks, in Creole: “Christmas, what are you bringing to Haitians? We are all in darkness, and we don’t know which way to go. Christmas, what are you bringing to Haitians? We are all in darkness, come save us.” To explain the meaning behind that song, Arnaud said: “Christmas brings a lot of things, a lot of gifts to others, but we ask the Lord what does he give to Haitians? We don’t know.” Demonstrating his confidence that his prayers will be answered somehow, he added, “But he will answer us.” For Arnaud, questioning the meaning of Christmas leads him to a deeper understanding of his faith. If he could ask the Lord to bring something to Haiti this Christmas, he said, it would be a peaceful end to the divisions and confl ict. To summarize what his faith means to him, Arnaud concluded the interview by saying forcefully: “Nowadays, we need a password for everything—our cell phones, our computers. For Christians, the password to life is just Jesus.” Haitian immigrants in Montreal like Arnaud make sense of their private and public space in society by engaging in prayer as a way of self-transformation, and they saw themselves as givers to others in society and not just recipients of external aid. The theological doctrine of the incarnation firmly defines Christianity as a historical religion for them; they emphasized how God lived in the world in the person of Jesus Christ. Like Arnaud, they believe that God continues to act in the world, as evidenced by providential acts and good works inspired by the Holy Spirit. The similarities between the narratives of Haitian Catholics in Miami and Montreal are evident; the differences lie in how their faith gets turned into action.

RELIGION A ND PUBLIC LIFE IN CA NA DA A ND QUEBEC

How did Haitian clergy and lay leaders find support for their initiatives from preexisting Catholic institutions? What barriers did Haitian leaders face as they created new institutions? Before returning to the Catholic

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Church’s institutional mediation for Haitians in Montreal, let us first explore religion in contemporary Canada, in particular Quebec. In its early history, religious institutions in Canada—notably, the Catholic Church in Quebec and mainline Protestant denominations in anglophone Canada—helped form both national identity and state structures. Rapid secularization occurred in Canada beginning in the 1960s, however, both in terms of a decline in religious practice and the decreasing public importance of religious institutions. Relatively little recent research has been done on how religious institutions engage the public sphere in Canada today. Several recent works attempt to provide a new theoretical framework, or at least a theoretical justification, for reexamining religion and public life in Canada. In two volumes that resulted from a comparative study of religion and politics in the United States and Canada, led by David Lyon and Marguerite Van Die of the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University in Ontario, both of the lead scholars on this project argue that most scholars and journalists long ago stopped questioning the secularization thesis—which asserts that religious beliefs and institutions will slowly lose nearly all their influence on society—as it applies to Canada.1 Because of the widespread acceptance of the secularization thesis, Lyon writes, “by and large, the idea that religious commitments affect public life is scarcely raised today in most Canadian media and academic accounts.”2 Similarly, Van Die states that “not only has the image of Christian Canada faded into history, but the very thought that religious institutions and beliefs might have a role to play in public life strikes many today as archaic, if not problematic.”3 Van Die and Lyon point out that uncritical acceptance of the secularization thesis produced a kind of amnesia about the historical contributions of religious institutions and ideals to public institutions and social norms in Canada. In addition, scholars may overlook how religious institutions and ideals continue to influence institutions and norms in Canada, albeit in different ways than before. The unquestioned acceptance of the secularization thesis obscures modern debates about religion and public life, because “secularization, understood as religious decline,

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deflects attention from ways that the religious impulse is relocated, and religious activities restructured.”4 Rather than seeing secularization as implying that the state entirely replaces the functions of religious beliefs and institutions, Van Die argues that we can conceive of secularization as having altered the boundaries between the public and private and between the church and the state and suggests that more research on religion in Canada can shed light on how these boundaries are now being drawn. Catholicism in Quebec has been profoundly influenced by EnglishFrench ethnic divisions. Until very recently, Quebec was divided into English- and French-speaking communities, which largely lived, worked, studied, and worshipped in separate societies. To explain the long-standing ethnic divide between the French and English language groups of Quebec, we have to go back at least to the British conquest of Quebec in the 1750s. Although the majority of Quebec’s residents at the time were French-speaking and Catholic, an English-speaking and Protestant minority subsequently captured and held nearly all political and economic power for much of the next two hundred years. The language and religious differences that separated English and French Canadians in Quebec served as markers to enforce the economic and political exclusion of the majority French-speaking population. In fact, two hundred years of English domination largely explains the extraordinarily strong influence of the Catholic Church among the French Canadian population of Quebec during that time.5 The British did not seek to assimilate the French Canadians forcibly into their own institutions, and they conceded much authority over that population to the Catholic Church, which dominated not only religious life but many aspects of social life, such as education, trade unionism, and leisure, among French Canadians in Quebec for nearly two centuries.6 Scholars have offered multiple interpretations of the Catholic Church’s historical influence in Quebec. On the one hand, some have said that a separate French Canadian and Catholic Quebecois culture might not have survived without the Catholic Church. On the other hand, as in

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the French Revolution some 170 years earlier, the intellectuals who led the Quiet Revolution in Quebec accused the Catholic Church’s leaders of overemphasizing traditional values and creating obstacles to developing a modern Quebecois society and government. Roberto Perin describes how, before and increasingly during the Quiet Revolution, Quebecois intellectuals criticized the Catholic Church in Quebec as essentially opposed to modernization and progress. These intellectuals largely agreed that the Catholic Church in Quebec “had contributed to the intellectual, social, and even the political backwardness of their compatriots,” and some even accused the Catholic Church of running a theocracy in Quebec. Although some historians now argue that the Catholic Church was never as powerful in Quebec as such accusations imply, Perin nonetheless asserts that “a wide consensus still exists among liberal, nationalist and Marxian historians who hold the church responsible for the deficiencies of French Canadians as a North American people.”7 Perin conversely argues that the Catholic Church protected Quebec’s unique culture from British assimilation and therefore actually laid the groundwork for the Quiet Revolution. With the incorporation of Quebec into the Canadian federation, Britain sought to assimilate all French Canadians to British or anglophone culture, but “the goal of assimilation, however, miscarried largely because of the Quebec church.”8 To resist this assimilation, the Catholic Church strongly encouraged vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and church leaders also built numerous economic institutions, such as trade unions and credit associations. Perin argues that one should “marvel at the church’s ability to institutionalize French-Canadian culture in such a short period of time, as well as religion’s role in fashioning a cohesive and self-confident identity.” He further asserts that even if the architects of the Quiet Revolution do not acknowledge the Catholic Church’s important contributions to Quebecois identity and culture, “these were the foundations upon which the Quiet Revolution was built.” 9 Civil society institutions and a strong national identity, both of which, Perin argues,

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were closely tied to the Catholic Church, later provided a springboard for the same intellectuals who led the revolution against English domination and who dismantled the church’s public influence in Quebec. Thus, despite the fact that the Catholic Church acted as the guardian of French Quebecois society, culture, and language for hundreds of years, leaders of the Quiet Revolution sought to greatly reduce its influence. As a consequence of the modernization ideology and antireligious sentiment of the Quiet Revolution, religion was “abandoned as an area of study by most professional historians, who increasingly identified it with a sectarian and bigoted past.”10 In addition to removing the Catholic Church from its influential position in Quebec, the Quiet Revolution sought to redress inequalities created by two hundred years of English dominance in Quebec. One of the goals of the Quebecois nationalists who took power in the 1960s was to replace the political and economic dominance of the British and the cultural dominance of the Catholic Church with a modern, secular, Frenchspeaking government for Quebec. During the Quiet Revolution, Quebec’s education, health, and leisure institutions, and even trade unions, underwent rapid secularization. In just ten years, new French-speaking state bureaucracies replaced Catholic Church–sponsored schools, hospitals, unions, and leisure/recreation groups. Along with this institutional secularization, the numbers of clergy and members of religious orders dropped dramatically. In 1986, Quebec had 13,609 ordained priests, along with 34,571 female members of religious orders, but by 1997, there were only a total of 7,312 priests in all of Quebec, 86 percent of whom were over sixty. At the level of individual belief and practice, even if 85 percent of Quebecois still identify as Catholic, fewer than 10 percent practice regularly, and Catholic culture and religious authority does not hold a candle to what it was just a half century ago.11 The boundaries between church and state in Quebec have changed so radically that the religious field in Quebec today would be quite unrecognizable to someone who grew up there just two generations ago. What are these new boundaries between church and state in Quebec?

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Even though the Quiet Revolution produced conflict between government agencies and the mediating institutions of the Catholic Church, Catholic leaders still see the church as a legitimate representative of civil society, and one with suYcient experience and institutional forms to continue to shape the adaptation of immigrants such as Haitians. Relative to Miami, conflicts between the church and state in Montreal limit Catholic leaders’ success in supporting Haitians’ adaptation. Nonetheless, the ways in which the Catholic Church attempts to mediate for Haitian immigrants illustrates one way in which Catholic leaders see themselves engaged in a struggle for survival, la survivance, a term used by Quebecois nationalists to describe their struggle against English dominance.

H A ITI A N I M MIGR ATION TO QUEBEC

Other than influencing how religious institutions support Haitians’ adaptation in Montreal, what does the Quiet Revolution—a secularizing nationalist social and political movement—have to do with the onset of Haitian immigration to Quebec? The Quiet Revolution led to many state policies to strengthen the French-language culture of the province, including opening the door for French-speaking professionals, among them many Haitians, to immigrate to Quebec. Since the 1960s, in a way that has few parallels in the United States, the Quebec government has used state policy to actively shape the composition and adaptation of the immigrant population, while at the same time slowly taking over the functions of religious institutions and attempting to break nearly all state ties with the formerly influential Catholic Church.

Immigrant Professionals When the new French-speaking government in Quebec established educational and health institutions to replace the formerly private (i.e., Catholic) ones, a sudden vacuum resulted. At that time, the French-

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speaking Quebecois had relatively low levels of education and were unable to fill all the new positions rapidly being created. In response to this mismatch between various government agencies’ labor needs and the available supply of high-skilled labor, the Quebec government turned to recruiting highly skilled immigrants.12 Starting in the 1960s, the Quebec government actively encouraged French-speaking professionals from countries like Haiti to come to Quebec and used immigration policy to build French-speaking government bureaucracies. Given the importance of immigration to the province, a Ministry of Immigration was created in 1968 to coordinate Quebec’s immigration and immigrant adaptation policies. In 1991, the Quebec government went even further and acquired full independence from the Canadian federal government in selecting immigrants to Quebec. In most other Western nations with large immigrant populations, such as Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the central government decides most matters of immigration policy. This remarkable decentralization of immigration policy to the provincial level in Quebec further illustrates the importance Quebec government oYcials and intellectuals give to immigration and immigrant adaptation as part of their goal of preserving Quebec’s unique francophone identity. In this system where Quebec selects its own immigrants, Haitians with professional degrees score high in points because they speak French. Not only does Quebec’s immigration policy give priority to French speakers, but the Quebec government has also used public policy to encourage non-French-speaking immigrants to integrate into French Quebec society rather than English Quebec society. In fact, in order to reverse the trend in which many immigrants who arrived in Montreal during the 1960s and 1970s largely lived in English-speaking neighborhoods and participated in English-language institutions, the Quebec government developed assertive public policies to promote the use of the French language in public institutions, in commerce, and in schools. Thus, at the same time that immigrants transformed the visible landscape

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of Montreal, it changed from being a city that was apparently anglophone but had a majority francophone population to one where English speakers appeared to be the numerical minority they actually were and French speakers, the numerical majority but historical minority, dominated culture and politics.13 Just at the time when the Quiet Revolution was unfolding in Quebec in the 1960s, Haitian professionals and intellectuals were growing increasingly weary of François Duvalier’s failure to build a democracy in Haiti and were beginning to look outside of their homeland for work opportunities. Paradoxically, Haiti’s most nationalist government since its independence thus created a brain drain in which many highly educated Haitians eventually moved abroad to pursue greater work opportunities.14 By 2002, the class structures of the Haitian communities of Montreal and Miami did not seem very different. However, the public image of Haitians was greatly influenced by the first immigrants who arrived in each city. Media portrayals of Miami’s Haitian community focused more on boat people than on professionals, whereas in the Quebec media, there was considerable coverage of Haitian professionals in Montreal who had participated in the original brain drain and gone on to be very successful. Whereas Haitian leaders in Miami have to struggle to convince anyone that Haiti does indeed have educated professionals, the opposite is true in Montreal; and because their image of the Haitian nation and people had been formed by the earlier wave of professionals, many Quebecois and even some government oYcials were surprised when low-skilled, Creole-speaking Haitians began to arrive. Although a small number of Haitian professionals moved to former French and Belgian colonies in Africa, and others moved to France, many favored Quebec for several reasons. Clearly, Quebec is closer to Haiti than to France or Africa, making it easier for this early group of Haitian professionals to engage in numerous transnational activities, most significantly, promoting democracy in Haiti.15 Although the United States also opened its doors to non-European immigrants in

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the 1960s, Haitian professionals who moved to Quebec could work in French, the language in which they had been educated. Furthermore, the Quebec government specifically recruited Haitian professionals, even placing advertisements in Haitian newspapers encouraging Haitian immigration and promoting a welcoming image of Quebec. Quebecois tourists and Catholic missionaries who frequently visited or worked in Haiti during the 1960s and 1970s further strengthened Quebec’s welcoming image in Haiti.16 Another reason Haitians flocked to Quebec undoubtedly had to do with fear of racial discrimination in the United States. As opposed to moving to New York or Miami, moving to a city largely devoid of black-white racial tensions must have seemed quite attractive to Haitian professionals aware of the tumultuous events of the civil rights movement in the United States.17 Montreal did have ethnic tensions; however, as described above, these tensions emerged from social inequalities based on language differences rather than on racial differences.18 In the 1960s, when the civil rights movement was creating social unrest in urban areas of the United States, long-standing tensions between anglophone and francophone residents of Quebec also produced much social unrest. However, inasmuch as Haitians tended to mix more with French-speaking than English-speaking Quebec society, they posed no threat to the various state-sponsored initiatives to make Quebec a more visibly French-centered culture.19 Unlike the thousands of Haitian boat people who rapidly created a large Haitian community in Miami in just a few years, Haitian migration to Quebec began rather slowly. During the 1960s, approximately 1,000 Haitians migrated annually to Quebec. Quite unlike Haitians in Miami, the first Haitians who migrated to Montreal did not encounter racial or linguistic barriers to their adaptation. This earlier group of Haitian immigrants in Montreal adapted easily, both economically and culturally, because they spoke fluent French, were well educated, and found ample opportunities to work in an expanding public-sector economy. In

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addition to contributing to Quebecois society through their work, these professionals, students, and intellectuals formed a vibrant set of Haitian literary and cultural organizations, journals, and transnational political organizations, many of which still exist today.20 Among the Haitian intellectuals who migrated to Quebec in the 1960s were numerous Haitian priests, in particular members of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and the Congregation of the Holy Ghost (the Spiritains). These two religious orders were among the oldest and most influential male religious orders in Haiti, where Jesuits and Spiritains spearheaded numerous social justice projects. In carrying out their social justice work, many Jesuits and Spiritains directly denounced François Duvalier’s repressive political and economic policies, leading Duvalier to expel all members of these orders from Haiti in 1964 and 1969, respectively, and to shut many of their most important institutions, including the prestigious Collège San Marcial in Port-au-Prince, which was run by the Spiritains.21 Religious ties between Quebec and Haiti made Montreal an attractive place for Haitian priests and members of religious orders to seek exile yet also continue their work with Haitians. For example, many religious orders in Haiti fall under the juridical supervision of Jesuit or Spiritain provincial headquarters in Quebec, which means that Quebecois missionaries frequently work in Haiti and that Haitian men and women who want to enter religious life often complete part of their studies in Quebec. The social ties and practical knowledge generated by the movement of priests and nuns between Quebec and Haiti aided the later permanent settlement of some Haitian priests and many other Haitians in Montreal. Once in Montreal, many of these Haitian priests participated actively in the intellectual life of other Haitian exiles. In later years, when lowskilled Haitian immigrants outnumbered professional Haitian immigrants to Quebec, some of these clergy advocated for Haitian immigrants’ rights and started social programs to aid their adaptation. At first, however, these priests mostly blended in with numerous other Haitian

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intellectuals and leaders who worked to organize cultural and political events for Haitians in Quebec, while laboring arduously against the Duvaliers and for democracy in Haiti. In fact, changes in the class composition of Haitian immigration to Quebec altered the focus of many of the Haitian clergy who had arrived earlier. Mediating institutions were created, not for those Haitians who had no trouble speaking French and obtaining work visas and employment in the 1960s and early 1970s, but rather for the lower-skilled Haitians who followed their compatriots in subsequent years.

Working-Class Immigrants and Asylum-Seekers As economic and political conditions in Haiti deteriorated from the 1970s through the 1990s, Haitians topped the list of foreigners entering Quebec. By 2001, the 80,000 Haitians in Montreal comprised the largest nonwhite ethnic group in the city.22 Although Quebec continues to recruit French-speaking professionals to work in particular sectors of its economy, since the mid-1970s, the proportion of professionals among Haitian immigrants to Quebec has declined sharply. In their place, tens of thousands of middle- and lower-class Haitians have arrived in Quebec, confronted with many disadvantages relative, not only to native Quebecois, but also to earlier Haitian immigrants.23 At the time of the 2001 Canadian census, 45 percent of the Haitians in the country reported having less than a high school education.24 Because of both their lower educational background and an economic recession in Quebec, the rapid and successful adaptation of Haitian professionals and students that took place in the 1960s would not be matched by subsequent waves of Haitian immigrants. Beginning in the 1970s, Quebec underwent an economic recession that disproportionately affected new Haitian immigrants with low levels of human capital.25 For example, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, unemployment among Montreal’s blue-collar workers—including in the manufacturing sector, where many Haitians worked—rose to 30 percent. High unemployment hit Haitians particu-

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larly hard. In the 1990s, Quebec’s overall unemployment rate varied from 9 to 12 percent, but rose as high as 27 percent among Haitians.26 These newer Haitian immigrants also differed from earlier immigrants in that many more of them arrived in Quebec alone rather than with their families. Changes in Quebec’s immigration policy partially caused this change. Prior to 1972, Haitians could enter Canada as tourists and apply for work visas after their arrival. However, because of an economic downturn and growing unemployment, in 1972, the Canadian government started to require all potential immigrants to apply for visas in their home countries.27 This did not prevent low-skilled Haitians from seeking a brighter future in Quebec, but they frequently lacked enough money or legal status to move with their families and thus often began their journeys alone. As a result of this particular migration pattern, Haitian households in Montreal are more likely than non-Haitian households to be headed by a single parent, most often a woman. Because of their low levels of education, high unemployment, and the higher rate of female-headed single-parent households, in 2001, Haitians in Quebec had an average household income of $19,502 compared to $26,625 (Canadian dollars) for all households in Montreal.28 Looking only at the average income of all Haitians in Montreal might obscure some great inequalities within the total distribution of incomes, which can more clearly be seen by looking at data on the two neighborhoods with the greatest number of Haitians in Montreal, Montreal North and Saint-Michel. In 1996, in Montreal North, where approximately 10,000 Haitians lived, 32.3 percent of Haitians were unemployed. In addition, 56.4 percent of Haitian two-parent households and 77.6 percent of Haitian single-parent households in Montreal North were under the poverty line. The data for Saint-Michel, where another 10,000 Haitians lived, resemble those for Montreal North. In Saint-Michel, the incomes of 80 percent of single-parent and 62 percent of two-parent Haitian families fell under the poverty line in 2001. With exactly the same unemployment rate as that of Hai-

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tians in Montreal North—32.3 percent—Haitians in Saint-Michel are twice as likely to be unemployed as non-Haitians living in the same neighborhood.29 The censuses of the United States, Canada, and France ask slightly different questions, and each country draws the poverty line at different levels, making direct cross-national comparisons of Haitians’ socioeconomic status somewhat challenging. These data nonetheless show that, relative to nonimmigrants in all three cities where I did my research, many Haitians occupy an inferior socioeconomic position from which to begin their adaptation. By 2002, working-class Haitians clearly predominated among the new arrivals and were the majority of Haitians in Montreal. Unlike their predecessors, these working-class Haitians generally do not all speak French fluently, many have not finished high school, and their households are often headed by women. As a result of increasing numbers of low-skilled Haitians migrating to Quebec, both Haitian leaders in Montreal and the Quebec government realized that the rapid adaptation of professional Haitians would not be matched by those working-class Haitians who, partially as an unintended consequence of the government’s own recruitment policies, followed the path of their earlier compatriots seeking to escape political repression and a weak economy in Haiti. Given the levels of poverty in Haiti, it may not be too surprising that Haitian immigrants are poor relative to non-immigrants in the United States, Canada, and France. However, when presented with unquestionable evidence about poverty and unemployment among Haitians, many intellectuals pointed out that in Montreal or Paris, immigrants at least have access to many more social benefits than in Miami. However, it is not clear that immigrants such as Haitians know how to access those benefits, have the legal status needed to access such benefits, or would even apply for them if indeed eligible. Trying to compare poverty levels across nations always brings up debates about comparing different measures, but nonetheless, the perception of inequality between Haitians and others in Quebec was quite striking. Haitian leaders there generally

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expressed grave concerns about Haitians’ ability to find adequate housing, work, and educational opportunities. How do disadvantaged Haitian immigrants perceive and experience their own adaptation struggles? How do they develop cultural and institutional resources to address these problems? Given that, in Haiti, religious beliefs and religious institutions are central to education, social services, and social movements, how do different national contexts influence the ways in which these cultural schemas and institutional forms get transposed into new settings?

NOTRE DA ME D’H A ITI IN MONTREA L

Miami Haitian Catholics’ expressions of piety appear very similar to those encountered in Montreal. Some of the main themes that emerged from my observations of prayer groups, choir rehearsal, Mass, and individual interviews in Miami and Montreal were (1) embracing suffering as part of redemption; (2) personal transformation through prayer— what I here call “active abandonment to God”; (3) redefining symbolic boundaries, such as by seeking to become a “giver” by praying for others, and not just a “receiver” of aid from the government or a community association; and (4) prayer as providing a kind of centeredness. Each of these themes in one way or another points back to two aspects of Catholic teaching discussed in the previous chapter: incarnation and inculturation. Haitians in Montreal, as in Miami, build a local “theology of grace and hope,” drawing on universal Catholic doctrine to generate individual and group narratives about their adaptation. Haitian Catholics use these beliefs and practices as a kind of cultural mediation—they are mentally, psychologically, and spiritually weaving their way through a new neighborhood, a new city, and a new country. Although the forms of cultural mediation seem quite similar in Miami and Montreal, how this cultural mediation contributes to concrete social action—institutional mediation—differs greatly. The Haitian Catholic mission of Montreal, also called Notre Dame

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d’Haiti, shares Saint-Edouard parish with French Quebecois. Unlike Notre Dame in Miami, which is the pillar of a large and geographically concentrated ethnic community, Notre Dame in Montreal is like a community within a community; in other words, Haitian Catholics are just one community in Saint-Edouard parish. Also unlike the location of Notre Dame in Miami, nothing in the neighborhood around the parish church of Saint-Edouard indicates that Haitians live or worship there. Whereas Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center in Miami sponsor numerous daily activities, activities at Montreal’s Notre Dame happen mostly on weekends, when many Haitian Catholics can take the time to travel one hour by bus and subway or half an hour by car to get to Notre Dame. The parish does have daily Mass, but because of distance, this Mass does not attract the most devout Haitian Catholics, as is the case in Miami; nor does the church sponsor social programs on its premises. Thus, whereas Notre Dame in Miami is a central meeting place for Haitian worship and social programs every day of the week, sitting in the middle of a larger ethnic community, Notre Dame in Montreal is something like a weekend destination for just a few hundred people.30 The neighborhoods in Montreal with the highest numbers of Haitian residents, Montreal North and Saint-Michel, featured cafeteriastyle restaurants with Haitian food, money transfer (remittance) agencies, and a secular Haitian community organization or two, but these neighborhoods came nowhere near to replicating Little Haiti’s ethnic feel and visage. The active Haitian transnational groups, cultural groups, political groups, hometown associations, and community service organizations are dispersed throughout the city. My first weekend in Montreal, I went to Mass at Notre Dame on Sunday at 5 p.m. The gentleman sitting next to me heard me singing along with some of the Creole worship songs during Mass and offered to share his songbook with me. I quickly learned that the music at Mass was very similar in Miami and Montreal, and I thus began to bring my Creole hymnal with me to Mass. After Mass, the gentleman

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next to me expressed his surprise that I read and sang in Creole, which gave me the chance to explain to him about my research and my time in Miami.31 Although he seemed a bit timid at fi rst, several weeks later, I interviewed him in depth—this was Robert, whom I presented in chapter 1.32 The following Saturday, at a pilgrimage by members of the Notre Dame congregation to a Franciscan monastery outside of Montreal, their piety and prayers focused on suffering, on offering prayers of reparation for their own sins and those of others, and on asking for God’s grace in the midst of diYculties. Walking around in the cold, wearing hats and scarves, this group of devout Haitian Catholics prayed the rosary, enacted the Stations of the Cross, and in conclusion celebrated Mass.33 Robert, who had fortuitously sat next to me at Mass the previous week, also turned out to be one of the choir’s leaders. Before we warmed up our vocal cords, Robert invited all present to stand and he led the group in an opening prayer. He then quickly turned the stage over to Jacques, the spiritual leader of the choir. Jacques held his Bible, which I could see was full of highlighted passages, and began to exhort the group to make a firm commitment to participate in the choir and to use their presence at rehearsal as a chance for spiritual growth. At Friday and Saturday choir rehearsals over the next several months, Jacques began each rehearsal with a prayer. Often referring to the class and ideological differences in the Haitian community, Jacques repeatedly told the choir members that they needed to learn how to address their differences directly with their brothers and sisters in the community. Later in the fall of 2002, as problems escalated in Haiti, Jacques would often address these political problems during the opening prayer of the rehearsal, always making the point that Haitians in Montreal needed to overcome these political divisions and support one another. Perhaps knowing that the social element of the choir would draw a large crowd, Jacques wanted to use the occasion for prayer and solidarity, for combining both social life and prayer.

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“A Child of God” Jacques migrated legally to Montreal as a teenager with his parents and all of his brothers and sisters, so he never had to struggle to get legal papers. He has a steady job as a factory manager, and he has earned the respect of his bosses. Most of all, he feels blessed in having a strong faith. Jacques considers himself one of the more fortunate members of the Haitian community—both materially and spiritually—and said that he feels a great responsibility to help others. Although he works six days a week, is married, and has two children, Jacques spends all of his free time participating in and leading church activities. During the week, he participates in a Wednesday evening prayer group that meets at different people’s homes across Montreal. On Saturdays, after he gets off work at noon, he attends a prayer group at Notre Dame and then goes to choir rehearsal. Perhaps because he did not want to seem to be bragging in telling me how much he does for others at Notre Dame, he repeated many times that he thanks God for giving him the health, energy, and desire to be so active at church. Implying that sometimes choir rehearsal could be disorganized, he said that he tried to keep the choir orderly and guide people toward an encounter with God through music. Unfortunately, according to Jacques, more recent immigrants from Haiti have not adapted as successfully as he has, and the entire Haitian community has begun to suffer from negative stereotypes. He lamented that all you heard about Haitians on the radio and on TV was that they came from a poor country and created problems in Montreal. As a result of the negative stereotypes about Haiti, he said, “Some of our youth here don’t respect themselves anymore, and they contribute to the bad image of Haitians by forming gangs. We Haitians have to come together to show that we can do something for ourselves. In this country, we suffer humiliations; we have to work hard. We are also a minority, what they call a visible minority. When one of our group does something wrong, they stigmatize us all.”

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Because of negative images that have formed about Haitians in Montreal and because of their often limited education, Jacques explained, Haitians have to work “four times as hard” to get ahead. Although he said several times that some Quebecois hold negative stereotypes about Haitians, he insisted that thanks to his religious beliefs, he did not let such stereotypes affect his self-image. He repeated a phrase that came up frequently, that, since each person is “a child of God,” all people are equal. Knowing that one is a “child of God” helps form self-respect, Jacques explained, which in turn helps people get along with native Quebecois. “If you want people to respect you, you have to respect yourself first.” Some Haitians in Montreal do not show self-respect in the way they dress or talk, he said, and this might make native Quebecois dislike them. With regard to prejudice in Montreal, he admitted that sometimes even those Haitians who did respect themselves were not respected by others. “Of course, anywhere you go, there will always be some people who don’t like you.” He paused for a moment, looked at me intently, shrugged his shoulders, and added emphatically, “But they don’t even know why they don’t like you.” In other words, in his own life, Jacques tries to excuse people who do not treat him well, simply presuming that their negative feelings are their problem, not his. Yet he lamented that many other Haitians, youth in particular, felt unwelcomed in Montreal, and often, as a result, rebelled against their parents’ values or mainstream ways of behaving and acting, which he thought only further earned them poor treatment from others. Jacques’s emphasis on seeing oneself as a “child of God” represents one attempt to refashion the symbolic boundaries Haitians confront in Montreal. By attending Mass and prayer groups and acting as the spiritual leader of the choir, Jacques sought to teach others that, despite the diYculties they encountered, they had dignity and therefore should look at themselves with respect, no matter how others saw them. By organizing and leading prayer groups and the choir, Jacques hoped to help others to form and maintain that self-respect based on their relationship

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with God. Even if we cannot change others’ opinions easily, he insisted, we can control how we imagine ourselves compared to them.34

“The Center of Our Life” Haitians who attend Notre Dame live in many different parts of Montreal. Around six prayer groups therefore meet one weeknight at someone’s home, and then on Saturday evenings, they all come together in a large group at Notre Dame. Haitian Catholics who arrive in Montreal could join parishes in their own residential neighborhoods, but the members of these groups all emphasized that they wanted to pray in their native language—Creole—with others who understood their struggles and expressed similar piety. As most of the people in these prayer groups had participated in similar groups in Haiti, such as the Legion of Mary and the Holy Family, they looked for other Haitians with whom they could continue the activities of those groups. Not finding the same groups in local Quebecois parishes, and for some, not feeling that they prayed as fervently in French as they did in Creole, members of these Haitian prayer groups began meeting several years before a Haitian ethnic mission was established in Montreal in 1981. Numerous Haitians mentioned feeling socially isolated in Montreal at first. For example, Regine, a woman in her sixties, described the cultural shock she had felt when she arrived in Quebec eight years earlier. To describe how isolated she felt, she emphasized, “We are living in a cold country. When I found Notre Dame, mwen te soulaje [I felt relieved].” This particular word—soulaje—came up again and again as people described their religious experience to me; finding Notre Dame or other Haitians to pray with provided psychological relief in a cold environment. Another member of Regine’s and Jacques’s prayer group, JeanFrançois, also in his sixties, moved to Montreal in 1993. Having been active in the church in Haiti, he looked around for a parish and a prayer group to join and felt relieved—soulaje—at finding Notre Dame. Jean-

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François organizes the weekly prayer group, and like the Legion of Mary, he and other members of the prayer group go during the week to visit other Haitians who are having diYculties. As he put it, “That is what gives me life in Canada—prayer and apostolate. The church is the poto mitan [the center of] our life.” Hearing this comment repeated by several others gave the sense that immigrating upsets a feeling of centeredness. Perhaps the loss of centeredness is more acute in Montreal because it is further from Haiti than Miami and its climate is much more different from Haiti’s than Miami’s tropical climate.

“I Live When I Go to Notre Dame” Although many people expressed great joy when they discussed their prayer, others were more hesitant. For example, Anne-Marie, a woman in her early forties whom I met in the choir, often seemed rather subdued, even melancholy. One night after choir rehearsal, we drove up Boulevard Pie-IX, in the northeast suburbs of Montreal, to the room Anne-Marie rents in the apartment of a Haitian family. She introduced me to the couple from whom she rents the room, and then removed the lock from her bedroom door, opening the door to her tiny room, with just a dresser, telephone, and a large picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus over her bed. She immediately grabbed the phone to see if she had any messages and seemed rather sad that she did not. Anne-Marie explained that she had only been in Montreal for a year. Her husband did not get a visa to come to Canada, so she came alone; thus, she saved as much money as she could to call Haiti, and she showed me her long-distance calling cards and explained the cost. Her life seemed devoid of much social contact, except for church. Although she was thankful that she had a job (she took a bus every day to her job at a factory that assembled photo albums), she feared she might lose it, because she had already been laid off once and was unemployed for three months. She eventually got rehired at the same factory, this time to work the day shift, which she much preferred.

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In contrast to her lonely existence during the week, she spent most of the weekend at Notre Dame, often going to Mass twice on Sunday. As if to stress the importance of church in her life, she emphasized, “I live when I go to Notre Dame.” In addition to belonging to the choir and attending Mass at Notre Dame, Anne-Marie prayed while getting ready for work and prayed the rosary while waiting for the bus, trying to find some relief from her daily grind. Like many others, she insisted that she prayed for other people and not just for herself. Although she often felt discouraged and cried, she had not given up hope and continued to pray. Anne-Marie’s example shows that, despite the obvious joy many people find in expressive piety at Sunday Mass, others, like her, continue to pray even in the absence of much consolation. Although for some, prayer is an emotionally satisfying experience, for others, it may be an act of the will that appears to be devoid of joy, but that they nonetheless believe helps them continue their struggle, rather than giving in to despair. What is to be learned from these examples? Although Notre Dame d’Haiti in Montreal has fewer members than its counterpart in Miami, for those who participate regularly, this church is practically the only place they can call home. Even though many of them confessed that they often felt helpless and wanted to cry, individual and communal prayer gives members of this community hope, a sense of centeredness (poto mitan), and relief (soulajman).

“Building the Kingdom Together” Another interview, now with Marie, illustrates how prayer helps many Haitian Catholics defi ne themselves as givers and not just receivers. Marie’s words eloquently illustrate how prayer leads to social action through active abandonment to God. Her personal prayer and her experiences as a leader of a group that seeks to unite prayer and social action show that prayer can be a powerful transforming force for Haitian immigrants at both the individual and collective levels.

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Marie’s beautifully decorated apartment contrasts starkly with the drab industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of Montreal where she lives. Marie moved to Quebec as a twenty-year-old mother, and when she first arrived in Quebec, she always felt lonely, because people she encountered on the street or public transportation would intentionally avoid eye contact with her and try not to talk to her or anyone. In order to fight her feelings of solitude, Marie joined a small prayer group of eight to ten people, which gave her a sense of individual agency and helped her feel part of a supportive community, in contrast to the meaninglessness she felt as just one more immigrant working mother in Montreal. Marie’s prayer group also uses prayer meetings as a way to begin reflection on and action about social problems. Marie repeatedly pointed out the spiritual, not the material, benefits of her church participation. She emphasized that materially poor people can feel empowered to improve their situation if they discover they share values with others, because sharing values forms a basis for developing relations of generalized reciprocity. Like many others, Marie emphasized how she herself and the members of her prayer group did not want simply to receive charity; rather, they desired reciprocal relationships—in theological terms, communion with others. She admitted that bringing people together to get to know one another, build trust, and then work on their problems together takes a lot of time. Changing oneself and changing society, she emphasized, takes effort and patience. “We also need to accompany each other. We need to come together as a community in order to make change.” Marie’s description of social change also focused on fi nding the presence of God within herself and sharing that with others. Her words illustrate a clear belief in the incarnation and inculturation. “God lives in me all the time,” she said. “I can call on him when I want. We are also instruments of God. God is not an abstract thing, one finds God through contact with others.” Quite like Jacques, she pointed to how, in the Gospel, Jesus emphasized that each person is a dignified daughter or son of God, and because

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each person has dignity, everyone can contribute something to society. However, when Haitians migrate to Montreal, they often feel isolated and fall prey to frustration or even desperation. Thus, her group aims to resolve concrete problems and to do so while building the dignity of the members; in other words, they try to help each other out, but they also ask everyone to contribute something to the group. The term “active abandonment” aptly captures what Marie explained about patience, prayer, and action. Acknowledging that some people’s faith leads them to just wait for God to come and act somehow in their lives, Marie described how her group fosters the opposite approach: doing something for God, such as praying, and doing something for others while waiting for God to act in one’s own life. In describing what it means to abandon herself to God, Marie, like others, distinguished between passive and active abandonment, although they did not use those words. Passive abandonment means resignation and waiting; active abandonment means constantly struggling, “holding on tight,” and giving to others despite one’s own desperate neediness. Active abandonment requires trust, patience, and prayer, along with industriousness, self-respect, and giving to others. Marie said that joining and eventually leading a prayer group made her feel that she belonged somewhere, in contrast to the social isolation she felt on the streets of Montreal. As she put it, believing that she “belongs somewhere means that your idea is important, your contribution is important in the construction of [God’s] kingdom. When you feel that you are somebody, [that] you are a person, [that] you are important, you can move mountains, and that is faith.” She went on to contrast the isolation and powerlessness many Haitian immigrants feel to the strength of sharing faith and feeling in communion with others, saying, “Faith is what gives us the confidence that we can together build the kingdom. The kingdom isn’t my kingdom, it is the kingdom of all. That’s why we have to build it together.” Understanding one’s place in the world in relation to God and others, feeling centered, allows people to give to others. “Suddenly, you feel important, and when you feel

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important, you feel like you have something to give to others. Often, one has the impression that the poor ask incessantly, but suddenly someone asks you to contribute, because you have something to give too. Things change when suddenly I see I have something to give.” Marie talked openly of her faith as something that made her feel like a person again, a person with the ability to influence her surroundings. Haitian immigrants in both Montreal and Miami realize they have many unmet needs, and Marie repeated that, through participation in prayer groups, people like her feel empowered, because they are asked to give something to others. Her prayer group does indeed try to recommend that people visit various social agencies that can help them with their material needs. However, their approach begins by making people feel they can contribute something, not just that they are asking for something.

“We Call on Another Force” Increasingly intrigued by the connections people like Marie made between faith and action, or their active abandonment to God, I traveled to Anjou, a town on the eastern edge of Montreal, to interview Lucien Smarth. As a priest ordained in his native country, Lucien had worked on numerous social projects in Haiti. Like many other socially conscious priests, Lucien had earned the disfavor of François Duvalier, and he fled Haiti in 1965. He first went to France, where he earned advanced degrees in sociology and anthropology. Then, in 1973, he moved to Montreal, just as the Haitian community there was growing rapidly. He worked in conjunction with other priests and Haitian laypeople who founded, first, the Bureau de la communauté chrétienne des Haïtiens à Montréal (Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community of Montreal) and then a second center that grew out of it, Sant N’a Rive (We Shall Arrive), which teaches Creole literacy.35 Having moved back and forth between the world of Haitian intellectuals and that of lesser-educated Haitians, Lucien reflected upon

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how intellectuals often separate faith from material things, a separation that appears artificial to many Haitians. To further explain his point, he described how there is so much misery in Haiti that even if people have little reason to hope, they hope anyway. To exemplify the hope people have in Haiti, he emphasized the sacrifices people made for their children. First, he quoted a common Haitian proverb: “Children are the future. Children are a blessing from God.” Then he went on to describe how even if people in Haiti live in miserable conditions with virtually no way out, they have five or six children anyway and believe that if those children do not die as infants, they will have a better chance in life than they themselves had. His voice became very passionate as he described the sacrifices parents in Haiti made for their children. Even if the infant mortality rate in Haiti is high, even if these parents see other people’s children die, and may even see one or more of their own children die, they still believe their children can make it if they get an education. Extremely poor people in the countryside of Haiti, people who cannot read or write, will sacrifice everything to send their children to school in a nearby town. Those children from the countryside, for their part, may have to get up at 4 a.m. to walk two hours to school, with only a piece of sugarcane to fill their stomachs. Often, he said with teary eyes, the parents will go without eating so that they can pay for their children’s school supplies. “It’s heroic for such poor parents to send their children to school, there is no other word for it,” he said. “It’s crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy! Of course, they have faith in God, at least a little bit, but their experience teaches them that despite their best efforts to get ahead, they will most often fail, because Haiti just doesn’t have resources.” If the desperate misery in Haiti makes people rely on faith, then do they lose their faith when they move to a much wealthier place like Montreal? “Sure, some Haitian intellectuals may lose their faith, but for the average Haitian, they will tell you that God put the government there to help them!” He then laughed and said, “God put the government there for them! They will tell you that God gave their children

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the chance to attend school. How did the school get there? God put it there for them.” Far from implying that Haitians’ faith leads to passive abandonment, and echoing Gérard in Miami, Marie and Arnaud in Montreal, and many others, Lucien passionately described a kind of active abandonment in which Haitians hold on to their faith, not to avoid their worldly problems, but to develop a vision for how they will improve their lives on earth: For me, that’s what religion is in general. We feel our limits, we feel our weaknesses, we feel our inability to change things. And then we call on another force, a divine force, to give us more strength and greater capabilities. I fi nd it completely legitimate that people turn toward religion to solve their problems. Because that’s what I take to be the meaning of religion. It is the same here in Montreal as in Haiti: Haitians feel the same powerlessness in so many respects, and that is what makes them turn toward God, or what they call God. I also think that religion aims to make the earth become more and more, better and better, as an image of heaven, according to believers. So they have the task to make life down here more beautiful, so earth becomes more like the image of the beautiful life they await on the other side. So religion has those two aspects, working to get more strength on earth so they can transform earth and know happiness on earth, and so that they can also be happy on the other side.

As we have seen, since the Quiet Revolution, great skepticism about religious faith and religious institutions has increasingly pervaded Quebec. Lucien offered sharp critiques of the way modern intellectuals understand, or, better put, misunderstand, people who have religious faith. With regard to the future adaptation of Haitians in Quebec, Lucien questioned what would happen to second- and third-generation Haitians born in Quebec who may lack their parents’ or grandparents’ religious faith, but nonetheless find themselves facing problems of school failure and unemployment. In other words, what happens when you have serious social problems, like those of many Haitians in Quebec, but those people lack

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common forms of cultural and institutional mediation? Although the decline in religious practice may be one reason for the apparent downward assimilation of some second-generation Haitians in Montreal, let us for the present examine the types of institutional mediation provided there by Catholic leaders.

THE BUREAU OF THE H A ITI A N CHR ISTI A N COM MU N ITY

In response to growing concerns about the thousands of working-class Haitians who arrived in Montreal in the 1970s, Haitian leaders founded the Bureau de la communauté chrétienne des Haïtiens à Montréal. Quite like the leaders of the Toussaint Center in Miami, the leaders of the Bureau both organized volunteer work within the Haitian community and met with government leaders to discuss social issues in the Haitian community. Specifically, the Bureau lobbied for the legalization of Haitian asylum-seekers and started social programs to support their adaptation. In 1972, a deportation threat marked a watershed in the organization and mobilization of Haitians in Montreal. Until this point, Haitians had largely felt welcomed in Canada, and Haitian students and professionals generally adapted successfully and rapidly. However, as more workingclass Haitians arrived in Montreal, the government attempted to close doors that would have allowed them to legalize their status. Until 1972, Haitians could enter Canada as tourists and apply for work visas after their arrival. However, because of an economic downturn and growing unemployment, in 1972, the Canadian government began to require all potential immigrants to apply for visas from their home country and threatened to deport approximately 1,500 Haitians who had entered as tourists and then requested work visas or resident status.36 In response, Catholic leaders in Montreal founded the Bureau, the leading Haitian association in Montreal for much of the next fifteen years. The initial leaders of the Bureau included several Haitian priests

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active in the pro-democracy movement who had who migrated to Montreal during the Duvalier regime. Along with Haitian students and professionals, these clerics formed part of the transnational Haitian prodemocracy movement located in Montreal. Once in Montreal, several of these priests also dedicated themselves to supporting the adaptation of working-class Haitians into Canadian society. Father Paul Dejean, who headed the Bureau, was the most visible figure.37 Although the Bureau’s first priority was to advocate for the legalization of Haitians in Montreal, its leaders also knew that the newly arriving workingclass Haitians faced many obstacles to their adaptation. Thus, as at the Toussaint Center, lay leaders who worked with Father Dejean described how they had begun with the dual objective of advocating for Haitians’ legal rights and starting social programs to support Haitians’ adaptation. Although clearly the volunteer work of Haitian clergy and lay Catholics was necessary to get the Bureau going, simply mobilizing volunteer work in an impoverished immigrant community was not suYcient to address the community’s concrete problems. The Bureau’s leaders both mobilized volunteer work within the Haitian community and reached outside of the Haitian community to access financial resources and to establish contacts with state oYcials and other Catholic institutions. Looking at how the Bureau’s leaders sought to represent Haitians to the Quebec government sheds light on new ways in which Catholic leaders and institutions engage the public sphere. Although by the 1970s, institutions created as part of the Quiet Revolution had displaced many Catholic social service institutions, some Catholic institutions continued their social work. In many instances, the Bureau’s leaders used their personal connections with other Catholic associations to solicit financial support and advice. For example, according to one of the Bureau’s former directors, Jean-Claude Icart, the archdiocese of Montreal provided some money to help them start social programs. In addition, the Bureau’s leaders often appealed directly to Catholic religious orders, such as the Jesuits or the Spiritains, to fund particular programs.

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In addition to obtaining badly needed money to start social programs, the Bureau further benefited from the advice of another institution with Catholic roots, the Centre social d’aide aux immigrants (Social Center for Aid to Immigrants). In 1947, the order of religious sisters called Our Lady of Good Counsel had founded the Center to support the adaptation of World War II refugees. Although this center also directly aided some Haitians, its main contribution to the Haitian community was helping the Bureau formalize a charter and write project proposals in order to apply for government funding. Furthermore, the Centre justice et foi (Center for Justice and Faith) also organized numerous events to reflect on religion and immigration to Quebec, and the leaders of the Center, in particular, the Jesuit priest Julien Harvey, used their connections to the Quebec government to lobby for Haitians’ rights.38 Although it was not the only Haitian organization in Montreal at the time, the Bureau flourished more than other organizations, because it brought together in one place experienced leaders, volunteers, and funding from both Catholic institutions and government agencies. By 2002, however, in order to continue acquiring government funding, both the Bureau and the Social Center for Aid to Immigrants had removed any mention of Christianity from their charters or names, thereby altering their image vis-à-vis the government, but quite likely also altering the way the people they serve perceive them.

Political Advocacy The various ways in which the Bureau mediated for Haitians, such as political advocacy, help illustrate a more nuanced perspective on secularization in Quebec. In 1972, the Bureau’s leaders successfully lobbied the Canadian government to reconsider its decision to deport several thousand Haitian immigrants. In order to argue for these Haitians’ right to remain in Canada, Father Dejean wrote letters to government oYcials and met personally with them. In those personal communications, he explained that humanitarian clauses in Canadian immigration

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law justified granting Haitians residence in Canada because they would encounter repressive conditions if they were forced to return to Haiti. Although the new francophone Quebec state replaced most Catholic social service agencies with its own institutions, religious leaders like Father Dejean formed mediating institutions like the Bureau that provided the state with important information about Haitian immigrants. Despite both the Bureau’s efforts and the personal lobbying of Father Dejean, the courts at first ruled that humanitarian concerns were insuYcient to grant Haitians residence in Canada. When direct lobbying did not work, the Bureau’s leaders used their connections to other institutions in civil society to mobilize public opinion. Even though numerous other civil society organizations in Quebec—Quebecois Catholic institutions, secular human rights groups, political parties, professional associations, and trade unions—were all instrumental in generating sympathy for the Haitians threatened with deportation, for two reasons, the Bureau nonetheless became the central institution that led the legalization campaign. First, Haitian immigrants gathered around Catholic institutions, where they found people of similar cultural mores and religious beliefs. The Bureau’s name clearly identified it as a Christian and a Haitian organization; its leaders were clergy and Catholic laypeople whose work was undoubtedly identified with Catholic organizations. Thus, the Bureau’s combined ethnic and religious image made it unique among organizations supporting Haitian immigrants. Second, the Bureau used its connections to other Catholic institutions, like the Social Center, to write a charter and apply for outside funding. With regard to political advocacy to legalize Haitian asylum-seekers, the Bureau energetically requested group asylum for all Haitians threatened with deportation; however, the Canadian Ministry of Immigration only agreed to review each case individually. Of that group of asylum-seekers, about 55 percent had their requests approved; the rest either voluntarily returned to Haiti or were deported.39 Since Haitian leaders were unable to persuade the Canadian government to recognize all Haitians as refugees, each Haitian fleeing persecution had to prove

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his or her case individually or had to apply for a refugee visa while still in Haiti. This proved to be an insurmountable task, in particular for less-educated Haitians. Most Haitians who entered Canada legally after 1972 have thus been admitted under family reunification provisions, not as refugees or as professionals.40 But the closure of legal channels did not stop everyone from fleeing political violence and seeking a better life elsewhere. Those Haitians who did not qualify for visas as professionals or under family reunification provisions continued to arrive as tourists and often to overstay their visas. This situation once again led to a large number of undocumented Haitian immigrants in Montreal who turned to mediating institutions to help resolve their precarious relationships with the state. In 1980, a sudden dramatic increase in Haitian boat people heading to Florida generated great international attention and sympathy for Haitian asylum-seekers. The same forces driving thousands of Haitians to risk their lives and take a boat to Florida—namely, heightened political persecution and a lagging rural economy—also led many Haitians to seek entry into Canada. Despite the Canadian government’s earlier refusal to classify Haitians as refugees, in 1980, the Bureau’s leaders sought to take advantage of increased public and international sympathy for Haiti’s plight and launched another large-scale legalization campaign. In carrying out this campaign, leaders of the Bureau once again relied on personal contacts with government oYcials to present their case on behalf of Haitians. For example, a Haitian Jesuit priest who worked at the Bureau, Father Karl Lévêque, contacted Father Jacques Couteau, a fellow Jesuit, who was then Quebec’s minister of immigration, directly about the Haitians arriving in Montreal. As Father Couteau became increasingly concerned about clandestine Haitian immigrants living in Montreal, he asked another Jesuit, Father Julien Harvey of the Centre justice et foi, to write a report on the number of undocumented Haitian immigrants, where they lived, and where they worked. As undocumented immigrants would not likely have spoken openly to a government oYcial, Father Harvey used his connections to Haitian

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clergy and Catholic lay leaders in the Haitian community to present the government with much-needed detailed information on Haitians’ status in Quebec. Father Harvey’s report showed that indeed thousands of Haitians who lived and worked in Quebec had no intention of returning to Haiti for fear of persecution and misery. In part based on the data and arguments presented in this report, around 4,000 Haitians living in Canada at the time were granted legal status.41 Despite the continuous political upheavals in Haiti, the Canadian government never recognized Haitians as a refugee group, even during the extremely violent 1991–94 military regime. Thus, in addition to these two legalization campaigns, the Bureau’s leaders also focused their efforts on helping individual Haitians to file asylum claims. Legalization was given top priority at the Bureau, because, as Jean-Claude Icart explained, “We knew that, whatever problem someone may have, that problem is 100 times harder if he is illegal. So, every other problem was secondary to the legal situation. . . . So at the beginning, we put all of our effort in that. Even if we had other programs on the side, the priority was that we didn’t want anyone to be illegal.” It may seem somewhat curious that, in a province where religious authority appeared to have largely disappeared in decade of the Quiet Revolution, the government nonetheless accepted that an organization with a clearly Christian and Catholic identity represented the social needs of this particular immigrant group. Given the limited conditions for legal immigration from Haiti to Montreal after 1972, it made sense that many Haitian immigrants arriving in Montreal would turn to the Bureau’s leaders for support. The Bureau’s leaders deemed it of utmost importance to create a relationship between these newcomers and the state in order to facilitate the regularization of their legal status.

Social Programs Alongside its advocacy efforts, the Bureau established social programs to support Haitians’ adaptation in Montreal. Despite the existence of

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a more generous welfare state in Canada than in the United States, working-class Haitian immigrants, for the most part, were not recruited to come to Canada, and the Canadian government did not therefore initially establish programs to help their adaptation. The Bureau helped organize volunteer work in language and job training to bridge this gap. Like Miami’s Toussaint Center, the Bureau’s close contacts with the newly arriving Haitians allowed its leaders to mobilize resources from within the community—such as volunteer work to staff social programs—and simultaneously to raise greater fi nancial resources from outside the community. For example, working-class Haitians with fewer years of schooling generally have limited knowledge of French. To address the language issue, the Bureau’s leaders solicited volunteer contributions from Father Lévêque and others who had worked on Creole literacy projects in Haiti to offer literacy classes and French-language classes to Haitian immigrants in Montreal. In order for these programs to gain government funding, however, leaders of the Bureau had to explain to the Quebec government that only well-educated Haitians, who comprise a minority of that country’s population, have enough years of schooling to be fluent in French. With time, the demand for both Creole literacy and French classes grew, and leaders such as Lucien Smarth founded Sant N’a Rive to focus primarily on Creole literacy and French-language training. The Bureau’s leaders mediated for Haitians by both working with the Haitian community to organize social programs and working with government leaders to attract greater resources into the Haitian community. Like Miami’s Toussaint Center, the Bureau’s leaders mediated for Haitians in the sense that they simply opened their doors and allowed people to come forward both to express their problems and to suggest initiatives. According to Jean-Claude Icart, the Bureau created an environment in which people could discuss common concerns and develop joint efforts to address their problems. Being a community institution, identified as both a Haitian organization and a Christian organization, created a central point in the community where people felt they could

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go with their needs and with their initiatives. Echoing comments from Randy McGrorty of the Legal Services Project at Miami’s Toussaint Center, Jean-Claude Icart explained how “the Bureau would respond to demands and found programs. Sometimes those programs would grow and become independent [from the Bureau], and at other times we would just help people to found their own organization from the beginning.” In other words, the goal of the Bureau’s leaders was not necessarily to centrally plan and implement all the programs needed to help Haitians’ adaptation, but rather to provide a central meeting place and to offer strategic support to help volunteers develop their ideas into concrete projects. Although the needs of the community were certainly great, it was not always possible to plan needed programs in advance, and the government relied on this mediating institution to take the first steps in organizing the Haitian community. The Bureau’s development in the 1970s and the 1980s resembled that of the Toussaint Center in several ways. Like the Miami organization, its leaders enjoyed the trust of the Haitian population, mobilized greater volunteer work within the community, created a central place for outside agencies to fund programs for Haitians, and helped establish other independent Haitian organizations. Also like the Toussaint Center, the Bureau’s leaders knew the value of combining volunteer work and external funding, and they raised money from several sources: Catholic institutions, Centraide (a private foundation like United Way that raises money from the private sector to give to community associations) and the provincial and federal governments. The Bureau’s period of high growth was during the 1980s, when in addition to language programs, it ran a day-care center and a job-training program. Quebec’s rapid and relatively thorough secularization starting with the Quiet Revolution did not entirely eliminate the ability of church organizations and leaders to mediate on behalf of a disadvantaged immigrant group like Haitians. Working through diocesan organizations such as Catholic Charities or community-based mediating institutions such as the Bureau, Catholic leaders provided both social services and politi-

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cal representation to Haitian immigrants. Since the Quiet Revolution, Catholic Church leaders in Quebec have spoken out on issues ranging from immigrants’ rights to workers’ rights,42 exercising what scholars of the Catholic Church and politics in modern democracies, such as David Yamane, have called a prophetic voice, whereby religious institutions denounce social injustices and press for political change.43

INTERCULTUR A LISM, R ACE, A ND RELIGION

As noted above, the Quebec government undertakes numerous efforts to encourage immigrants to adopt francophone Quebecois culture. During my meeting with Pierre Anctil, the director of the Quebec government’s Council of Intercultural Relations, he explained many of these policies. First, he explained that the Quebec government prefers to fund multiethnic associations rather than mono-ethnic ones, and that the government also prefers to cooperate with secular organizations rather than faith-based ones. To explain these preferences, Anctil observed that many Quebecois feared that Canadian multiculturalism functioned in practice as “an instrument for the anglicization of immigrants.” As many Quebecois are concerned about la survie linguistique, linguistic survival, Quebec developed its own policy of interculturalism. As Anctil explained it, the only real difference between interculturalism and multiculturalism is that in the former, immigrants become part of francophone society, whereas in multiculturalism, immigrants become part of anglophone society. However, as part of interculturalism, the Quebec government had also recently decided to no longer fund ethnic organizations that served one particular immigrant group, such as Haitians. Although he was clearly sympathetic to using government policy to encourage immigrants in Quebec to learn French, Anctil was more critical of the newer policy of funding only multiethnic organizations. He argued that certain groups needed more government support than others in order to exercise their citizenship, and that treating all immigrant groups as equal overlooked great differences in their socio-

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economic status. For example, the Quebec government’s policy of funding only multiethnic associations overlooked the fact that groups such as Haitians suffered from racism: “It is undeniable that our society . . . generates systemic forms of racism, and that generates integration problems for these [black] communities in particular,” he acknowledged, although he clearly believed that racism was less prevalent in Quebec than in the United States. Anctil also explained that, in contrast to the U.S. government’s reaching out to faith-based community organizations, Quebec preferred to work with secular organizations. Whereas, in his opinion, in the United States, the state was “absent” in immigrant communities, he said, in Canada, “the state has replaced the church.” There were many churches in the Haitian community but they did not get any government funding for social services, inasmuch as “this is not necessary in Quebec, because the social services are there. Since immigrants in Quebec don’t live in ghettos, they have access to the same services as everyone else.” Based on my ethnographic observations among Haitians in Montreal, as well as studies done by leaders of the Bureau and comments by Haitian leaders there, Anctil’s confidence that social services are readily available to Haitian immigrants in Montreal seems overstated. It does not appear that newcomers like Haitians know how to avail themselves of government social programs without the help of mediating institutions. In other words, government funding of social services does not automatically equal access to those services. Access to social services also depends on trust, and mediating institutions frequently enjoy more trust with populations like Haitian immigrants because of the close relationship between cultural and institutional mediation.

Quebec’s Changing Context Despite the similar origins of the Bureau in Montreal and the Toussaint Center in Miami as advocates for Haitians and providers of social services, by 2002, the Bureau had lost much of its leadership—including

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charismatic and well-known figures like Father Dejean and Father Lévêque—and it had also lost much of the outside funding that made it so important to the Haitian community in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite the fact that some new Haitian immigrants continue to arrive undocumented in Montreal, the Bureau’s high-profile political advocacy has not continued, perhaps because there is less hope that a largescale legalization of these immigrants is possible. Evans Desmangles, the director of the Bureau in 2002, explained how its structure and objectives have evolved to try to meet the changing needs of the Haitian community and to coincide with the changing priorities of the Quebec government. Desmangles emphasized that the Bureau’s strength lies in it being a grassroots organization, a place that Haitians feel belongs to their community. Although he emphasized that the Bureau would not turn away anyone who was not Haitian and came to the Bureau for help, he nonetheless argued that Haitians who arrived in Quebec and might have trouble speaking French naturally turned to a Haitian association when they needed help. As he explained, it is “part of the normal process to regroup around one’s own people, where one can speak one’s own language, and find some elements in common upon which to support each other and take your place in the new society.” Thus, as in earlier years, Desmangles explained, people simply come to the Bureau to talk about a particular issue and fi nd a way to try to improve things. Working together, he said, they develop a vision of what the Haitian community needs and then present that vision to the government. The Bureau’s mission still includes providing social services, but the volume of such services is now greatly reduced. Government funding of such services has more recently gone to organizations that work more with youth. In response to perceived changes in the political context in Quebec, the Bureau has adapted the image it presents to the government. Because of problems of “interpretation,” Desmangles said the Bureau’s leaders had decided to remove the word “Christian” from its name, which became just the Bureau of the Haitian Community of Montreal. He explained

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that all its services have always been available to anyone, regardless of their religious aYliation or practice, and that the types of services it offers are all secular, not religious. As he put it quite simply: “Our services are developed in response to the needs of the Haitian community, but once the service is set up, it is available for everyone. If someone comes in, we evaluate their needs, and if we can help them, we do.” With regard to the ethnic identity of the Bureau, Desmangles acknowledged that it has had some diYculty obtaining funding because of the government’s preference not to fund associations focused on one ethnic community. Although few associations are truly mono-ethnic in the sense that they would refuse to help someone of another ethnicity, some associations like the Bureau strongly identify with one particular ethnic group. The Bureau does not require its staff to be Haitian nor does it only assist Haitian immigrants, but because of its name and historical ties to the Haitian community, it is not surprising that most people who go there are indeed Haitian. Desmangles seemed reluctant to take the word “Haitian” out of the Bureau’s name, afraid that that would take away the Bureau’s key to success, namely, that Haitians identify with the Bureau; they feel at home there and that it belongs to them. Although he emphasized that, in some instances, Haitians need to have a place to call their own, Desmangles and many other Haitian leaders recognized that the Quebecois have some legitimate concerns about the survival of their identity that all immigrants to Quebec should respect. However, where Desmangles seemed to disagree with some Quebecois policies was on a question of interpretation. In his opinion, the fact that Haitians want “their own place” does not mean they do not want to be part of Quebecois society; it just means that people naturally feel more at home speaking their own language and talking to people who share their culture. In his view, therefore, adaptation does not mean giving up one’s particular ethnic identity. Similarly, forming ethnic associations does not mean that Haitians do not want to adapt to Quebecois society. Although Desmangles aims to fulfill the same mission as earlier

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leaders of the Bureau, the Bureau has undeniably declined in size and relevance since the 1980s. In addition to the Quebec government’s retreat from funding faith-based or mono-ethnic associations, another possible reason for this is that the Bureau has not been very successful in reaching second- and third-generation Haitians. Many community leaders—even those who used to work with the Bureau—commented that currently many Haitian community efforts should be oriented to second-generation Haitian youth, many of whom are not successfully adapting in Montreal. Whereas first-generation Haitians automatically look to the church, younger Haitians mostly raised in Montreal or born there have adopted a more secular outlook. Thus, many second-generation Haitians born in Montreal remain largely out of touch with their parents’ religious community—at least among Haitian Catholics—and this makes them less likely to know of the Bureau or perceive of it as a particularly trustworthy organization. Another organization affected by changing policies is the Social Center for Aid to Immigrants, one of the principal organizations that helped the Bureau open its doors and acquire funding. Although the Social Center for Aid to Immigrants was founded by a religious order and continues to be run by members of that order, it too has removed from its charter any reference to Christianity or a Christian inspiration for its work. The director of the Social Center for Aid to Immigrants, Sister Lorette Langlais, seemed to agree with the Quebec government policy of supporting only multiethnic and secular organizations. “It is the state’s responsibility, and that of all citizens, to take care of social needs, not just the church’s,” she said. In fact, she argued that the state should be doing more for the poor and for immigrants. At times, she feared that the state wanted to pass along its responsibilities to church volunteers. “Sometimes by turning to churches for social services, the state may be looking for cheap labor.” Even though the Social Center for Aid to Immigrants no longer calls itself a Christian organization, Sister Langlais talked openly about her personal faith, and a crucifi x hung on her oYce wall. “I do my work in

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the name of my faith, but I am not going to impose my faith on anyone. We are not here to teach religion. We have to respect others. Muslims work as well as I do.” Once, when asked disapprovingly about the cross in her oYce, she just shrugged her shoulders and, downplaying the religious significance of the symbol, said, “Oh, it’s cultural.” Sister Langlais further explained that the Quiet Revolution had not actually eradicated all Catholic social services overnight. In fact, according to her, it had actually opened up new opportunities for collaborating with the state. Prior to the 1960s, her religious community had funded all the activities of the Social Center for Aid to Immigrants, but now it can receive money from the government, which is currently the source of 70 percent of its funds. OYcials of the archdiocese of Montreal clearly believed that Catholic leaders have a public mission, but they were cautious not to appear to be leading any particular political or social movement. Brian McDonough, director of the archdiocese’s OYce of Social Affairs, explained that because they fear backlash from secular politicians who believe the church overstepped its bounds in the past, when the archdiocese of Montreal engages social issues, its clergy and lay staff try to work in coalitions of organizations, so that they are not seen as leading a political or social movement. He said: The Catholic Church in Quebec had a very, very different mission in 1841 than it had in 1950, and then following the Quiet Revolution in the early 1960s. That change in [its] self-understanding and the understanding of its mission means that the role of the Church in welcoming and also accompanying immigrant communities has changed. And, of course, that has a very real impact on the way the Church develops ties with the various waves of immigrants from Haiti, the services that the Church might seek to offer, and the kinds of needs the Church might seek to meet, and also its own expectations of the different waves of immigrants from Haiti.

McDonough alludes to the fact that since the Quiet Revolution, the Catholic Church in Quebec has come to be seen as antimodern, anti-

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progressive, and not as an institution or a source of culture that provides hope but as one that kept people in misery and subordination. Yet, through their work done on behalf of Haitian immigrants and other immigrants to Montreal, Catholic leaders in Montreal are fi nding new ways of inculturating the faith. Studying how immigrants such as Haitians generate cultural and institutional forms of mediation in Miami, Montreal, and Paris draws our attention to the importance of both history and individual agency in understanding how religious institutions operate, and even how people develop and express their religious faith. Catholic teaching certainly emphasizes a strict hierarchy that supervises local institutions. The hierarchy, led by the pope, issues dogmatic statements on teaching and regulates the liturgy. Yet Catholic teaching also emphasizes free will and, especially since Vatican II, Catholic teaching further stresses that the secular realm of government should be free of church domination but not influence. Catholicism’s attempts to achieve unity of belief help explain the remarkably similar ideas about faith across sites. The extremely different institutional configurations of the Catholic Church in Miami, Montreal, and Paris make sense in light of Catholicism’s emphasis on integrating the faith into local circumstances, as well as state policies that regulate religious institutions.

CONCLUSIONS

Even if people’s religious beliefs and narratives seem remarkably similar across space, the same religious institution interacts with state agencies in enormously different ways across that same space. The same religious tradition—Catholicism—gives rise in different places to individual religious belief, prayer groups, religious communities, and mediating institutions with similar objectives, but these institutions can either be strengthened or hampered by the larger social and political context. Because of the legacy of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, the frequent feedback that characterizes the spiritual and social activities of Notre

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Dame and the Toussaint Center in Miami was never quite as strong in Montreal; furthermore, the ties that did exist between the Bureau and Notre Dame d’Haiti in Montreal have weakened over time, in part due to government policies that led the Bureau’s leaders to deemphasize its Christian roots and connections. In the current context in Quebec, the state increasingly marginalizes mediating institutions such as the Bureau, because such organizations identify their social mission both with the Christian tradition and with one specific ethnic community. The presumption that Haitians will simply access government services in other ways, such as by going directly to a government oYce or by walking into a multiethnic association, seems to overlook the fact that immigrants like Haitians seek not only material support but the psychological and spiritual support that often comes through common culture, language, empathy, and faith. Furthermore, as Haitian Catholics turn to their religious institutions both to strengthen their faith and to organize social action, Miami’s Notre Dame d’Haiti and the Toussaint Center mutually reinforce the spiritual and social elements of Haitian Catholicism. However, in Montreal, state policies force a separation between faith and social action, which Lucien Smarth, Marie, and many others said quite simply makes little sense to many Haitians. The Bureau’s once successful mobilization of support from within the Catholic community and its ability to gain some legitimacy with government leaders lead one to wonder whether the Quiet Revolution in Quebec has definitively cut all ties between the state and religious institutions. Secularization in Quebec did not sever all ties between the church and the state; rather, those ties have been reduced and transformed. Compared to Quebec’s past, or compared to the United States, the ties between the church and the state in Quebec may be weaker, but this does not necessarily mean that such ties are totally absent or insignificant. The history of the Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community of Montreal and the Center for Social Aid to Immigrants certainly presents a more nuanced version of secularization in Quebec. Concerns about the long-term socioeconomic mobility of Haitians

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in Montreal are increasing; alongside those concerns, leaders and parents wonder where Haitian youth will turn for a sense of meaning and belonging. Chapter 6 elaborates on how Haitian parents in Montreal fear that whereas a narrative of hope rooted in Christian faith kept them from giving in to loneliness or discouragement, it is not so clear that Haitian youth raised in the much more secular environment of Montreal, relative to either Haiti or Miami, will benefit from similar types of cultural mediation. Consequently, mediating institutions like the Bureau may become even less important. Although some government oYcials asserted that the state has replaced the church, community leaders and parents nonetheless identify numerous gaps in its services. They try to fill these through mediating institutions, but those institutions often receive only a weak response from the state.

Chapter five

Paris “I Would Be Dead without the Church”

More than two hundred years after the Haitian Revolution freed the slaves in Saint-Domingue and overthrew French colonialism there, a small but growing community of Haitians live in metropolitan France. Little is known, however, about what paths Haitian immigrants have taken to enter France, where they settle when they arrive, and what challenges they face in their adaptation. Analyzing Haitians’ adaptation in France contributes both to the goal of comparing how cultural and institutional mediation have evolved in response to Haitian immigration in three different countries and to ongoing debates about the successes and failures of immigrant adaptation in France. Quite in contrast to the American melting pot and Canadian multiculturalism, the French republican model of immigrant integration emphasizes that immigrants should acquire French citizenship, which guarantees equality of all before the state, so that all other differences of race, education, culture, and even class will eventually fade into the background. In a report by the Haut conseil à l’intégration (High Council on [Immigrant] Integration), a group of French scholars and intellectuals argued that durable ethnic communities that last several generations run contrary to French republicanism, which emphasizes that individuals should relate directly to the state without any intermediary group representatives.1 151

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An opposing viewpoint stresses that, despite the promises of equality made by French republicanism, immigrants in France encounter racism, and that much socioeconomic inequality exists between the descendants of immigrants and the rest of the French population.2 From this viewpoint, in order to develop strategies that foster durable integration, it is necessary to acknowledge that social boundaries and economic inequalities often correspond to ethnic groups. The 2005 crisis in the largely immigrant-inhabited French suburbs— dubbed la crise des banlieues—made it increasingly diYcult to deny the strong perception of discrimination and inequality among immigrants. After the riots subsided, the debate between two largely opposing yet deeply held viewpoints about immigrant integration in France—one encouraging immigrants to become French as quickly as possible, the other supporting ethnic communities and associations—began to rage once again. Comparing how three different national models affect the adaptation of one immigrant group—Haitians—contributes to debates about the merits of individual versus group-centered immigrant adaptation policies in France. French census and immigration data convincingly show that few of the 25,000 Haitians in France have entered legally, that they tend to have low levels of education, and that they mostly live in the Paris banlieues. Like their compatriots in Canada and the United States, Haitian immigrants in France use their religious beliefs to create narratives of hope and a sense of identity in a foreign land. As in Montreal and Miami, leaders of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris (Haitian Catholic Community of Paris) founded a social service center to try to help Haitians legalize their status, learn French, and find work. Although the forms of cultural mediation across sites appear quite similar, the institutions founded by Haitian leaders to try to mediate with the host society in France are largely invisible to the state, thus limiting their ability to support Haitians’ adaptation. The ideology of French republicanism and state policies regarding laïcité (secularism) overlook the fact that immigrants frequently rely

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on their religious beliefs to shape their new identity and often turn to mediating institutions to navigate the complex path toward adaptation. Haitian immigrants in France encounter increasing prejudice, which impedes their upward social mobility, and the French state’s relative indifference to mediating institutions in the Haitian community weakens one important source of support on which Haitian immigrants rely elsewhere.

THE COM MU NAUTÉ CATHOLIQUE H A ÏTIEN NE DE PA R IS

During three months in 2003, I observed activities at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, participated in the choir, and attended social events at the Saint-Georges de la Villette parish church and at people’s homes. Members of the community prayed in similar ways to their counterparts in Miami and Montreal, likewise used biblical stories to give meaning to their struggles, and also participated in prayer groups where they gave to others through their prayer and service. After Easter Vigil Mass at Saint-Georges in 2003, Augustin, a young man in his late twenties, approached me and inquired about my research project. Augustin always seemed composed and secure, like a young leader. Few Haitians in France are monolingual Creole speakers, but Augustin’s perfect French indicated that he had been more highly educated in Haiti than most other members of this church. Born in Les Cayes in southwestern Haiti, Augustin moved to Port-au-Prince to study accounting and management at the university. Like Arnaud in Montreal and so many other Haitians, Augustin’s dream was to make his country a better place, but feeling increasingly frustrated with the political situation in Haiti and beginning to fear for his life, he came to France as a tourist and then applied for political asylum. More than 37,000 Haitians have applied for asylum in France since the early 1980s, but in 2003, for example, only 11 percent of them received it.3 Augustin had a temporary work visa and was trying his hardest to get

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by—both materially and spiritually—while awaiting the verdict on his application. Although he is well educated, young, and full of ambitions, Augustin seemed overwhelmed by having to start again at the bottom of the ladder in France. In Haiti, he had studied in Catholic schools, sung in the choir, and attended Mass every day. He admitted that he missed the strong religious fervor in Haiti. In Haiti, he was not the only one at daily Mass. Unlike in France, lots of people in Haiti attend Mass before heading to work for the day. As is common among newly arrived Haitians in Paris, Augustin was sharing a small apartment with another Haitian, which was located in the suburb called Montreuil. Through social connections to other Haitians in Paris, he quickly found his way to the Communauté catholique haïtienne, which meets on the northern edge of Paris. The more Augustin talked, the more his eyes expressed a great sadness. Like so many others, he talked about his faith as his only hope, as the center of his life. “The Haitian Catholic Community is my foundation, my base, my only family here. Without this community, I would be dead.” His somber look indicated that he struggled greatly to keep his hope going. The death he was trying to avoid might well have been a kind of spiritual death, or a death of hope and inspiration. Having struggled his whole life to help others in Haiti, Augustin felt that French society presented him with fewer ways to give to others. Attending church and singing in the choir allowed him to live by being able to give to others, and not just to be a black immigrant with precarious legal status and a low-status job. Although he does not spend as much time at church in France as he did in Haiti, he participates actively both in the Catholic parish near his home and in the Communauté. In fact, since the members of the Communauté gather for Mass at 5 p.m. on Sundays, Augustin first goes to morning Mass at the local parish church near his apartment. “Even if people at my parish are nice, it’s not the same thing [as the Communauté],” he explained, however. Augustin and

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many other Communauté members thus participate actively in both the Communauté and their local parishes. Augustin’s frank words illustrate how in such desperate circumstances, beyond turning to social networks at church for help finding housing and applying for asylum, many Haitians in Paris turn to their religious faith for spiritual nourishment. Their church participation also provides them with a way to give their time and energy to others. My interview with Augustin once again reminded me that although the neighborhood setting and even the style of the church architecture varied from Miami to Montreal to Paris, the Haitian Catholics who gather for prayer, choir rehearsal, and service spoke very similarly about their migration and adaptation experiences and their faith lives. The expressions of cultural mediation in Paris were quite similar to those in Montreal and Miami. However, the differences emerged when I examined how leaders of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris formed associations to carry out institutional mediation. Only one organization founded by Haitians in Paris has had much notable impact on their adaptation, Haïti Développement (Haiti Development). In some ways, the history of Haïti Développement resembles that of both the Toussaint Center in Miami and the Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community in Montreal. René Benjamin, a Haitian professional in France, founded Haïti Développement in 1969 to encourage Haitian students and professionals in France to use their skills to contribute to development in Haiti. A devout Catholic, Benjamin was one of the lay leaders who helped found the Communauté catholique haïtienne in 1981. At that time, Benjamin also changed the mission of Haïti Développement to focus on supporting the mostly working-class Haitians who were arriving in Paris in greater numbers. Notwithstanding his tremendous efforts, Benjamin has had little success in attracting outside funding. He largely runs Haïti Développement as a one-man show out of his apartment, trying to help Haitian immigrants apply for asylum, improve their French, and find jobs and

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housing. Despite the relative lack of governmental support for his initiatives, Haitians in France look to Haïti Développement as their most important mediating institution. Compared to similar institutions in Miami and Montreal, the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris and Haïti Développement appear small and relatively insignificant. The Haitian communities of Miami and Montreal are quite numerous, but the small number of Haitians in Paris live spread out all over the Paris banlieues, and these two Haitian institutions represent practically the only rays of hope or connections to Haitian culture many people can find. Even if they have fewer members and less money and political influence than their counterparts in North America, their religious faith is just as important to people like Augustin and others profiled in this chapter as it is to Haitians in Miami and Montreal. Despite some gradual changes in the French approach to immigrant adaptation, French traditions and policies hinder the ability of mediating institutions like Haïti Développement to assist Haitians in their adaptation. Although the very idea of institutional mediation seems to go against French republicanism’s insistence on a direct relationship between citizens and the state, scholars who study immigrant associations in France have pointed to the many ways in which the state and immigrant associations in France depend on each other to achieve adaptation goals and build social solidarity.4 However, with regard to Haitians in France, my research nonetheless uncovered very little contact between the state and mediating institutions founded by Haitians.

CROSSING THE ATLA NTIC

The strong historical, cultural, and political ties between Haiti and France might lead us to expect to find a large Haitian community in Paris, but its relative distance from Haiti seems to have limited the number who have settled there. Prior to the 1970s, only a few thousand Haitians lived in France, most of them students and professionals.5

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These first migrants came from the Haitian upper class, and most of them did not see France as their new home country; rather, they were awaiting a chance to return to Haiti under a democratic system. Many Haitians from this first stage of immigration founded associations—in particular political associations—to promote change in Haiti, but few of these associations have survived into the present, in part because their leaders returned to Haiti.6 Unlike many North Africans living in France, Haitians were not recruited to work in metropolitan France—that is, continental European France. In fact, the French government oYcially stopped recruiting labor migrants to metropolitan France in 1973, before the majority of the 25,000 Haitians counted by the 1999 French census arrived there.7 Some Haitians entered French territory as laborers in the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Guyana, collectively called Les Antilles. In fact, according to the 1999 census, more Haitians then lived in these three Caribbean departments—27,349—than all the departments of metropolitan France, including Paris and its suburbs, where approximately 25,000 Haitians lived. Data from the statistical service of France’s former OYce de migrations internationales (OYce of International Migration), or OMI, demonstrate that nearly all Haitians who had received a work visa from the French government had immigrated to Guadeloupe, Martinique, or Guyana, not to metropolitan France.8 In fact, according to data from OMI, from 1993 to 2001 around 90 percent of 5,133 work visas granted to Haitians were to work in the Antilles, not metropolitan France. Extremely few visas were granted for Haitians to work in Paris. For 2000, for example, only nine Haitians received permanent visas as salaried workers to migrate to Paris or its suburbs. Another approximately 5,000 Haitians acquired some kind of legal status through two slightly different types of family reunification provisions. Around 2,800 Haitians obtained visas to move to France under family reunification provisions. A second group of around 2,100 Haitians already living in France applied for and received temporary legal status through what is called a carte de

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séjour “vie privée et familiale,” or “private and family life” residence card, which grants temporary residence to foreigners living in France who can demonstrate that they are married to a French citizen, have a child who has lived in France since the age of ten or younger, or have continuously lived in France for the previous ten to fifteen years. Since the card’s inception in 1991, this has been the most common way Haitians in France have attained legal status. 9 What about refugees fleeing political turmoil in Haiti? As in Canada and the United States, relatively few Haitians were legally admitted as refugees and granted political asylum in France. Despite the continuous political conflict of the past twenty years in Haiti and the numerous well-documented human rights abuses there, OMI data show that from 1993 to 2001, only 1,532 Haitians had been given refugee visas to enter France. Data from the OYce français de la protection des réfugiés et des apatrides (French OYce for Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons), or OFPRA, show that an astoundingly high number of Haitians—37,355—requested asylum in France from 1981 to 2006, and that 31,183 of these applications were rejected and only around 6,000 accepted. Because the political and economic situation of Haiti remains very precarious, many Haitian leaders in Paris assert that most asylumseekers—and accompanying family members—whose claims are rejected remain in France. In light of data from OFPRA, the 1999 census figure of 25,000 Haitians in France appears very low indeed. Most Haitian community leaders estimated that closer to 50,000 Haitians lived in France by the early 2000s. Combining data from various sources indicates that those community leaders’ estimates may not be too far off the mark. Analysis of census data further illustrates that, like many other immigrants to France, Haitians tend to reside in the banlieues, comprised mostly of urban high-rise apartment buildings originally built to house North African labor migrants and their families in the 1960s. Of the total of nearly 25,000 Haitians in metropolitan France in 1999, 22,000, or 88.3 percent, lived in Ile-de-France, the administrative region consisting of Paris and its suburbs. Very few of them lived in the city of

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Paris. In fact, 90 percent reside in the banlieues.10 Twenty percent of Haitians in France had completed secondary school or higher, and 12.7 percent had some university education. Although these levels of education seem high for Haitians, the data also show that few Haitians work in professional occupations commensurate with their education. Rather, the largest number of Haitians work in the service sector, which tends to have one of the highest unemployment rates. This may explain the high rate of unemployment of Haitians in France—28.4 percent—which is more than double that of the economically active population overall, 12.5 percent.11 Haitians’ lower levels of human capital—measured by education, work experience, and French-language skills—no doubt contribute to their high rate of unemployment as well. However, the French scholar Patrick Simon has pointed out that immigrants’ social position also limits their employment possibilities. He argues that inability to attain French residence or citizenship, lack of networks in labor markets, and ethnic discrimination all help explain high levels of unemployment among most foreigners in France.12

FRENCH REPUBLICA N ISM A ND THE I M MIGR A NT BANLIEUES

Further complicating Haitians’ adaptation is the fact that most Haitians in Paris live in the banlieues. Although many French would resist comparing their banlieues to American inner cities, the banlieues of large French cities like Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles have come to enjoy a poor reputation, comparable to that of American ghettoes, and are characterized by high crime rates, youth delinquency, and school violence.13 For some French, despite the fact that the government provides many services to immigrants, such as public housing and free education, the banlieues symbolize the failure of immigrants to join mainstream French society. Yet immigrants like Haitians often have no choice but to move there in search of affordable housing. In 2005, several weeks of rioting erupted in the banlieues. First- and

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second-generation immigrant youth—most of them of North African or sub-Saharan African origin—burned over 10,000 vehicles. In addition, and perhaps more significantly for how we understand the limits of French republicanism, the young rioters directed much of their rage at symbols of the French Republic, attacking 255 schools, 233 public buildings, and 51 post oYces and stoning 140 public transport vehicles.14 In other words, the rioters attacked the very instruments the French government offered to incorporate them into mainstream French society. The ideology of French republicanism has historically been so strong in France that until the 1980s, scholars rarely studied immigrant communities or recognized the contributions of immigrants to French culture.15 As Miriam Feldblum puts it, despite the long history of immigration to France, such as the thousands of Europeans who migrated to France after World War I and World War II, most French do not consider their country to be “a traditional country of immigration, in the fashion of the United States, Canada or Australia.” To further emphasize her point, she adds: “France does not consider itself to have been formed demographically or culturally by successive waves of immigrants.”16 One scholar, Alec Hargreaves, argues that French republicanism has created “collective amnesia” about the contributions of immigrants to French society.17 The 1988 publication of Le creuset français (The French Melting Pot) by the eminent French historian Gérard Noiriel partly remedied this amnesia. In this influential work, Noiriel argued that, contrary to the one-way transmission of values and culture posited by French republicanism, immigrants have indeed left their mark on French society and identity. Despite growing recognition of immigrants’ lasting impact on France, large-scale surveys of immigrants and numerous in-depth case studies of particular immigrant communities of the kind common in the United States and Canada are still less common in France. Because French republicanism emphasizes individual rights and equality, rather than group rights or group equality, the French government generally has not created public policies specifically dealing

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with ethnic minorities like the aYrmative action policies found in the United States and Canada. However, in part as a response to the persistent problems of the banlieues, beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the present, the French government has increased its cooperation with ethnic associations. Although a 1901 law allowed many private associations to be formed in France, until 1981, foreigners were still excluded from forming associations. When the law changed, immigrant associations in France, founded both by first- and second-generation immigrants, began to proliferate, and the government began to see these associations as possible intermediaries for state programs.18 For example, in the 1980s, departing a bit from the unified national identity promoted by republicanism, the French government began to organize immigrants into associations and even to subsidize those associations in the banlieues as a way of promoting adaptation.19 This strategy partially reversed previous policies that had prohibited most ethnic associations because they were seen as promoting partial attachments and identities that weakened allegiance to the state.20 Scholars, politicians, and the French public continue to debate the causes of and solutions to this failed immigrant adaptation. Many point to changes in the French economy since the 1970s and the resulting unemployment, especially youth unemployment, as the reason for the failed adaptation. Others offer cultural explanations. One prominent example of this latter viewpoint comes from Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the Front national (FN) political party, who has argued that many immigrants, in particular, North Africans, are too culturally different from the French and simply cannot be assimilated into the French nation. Although one might think these arguments are only embraced by the extreme Right, public opinion polls demonstrate that many people polled in France indeed agree that many immigrants are too different for them to become French.21 The 2005 riots in the banlieues clearly demonstrated that, whatever the cause, many immigrants and their descendants in France remain far outside of the French cultural and socioeconomic mainstream. In

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response to the riots, some have proposed that the government should grant greater recognition and funding to local community associations in the banlieues. It now appears that the government increasingly recognizes the importance of mediating institutions to deal with problems of immigrant adaptation, yet there is little such cooperation between Haitian associations and the French state. As one French scholar of immigration, Riva Kastoryano, points out, the state should not be viewed as autonomous actor, but rather should be analyzed in how it relates to society, such as through relationships with immigrant organizations.22 Although such a statement may not seem unusual to some readers, Kastoryano’s assertion represents an important departure from the top-down, state-centered ideology implicit in much of French republicanism that has been used to guide both theory and research on immigrant adaptation in France.

REDEFINING L AÏCITÉ?

One of the challenges the French government will face as it cooperates more frequently with immigrants’ mediating institutions is that many immigrant leaders and organizations, as in the Haitian community, have ties to religious organizations. Because of the often close ties between ethnic communities and religious communities among immigrants, the meaning and application of laïcité, or secularism, increasingly arises when discussing immigrant adaptation in France. The different French and American governmental approaches to religion and civil society, which influence institutional formation in the contemporary Haitian communities of each country, date back to their nations’ respective revolutions. The French Revolution of 1789 removed much of the political and social influence of the Catholic Church, the majority religion of France since the fourth century, but the application of laïcité has not stopped at separating church and state functions. Leaders of both the French and American Revolutions wanted to prevent an established church from taking political power, but the

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French Revolution went much further than the American Revolution in removing the sacred from the secular realm. The French principle of disestablishment further evolved throughout the nineteenth century, and the policy of laïcité was enshrined in the Loi du 9 décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des Eglises et de l’Etat, which mandated a strict separation of church and state.23 In recent years, the principle of laïcité has also been used to mandate secularism in France’s public sphere in ways not easily found in other countries of the West. For example, French law has placed restraints on the public functions of religious groups and on the public display of religious symbols, such as the 2004 law banning wearing Muslim head scarves and other religious symbols in public institutions. Whereas in the United States, civil society organizations, including religious institutions, are seen as an important part of a stable democratic order to the extent that they inspire and shape civic behavior, the French state holds a more secular and statist view of society, which emphasizes unity based on a common culture that the government protects.24 In other words, the state, not civil society institutions such as religious institutions, is responsible for forming French citizens and ensuring their welfare. These ideological differences are partially responsible for the greater share of social services provided by the state in France than in the United States, where the private sector, including many religious organizations, frequently shares responsibility for welfare provision.25 Quite unlike the United States, where the Catholic Church established a position as part of a vibrant voluntary sector and conducted extensive social work with immigrants, in France, all independent nonprofit organizations, including religious nonprofits, were illegal until 1901, and all foreigners were prevented from forming associations until 1981. The French state’s interactions with ethnic or immigrant groups becomes even more complicated when religious institutions or symbols intervene. This may be partially because immigrants in France appear to practice religion more than native French do. According to a survey conducted by the Institut national de la statistique et des études

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économiques (National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies), or INSEE, only 16 percent of people in France regularly practiced a religion in 1996—which was actually a slight increase from the previous survey—and 25 percent reported no religious aYliation. But 31 percent of the foreign-born in France said they regularly practiced a religion— nearly twice the proportion of native-born.26 With the gap between native and immigrant religious practice, and that fact that religious leaders often found ethnic community associations, we might well wonder how the principle of laïcité influences immigrant adaptation generally and that of Haitians in France specifically. Indeed, in recent years, the French government and public figures have questioned the meaning of laïcité and some have called for more cooperation with civil society organizations, some of which have religious origins.27 The continued emphasis on laïcité does not mean that the French government has not accorded some space to religious ideas and leaders in the public sphere. In fact, one of France’s foremost experts on North African immigrants in France, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, has argued that Islam, both as a religion and a collective identity, is now firmly entrenched in French politics.28 In addition, other scholars in France have also pointed out that the Catholic Church, although undoubtedly much weaker than a hundred years ago, has nonetheless insisted on the continuing need to refer to the Gospel in order to formulate answers to pressing social questions founded on an integral concept of the human person as both a spiritual and a material being.29 In the hotly debated arena of public discourse on immigration in France, the Catholic Church, acting through public pronouncements by the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the individual work of many bishops and clergy, has reasserted its right to criticize public policy and shown its desire to shape the consciences of private citizens with regard to public policies.30 The difference between the French and American governmental approaches to religion and civil society can be summed up in the fol-

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lowing way. Although laïcité cannot proscribe private religious belief, French laws go to great lengths to shield France’s citizens from religion. In contrast, in the United States, while the constitution prohibits the establishment of a national religion or a state church, it also provides many protections for the free exercise of religion. The debate about how the French principle of laïcité is put into practice has most often come to the forefront when discussing the incorporation of Muslims into French society. Jocelyne Cesari, one of the foremost scholars on the incorporation of Muslim immigrants in the United States and France, points out that although the principle of laïcité is supposed to make the French state neutral toward religion, in its application, laïcité really rejects “any form of transcendence.”31 She continues to argue that the difference between the United States and France is not just legal, but also cultural: “Differences in the practice of secularism between France and America are not limited to the institutional or governmental level, however. They are also reflected in the status of religion in social life . . . the idea that religion cannot contribute positively to the common public good, a hallmark of secularized thought, is consistent throughout most of Europe. This secularism takes two forms: the cultural marginalization of religious creeds and the restriction of religious life to the social sphere.”32 As in the United States, freedom of religious expression is guaranteed in France. However, despite the fact that the French Conseil d’Etat has repeatedly pointed out this protection of religious freedom, “most French citizens see secularism as an apparatus for the delegitimization of religious identity.”33 This hostile attitude toward religion helps explain why a special commission of scholars and experts chosen by the French president to review the laws of secularism, the Stasi Commission, came out in favor of banning ostentatious religious symbols in public schools and other public places. This law, which passed in 2004, is generally held to target the Muslim head scarf, which in France is “interpreted as a symbolic rejection of progress and individual female

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emancipation . . . [and] provokes the wrath of those groups spearheading the defense of secular ideology, such as teachers, intellectuals, feminists and civil servants.”34 The principle of laïcité thus clearly distinguishes France from the United States. However, we should not therefore presume that the application of laïcité never changes. Just as church-state relations evolve in the United States and in Canada, French laïcité evolves as government oYcials respond to different perceived problems, as with immigrant adaptation. Looking at how Haitians navigate these different terrains sheds light on how the principle of laïcité is put into practice, thereby frequently shifting the boundaries between church and state.

Catholicism and Laïcité One of most the prominent French scholars of religion, Danièle HervieuLéger, notes that France considers itself the prototype of separation of church and state; in other words, many French see their country as the political, juridical, and intellectual prototype of secularism. Many French intellectuals have long believed that the retreat of religious beliefs and institutions is both necessary and inevitable in order both for societal progress and for individuals to come to heed their own consciences. Other European nations, such as Germany, Hervieu-Léger states, are more likely to recognize the Christian influence on their politics and economy.35 Hervieu-Léger argues that a better understanding of French politics would recognize that France has been deeply affected by two traditions—the Catholic and the republican.36 She does not see the Catholic Church as attempting to return the past, but rather as presenting a prophetic anticipation of a postmodern future.37 In some ways, she states, church leaders and intellectuals are trying to achieve the social good that rational progressives could not. In so doing, church leaders also emphasize that progress is not just about technical rationality but also about moral order.

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As in Quebec, although the Catholic Church’s scope and type of influence in French society has changed greatly, it is more appropriate to talk about new forms of engagement rather than merely to conclude that all engagement has ended. René Remond, in his 1995 book Le Catholicisme français et la société politique (French Catholicism and Political Society), traces how just as the French understanding and application of laïcité changed, the Catholic Church’s understanding of how to engage with the public sphere changed as well. He argues that, in its original conception, laïcité was linked to a broader movement, inspired by positivism, that emphasized teaching scientific knowledge over religious knowledge. The intellectuals who forged laïcité thought achieving national unity required suppressing religious teaching and removing religious institutions and influence from the public sphere. Unity, in their view, had now to come from allegiance to the state, not from a shared religion. Remond notes that laïcité has now evolved, positively in his view, to mean that religious beliefs must be tolerated but not suppressed. Remond also astutely captures how Catholic social doctrine emphasizes social justice. Catholic social doctrine and moral doctrine, he explains, complement each other. Thus, the Catholic faithful are required both to abide by Catholic morality and to work in society to build just institutions and just social structures. Catholic social doctrine insists that the faithful’s duties do not end at the individual level; rather, they are obliged to participate in associations that promote social ends in line with Catholic teaching, such as providing education and services to the elderly and the poor. Numerous papal encyclicals, the most recent being Pope Benedict XVI’s 2005 encyclical Deus caritas est, emphasize that Christian charity obliges Catholics to build just social structures. Catholic intellectuals in France and other places in Europe in the past formed their own political parties, such as the Christian Democratic Party.38 More recently, national Catholic organizations in France, such as groups that belong to the Catholic Action movement, like Action

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catholique ouvrière (Catholic Worker Action), have sought, not so much to impose specific solutions to social problems, but rather to foster an attitude of engagement among Catholics and to provide guidelines for interpreting France’s historical evolution, such as its changing culture and demographics. Remond further points out that both the Vatican and the French Bishops’ Conference have published documents about social doctrine and political engagement that explicitly recognize that faithful Catholics, other Christians, and non-Christians of good conscience may indeed differ in the political or technical solutions they propose to a particular social problem. Thus, there is no need to have a Catholic or a Christian political party in name in order for Catholics or Christians to influence the public sphere. Remond’s description of the general tendency of Catholic intellectuals in contemporary France—whether they be laypeople or clergy—fits well with how Catholic laypeople and clergy engage in debates about immigration and immigrant adaptation in France. For example, documents published by the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference do not so much try to settle issues about exactly how many immigrants or refugees should be allowed to enter France as call for a national and local dialogue about the diYcult issue of immigrant adaptation.39 Catholic clergy and Catholic lay intellectuals in France, in particular since Vatican II and the papacy of John Paul II, have carved out a new, transformed place for themselves in French society and politics. Both Hervieu-Léger and Remond refer to the phrase “expert in humanity,” first used by Pope Paul VI in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1965 and often repeated by Pope John Paul II during his papacy (1978–2005), to capture the church’s contribution to public debates. What does it mean to be an expert in humanity or to emphasize that society must be based on moral order and not just on technical rationality? Catholic leaders’ assertion that they are experts in humanity points to the Catholic Church’s self-understanding that it has a unique position—though not the only position—from which to understand the desires of men and women. The Catholic Church’s

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understanding of humanity, and as such its work supporting immigrant adaptation, points not only to the material needs of men and women, but also to their desire for meaning, for identity, for belonging. With regard to immigrant adaptation, therefore, newcomers must be given, not only material aid, but also a place in which to construct their new identity and sense of belonging. Catholic clergy and lay leaders working with immigrants, and Catholic intellectuals in general, do not seek to reestablish church control of state functions, but, as José Casanova puts it, many do seek to assert a public voice for the Catholic Church in the modern world.40 Thus, the concept of institutional mediation points to one way in which the Catholic Church understands its relationship to the modern, secular state. Furthermore, the work of clergy and lay leaders who work for church agencies like Catholic Charities or the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference is institutional mediation, because they act in the name of the Catholic Church, an institution with a long history of political and social work in France.41

H A ITI A N CATHOLICS IN PA R IS

The French republican traditions and French policies upholding laïcité might lead us to conclude that Haitian immigrants to France simply leave their religion at their port of entry. However, the interview excerpts below call into question the notion that all immigrants to France automatically adopt the tenets of republicanism, where no mediating institutions stand between individuals and the state. Rather, given their faith and regular involvement in church organizations, Haitians in France frequently seek help from Catholic lay leaders and clergy to resolve pressing problems related to their adaptation. Haitian Catholics in Paris gather at the Saint-Georges parish church in the nineteenth arrondissement, a neighborhood that lies close to the northern banlieues of Paris. In many ways, the nineteenth arrondissement looks more like a banlieue than one of the more central neigh-

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borhoods of Paris that most foreigners would be likely to visit. Large numbers of sub-Saharan and North Africans live there, as evidenced by the ethnic food stores near Saint-Georges. Like the Saint-Edouard parish church in Montreal, where the Haitian mission of Notre Dame celebrates Mass, Saint-Georges in Paris is a gothic church. The paintings and statues that decorate its walls seem to have been there for hundreds of years, with few restorations. Walking into Saint-Georges, one feels both the ancient traditions of Catholicism and the new life being brought to the Catholic Church in France by immigrants such as Haitians.42 As in Montreal, most members of the Communauté catholique haïtienne in Paris live far away from the church, so I joined the choir as a way of getting to know more people, who came to rehearsal on weekends.43 The first Mass at Saint-Georges coincided with a special Mass and reception to celebrate René Benjamin’s seventy-fifth birthday. As in Montreal, the Mass was celebrated mostly in Creole, with just a little bit of French. From up in front of the altar, Father Eustache’s personality extended out into the crowd, as he publicly acknowledged Benjamin’s work to assist all Haitians in Paris and his particular efforts to help found and maintain the Haitian Catholic mission. After Mass, all in attendance moved to the church’s reception hall, where women served cake, food, and soft drinks, and two choirs—the children’s and the adults’—performed special songs. Since most Haitian associations in France today concern themselves with politics and developments in Haiti, and very few focus their efforts on the Haitian community in Paris, many Haitian community leaders consider Benjamin to be the one person who has done the most to assist Haitians’ adaptation in Paris. As in Miami and Montreal, Haitian Catholics were eager to share their prayer lives with me, recounting a larger story of how they had moved from Haiti to Paris and how they adjusted to their lives in a new home. In interviews with individuals about their faith, narratives similar to those among Haitian Catholics in Miami and Montreal emerged,

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illustrating very similar forms of cultural mediation across sites. To illustrate the similarities, the interview excerpts below point to a strong belief in the incarnation—that God is present all around and hears their prayers. In addition, active members of the Communauté catholique haïtienne make great efforts just for the sake of what one woman called rassemblement—coming together. She echoed Father Wenski’s idea that Haitians’ adaptation is best accomplished from a position of strength, and coming together to pray gives many the strength they need to keep going in their struggles. Another example shows how religious faith helps create a sense of moral order out of what appears to be chaos, bad luck, or unjust treatment. Together, these examples illustrate the very similar ways in which Haitian Catholics put into practice different elements of Catholic doctrine and, in so doing, create a local theology founded on grace and hope.

“I Talk to Jesus All Day Long” Numerous religious images decorated Emma’s three-bedroom apartment in a northern banlieue of Paris. In the front hallway, a six-footlong fluorescent rosary hung on the wall. Emma had bought this rosary at Lourdes, the popular pilgrimage site in the south of France, where Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared in 1858 to a young woman named Bernadette Soubirious. Pictures of the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus adorned Emma’s living room and bedroom. As Emma talked about her life in France, her three children and husband walked around and listened to bits of our conversation. Her mother had moved to France when Emma was only fourteen and had brought Emma to join her a few years later. By 2003, all of her six siblings had moved to Paris, and she had a family network of about twenty-five people in the Paris region. Emma had always been active in the Catholic Church in Haiti, so right after she arrived in France in 1984, her mother introduced her to the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris. At the time Emma

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started attending the Communauté, it was just a small and informal prayer gathering, led by a French missionary priest who had worked in Haiti. Recognizing that the Haitian population of Paris was rapidly growing, Emma and a few other lay members of the community, such as Benjamin, formed a pastoral council to expand the Communauté. Beginning with just ten people attending Mass in 1984, it grew to have several hundred regular members by 2003. Like others, even when Emma talked about her job or her family, she always returned somehow to her religion. For example, although she works at a university cafeteria, she most wanted to emphasize how she makes elaborate cakes for weddings, first communions, birthdays, and other special occasions in her church community. As Emma described her cake business to me, her fourteen-year-old daughter Chantal pulled out a photo album and enthusiastically showed pictures of the cake she had helped her mom make for her own first communion. For Catholics everywhere, receiving one’s first Eucharist is one of the most important steps in one’s religious life. However, many clergy commented on how Haitians retain more elaborate traditions of celebrating this sacrament than other Catholics in the United States, Canada, or France. When Haitians make first communion, children dress all in white and have their portraits taken; their parents invite all their extended family and friends to join them in a great feast, and they keep albums recording the event, much like a wedding. In addition to the religious significance of her participation in the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, for Emma, as for Marlene and others, bringing their children to church with them represents one of the few ways in which their children stay in touch with Haitian culture and learn at least some Creole. Like Marlene’s two daughters, all of Emma’s three children attend the Communauté with her and participate in the youth groups and a youth choir, which sings in Creole. She does not force them to come, but she hopes they will continue to attend. Her daughter Chantal at least seemed to follow her mother in just about everything, even sitting next to her during our two-hour

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interview, but Emma admitted that it has been harder to keep her teenage son involved in church groups. With her daughter and husband next to her in her living room, Emma confidently asserted, “You could say that God is really the only thing I have in my life.” She went on to tell me, “I talk to Jesus just like I am talking to you right now.” She repeated this idea several times, pointing at the different statues and pictures of Jesus she has around her living room. “I talk to him all day long, when I am at work, and when I am at home. Jesus is my best friend, he is my most reliable friend, he is my role model.” Emma talked very naturally about her prayer as an ongoing conversation between her and Jesus that takes place in different places and at all times of the day. In addition to feeling the presence of God at expressive Charismatic ceremonies or grand feasts like first communions or weddings, people like Emma sense God’s presence, not just in church, but with them in all circumstances, guiding them through the many challenges of their adaptation in a new society. A firm belief in the incarnation is a constant amid what otherwise are many changes and uncertainties. By her active participation and leadership in the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, Emma gives a different meaning to her life in France and generates a sense of moral order for her children.

“God Knows Every Hair on Your Head” Michèle, another member of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, emphasized a similar idea of God’s continuous presence in her life. It was hard to miss Michèle at Sunday Mass at the Communauté, because she was always very dressed up and she routinely had a big smile for everyone. At her home in a southern banlieue of Paris, she proudly pointed out that her current fifty-five-square-meter apartment, in a high-rise building, is much bigger than the tiny seventeen-squaremeter apartment where she lived with her brother, three other adults, and a child when she first came Paris in 1984. As she showed me around

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the neighborhood, she emphasized that she and her family had previously lived in a darker, more dangerous banlieue. At least in her current apartment building, everything was clean and in working order, and they had a nice yard. In her mind, things seemed to be getting better for her family in Paris, even if they still had a long way to go. Michèle came to France in 1984 with a tourist visa to visit her sister, but then decided it was unsafe to return to Haiti. Her first application for asylum status, when Jean-Claude Duvalier was still in power, was denied. She then reapplied and obtained a one-year residence permit. This permit was extended first for nine more years, and more recently she had obtained a ten-year residence card. In 2003, she and her husband were planning to apply for French nationality. As her children were both born in France, they can automatically claim French citizenship, but they both emphasized their Haitian identity over their French identity. When Michèle mentioned that her twelve-year-old daughter, Carline, already had legal papers, Carline piped up, “I’m still Haitian, but I have a French ID card.” Her eight-year-old brother retorted proudly, “I’m Haitian.” Michèle’s children could clearly combine ethnic and national categories as they saw best; how they will fashion their identity in the future remains to be seen. These comments illustrate the great lengths that Haitian parents in Paris go to raise children “the Haitian way,” which many parents like Michèle explained to me to be respectful and obedient. They contrasted this “Haitian way” of raising children with their perception that French parents allow their children to be rebellious and impolite. Such comparisons of parenting styles often came from direct experience with French families, as Michèle, like Marlene and several other women at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, spends her days caring for French children. Michèle’s first job in France was taking care of just one child for a French working mother. Michèle’s first boss really liked her, and when she no longer needed her help, she assisted Michèle in obtaining cer-

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tification to work at a day-care center. Michèle seemed very satisfied with her job, and remarked that she was lucky she loves kids so much, because day-care work was abundant. Michèle’s husband, Henry, drives a taxi. Over lunch, Henry described how he likes the days, which occur only rarely, when he earns enough to come home early. According to Henry, his family is doing much better financially now, compared to a few years ago, but he envies family members who live on Long Island, New York, who have bigger homes and earn more money. Their apartment, although small, is decorated with religious images, mixed in with paintings from Haiti and with family photos. Like Emma’s home, Michèle’s apartment was decorated with large pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and images of the Virgins of Lourdes and Fatima, a popular pilgrimage site in Portugal. To explain the abundance of religious pictures, Michèle simply replied, “We are great believers.” She further stated that, in Haiti, her family always practiced their faith. Her mother belonged to the parish council, and the Charismatic prayer group met at Michèle’s house every Tuesday. She was always involved with the church in Haiti, and she used to sing in the choir and go to different groups. It is a bit harder to be involved in Paris, she lamented, because the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris meets on the other side of Paris from where she lives. She discovered the Communauté in 1989 and has been going with her husband and two children ever since. As if to confirm that her family is made up of strong believers, Michèle showed me the pictures of her children’s baptism and first communion. Michèle talked about how her parents taught her the Catholic faith and sent her to Catholic school, but she bemoaned that it has been harder to raise her children as Catholics in France, because a lot of other kids at their school are not believers, and they make fun of kids like hers who are believers and go to church. When she made this comment, however, her daughter spoke up and insisted that a few of her classmates did go to church. Regardless, Michèle’s impression that

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fewer people in France practice their faith compared to Haiti certainly causes her concern. She takes her children with her to church every Sunday and has enrolled them in catechism classes at the local parish. This confidence that God accompanies her everywhere, she said, is what has enabled her to persevere in her many struggles in France. Despite the more secular climate in France, and even now that her economic situation is much improved, Michèle insisted with absolute confidence, she has never been tempted to give up her faith. “My mom used to tell me, ‘Look at your head. You couldn’t ever count all of the hairs on your head, but God knows every single hair on your head, and not a single one could fall without him allowing it.’ ”

Rassemblement Carmel, another member of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, lives in a banlieue south of Paris. Carmel is small in stature—less than five feet tall. Like Marlene, she works as a domestic servant for a wealthy family eleven hours a day, five days a week. She and her husband raise their own four children plus two grandchildren, who live with them. As at Marlene’s home, the dark, dingy entranceway to Carmel’s apartment contrasted greatly with the bright, cheerful home she keeps. In 1980, a friend invited Carmel to come to France, gave her a place to stay, and helped her fi nd a job. Although she came with a tourist visa, she was able to apply for amnesty just a few years later. Once she had legal residence, she first brought over her sisters. In 1984, her husband joined her, and their four children were subsequently born in France. When I arrived at their home, all four of their children and their two grandchildren greeted me with kisses. Proud of their behavior, Carmel quickly remarked: “Yes, that is how I raise them—the Haitian way, not the French way. In Haiti, we teach kids to say hello, good-bye, to ask to be excused. French parents just let their kids do whatever they want; they aren’t polite. French kids just wander around on the streets.”44 Carmel further complained about how hard it has been for her

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to find steady, well-paying work. She said she hoped to change jobs, because she feels that she works very long hours for low pay. To make matters worse, she thought her boss did not respect her because she is an immigrant. However, as she does not have any particularly valuable occupational skills, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “What can I do? We are obliged to take whatever job we can and live wherever we can afford.” In her daily routine, Carmel gets up at 6 a.m. to prepare breakfast for her own family and begin preparing their dinner. After working for eleven hours taking care of her boss’s four children, she comes home to continue the domestic chores for her own family. Her husband works as an electrician, and he echoed her comment that as an immigrant in France, you are obliged to take whatever job comes your way, even if the pay is not good. Despite all the stresses of being low-wage-earning immigrants, Carmel and her husband find time to stay very active in the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris. Belonging to the Communauté aYrms their faith and reinforces their values to their children. In addition to Sunday Mass, they attend Friday night choir rehearsal at the Communauté. Before the 5 p.m. Creole Mass at the Communauté, she and her husband attend a Legion of Mary meeting, the same prayer and service group they belonged to in Haiti. Carmel showed me her prayer book for the Legion of Mary, in French, and admitted that she cannot read it all, but said that she does her best. Furthermore, as part of their commitment as members of the Legion of Mary, Carmel and her husband visit the homes of other Haitians in Paris. In particular, they offer counseling and support to couples having marriage problems or to families with rebellious children. Another part of their mission is to visit the sick and encourage those Haitians whose undocumented legal status has left them discouraged or without any access to health care or social welfare. Carmel admitted that she and her husband cannot immediately fi x someone else’s problems, but, she said, they can at least give some advice and try to lift people’s spirits. However, she added, you cannot help other people if you do not

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give a good example, so she and her husband work hard on creating a happy home, which includes praying together and attending church on Sundays as a family. Despite her time-consuming job and numerous domestic chores, Carmel insisted that, far from cutting out her prayer life because she is so busy, she relies on her spiritual life in order to keep struggling to get ahead. In her opinion, in order to truly live a Christian life, one cannot maintain one’s faith just by going to church on Sundays and then going home. She insisted that one of the most important elements of faith is rassemblement, or getting together. Because Haitians live so far from one another in Paris and because they work long hours to survive, this communal element of the faith lacks a little in Paris. Reminiscent of Marlene in Montreal and of Father Wenski’s emphasis on integrating from a position of strength, Carmel emphasized that “we need to live in community, to come together, to receive formation so that our faith can grow.” This communitarian spirit seemingly contradicts the individualism of French republicanism but would fit easily into a concept of the melting pot. In addition, Carmel’s comment reflects that people often seek out others to aYrm their own religious beliefs. To emphasize forcefully how faith gives strength, Carmel made a fist and punched the air, saying, “When you have more faith, you are stronger [punch] to face your problems in life.” Rassemblement, getting Haitian Catholics in Paris together, is not as easy as Carmel would like. Carmel tried to start a Haitian Charismatic group in Paris, but people live so far away from one another and from Saint-Georges, where the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris meets for Mass, that she has not been able to maintain an active Charismatic prayer group. However, as in Montreal, a few small groups of Haitians meet for prayer in different banlieues in the north and the south of Paris, and it is likely that these groups will grow in size, because more Haitians arrive in France each year. For Carmel, her sense of personal and community identity came from her faith. Carmel and many others emphasized that faith means

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both fulfilling certain individual obligations to God and being of service to others in the community. Despite her very hectic schedule, Carmel made time for personal prayer, for service through the Legion of Mary, and for going to choir rehearsal. In each of these ways, religious narratives and practice form cultural mediation that help Carmel and other Haitian Catholics find a sense of individual and collective belonging in what is often an unfriendly environment, full of many daily challenges.

“Faith Is Doing What Is Right” Another example illustrates how religious faith provides a sense of moral order that one is not permitted to violate, no matter what the circumstances. Although, like Michèle, many members of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris constructed narratives that emphasized experiencing joy despite diYcult circumstances, others, like Therèse, held onto their faith because of a deep sense of religious truth, a belief in right and wrong that often persists even when religious sentiment ebbs. Therèse, another member of the choir at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, invited me to her home for lunch one Wednesday, the one day a week she rests from her work cleaning homes. After an hour-long journey by subway and bus, I arrived at Therèse’s apartment building, which towered about twenty stories high in the western Paris suburb of Mairie de Lilas. Therèse was born in Léogâne, Haiti. After a strict upbringing, in which she was barely allowed to date, at twenty-four, she married her husband in the Catholic Church. A few years later, her husband moved to France, and she joined him shortly thereafter with their daughter, who was four years old at the time. Their years together in France were extremely trying. Her husband fell ill, and since they had no medical insurance in France and no legal papers, he went back to Haiti. The medical treatment he received there did not help, and he died at thirty.

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Therèse was unable to travel to Haiti to take care of him or attend his funeral, because she still did not have legal papers in France. So she remained as a young widow and mother, alone in Paris. Therèse described her situation after her husband’s death as desperate and impoverished. Despite her miserable situation, she was afraid that people in her church community would look down on her if she said she could not afford to pay rent or for her daughter’s food. So, she went to the local government charity oYce, and they offered her tickets to eat at a public cafeteria. When she went there to eat, however, she saw homeless and unemployed men standing in line, and she felt too ashamed to join them. Afraid that another Haitian would see her and tell others back in Haiti that she was unemployed, she threw away the food tickets and survived on her own. Later, though, she admitted that she did receive a government welfare check for her daughter. Struggling to get by, Thèrese put up signs in stores advertising herself as a cleaning lady. She considers herself a skilled seamstress, and she still makes some money sewing clothing, but she has found herself better able to make a living by cleaning homes. Although she never remarried, Thèrese lived with another Haitian man for several years, and they had a child together. When they were all together, they lived in an extremely cramped apartment with just two rooms: one where they slept and a kitchen with just a small refrigerator and an electric burner. They shared a bathroom in the hallway with several other families, and paid extra money every time they took a shower. She paid as much money for that tiny apartment—€450 monthly—as she now pays for a much bigger and cleaner apartment. The difference, she said, was that once she acquired temporary legal papers, she became eligible to apply for lowincome government housing, which generally surpasses the quality and cleanliness of low-income private rentals in France, such as her previous apartment. By 2003, Therèse and her companion had split up, and she once again lived as a single mother, now with two children to raise. Throughout our conversation, Thèrese’s voice and look expressed much sorrow and disappointment. She was proud of having struggled

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so hard to survive, but she did not hide the fact that her struggles had really taken a heavy toll on her. In particular, she mentioned that her only two close family members in France—her sister and her first husband’s father—had both failed to help her when she most needed it. From Thèrese’s point of view, her sister simply turned her back on her when she was down, and since then they hardly spoke. Her father-inlaw, however, went beyond ignoring her plight and actually stole money from her. As Thèrese told the story, her father-in-law managed to pull off a scam in which he named himself the legal guardian of Thèrese’s daughter and thus started receiving the government check meant for Thèrese. It took nearly a year for Thèrese to realize what was going on and stop him. The worst part was not just the lost money, she said, but how deeply she was scarred by this deception. Thèrese reiterated that she never asked people for help, but she did mention that René Benjamin from the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris had helped her apply for legal papers several times. At first, she was always denied, but once she had borne a child in France, she became eligible to apply for a carte de séjour “vie privée et familiale.” She then went back to Benjamin, who helped her file an application, which was ultimately successful. However, obtaining this card is only a temporary reprieve for Thèrese, because she must reapply every year and thus always risks being denied. Thèrese seemed proud of how far she had come since feeling so destitute when her husband died ten years earlier. Like Michèle, she said that her faith had never waned. “I always pray to God for what I need,” she said. Despite her anger at her relatives’ abandonment and deception of her, she insisted: “Faith is trusting in God, faith is helping other people, faith is doing what is right.” Attending church every Sunday and going to choir rehearsal on the weekend aYrms Thèrese in the rightness of her path, even when others disappoint her. Being an active member of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris has been the one constant in her life in Paris. Like so many other members of the Communauté, Thèrese decorated her apartment with several religious

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articles—a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary and one of Our Lady of Fatima that she brought back from a pilgrimage to Portugal, among other things. Unlike Marlene’s, Thèrese’s description of her faith did not include mystical experiences or visions. Rather, Thèrese’s faith is more one of persistence along a particular path and encouraging others, even when people close to you deceive you. When everything seemed to be falling apart around her, Thèrese turned to her faith for strength and guidance. Even if others hurt her badly, she insisted, she did not want to do the same. Thèrese’s actions at the end of our interview illustrated what she meant by always doing what is right and helping others. To my great surprise, when we finished our three-hour interview, Thèrese prepared two plastic containers full of food for me to take home. When I expressed my amazement at the amount of food she was giving me—enough for four meals—she smiled and said, “That’s just how I am. I can’t be just a little bit generous. I try to be very generous.” Thèrese’s words once again showed how many Haitians wanted to be “givers” and actively sought ways to be generous even with their limited fi nancial means. These examples illustrate how, in constructing narratives about their adaptation, members of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris adapt their religious faith to their present circumstances. Like Julia in Miami, who told me that “Jesus came with us on the boat,” Haitian Catholics in Paris emphasize the real presence of Jesus in their lives as a friend they can talk to all day long. Coming together, or rassemblement, as a community of faith provides a sense of moral order. Belonging to a moral community, even if it is one that is not endowed with great material wealth, keeps people on a path they see as morally upright, even when they face desperate material circumstances. Doing what is right, knowing that God knows every hair on one’s head and sees every action, gazing up at religious images at home, and instructing children on proper behavior are all important forms of cultural mediation in Haitians’ adaptation in Paris.

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THE STRUCTURE OF THE COM MU NAUTÉ CATHOLIQUE H A ÏTIEN NE DE PA R IS

Given the small numbers of Haitians in Paris and their dispersion throughout the Paris banlieues, the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris is virtually the only way its members interact with other Haitians. Most Haitians must travel an hour or so by train and metro to reach Saint-Georges. In 1981, when the Haitian population of Paris numbered approximately 8,000, twenty or thirty people founded the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris. By 2000, the Haitian population in Paris and its surroundings had grown to more than 20,000, but the Communauté only counted 400 members. Despite these small numbers, more than in Montreal or Miami, for Haitians in Paris, the church is often the only ethnic association of which they know or with which they come in contact. For its regular members, the Communauté is the center of their social network and a place of rassemblement, getting together to strengthen their spiritual life. The small community is nonetheless quite tightly knit; about one-third of those who attend Sunday Mass at Saint-Georges also belong to one of the community’s prayer groups, youth groups, or choirs. In my many interviews with leaders of secular Haitian associations in Paris, none of those leaders claimed to have nearly as many members or as much regular participation as this church community. Although the forms of cultural mediation present among Haitian Catholics in Paris resemble those in Miami and Montreal, the structure of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris differs substantially, illustrating the more limited financial resources of the Catholic Church in Paris, compared to Miami in particular. For example, the limited availability of funds to pay for a full-time priest to lead the Communauté has greatly hampered the scope of its activities. In both Miami and Montreal, there are full-time clergy at Notre Dame d’Haiti, but a full-time priest has never been assigned to the Paris Communauté. Since 1986, Haitian priests studying in France have intermittently

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led the Communauté, but because the archbishop of Paris chooses the chaplain of the Communauté from among Haitian priests sent to France to pursue a higher academic degree, he has to divide his time between it and his studies. Moreover, as soon as his studies are completed, he returns to Haiti, and a new chaplain is named from among the Haitian priests studying in Paris. Many of the original lay leaders who helped found the community still participate actively—like Emma and René Benjamin—and thus provide some continuity of leadership, but even this strong lay leadership cannot replace the work that a full-time, regular priest would be able to do. From its founding in 1981 until 2003, six different Haitian priests led the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, each serving for from two to four years.45 As full-time students and short-term leaders of the community, these clergy have been less active in broader community affairs than the leaders of the Haitian Catholic missions of Montreal and Paris. According to Father Philippe Simon Barboux, the delegate for foreign communities in the archdiocese of Paris, of the fifty-four immigrant missions in Paris, only two immigrant communities—one of which is the Communauté catholique haïtienne—do not have a full-time clergy member assigned to lead them. The archdiocese of Paris subsidized the costs of the Communauté until 2003, but funds to pay for a full-time priest would now have to come from the Haitian community itself. According to Father Eustache, the priest who led the Communauté in 2003, it has tried to generate enough surplus to pay for a full-time priest, but has not been able to do so. In Miami, Montreal, and Paris, laypeople and clergy cooperate in social and pastoral programs. However, in Paris, the scope of these activities has been greatly limited by lack of funds and the great distances that make it diYcult to travel to the Saint-Georges parish more than once or at most twice a week. Consequently, smaller meetings of Haitian Catholics take place in different parts of the banlieues. Other members of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, like

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Marlene and Augustin, become involved in their neighborhood parish as well as remaining active in the Communauté. Unlike in Miami, there is thus no center to the Haitian community of Paris. What will happen as more Haitians arrive in France? Will the Haitian community continue to develop centrifugally, with people settling all around the outskirts of Paris? Or will a central meeting point emerge? Regardless of future settlement patterns, what kinds of institutional mediation exist within this community that support Haitians’ adaptation?

H A ÏTI DÉV ELOPPEMENT

The best-known mediating institution for Haitians in Paris is undoubtedly Haïti Développement, founded by René Benjamin, who also helped start the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris. Under Benjamin’s direction, Haïti Développement aims to bring in outside resources to support Haitians’ adaptation. As the word développement in its name implies, Benjamin originally founded it as a transnational organization to support development in Haiti. Since the majority of Haitians in France at that time were students and professionals, Benjamin created an organization that would help these temporary migrants plan ways to use their skills and education when they returned to Haiti. As a university student in Haiti, Benjamin had worked with Haitian students on numerous social and political projects. His political engagement earned him the disfavor of the Duvalier regime, prompting him to move to France. Benjamin always had a strong faith in God, and he never stopped practicing the faith when he arrived in France, even though his moving from Haiti to France meant that he entered a much more secular environment. In the 1960s, a small group of Haitian students and professionals met to celebrate Mass in Creole, but these efforts were discontinued for most of the late 1960s and 1970s. Until the end of the 1970s, the few thousand Haitians living in France had high levels of human capital and could adapt successfully

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without the support of an ethnic community. However, as the sources of Haitian immigration to France changed, Benjamin and a few others in 1981 saw the need to found the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris. As with the leaders of the Toussaint Center in Miami and the Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community in Montreal, Benjamin’s regular involvement with the church community made him aware of the great challenges this new wave of Haitian immigrants were facing in France. As a result, a couple of years after the founding of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, he changed the mission of Haïti Développement from preparing Haitians to contribute to development when they returned to Haiti to promoting the adaptation of Haitians who hoped to remain in France. Leaders of other Haitian associations in Paris agreed that Haïti Développement has had the greatest impact on Haitians’ adaptation in Paris. Its success is partly owing to its intermediary position between Haitians’ religious community and the secular host environment. As with the Toussaint Center in Miami and the Bureau in Montreal, Benjamin’s position as a lay leader of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris allows him to build trust among the Haitians he is trying to serve. He then uses his own contacts through other Catholic organizations like Catholic Charities to establish links with external actors. Leaders of other civic associations who do not participate in a religious community admit that, because of the dispersion of Haitians throughout Paris, they have few regular chances to interact with the populations they seek to serve. In fact, nearly all leaders of Haitian secular associations admitted that they had extremely limited contact with working-class Haitians, often lamenting their limited time to reach out to the grass roots. When Benjamin changed the mission of Haïti Développement in the early 1980s to focus on Haitians’ adaptation in France, political repression was severe in Haiti under Jean-Claude Duvalier. The primary mission of Haïti Développement at that time was to help Haitians apply for political asylum. As in Miami and Montreal, it is unlikely that many Haitians would be able to navigate the bureaucratic hurdles

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without informed counsel about how to apply for asylum. Like that of the Toussaint Center in Miami and the Bureau in Montreal, Haïti Développement’s support for asylum claims extends to advocacy for Haitians. In order for Haitians’ asylum requests to receive serious consideration, the government must be informed of the general conditions in Haiti that would support their claims of persecution. Nonetheless, it would be diYcult for Benjamin to sensitize French government oYcials about political conditions in Haiti by himself. In Miami and Montreal, Catholic leaders who advocate for Haitians have been supported by other Catholic institutions and leaders who have experience in advocating on behalf of immigrants and asylumseekers. As in the United States and Canada, the Bishops’ Conference in France and Catholic service agencies like Catholic Charities are particularly attuned to the needs of immigrants—in particular asylumseekers—whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or of another religion.46 According to José de Silva, the director of the French Bishops’ Conference’s OYce of Pastoral Services for Migrants, immigration has been the top social concern of the French bishops since the end of World War II. In addition to concerns about how immigrants impact internal affairs of the church, the clergy and laypeople who work for the French Bishops’ Conference believe they have a responsibility to participate in national debates about immigration policy. For example, the Catholic Church in France has lobbied the government to maintain family reunification as one of the pillars of France’s immigration policy, to grant foreigners resident status when they marry French citizens, and to allow undocumented parents of French citizens to attain residence.47 In addition to lobbying activities, certain church organizations and leaders were deeply involved in the political protests of undocumented immigrants that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. During a wave of more than one hundred hunger strikes organized by undocumented immigrants—in France, known as the sans-papiers, those without papers—from 1972 to 1992, the Catholic Church was one of the most systematic supporters

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of the undocumented and one of the only parties trusted by both the strikers and the government.48 However, despite some relevant similarities between the United States and France, varying traditions of secularism and statism produce different strategies among Catholic leaders for engaging the public sphere. For example, in the United States, Catholic agencies provide more services directly to immigrants and refugees, which strengthens the Bishops’ Conference’s voice in the public sphere. Because of the French tradition of laïcité and statism, Catholic agencies in France provide a relatively smaller amount of social services.49 Like their counterparts in the United States, many French Catholic organizations that work with immigrants were formed after World War II, when millions of refugees flocked into France. Catholic Charities in France eventually formed an extensive grassroots network covering the entire country, and it now assists more than one million immigrant clients annually, most of whom are undocumented.50 Because of their precarious legal status, these undocumented immigrants—many of whom are neither Catholic nor Christian of any denomination— prefer to approach the Catholic Church rather than the state. Catholic Charities provides links to local Catholic parishes that can help support immigrants or asylum-seekers for a short amount of time. Because their own resources are limited, however, the greatest help Catholic Charities can provide consists in helping immigrants fi nd out which types of government benefits they can access. In the case of Haïti Développement, Catholic Charities provided Benjamin with some advice and a small amount of funding for his language and job-training programs. Despite the importance of this support to launching Haïti Développement’s mission to aid Haitians’ adaptation, external support from Catholic organizations for Haïti Développement does not compare to that for Miami’s Toussaint Center. Whereas throughout its history, the Toussaint Center has continuously grown in terms of funding, staff, and space, Haïti Développe-

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ment stays afloat by using Benjamin’s apartment as its main oYce and rents a nearby oYce space for its larger meetings and classes. Benjamin acquired a modest grant from the French government to help asylumseekers file their applications with the government, and he uses this funding mainly to pay for an administrative assistant. He takes no salary from Haïti Développement and lives off his government pension. Despite shared concerns among Catholic leaders about Haitians’ adaptation in France, and despite the similarity in the history of institutions such as Haïti Développement and the Toussaint Center, Benjamin has found little external support for his efforts. The greatest concrete service he has been able to provide for Haitians is to help them file applications for asylum—he aids nearly 150 clients a month in this way. In some instances, at least, the French state recognizes its dependence on ethnic institutions, because of their greater trust and proximity to asylum-seekers, yet it only provides minimal financial support to such institutions. The other small services Haïti Développement has been able to provide—some job training and language classes—have been limited by scarce funding and the high cost of transportation from the banlieues. Without further external support, it is unlikely that Benjamin’s efforts to assist working-class Haitians can be expanded to have a substantial impact on their adaptation.

OTHER H A ITI A N ASSOCI ATIONS

In addition to associations in France whose primary mission is to work in Haiti, another ten to fifteen Haitian associations sponsor some kind of activities for Haitians in France. However, none of those other Haitian associations in France have received funding for programs or even for oYce space. Furthermore, because Haitians in the Paris region are so dispersed, few people attend even the largest activities organized by these ethnic associations. Given their lack of funding and the low turnout at their events, leaders of these secular Haitian associations

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admit that Haïti Développement is the only Haitian association that has had any significant impact—albeit a limited one—on Haitians’ adaptation. One Haitian community leader, Smith Glaude, who has conducted a study of Haitian associations in France, described to me in an interview how Haitian associations in France have a hard time getting off the ground, because la logique française, the French way of doing things, is that individuals deal directly with the state. As French government policies do not oYcially recognize any ethnic communities, Haitian associations in France have virtually no chance at attaining government funding for their activities or even gaining an audience with policy makers. As Glaude explains, “Compared to Canada, we Haitians represent nothing to the French government. We are invisible here in France.” Haitian leaders’ initiatives to try to reach out to the French government have been largely ignored, Glaude says; other immigrant groups have received more attention from the government.51 In addition to their invisibility to the state, many leaders of Haitian secular associations admitted that their activities drew mostly highly educated Haitians—the minority of Haitians in Paris now. These leaders know that working-class Haitians concentrate at church. One of them said, however, that there was a cleavage, or what he repeatedly called a décalage (gap), between Haitian intellectuals in Paris and working-class Haitian immigrants, such as the majority of people who attend the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris. Carl, who moved back and forth across class lines as both a leader of a youth group at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris and the president of a Haitian university student group in Paris, explained that many Haitian intellectuals lose their religious faith when they arrive in France and thereby cut themselves off from the working-class Haitian community in Paris. For example, as the former president of the Haitian Students’ Association of the University of Paris, he noticed that many Haitian students who went to church in Haiti stopped attending when they came to France. Perhaps intellectuals are more drawn by French republicanism’s

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promises of equality, Carl surmised. Another possible reason that so few Haitian intellectuals have engaged the Haitian grass roots in France could be that a small group of a few hundred students and intellectuals come to Paris, many on a transitory basis, to study, then return to Haiti and apply for a high-skilled visa to go to the United States or Canada. Like many other intellectuals, Carl acknowledged that his own social projects had been greatly influenced by the religious schools he attended in Haiti and particular religious figures he had known during his youth. The climate of doubt in France had affected his faith, although he continues to attend church. “You know,” he said, laughing, “in Haiti we were taught the Christian religion by the French. But now we say, if you want to lose your faith, go to France. We also used to say, if you want to lose your belief in communism, go to the USSR. And we say that if you want to stop believing that capitalism is always good, go to the USA.” Echoing what Lucien Smarth in Montreal had said, Carl aYrmed, “Yes, I believe in something greater than us,” but he is less sure of what that is now that he has moved to France. “Some people say it [that force] is God, it is Jesus Christ; others say it is the spirits, les lwas.” Carl’s comments differed greatly from those of other interviewees, who gave me testimony of great personal faith. Yet perhaps his comments about how the secular climate of France influences the faith of Haitian intellectuals—many of whom stop practicing their religion when they arrive in France—further points to why Haitians like Marlene and Thèrese make an extraordinary effort to go to the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris. Without this rassemblement, coming together to share faith, the sense of moral order and the feeling of belonging to a moral community could be shattered by their migration from Haiti to France. If this décalage, or cleavage, between Haitian intellectuals and workingclass Haitians in Paris is not bridged, Carl fears that many of the wellintentioned efforts of Haitian community leaders in Paris may not be very effective. The social initiatives sponsored by Haitian intellectuals would have a greater impact, Carl said, if they coordinated their activi-

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ties with those of religious communities that attract larger numbers of members. Carl’s comments demonstrate that—despite many laudable efforts to preserve Haitian culture in France—leaders of secular Haitian community associations in Paris have yet to overcome the diYculties of reaching out to highly religious people from the same ethnic group. For many Haitians, religious faith provides an important source of meaning, reassurance, and social solidarity. However, leaders of Haitian secular associations in Paris have few ties to grassroots religious communities. This décalage indicates that the Haitian community in Paris has two centers. French-speaking Haitian intellectuals move back and forth between embracing republican equality, participating in French society and politics, and seeking to influence Haitian politics at home. But many of the middle- and lower-class immigrants struggle for daily survival, and they find their center, not in embracing the societal equality promised to them by republicanism, a promise they do not see fulfilled so easily, but by forming strong bonds around their families and their church-based social networks.52

CONCLUSIONS

Comparing Haitians in Paris, Miami, and Montreal illustrates that even if individuals hold similar religious beliefs and engage in similar religious practices, this faith and community solidarity alone cannot enable them to adapt successfully in new settings. The national political context, in particular, the amount of cooperation between the state and civil society organizations, influences the extent to which immigrants’ own resources can be augmented with outside funding and government recognition. Despite similar forms of cultural mediation based on shared religious beliefs across all three sites, Haitians in France have the weakest mediating institutions with which to battle problems of unemployment and uncertain legal status. The French government promised to renew its attention to impoverished immigrant communi-

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ties after the riots of 2005, and greater government spending would be most effective if it complemented community resources, including those of religious communities. We should not expect all Haitians to move easily into mainstream French society, even over several generations. The absence of valuable resources from Haitians’ ethnic or religious communities will make it harder for Haitians to overcome the barriers to their adaptation shaped by precarious legal status, low human capital, and high unemployment. To cross these mountains would require much cooperation among grassroots religious and secular organizations and institutions of the French state. But such cooperation is largely uncharted territory in France compared to the United States. Nonetheless, the 2005 strife may present an opportunity to develop new strategies of immigrant adaptation that cooperate with rather than marginalize organizations like Haïti Développement. The crisis of the French model of immigrant adaptation ignited greater public debate about how mediating institutions contribute to immigrant adaptation, but the traditions and laws associated with laïcité and republicanism are unlikely to change overnight. Given the small size of the Haitian community of Paris and the fact that many of them have only lived in France for one decade, predictions about Haitians’ socioeconomic progress in Paris must be more tentative than in the case of either Miami or Montreal. In both Miami and Montreal, a sizeable second-generation Haitian population exists, which allows us to examine patterns in mobility. Haitians in Miami, who started their adaptation from the least favorable circumstances, have built strong mediating institutions and generated a robust ethnic identity, both of which have helped prevent the amount of downward assimilation from being even greater than what was initially expected. In Montreal, the trend has been the opposite. In contrast to the smooth adaptation of early Haitian immigrants to Montreal, many of whom were highly educated, the children of working-class Haitian immigrants are abandoning their parents’ culture, including their religious faith, and exhibit an alarming trend toward school failure and illegal activity.

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Immigrants to France from other European nations in the early and mid-twentieth century largely followed a steady path of upward mobility. However, the descendants of immigrants from outside Europe, most notably North Africans, have not exhibited similarly successful assimilation. By highlighting one community resource—the cultural and institutional mediation of the Catholic Church—this chapter has shown that the most successful strategy for Haitians would likely combine the efforts of voluntary associations, including those started by church leaders, and government institutions.

Ch a pter six

What Lies behind the Mountain?

Haitian Catholic immigrants use their religious beliefs and practices as a kind of cultural mediation—they are mentally, psychologically, and spiritually weaving their way through a new neighborhood, a new city, and a new country. To describe this journey, many people used another Haitian proverb, “Dèyè mòn, gen mòn,” which means, “Behind the mountain, there is a mountain.” Their faith sustains them in crossing these mountains; peers in their religious communities are crossing the same mountains; and the leaders of those communities guide them along the often treacherous paths. The Catholic faith provides Haitian immigrants with cultural mediation—narratives of hope—and institutional mediation—advocacy on their behalf with the host society government and social services. Haitian Catholics in Miami, Montreal, and Paris build a local theology, drawing on universal Catholic doctrine to generate individual and collective narratives about their adaptation. Although the cultural mediation appears quite similar across contexts, institutional mediation appears quite different. Since cultural and institutional mediation are ways of putting Catholic theology into practice, some understanding of Catholic theology helps explain why religious communities and their aYliated social service centers are unique spaces in the Haitian communities of Miami, 195

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Montreal, and Paris. Thus, we can say that the doctrine of the incarnation of God as man in Jesus Christ and the principle of the inculturation of the faith into local circumstances constitute theological cognates for the sociological notions of cultural mediation and institutional mediation. The doctrine of the incarnation states that God became man in Jesus Christ, and Catholic leaders and faithful continuously strive to bring Jesus into local cultures. Believing in the incarnation means that God is not far away or hard to grasp; rather, he is present in the everyday realities and struggles Haitian migrants face. Believing that, no matter what may befall them, Jesus accompanies them in their struggles constitutes a never-ending source of hope for Haitians. The principle of inculturation essentially means bringing faith to bear on the local culture, where culture denotes shared meanings and collective action, and creating service institutions. Praying together, participating in a faith-based community-organizing movement, or contributing to a social service project are all examples of inculturation of the faith. Haitian immigrants who arrived in Miami, Montreal, or Paris starting in the 1970s regrouped in Catholic missions founded specifically to welcome Haitians. These ethnic missions are moral communities that provide a meeting space for newcomers, where they not only reproduce the religious fervor of their homeland communities but also construct meaning in their new home. Throughout this book, I employ the concept of cultural mediation to capture how Haitians use their religious beliefs to create meaning in a new, and often unfriendly or unwelcoming, environment. Biblical narratives inspire hope in the midst of darkness; despite much evidence to the contrary, Haitians frequently assert that “Bondye bon”—God is good—and with God, there is always a solution. Ritual enactments of Jesus’ suffering give consolation to those who seem to constantly be walking up their own Calvary—“Redi, redi, lavi a pa fasil zanmi, pa pè, pa pè, Granfrè-ou la” (Fight, fight, life is not easy, my friends, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, your big brother is there). These narratives mediate Haitians’ interactions with their new environment, for their belief in God’s providence requires active

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abandonment, not passivity. Active abandonment means praying, hoping, and giving to others. Most often this giving is immaterial—giving consists of a prayer, a smile, or helping prepare for an event at church. Many said their faith is what gives them life, whereas others said the same thing in the negative sense: without faith, they would be dead. Leaders of all three Haitian Catholic communities emphasized that their social and political efforts would be less effective if they did not also foster and strengthen popular piety. As Father Wenski in Miami explained, it was most important to build the community starting with the Eucharist, and then add on the social programs. To the extent that Haitians sought assistance with their legal papers, medical needs, learning English, or job hunting, they wanted to interact with an institution whose staff understood them, or one located in their neighborhood or near their place of worship, not an institution in an unfamiliar place whose staff interacted with them in another language and a different culture. The institutional mediation of Catholic service agencies carries a fundamentally different meaning than services provided by state agencies. The cultural and institutional mediation of the Catholic Church in the Haitian communities of Miami, Montreal, and Paris are inseparable and complementary. Moving to the macrostructural level of analysis, the cross-national comparison illustrates how institutions operate in different political contexts. The scope and effectiveness of these institutions depends on relationships between the mediating institutions and state representatives, as well as the ability to acquire outside funding to provide services. Leaders of the Haitian Catholic missions in Miami, Montreal, and Paris all expressed concerns about similar problems in their community: unemployment, language diYculties, diYculties in fi nding work, and large numbers of undocumented immigrants, some of whom had asylum requests pending. Although these leaders founded organizations with similar goals in each city—the Toussaint Center in Miami, the Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community in Montreal, and Haïti Développement in Paris—these mediating institutions

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encountered very different responses from the respective governments. In other words, even if Haitian leaders responded in similar ways to perceived problems in the community, the institutions they created to mediate for Haitians were not treated equally at the macrostructural level, that is, by government institutions. In Miami, the relationship between the Toussaint Center and various state agencies has been one of cooperation. Not only did the Toussaint Center eventually acquire state funding for activities, such as English-language classes, originally funded with its own money and staffed by volunteers, but representatives of state agencies look to it for guidance on how better to serve this community. Although one might see the government’s relations with the Toussaint Center as going beyond cooperation and actively supporting its activities, this support only came about through much advocacy and negotiation by leaders of the Toussaint Center. Thus, cooperation most accurately describes this relationship. As one state representative in Miami put it, “We know that the church is the only place people can trust.” In Montreal, the relationship between the Bureau of the Haitian Christian Community and the state can best be described as one of conflict. The Bureau initially received some cooperation from state agencies, but over time, the state has sought to replace the Bureau, or simply to fund multiethnic associations with no religious ties. Being a “Haitian” and a “Christian” organization thus came to present great diYculties for the Bureau. As one Quebec government oYcial put it, “There are many churches in the Haitian community, but they don’t get any state funding,” an attitude that led to policies that prohibit funding associations with any ties at all to a religious tradition, even if, like the Bureau, they serve an entire community and not just practicing Christians or Catholic Christians. In Paris, the state’s oYcial stance toward religious congregations and their related service agencies can best be labeled invisibility. Although Haïti Développement received some funding to help Haitians present asylum claims, in general, French republicanism emphasizes that integration occurs at the individual level, and ethnic communities matter

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relatively little to oYcial policies. As one Haitian leader in Paris summarized his perception of the state’s lack of interaction with representatives of the Haitian community, “Because of the French logic of integration [which focuses on the individual, not groups], the state doesn’t pay any attention to our [ethnic or religious] associations. We are invisible.” My conclusions provide further support for Nancy Foner and Richard Alba’s argument that whereas religion in the United States generally serves as a bridge for `the inclusion of immigrants, in the Western European secular environment, immigrants’ religiosity and religious institutions are often perceived as a barrier to their inclusion.2 The perception that religion forms a barrier to inclusion in France has been further codified legally, such as through the ban of ostentatious religious symbols that passed into law in 2004. As Jocelyne Cesari argues, “The law reveals an authoritarian conception of secularism that is charged with the protection of individual freedom even against that individual’s will. The French state, in other words, declares that only the state knows what true freedom consists of, and therefore it is up to the state to emancipate the individual. Above all, the banning of ostentatious religious symbols imposes a definition of freedom of conscience based on an idealized and homogenous vision of society—namely the view that modern citizenship requires the rejection of all public signifiers of religion.”3 Thus, despite the fact that Muslim women may choose to wear the veil, or Christians may want to wear a crucifix, and so forth for Jews, Hindus, and members of other religious groups who often use their manner of dressing to demarcate religious group membership, French laws in essence deny its citizens the freedom of conscience to choose what they wear. This instance in which the French state denies individual freedom is just one example of the contrasting approaches to religion and civil society in the United States and France that forcefully limit the ability of immigrants to France to mobilize based on religious group membership. As Cesari points out, in the United States, “religion mobilizes people through a variety of associations and organizations, and freedom of religious expression is paradigmatic of every citizen’s right to free association and autonomous identity. In contrast, religious expression in Europe is

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often seen as a cause of public and civic perturbations, requiring regulation and control rather than preservation or encouragement.”4 Although such negative attitudes toward religion in France are most strongly held with regard to Muslims, the same laws and perceptions negatively impact the ability of Christian immigrants to mobilize based on their religious identity and associations, albeit likely to a lesser degree. What are the consequences of these different models of churchstate interaction for Haitians’ long-term adaptation? First, we can expect religion to have a more positive influence on Haitians’ adaptation in the United States relative to either Quebec or France. With regard to the United States, Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut argue that although religion does not directly determine immigrants’ political and social incorporation, “because religion has proved to be one of the most resilient elements of immigrants’ culture across generations, the beliefs and organized activities carried out by different foreign groups in this realm can be expected to be a trademark of their long-term incorporation into American society and, simultaneously, a key force in the guiding character of this process.”5 The ease with which immigrants to the United States have been able to organize their religious institutions, which Portes and Rumbaut insist then fosters community ties and socioeconomic mobility, is not likely to be matched in Europe or Canada. In particular with regard to minority religions in Europe, namely, Islam, Portes and Rumbaut predict that state confl ict with religion will fail to “stamp out” religion but rather encourage an even greater identification with that religion precisely because it is perceived to be threatened.6 Phillip Connor’s fi nding that Muslim religiosity in Europe increases in response to hostility supports their prediction.7 Immigrants’ long-term economic mobility is often measured by looking not so much at first-generation immigrants as at their descendants. Research on second-generation immigrants abounds in the United States, is growing rapidly in Canada, and is just getting off the starting block in France.1 Although the segmented assimilation model was

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developed in reference to immigrants in the United States, some poignant indicators of downward assimilation—immigrants becoming part of a more or less permanent underclass—can also be seen in Europe and Canada. For example, just as some second-generation Salvadorans in Los Angeles may join gangs, likewise, some Jamaicans in Toronto and Algerians in Paris have abandoned much of their parents’ traditional culture and reject mainstream pathways to success, such as education. We lack such longitudinal data on Haitians in Montreal and Paris, but in the case of Miami, some evidence indicates that religious participation has reduced the number of second-generation Haitians experiencing downward assimilation. Although the context in Miami makes it easier for parents to pass on their beliefs to the next generation, there is nonetheless good reason to think that religious beliefs and practices will not have as much influence on the adaptation of second-generation Haitians in those cities as they did on many of their parents. The theory I have developed about cultural and institutional mediation does allow me to make the following theoretical statement and prediction: The strength of cultural and institutional mediation increases the chances of upward mobility among second-generation immigrants. As first-generation Haitians and their leaders in Miami were more successful at establishing various forms of mediation, such as religious communities and social service centers with a broad range of activities, stronger relationships with state and civic leaders, and greater sources of funding for their social programs, Haitians in Miami will likely achieve more upward mobility than Haitians in Montreal or Paris. Neither the secularization paradigm— which emphasizes a growing distance between faith communities and the state—nor the religious economies perspective—which emphasizes that religion flourishes in the absence of state regulation—accurately predict what I found. In seeking to establish general theories, both perspectives seem to overlook the negotiating and accommodating being done by both sides—religious institutions and the state. This negotiation will carry on beyond the first generation into the adaptation of second and third-generation Haitians.

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The religious leaders of first-generation Haitian immigrants in Miami, Montreal, and Paris founded mediating institutions that sought to make the government aware of the community’s social needs. The immigrant parents of second-generation Haitian youth and the leaders of the churches they attend may see most clearly the dangers that young people in their community face. The new strategies Catholic lay leaders, clergy, and parents are adopting to try to reach second-generation youth and prevent downward assimilation present new challenges to paradigms about religion and society. Returning to how Donald in Miami, Robert in Montreal, and Marlene in Paris envision their own future and that of their children supports my prediction and turns our attention to new research questions in comparing immigrant adaptation cross-nationally.

DONA LD, ROBERT, A ND M A RLENE LOOK AT THE FUTURE

If, as the Haitian proverb says, “Behind the mountain, there is a mountain,” Donald in Miami, Robert in Montreal, and Marlene in Paris all believed they had climbed the steepest mountain in making the trip from Haiti to the United States, Canada, and France. Their children still had mountains to cross, but they hoped that eventually they would reach a place where they could celebrate their children’s successful rise. Each remarked that, although their children had greater opportunities for study and work in the United States, Canada, or France than they would have had in Haiti, they also feared that their children might adapt too quickly to the host culture and thereby lose some of the hope and determination that enabled them to survive the hardest part of their immigration experiences and even make small steps forward in their new homes. Despite their optimism about their children’s futures, these immigrant parents are by no means blind to the social context that influences their children and other Haitian youth.

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To illustrate, Donald, Robert, and Marlene all firmly believe that their host country offers ample opportunities for education and work for their children, but they differ in how they view their children’s religious milieux. Donald has virtually no doubt that his children will continue to attend church and will have lots of friends who do the same. Robert and Marlene, on the other hand, know that their children have relatively few peers who attend church, and they hope and pray that their children will follow in the footsteps of their parents, not of their peers. Their words also lead us to ask: If religious practice declines among second-generation Haitians, upon what pillars will they construct their sense of meaning and identity? What kinds of mediating institutions might help these young people as they struggle to finish school, find good jobs, and start families? How do the three models of interaction—cooperation in the United States, confl ict in Canada, and invisibility in France—influence the efforts of Haitian immigrant leaders to help the second generation in their communities?

“TWO CHILDREN IN COLLEGE, TWO TO GO”

One day after Sunday Mass at Notre Dame d’Haiti in Miami, Donald rushed over and excitedly told me that I was going to meet his two eldest children, who were coming home from Florida State University for the weekend. Donald explained that when he first met his wife in the Dominican Republic, they did not have any money for a wedding celebration, so they had only had a civil ceremony. Now they wanted their union, which had borne four children, to be blessed by God. After more than twenty years together, Donald and his wife were to celebrate a Catholic wedding the next weekend. The following Saturday evening, Donald and a small group of family and friends decorated the private chapel inside Notre Dame’s rectory. Donald’s wife did not know that their two eldest children would be making the trip down from Florida State University. They had told their mother that they could not afford the gas, and, besides, they had

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too much studying to do. A group of about twenty-five people gathered in the chapel, and when Donald’s wife walked in wearing a white dress, a bouquet in her hand and white flowers in her hair, she could not hide her emotions. Tears started streaming down her face when she saw her two eldest children in the chapel standing next to their two younger brothers, who still lived at home. After the ceremony, we moved into the reception hall, where Haitian food abounded and Haitian music played on a stereo. As Donald’s family posed for pictures, their joyful smiles demonstrated what a difference eighteen years can make. In 1984, Donald had made the heartbreaking decision to leave his wife and four children in Haiti and take a boat to the United States. He explained, “I worked hard so that my kids would not have to suffer the same humiliation as me. I suffered humiliation in Santo Domingo and here.” Donald and his wife saved all the money they made in their low-wage jobs, first, to put their children through a private school in Haiti, and then to bring them over to the United States to finish high school and go on to public universities. Even if highly educated blacks also suffer some discrimination in the U.S. labor market, Donald knows that if his children have a college education, they will not have to endure as much poor treatment as he did. Although Donald’s wife joined him relatively quickly in the United States, they were separated from their children for more than a decade, not even able to visit them, because they did not have legal resident status in the United States. Even when their asylum request was finally approved, they did not have enough money to travel to Haiti. Donald’s reunion with his children in Miami only four years prior had not been easy. Rather than being a strict disciplinarian, Donald said, he had adopted a strategy of always being nice to his children. As he explained, “I want to be their friend. I never get mad at them.” Donald was referring to the frequent cultural confl icts that arise between Haitian parents and their children. As Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut explain, dissonant acculturation occurs when secondgeneration immigrants adapt to the host culture more quickly than

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their parents, consequently weakening parents’ influence over their children’s behavior.8 As Donald, Father Jean-Mary, and many others at Notre Dame all said, Haitian parents often become very afraid when their children begin to listen to American music, want to stay out late at night, and want to have girlfriends or boyfriends in high school. Whereas in Haiti, parents often collaborate to supervise their children’s free time and social life, the reality of being a low-skilled immigrant in Miami often demands that both parents work full-time, and one parent may even have two jobs. Parents gradually feel a cultural divide between them and their children, and subsequently a loss of control, leading them often to resort to strict discipline, such as grounding or even spanking, which can sometimes backfire and make their children rebel even more. Father Jean-Mary counsels parents to do what Donald says he does: get to know your children, spend time with them and their friends, and refrain from criticizing every bit of American culture they pick up. When children see their parents as friends, Father JeanMary further explained, they might be willing to pay more attention to the rules imposed by their parents. One of the first things Donald did when his children arrived in Miami was to walk them down to Notre Dame and introduce them to the church’s various youth groups. Although he sometimes missed church prior to his children’s arrival, when his kids came, he went to church more frequently. “For the first year my kids were here, I didn’t miss a single Sunday Mass. I couldn’t just drop my kids off at the door of the church and not go in myself. What kind of a man does that?” Although his children all participate in a youth group at Notre Dame, Donald does not belong to any of its prayer or service groups. He explained that when he is not at work, he wants to spend his time at home supervising his kids, rather than joining church groups. “If I am not there watching them and asking them what they are doing, how do I know what they are going to do?” He added that he gets off work early enough to be home when the children finish school, so he waits for them and asks what homework they have. With his second child,

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he said: “I used to stay up studying with Antoine until midnight. He worked very hard. He deserved all the medals and awards he got.” By 2002, Donald’s two oldest children, Emilie and Antoine, had graduated from Miami’s Edison Senior High School near the tops of their classes and were attending Florida State University on scholarships. He boasted that Emilie had graduated ninth in her class just two years after coming from Haiti, even though she was not yet fluent in English. Antoine, a year younger than Emilie, graduated as valedictorian of his class and was the captain of the soccer team, winning several scholar-athlete awards. The youngest two boys, Jean and Manuel, were getting good grades in high school as well. Donald takes his children’s education so seriously that he has even taken time off work to go down and speak with administrators at Edison Senior High School. “At my work, whenever I ask for a day off to do something with my kids, they always give it to me. And they know if they don’t give me the day off to help my kids, I won’t come back to work.” Once, for example, Donald argued with a guidance counselor until she erased all of Jean’s absences. Donald insisted that since he dropped his children off at school, and followed them closely after school, there is no way they had missed or skipped school. He finally convinced the counselor, who then cleared his son’s record. Another time, his son Antoine was distraught because the school gave someone else an award for the junior with the highest GPA, whereas he thought he had the highest GPA in his class. Donald recounted how he had gone down to the school and demanded to see the principal. The principal’s assistants at first refused his request, but when the principal found out whose parent was waiting to see him, he was delighted to meet the father of one of his star students. The principal checked the grades, realized a mistake had been made, and gave the award to Donald’s son. Donald concluded, “Now I have two kids in college, and two more to go. I am not going to rest until the other two are in college. Then I will know that they are okay. Once they are in college, they will continue. But if they get off track now, they might lose their way. That is also why

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I don’t let them work. I just want them to study. If they start working and making money, then they will lose interest in school.” Donald has seen many other young Haitians get off track, lose their way, and become interested mostly in money or entertainment, not school and sports. Father Jean-Mary often counsels distraught parents whose children have started taking drugs or even working as prostitutes. One of the hardest parts of his ministry, Father Jean-Mary said, is celebrating funeral Masses for youths who die from gang violence. During my time at Notre Dame, one such tragic death occurred. A nineteen-year-old Haitian, George, had been jailed for gang activity and apparently committed suicide in jail, although his parents believed that he had been murdered. On the day he died, the son called his dad at 2 p.m. to ask him to hire a lawyer to help get him out of jail, and the father said he heard noise in the background, like fighting. At 4 p.m. that day, his son was found dead in his cell. His father went to Father JeanMary, wept, and told the priest he had done everything he could to save his son, but he had gotten addicted to drugs and trapped in a gang. At the funeral Mass held at Notre Dame, the reality of downward assimilation and dissonant acculturation could not have been more evident. On one side of the aisle, George’s parents and family were well dressed and very reverent. On the other side, the gang members sat wearing T-shirts bearing George’s picture, although their leader wore a suit. During the funeral, Father Jean-Mary delivered two messages. First, he told the family that nothing could separate George from God’s love. Second, he directed his attention to the gang members, bellowing out loudly to them, “The movies teach us that what is important is money and fame, but there is a better life, one with more meaning. You have to get to know Jesus Christ. Do you want to end up dead like George? Look at your parents,” he said, gesturing to the other side of the aisle, “they come from Haiti, they have worked so hard just to give you a chance.” Father Jean-Mary’s words indicate a generational difference that divides many Haitian families. First-generation Haitian immigrants

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like Donald often endure a certain amount of humiliation that comes from racial prejudice. They struggle against such prejudice by using their religious beliefs to create their own narratives of dignity and selfworth. They are frequently willing to do low-wage factory or service sector work in the hopes that their children will rise up a few rungs on the socioeconomic ladder. But many of their children raised in the United States have a different outlook. These children grew up seeing both wealth and poverty around them. Perceiving that a long, hard road separates them from wealth, and perhaps fearing that even if they work hard, discrimination will prevent them from achieving their goals, some youths opt to join a gang, seeking both a sense of belonging and a way to earn fast money by dealing drugs. But beyond passionate sermons at gang members’ funerals, Father Jean-Mary has tried to build a ministry to reach all Haitian youth. He explained: You see, these gangs are about identity. There is a crisis of identity among Haitian youth. The gang members who carry the coYn, they also put a Haitian flag on the coYn. It is a sign of identity, because they fight with Jamaican gangs, black gangs. The name of the gang means we are dust, we are nothing. When they come to Notre Dame for a funeral, it is my chance to try to reach them. I am not afraid to yell at these guys. After every funeral like this, one or two of them come to me afterwards and [say] that they heard my message.

To try to both support children like Donald’s who are on their way to the middle class, and to save those like George from the worst possible outcomes—incarceration and death—Father Jean-Mary prioritized the youth ministry at Notre Dame. His plans for the youth ministry at Notre Dame were just taking off during my fieldwork, so their full impact may not be felt for many years. Some longitudinal data exist in the United States to test propositions that religious participation may help prevent downward assimilation. The Haitian youth in the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal

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Study led by Portes and Rumbaut had both the highest rates of religious attendance among all the immigrant groups in the sample and also high indicators of downward assimilation, in particular, incarceration and early childbearing. However, given the extreme disadvantages Haitians face in their adaptation—for example, Haitian parents had the lowest levels of education of any of the immigrant groups in Miami included in this study—one would have expected their rates of downward assimilation to be even higher. In other words, religious belief and practice have kept some Haitian youth in school, away from gangs and out of jail. As Portes and Rumbaut report, “With other predictors taken into account, being a member of an established religion is strongly and positively associated with higher educational achievement and higher occupational prestige, and it is significantly and negatively related to indicators of downward assimilation.”9 These findings support the strategy adopted by Donald and Father Jean-Mary in which they try to create a positive social and religious environment for young Haitians as a barrier against downward assimilation. As with Donald’s family, religion can provide not only a sense of individual determination, but a way for the family to negotiate a new hybrid Haitian American identity. But Donald, Father Jean-Mary, and others at Notre Dame are keenly aware of the need to keep fighting for broad social change, so that fewer young Haitians end up dead like George and more end up in college like Emilie and Antoine. However, Father Jean-Mary, Gérard, and many other first-generation Haitian immigrants asked: What good is fighting for social change if youth lose their ties to their parents’ religious faith and all sense of meaning? Looking to the future of Haitians in Miami, Notre Dame likely will remain a welcoming place for newly arriving Haitian immigrants—a place where individuals have their faith aYrmed and develop social and spiritual connections with other Haitians. But what the church means to the children of these Haitian immigrants will likely be different. Haitian youth do not need English classes, or even job-placement classes, as much as they need help in choosing the best of their parents’ culture and

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American culture. In some cases, they do need after-school help with homework, because many of their parents did not go past middle school and cannot help them with advanced schoolwork. Youth also need a safe place to go after school if both their parents are working, a place where they can be supervised by other adults and the lure of the streets can be kept at bay. Even if they do not need many of the social services for which their parents looked to the church, their parents and young adult leaders still believe strongly that they need a moral community. Father Jean-Mary and about ten other Haitian priests under the age of forty who have been ordained in the archdiocese of Miami or who are currently in the seminary are to lead the Haitian youth ministry. With their leadership, along with that of lay leaders and parents, the aim and reach of Notre Dame will likely expand to include activities for youth—both their religious and also their cultural formation, a place both to learn about prayer and to meet like-minded peers with whom to socialize after school and on weekends. Thus, Notre Dame’s cultural and institutional mediation will likely expand into the foreseeable future, offering a ray of hope in what outsiders see as a poor immigrant neighborhood, but one that nonetheless has spawned more success stories than anyone would have predicted thirty years ago, in part due to the Catholic Church’s cultural and institutional mediation. Although the specific forms of cooperation between the Catholic Church and other institutions may change, the general model of cooperation will likely continue into the future. As Milton Gordon aYrmed long ago, this type of cooperation between immigrants’ mediating institutions and the government is probably the best model for successful longterm assimilation.10

“W E H AV E TO BR ING YOUTH BACK TO CHURCH”

In Montreal, Robert always came to Mass and choir rehearsal with his twenty-one-year-old twin sons. It was hard to miss his sons, because

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they both towered well over six feet tall, though they often seemed to stoop down and acted rather shyly. As he can no longer work due to his “accident” (he was brutally assaulted by criminals; see chapter 1), all of Robert’s hope for the future now rests with his children. Not being able to work also affords him ample time to spend with his sons. Whenever they are home together, they pray together, read the Bible together, and talk about where their lives are going. Their strong family life was evident at Robert’s fiftieth birthday party. His wife, Caroline, came out dressed in a fancy red dress, took the microphone, and, pointing at her husband, began singing, “There is someone there and it is Robert. There is someone there and it is my love.” Giggling, she then went over to Robert and gave him a kiss and kept singing about her love for him. They seemed like teenagers who had just fallen in love. As I was silently musing about their outward display of affection and deep love, Caroline spoke into the microphone and told everyone that since her husband had nearly died as a result of his accident just a few years ago, every day together now felt like precious time, a gift. Their struggles continued, she said, but their love for each other and their faith in God had grown through their trials. A few weeks later, Robert explained that his two sons were attending the Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel (College of General and Vocational Education), or CEGEP, an intermediate step between high school and university in Quebec. Like Donald, Robert has high hopes that his children will get a good education and find wellpaying middle-class jobs. Although they live in a cramped basement apartment in Saint-Michel, Robert’s children are among the minority of young Haitians in their neighborhood who have two parents at home.11 Like Donald, Robert emphasized that even though his children were on track to do well, they still needed support and supervision. In addition to the obvious economic disadvantage of growing up in a single-parent family, which is the norm for Haitians in Saint-Michel and Montreal North, nearly every Haitian community leader said that a major problem among youth was that they lacked both the parental

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supervision and the community supervision that exist in Haiti. If they were lucky enough to have both parents living at home, those parents were often too busy working to spend time with them. In other words, Robert and the Haitian leaders were afraid that many young Haitians in Montreal were abandoning their parents’ culture altogether, fi nding themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder, and rebelling against their parents, school authorities, and even the police. When Haitians like Robert arrived in Montreal, there were relatively few stereotypes or prejudices against blacks, at least relative to Miami. But his children not only face an economy where jobs are scarce for people in their neighborhood but also a society where being black is becoming more of a stigma. As the unemployment and poverty rates among blacks in Montreal— the largest group of whom are of Haitian origin—have gone up, the public image of blacks has been tarnished. The media in Quebec contribute to an image of blacks, especially young blacks, being caught up in a circle of school failure, unemployment, poverty, violence, and street gangs. The poor social situation of Haitian youth surprises many Canadians, because of Canada’s and Quebec’s strong emphasis on human rights and their welcoming attitude toward culturally diverse groups. According to Emerson Douyon, a Haitian psychologist in Montreal, A young black person [in Montreal] inspires fear in certain communities. If he moves about in a group, even Black communities fi nd him fearsome. . . . Alongside the myths and unfounded allegations, there is some hard data, which cannot be ignored. However our fear is that this negative identity will end up being internalized by blacks, and serving as an alibi for others to do nothing about the real needs of the Black communities. . . . The justice system is the only system in which blacks and the other visible minorities are over-represented. That this should be so in the United States, where racial bias has been extensively documented and denounced, is not surprising. But that it should be so in Canada and Quebec, which have a reputation for upholding human rights, is both surprising and disturbing.12

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Numerous Haitian associations, including the Bureau, are trying to reach out to Haitian youth to combat downward assimilation. Several other Haitian associations, such as the Maison d’Haïti (Haiti House) and Maison des jeunes L’Ouverture (L’Ouverture Youth House), have developed after-school programs for Haitian youth and gang-intervention programs. In my interviews with leaders of these associations, such as Ari Delva of Maison d’Haïti, they repeated much of what Father Jean-Mary said about gangs. According to Delva, many young Haitians in Montreal have abandoned their parents’ culture almost entirely, substituting what he called a North American black identity. “They get this identity from videos. They dress like black Americans with golden jewelry, they seek to have big new cars and beautiful girls. And in order to live that lifestyle, you need money, so they steal and they do credit card scams. What they want is to make a fortune; that’s the American dream.” Parents like Robert are well aware that youth around them can succumb to the lure of fast money, as Delva described. How have parents and leaders at Notre Dame reacted to this threatening reality? As at Notre Dame in Miami, leaders at Notre Dame in Montreal try to encourage youth to participate in youth groups, and youth leaders are often invited to help lead the liturgy. For example, at one Mass at Notre Dame, youths who had participated in World Youth Day, an international Catholic youth festival and pilgrimage that was held in Toronto in 2002, were invited to give their testimonies to the entire community. These young people walked down the aisle of the church carrying Haitian flags, Vatican flags, Canadian flags, and Quebec flags. They are fashioning their identity out of the various possible tools around them—Haitian, Catholic, Canadian, and Quebecois. As long as immigrants from Haiti continue to arrive in Montreal, we can expect Notre Dame d’Haiti to continue operating largely as it does now. But twenty years from now, Robert’s twin sons may no longer attend Notre Dame. Even if they continue to attend church, at some point they are likely to start going to a local neighborhood

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parish church rather than travel for an hour to get to Notre Dame. Moreover, since second-generation Haitians in Montreal are usually more comfortable speaking French than Creole, they are likely eventually to begin attending Mass in French. What awaits Haitian youth who attend parishes in neighborhoods like Saint-Michel and Montreal North, where the largest numbers of Haitians live in Montreal? A recently ordained priest of Haitian origin, Father Jacques Dorélien, who works at a parish in Montreal North, shed light on this question. Like Father Jean-Mary in Miami, Father Dorélien is passionate about wanting to attract youth to the church. Whereas the Catholic Church in the archdiocese of Miami is growing rapidly and church leaders work hard to obtain visas to allow young Haitians to study for the priesthood in Miami, since Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, vocations to the priesthood in Montreal have plummeted, and Father Dorélien is one of the few young priests in all of Quebec. Although other priests ordained in Haiti serve on occasion in various parishes of Montreal, they do not have full-time positions in Montreal. Like Father Dejean and other Haitian clergy who came before them, priests from Haiti living in Montreal focus mostly on first-generation immigrants and transnational activities. Father Dorélien, who moved with his family from Haiti to Quebec at the age of three, remembers a deep conversion experience he underwent during college that eventually led him to enter the seminary. He was searching for “a meaning in life,” he said, and started going to daily Mass. “It wasn’t easy. I would look around at Mass and see no other young people.” Now an ordained priest, he focuses on trying to build bridges between the elderly at his parish and the smaller number of young people who, like him, continue to attend church, even though most of their peers do not. As he explained it, “We Christians in Quebec are like the first Christians. We are living in a society that has been deChristianized. We need to share a message of hope, of joy. Jesus came to save, not just the materially poor, but the spiritually poor. Youth in Quebec are interested in Jesus. You just have to present him in a way

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that is appealing to them.” In other words, to counter the decline in the power of religious institutions and individual religious faith brought about by the Quiet Revolution, Father Dorélien now wants to build a base from the individual level to the group level that can influence the society around him. Sociologists often debate whether individual agency or social structure is more powerful at any given moment. What matters for the question at hand is to acknowledge the complex ways in which individuals and society mutually influence each other. When that mutual influence is one of confl ict, then clearly societal outcomes will suffer as a result. Father Dorélien is cautiously optimistic about youth in the Catholic Church of Montreal. He knows that relatively few youth attend church today in Quebec, but he believes it is his mission to go out and fi nd a way to make his faith, the faith of the parents or grandparents of many young people in Quebec, appealing to them. His words illustrate that, if Robert’s sons and other Haitian youth are to continue to practice their parents’ Catholic faith, leaders have to recognize that their faith needs to be inculturated again in the context that seems most real to youth. Arnaud, Robert, and Father Dorélien all said that not only do many young Haitians fail to attend church, they actively try to avoid it. As Arnaud put it, “They run the other way.” To the extent that Robert’s children and other young Haitians in Montreal continue to struggle to get ahead, their religious beliefs may help them cope with the sacrifice of many years of schooling and persistent job hunting, rather than succumbing to illegal activities in order to get ahead more quickly. However, the question remains of how young Haitians in Montreal who do not attend church—and therefore may not have access to the sense of meaning religion offers to others—construct meaning. What institutions do they turn to when facing diYculties?13 Given the secular climate in Quebec, young Haitians in Montreal who are Canadian citizens, speak French fluently, and went to school in Quebec may not turn to the same institutions that many of their parents did, such as the Bureau or Notre Dame. Just a few generations ago,

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the Catholic Church in Quebec formed something like an all-encompassing society for francophone Quebecois. First-generation Haitian immigrants also experienced Catholicism as a kind of all-encompassing social and cultural institution in Haiti. However, the Quiet Revolution broke the near monopoly on identity or meaning the Catholic Church had held for centuries in Quebec. The creation of a modern secular state in Quebec does not mean that religious belief no longer contributes something to understanding transcendental questions, or finding a sense of meaning, in Quebec. As David Lyon writes, understanding religion and modernity in Canada does not entail the presumption that all belief disappears, but rather asking about the relocation of belief.14 Although relatively few people in Quebec today report that they attend church weekly, many more report that they do believe in God and engage in some kind of regular spiritual practice.15 Catholic leaders in Quebec acknowledge some truth in charges that the church overstepped its boundaries in the past. However, by no means have they ceased creating institutions to assist the poor and immigrants, which they think is a fundamental part of their obligation as Christians, although how they create institutions looks quite different than in the past.

FIRST COM MU N ION

As more French scholars, politicians, and journalists turn their attention to the harsh reality of the banlieues, the insights of parents like Marlene can contribute something to future efforts in France to prevent downward assimilation. Marlene tries to build a protective wall around her children in their poor immigrant suburb by creating strong ties to her church and her extended family. At least schools in France are free, she said, whereas in Haiti they are not. But after her children return from school, Marlene and numerous other Haitian parents try to undo what they deem to be the negative cultural influence their children fi nd at French schools—atheism, skimpy ways of dressing,

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and materialism. “How can it be,” Marlene asked rhetorically, “that the French government prohibits young Muslim girls from wearing the head scarf to school but they don’t prohibit teenage girls from going to school with their breasts partially showing, their belly buttons poking out from under their short shirts, and their buttocks partially exposed if they bend over?” Like many other parents who expressed similar concerns, Marlene’s description of how French youth dress included many colorful gestures and demonstrations made with a clearly disapproving look on her face. Marlene was not necessarily advocating that her daughters wear a head scarf to school, but she thought that some young women rebelled against immodesty, not only by covering their breasts, buttocks, and navels, but also by covering their heads. She was clearly sympathetic with parents and youth who were concerned about what they deemed the immodest ways that young women in France frequently dress to attend school, and she felt that school and government authorities ignored such concerns. In fact, on the streets of her neighborhood, she covered her head with the hood of her jacket, not out of modesty or religious convictions, but out of fear of crime and a desire not to attract any attention. To counteract this negative cultural influence in her milieu, Marlene kept her daughters involved in numerous youth groups at church. When I visited Marlene’s apartment for the first time, she had invited over a Frenchwoman who was the leader of a youth group to which her two daughters, Katrine and Julia, belong. The youth group is called the Mouvement eucharistique des jeunes, or Eucharistic Youth Movement. In addition to singing in the choir at the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, her girls go to the local parish in Saint-Denis to participate in the Eucharistic Youth Movement. Soon, she said proudly, they would be going on a weekend retreat with such Catholic youth groups throughout Paris. In this kind of Catholic youth group, Marlene believes her children find reinforcement for the forms of behavior and dress that she values as a parent. The youth group activities in which her daughters participate com-

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bine many cultural and social activities along with religious formation. Marlene did not want her children to think of religion as something reactionary or a source of shame, but rather as something to give them a sense a self-esteem. The second time I went to Marlene’s apartment, the drab exterior of her building once again contrasted dramatically with her joyful, albeit very small, abode. This time she was preparing the food for her younger daughter’s first communion, and there was not an inch of space anywhere in the kitchen or living room without some kind of food. When I marveled at the amount of food she was preparing, Marlene said that this was nothing compared to the elaborate feasts she prepared when the wealthy family she worked for had houseguests. And on top of that, she exclaimed, “This is for my daughter! She is making her first communion!” Marlene was clearly overjoyed that her daughter would soon be receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist. The celebration she was preparing served as a reminder that, despite having lost her husband at a young age and having to struggle every day to get by, she had succeeded thus far in keeping her children close to her faith and culture. The following day, her daughter’s communion ceremony was held at the local Catholic parish in Saint-Denis. Julia, Marlene’s daughter, was wearing a long white dress, white gloves, and a white veil. Afterward, about thirty people gathered in the church’s reception hall to enjoy the feast Marlene had prepared. For several hours, the extended family of Marlene’s brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews all ate, drank, and gave toasts to each other and made wishes for their future. Julia, the young first communion celebrant, was beaming with pride and never sat still, taking turns dancing with every relative present. Marlene is not the only Haitian parent trying to connect her children both to the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris but also to other Catholic youth groups in Paris. As in Montreal, but not in Miami, young Haitians in Paris will likely slowly move into local parishes and mix there with Africans, Antillais, Spanish and Portuguese migrants, and their descendants. Through archdiocese-wide groups like the Eucharistic Youth Movement, some young Haitians come into contact with other

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Catholic youth from different national backgrounds and many French Catholics. The Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris still serves as a first stop, a stepping-stone, for newly arriving Haitians, and for Haitians who want their children to have a sense of their culture. But given the geographical dispersion of Haitians throughout Paris, it is inevitable that their religious practice will take place in mixed ethnic parishes, as well as occasional visits to the Communauté catholique haïtienne. The 2005 banlieue riots sounded a warning bell that downward assimilation is a real possibility for the children of immigrants like Haitians. What do Marlene’s actions tell us about current debates regarding immigrant adaptation in France? Marlene fears that without the cultural mediation her faith offers her—such as hope in the future, and self-respect—her children might become part of a rebellious youth culture with little respect for tradition and law. By connecting her daughters both to the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris and to the larger Catholic youth community in Paris, she hopes to link her daughters to institutions with leaders who can not only guide them in their religious faith but also help them fi nish school and find professional work. In other words, Marlene sees many elements of her social environment as alienating, and she seeks to provide her daughters with both cultural and institutional mediation. Although President Jacques Chirac set up the Stasi Commission in 2003 to renew France’s application of laïcité, and President Nicolas Sarkozy began reforming immigration law after his election in 2007, policy change in France has progressed slowly at best. As long as the efforts of parents like Marlene and the religious leaders who support them remain invisible to the state, it is unlikely that durable solutions will be found to prevent future crises in the banlieues.

MOV ING FORWA RD

For disadvantaged groups in American, Canadian, and French society, and for newcomers such as Haitian immigrants, the state not only

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largely fails to provide a sense of meaning, but interactions between immigrants and state agencies can often be quite alienating. The alienation of certain groups in modern democratic states—both in terms of material poverty and of symbolic exclusion, such as the creation and maintenance of anti-immigrant prejudice and racial stereotypes— presents a fundamental problem for the goals of democracy. Within the Haitian communities of Miami, Montreal, and Paris, the Catholic Church is a mediating institution, whose leaders aim, not so much to create an alternative, all-encompassing community life, but rather to act as a bridge by means of which newcomers may become part of their new society without burning bridges to their past and to their identity as Haitians. This bridge-building or mediating does not detract from democracy but rather contributes to its flourishing. My interviewees described their lives on earth as a journey, often a pilgrimage full of suffering and tears but also a journey of hope and many rebirths. They certainly try their hardest to improve their lives, often taking tremendous risks to move to Miami, Montreal, or Paris, leaving behind spouses, children, and social networks, and then largely working in low-skilled, low-status jobs and enduring stereotypes and cold interpersonal relationships with other residents of the United States, Canada, and France, all in the hopes that their children may have a better chance in this life. Yet ultimately their sights are set on reaching the other world; it is only in that other world, they believe, that their suffering and tears will permanently cease. As many leaders of these Haitian communities reminded me during my research, intellectuals may separate material and spiritual things, but not everyone else does. Measures of socioeconomic status we are likely to find in censuses or other national income surveys tell us little about how immigrants perceive their social, religious, and cultural inclusion in their new homes. These perceptions of inclusion matter, because they affect the aspirations of youth, in particular, second-generation immigrant youth, and such aspirations then influence social mobility. When discussing the

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general well-being of Haitians in Miami, Montreal, and Paris, it appears likely that more Haitians would be eligible for government social services in Montreal and Paris. Scholars in Montreal or Paris often offered the greater availability of welfare as a solution to the problems of high unemployment among immigrants, a problem more acute in France and Canada than in the United States. For example, one could tell a Haitian mother in Montreal that having a child and a low income makes her eligible for social benefits like low-income housing and medical care for the child. But does receiving this government support make her feel part of society or does it make her feel alienated and disempowered? Much social science literature seems to assume that state benefits create both a reality and a perception of social inclusion. To what extent is this true, at least among immigrants like Haitians, for whom receiving state benefits and not working represents something shameful? For many people, occupying a low-status position in the labor force was more dignified than being out of the labor force, even if they could receive state welfare benefits for being unemployed. Many important questions remain about the adaptation of both firstand second-generation immigrants in the United States, in Canada, in France, and in other European countries. In examining how parents perceive the likelihood of their children’s successful adaptation, we see how the cultural and socioeconomic adaptation of those second-generation immigrants is strongly influenced by their parents’ reception in their new society, the culture their parents bring with them, and the types of institutions first-generation immigrants create. Even if one is mostly concerned about the adaptation of second-generation immigrants, we nonetheless need to understand the culture and institutions of their parents if we wish to understand some of the most important influences on the adaptation of second-generation immigrants. Interactions between immigrants’ mediating institutions and state authorities, such as immigration authorities, school authorities, or other types of state institutions, often follow models of interaction that have been developed over decades or even centuries. Highlighting what

222 / What Lies behind the Mountain?

these models are, then seeing their strengths and weaknesses, contributes to the dynamic development of these models that can further goals of successful immigrant assimilation. To illustrate, religion forms an important part of the culture of many first-generation immigrants in North America and Europe, and religious institutions represent the primary way in which they participate in civil society. As is the case among Haitian immigrants, success at building institutions varies greatly across national contexts. One of the characteristics of mediating institutions among fi rst-generation Haitian immigrants is that their leaders interact daily with workingclass immigrants and therefore may often see problems arising in the community before government oYcials and agencies do. Subsequently, government oYcials and agencies concerned about second-generation immigrants gain important information by listening to how parents, religious leaders, and other community leaders perceive of problems in their communities and how members of those communities organize to confront those problems. Donald, Robert, and Marlene had already devised strategies to protect their children from what they consider to be negative influences, and faith may move some mountains out of their way. Their efforts can be strengthened or weakened by the reaction of state oYcials and their interactions with those oYcials. Rather than assuming that second-generation youth identity will simply be shaped by the fact that they have American, French, or Canadian citizenship, and rather than presuming that second-generation youths will become as secular as their peers born to native parents, we should consider how immigrant youth refashion their identities in a way that lies somewhere between their parents’ culture and the influences of the host country. Just as first-generation immigrants use their religious beliefs to create narratives of meaning and hope around their diYcult circumstances, second-generation youth create their own cultural narratives, influenced both by their parents’ culture and the culture around them. Future research should study both the identity formation of secondgeneration youth and their socioeconomic mobility. Even though they

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can be studied separately, in fact, the two are closely intertwined. To provide just one example, the educational outcomes of immigrant youth in the United States have been shown to be influenced strongly by their parents’ expectations for them. Immigrant youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, like many Haitians, can succeed in school if there are good schooling opportunities and if they find extra support—perhaps from institutions in their ethnic community—to make up for many of their parents’ inability to help them with schoolwork. In addition, parents’ expectations and those of leaders in ethnic communities also likely impact immigrant youth’s perceptions of opportunity. Despite many gaps between expectations or aspirations and actual achievement among immigrant youth, many young children of immigrants show remarkable resilience in the face of discrimination.16 In other words, the narratives second-generation youth use to adapt to their own situations—narratives that can be of either color-blind hope, resilient extra effort, or of despair—can influence the amount of effort they make to get ahead when they perceive blocked opportunity into higher education and good jobs. What are the cultural resources and institutions that will mediate for second-generation youth as they struggle to get ahead through education, battling not only a real lack of opportunity but also the perception that some of their peers or superiors in school or at the workplace believe they will never succeed? What family characteristics, social ties, and psychological motivations distinguish those who succeed in school and in the labor force from those who do not? In my work with Deborah Rivas-Drake, we found that young immigrants from similar economic backgrounds react to their minority status by developing one of three distinct psychological profiles we call assimilation, accommodation, and resistance. However, we lacked the data to ask questions such as: How does religion influence the cultural tools immigrant youths employ to navigate a society stratified by race and ethnicity? What impact does religious participation have on second-generation immigrants’ longterm educational efforts and attainment?17

224 / What Lies behind the Mountain?

Strong faith in God or large faith-based service institutions (regardless of whether they are funded by the government or by private donors) alone can not achieve successful immigrant adaptation, for either the first or the second generation. One need look no further than Haiti to see that strong belief in God and numerous religious communities cannot by themselves overcome structural barriers to economic prosperity, such as the lack of a well-functioning state. However, in countries of the developed world, such as the United States, Canada, and France, religious beliefs provide a sense of meaning to some people, perhaps more so to immigrants, whose identity is almost by definition shifting and changing. Communities of worship and service institutions linked to those religious communities may hold for a time—one or perhaps two generations—a greater proximity to immigrants and hence greater trust among them. But as cultural and economic adaptation progresses, immigrants’ communities of worship and their service agencies will likely be transformed as well. And how they are transformed depends greatly on historical processes unique to their respective host societies, highlighting how the various levels of analysis explored in this book—individual, organizational, and macrostructural—all influence one another. Many immigrants are concerned, not just with economic advancement, but with maintaining a sense of moral order. Haitian parents in Miami, Montreal, and Paris were generally confident that their children would be better off than they had been, but they worried about their children’s moral community, their sense of purpose in life, and their willingness to sacrifice short-term gains in order to achieve longterm mobility. These parents belong to strong, tightly bounded moral communities. In particular, in Canada and France, Haitian parents saw nonimmigrant youth as lacking faith in God, lacking respect for elders, and even lacking respect for themselves in the way that they dress, talk to their parents, do not attend church, and do not take school seriously. Even if these parents were exaggerating the behavior and attitudes of other youth, their perceptions indicate that immigrants evaluate differences between themselves and natives in moral terms, not just by

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225

examining socioeconomic differences, color differences, racial differences, and nationality/citizenship differences.18 Lest readers think my argument about the importance of faith or moral order only applies to people who are immigrants or socially disadvantaged in some way, do not fears of eroding social capital in all sectors of society indicate an underlying concern about the breakdown of moral communities? Is it not possible to have the material comforts of this world and yet lack a sense of purpose, a sense of community? At the individual level, do the materially wealthy really need a sense of purpose in life any less than the materially poor? At the social level, do not shared morals uphold the institutions that have produced so much prosperity in the West? It may well be true that the materially wealthy are more entrepreneurial in finding and establishing moral communities, so their moral communities may be more diverse than those of the materially poor. But the wealthy and middle class nonetheless live in moral communities. Some wealthy people certainly do turn to religious institutions for their moral communities, whereas others may turn to yoga, Eastern spirituality, or even modern philosophy. If all human communities are fundamentally moral communities, then further research on what makes some moral communities stronger than others is warranted. Among other things, we know that strong religious communities both generate social capital and help regenerate the moral order that underlies the functioning of free, prosperous democratic societies.

Appendix A

M ETHODS

FIELDWORK

One of the most common questions posed to me about this project is: Why did you study Haitians? To put it simply, I wanted to study an immigrant group that few others had studied, a group quite different from my own (my heritage is Cuban and, more distantly, Irish). I was fluent in Spanish and quite knowledgeable about much of Spanishspeaking Latin America, but my very limited knowledge about Haiti came mostly from press accounts of the different political crises there and from what I learned by attending a few scholarly events on Haitian history and politics. I was also intrigued by Haiti because of its unique language, culture, and history. Before beginning my fieldwork and interviews, I conducted preliminary research trips to Haiti, Miami, Montreal, and Paris. My project was originally designed to interview mostly leaders of the Haitian community, so I had hoped to conduct much of my research in French. However, during my first trip to Miami and during preliminary interviews with Haitian leaders there, I became more curious to meet and speak with the Haitians who these leaders served—people who primarily spoke Creole. Thus, I realized quickly that my limited knowledge of 227

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Appendix A

Haitian culture and my inability to speak Creole would limit my ability to understand the local context in which the leaders I interviewed were operating and would also prevent me from conducting in-depth interviews with most members of their communities. In the summer of 2001, I enrolled in the Haitian Summer Institute at Florida International University, led by Dr. Jean-Robert Cadely, where I studied Haitian Creole three hours a day and attended daily lectures about Haitian history, culture, religion, and economics. That summer, I also took my first trip to Haiti with members of my class, Professor Cadely, and tour guides. My fluency in French greatly facilitated learning Creole, as did my two trips to Haiti in 2001 and 2002, the numberless hours I spent observing events, talking informally with Haitians, and reading songbooks and missals during religious services. I spent seven months doing fieldwork in Miami in order to become fluent in Creole and gain familiarity with Haitian culture, but I was able to collect a similar amount of data in only four months each in Montreal and Paris. Once I was fluent in Creole, the majority of my interviewees chose to speak to me in that language, although some community leaders and government oYcials spoke to me in French or English. My fieldwork was suspended temporarily due to my father’s unexpected death on September 5, 2001. As the tragic events of September 11, 2001, occurred just one day after my father’s funeral, I decided it was best to suspend my fieldwork in order both to recover my energy and to wait until it was safer to travel by air. When I returned to do fieldwork full time in Miami beginning in January 2002, I was still deeply affected by my father’s death. People often asked me about my family, and I frequently mentioned in replying that my father had recently died. In most cases, people responded with great sympathy. I was deeply moved by the encouraging comments and the compassionate looks I received when I told people about my loss. In fact, although it is impossible to know for sure, I think it is likely that my obvious sorrow over my father’s death gave me something in common with the people I interviewed, something that transcended differences of class, race,

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language, and education. I did not speak at length about my father’s death or any other personal matters, because I did not want to focus attention on myself. But little had I imagined that this one piece of selfrevelation would do so much to generate empathy and trust between me and the members of the communities where I did my fieldwork. It is also possible that, even if I was not conscious of it at the time, my own intense suffering made me more attuned to narratives about suffering and rebirth. During 2002 and 2003 I spent a total of sixteen months conducting ethnographic fieldwork, which included approximately 150 formal interviews and countless hours as a participant observer at the Haitian Catholic missions in Miami, Montreal, and Paris. I chose to use ethnographic methods rather than survey research methods or just interviews with key informants because I was interested in understanding how religion influences the various steps immigrants take to settle in a new place. Conducting ethnography in the Haitian communities I chose to study required more than just academic knowledge about Haiti and Haitian migrants. Knowing that there are three main religions in Haiti—Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou—I thought carefully about how to design my research. I originally wanted to compare different religious groups in each city, but given the time I needed to build trust, and my interest in looking at how religion is influenced by different national contexts, it made more sense to compare the same religious group in all three cities. I chose to focus on Catholicism in part because the Catholic Church in Haiti has historically been involved in numerous social programs; thus I could compare how migrants and religious leaders transpose such efforts into new political contexts. Furthermore, as I discovered in my preliminary research and interviews, the Catholic Church has a long-standing presence as a service provider to immigrants in the United States, Canada, and France. Focusing on one religious tradition in three different countries also allowed me to observe how a particular religious institution interacts with various local political institutions.

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Finally, I myself am Catholic. Inasmuch as I approached the Haitian community as an outsider in nearly every way—race, class, language—I hoped that by entering a Catholic community, I would be able to interact with the people around me in a natural way and thus build the trust needed to conduct interviews. When I first began my ethnographic research, I was acutely aware of the differences between me and the people I sought to understand— such as race, class, color, and education. At each of the churches in Miami, Montreal, and Paris where I did my fieldwork, I asked the pastor to introduce me at Sunday Mass and give me a chance to speak to the congregation in Creole. As a Catholic, I was familiar with the religious setting. Beyond that, demonstrating my fluency in Creole and my ability to use Haitian proverbs, as well as simply being a regular presence around the community, seemed to help break down the initial barriers between me and the Haitians I met. To further build trust and familiarity, I resided at the visitor’s center on the same property as Notre Dame d’Haiti while I was in Miami, and in Montreal and in Paris, I joined the choir at the Haitian Catholic communities where I did my research. In order to increase my familiarity with Haitian culture and to improve my Haitian Creole as fast as possible, I asked Father JeanMary at Notre Dame if he could help me find lodging in Little Haiti during my research. As the first floor of the rectory of Notre Dame is often used for visitors, Father Jean-Mary arranged for me to live there. During my seven months in Little Haiti, I shared the first floor of the rectory at Notre Dame with two religious sisters and occasional visitors from Haiti. The clergy who worked at Notre Dame lived on the private, separate second floor, but we all shared our meals in the evenings. Notre Dame celebrates five Masses each Sunday, and at each Mass during my first week in Miami, I introduced myself to the community in Creole and explained my general research interests. Father JeanMary added a few words welcoming me to the parish and encouraging parishioners to interact with me. When I met people or attended prayer groups, I did not state my religion, but my reception of Eucharist dur-

Methods / 231

ing Mass surely signified to others that I am Catholic. Although I was somewhat surprised that no one asked me about my religion, I was just as surprised at how their first questions generally focused on ethnicity and language. The first two questions people generally asked me were about the origin of my first name—Margarita—and where I had learned Creole. I told people that my mother is from Cuba, my father is American from New York, I speak Spanish, was born and raised in Maryland, and have lots of Cuban relatives in Miami. I feared that being perceived as white and/or Cuban American might be a barrier to gaining trust. However, any mistrust because of my skin color or ethnic background seemed to fade from view as people saw me as a familiar face, someone who helped out setting up chairs at events and who talked to many different people. In fact, at nearly every event I ever attended, people (often people I had never even met) went out of their way to bring me a piece of cake, offer me a place in the food line, or bring me a drink in order to make me feel welcome. When I asked a priest about this amazing show of warmth, he told me that people liked me because I “met them where they are.” Several people told me directly that they appreciated my sincere willingness to learn their language and learn about their community as few outsiders do. Despite this warm welcome, at my first field site in Miami, I had a hard time starting my first in-depth interviews with members of Notre Dame d’Haiti. The interview schedule I had developed did not seem to spark long answers, and I wondered what to do. During the English classes I helped tutor at the Toussaint Center in Miami, I often listened to conversations between people during breaks from English class. These conversations frequently dealt with a child who was sick, someone who was looking for a job, or trying to get legal papers. In the group conversation, I would often interject a few of my own questions and then ask one person if we could sit down outside and talk a bit more. As so many of my interviews began by listening to informal conversations among several Haitians, I am confident that people were not changing their behavior or the topics they discussed just because I was around.

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Although I am confident that my interviewees trusted me, their impression of me might nonetheless have shaped the topics they raised in our conversation, and their answers to my questions, in ways that I could not entirely control. I did not originally plan to ask people about their prayer lives, but rather about how they found health care, jobs, and housing. However, the conversations seemed naturally to turn toward God, perhaps because we were meeting at a church and perhaps also because they perceived me as religious, since I attended church with them. It is possible that a researcher who interviewed Haitians at school or a cultural center might not have encountered as much reference to God as I did. However, it is also possible that researchers who interview Haitians or other immigrants in nonreligious settings may miss the fact that beliefs in God are relevant to the question they are studying—such as family life or education—because the researchers themselves did not ask about religion. I learned several things from my informal interactions at my field sites. First, some interviewees brought up sensitive topics I never would have thought to ask about, such as rape. People volunteering very sensitive information such as this indicated to me that I had become enough of an insider to have people speak to me naturally, as if they were speaking to a friend. Yet, as a researcher, I was concerned that at such moments, the people I was interviewing might have forgotten that, even if I acted like their friend, I was also conducting research. In order to be absolutely sure I had permission to repeat such painful personal experiences in my writing, I always checked at both the beginning and end of the interview if I was allowed to share what they had told me. Everyone I interviewed readily agreed to let me share his or her painful experiences. During certain moments when people recounted being the victim of violence, I also questioned my own ethical responsibility to act on the information given to me. Although hearing horror stories such as Stephanie’s experience of being raped in Haiti naturally made me want to help her, I thought that getting involved in interviewees’ personal

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lives, political problems, or immigration issues would be overstepping my boundaries and changing my role in the community. Thus, although Stephanie and others treated me like a friend, in the sense of trusting me with very sensitive personal information, I did not respond to these people’s troubles the way I would have with a friend outside of a research context; that is, I did not attempt to give advice about how to acquire legal papers or fi nd health care. Feeling somewhat unsure about whether I was doing good or bad by not getting involved, I spoke to leaders at the church about such painful stories. They reassured me that people in the community knew that I was doing research, not advocacy or providing social services. Just listening to their stories, and then eventually writing about them for a wide audience, they told me, already constituted an important act of solidarity with the community. These experiences showed me in a very powerful way how friendships formed at church provide empathy and compassion to people who have undergone traumatic experiences. When I interviewed leaders of secular associations in the Haitian community, I explained to them that I was interested in Haitian community organizations and the church in particular. Although studying the church may have swayed my nonchurch interviewees to perceive me in a certain way, overall, I believe I established credibility among leaders of secular organizations because I had learned Creole, spent a lot of time in the community, and talked to members of the community as well as leaders. Meeting people and conducting interviews with members of the Haitian community in Montreal and Paris proved much easier and quicker. Since I had become fluent in Creole during my stay in Miami, I was able to begin interviews rapidly in Montreal and Paris. Although I could not find an equivalent living arrangement in Montreal or Paris, in order to observe regular interactions at church, I joined the choir of the Haitian Catholic missions in both Montreal and Paris, which generated much curiosity—people were surprised that a non-Haitian could read and sing in Creole—and some amusement.

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In both of these cities, I attended Haitian cultural festivals, birthday parties, and baptisms, as well as participating in pilgrimages to nearby religious sites. Whereas in Miami, I conducted many of my interviews on the grounds of Notre Dame, in Montreal and Paris, I mostly traveled to many people’s homes to interview them, which allowed me to walk around and see their surroundings.

INTERV IEWS W ITH K EY INFOR M A NTS

In addition to ethnographic observations, in each city, I interviewed from twelve to twenty-five key informants (fewer in Paris, because the Haitian community there is smaller), such as academics, journalists, and government oYcials and community leaders. I quickly learned that not all Haitian community organizations work actively on issues related to Haitians’ adaptation, and I interviewed the leaders of those most involved in the community based on the consensus among key informants. For these interviews, I used a structured interview schedule (see below). I asked the key informants questions about the major barriers Haitians faced in their adaptation, such as immigration policy; accessing social services; relationships between Haitians, non-immigrants, and other immigrant groups; Haitians’ primary occupations, levels of unemployment, and entrepreneurship; class and educational background; and family structure. I also asked key informants about the history of their own organization, including its founding, program areas, private and public sources of funding, successes and challenges; successes and hurdles in confronting the Haitian community’s major problems; and interaction between their association and the government, other Haitian community organizations, religious groups in general, and the Catholic Church in particular. These observations, though clearly not as intense as my observations at the church, nonetheless allowed me to place the church in the broader perspective of the whole ethnic community. Next, to understand the types of institutional resources the Catholic Church offers immigrants, I interviewed from five to ten Catholic

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Church leaders at three levels: national, city, and local. I interviewed several staff members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops about the Catholic Church’s work in immigration and social services, and I collected many published or internal documents on this topic. At the city level, I asked diocesan oYcials how immigrants in general are received into parishes, such as by creating ethnic ministries, and whether diocesan organizations offer any type of social services to immigrants. At the parish level, I focused my research mostly on Catholic missions created for Haitians that I describe in chapters 3–5. Since many Haitians in each city attend parishes with other immigrant groups and nonimmigrants, I interviewed leaders from mixed-ethnic parishes with many Haitian members. I asked Catholic clergy about their pastoral programs, religious services, and leisure activities for Haitians, and whether the church offered financial support or social services to its members. In addition, I treated clergy as key informants on the community and asked them how the government, Haitian community organizations, and the church contribute to Haitians’ adaptation. I interviewed ten Haitian clergy in the United States, and five each in Montreal and Paris. At the Haitian Catholic mission of each site, I interviewed approximately ten lay leaders of church groups, including youth groups, prayer groups, the choir, and charity services, such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society. In interviews with lay church leaders, I combined questions that I asked of clergy and those asked of regular attenders at these churches. Lay church leaders proved to be useful informants, because they have a broad overview of church activities, and unlike clergy, they work in the secular world and mostly had families. Interviews with lay leaders revealed that they generally have more education and work experience than the majority of church members. I also asked lay leaders about their own personal migration experience. I learned from these interviews that these leaders’ participation in the Catholic Church’s social and political activities in Haiti profoundly influenced the types of activities they led in the diaspora.

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Table 1. Formal Interviews, by Category (total N = 144) Miami

Montreal

Paris

Key informants (academics, journalists, government oYcials, community leaders)

25

20

12

Clergy and lay leaders (national, diocesan, and parish)

20

15

10

Members of Haitian Catholic communities

15

15

12

Total

60

50

34

CASE STUDIES

I used ethnographic research methods within a cross-national comparative research design.1 Although I considered structuring this book around themes, for several reasons, I decided to structure it around three case studies. My research design was influenced by Charles Ragin’s work on comparative methods, in which he discusses the relative strengths of the variable-centered and the case-centered approaches to comparative social science research.2 In the variable-centered approach, scholars examine how one independent variable operates in different contexts. In the case-centered approach, each case is seen as a whole. The two approaches, Ragin explains, complement each other. Case-centered comparative approaches can contribute insights into new variables that might have been missed previously. Although I cannot possibly consider every variable that influences Haitians immigrants’ adaptation, I take a case-centered approach and present all of the data about each city in one chapter, thus encouraging readers to think about how the different factors I discuss influence Haitians’ adaptation there. In deciding how to conceptualize my own work, I was also influenced by Michael Burawoy’s description of the extended case method, in which sociologists explore how exter-

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nal forces shape data collected at the microlevel.3 In the extended case method, data collected at the microlevel are used to revise macrolevel social theory and concepts, such as immigrant adaptation. Discussing Catholic communities of worship alongside their aYliated social service centers in Miami, Montreal, and Paris made more sense to me than splitting up each case and looking at cultural and institutional mediation from different contexts side by side—which would have been more like a variable-centered approach. How Haitians talk about their faith across those three contexts varies very little. I considered putting the thick description of Haitians’ religious beliefs and practices from Miami, Montreal, and Paris side by side, but my point is not only to provide a thick description of Haitians’ beliefs but to use their words to more fully examine their adaptation in Miami, Montreal, and Paris, and to show how their religious beliefs and institutions influence their adaptation differently across space.

COMPA R ING CENSUS DATA FROM THREE NATIONS

As I collected and analyzed census data and immigration data on Haitians in each of my three cases, I encountered several diYculties in making direct comparisons across the three sites. First, the United States, Canada, and France each collect their data on immigrants and ethnic groups slightly differently. Second, questions on national origin, income, and poverty in each national census are not exactly comparable. In addition, I did not collect longitudinal data that follow the same people over a period of time. Even if I compared census data on Haitians from the United States, Canada, and France at different periods of time, census data can tell us little about how individual Haitians’ socioeconomic position has changed over time. Rather, longitudinal surveys that follow the same people over many years are required to make conclusive statements about social mobility. The census data presented in chapters 3–5 illustrate Haitians’ overall socioeconomic posi-

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tion. However, the poorest individuals and those speaking a foreign language are most likely to not be counted in national censuses, so census data are generally biased upward for a group like Haitians.

The U.S. Census In the United States, I used data from sample 4 of the 2000 U.S. Census. I chose the category of Haitian ancestry, regardless of country of birth. Therefore, the census data I present on Haitians in chapter 3 include not only first-generation Haitian immigrants but anyone who claimed Haitian ancestry, which could include second- and possibly thirdgeneration Haitians. In chapter 3, I only present data on Haitians who live in the five census tracts that make up Little Haiti. I compared data on Haitians in Little Haiti with data on Haitians elsewhere in Miami– Dade County and in the United States as a whole. Not surprisingly, socioeconomic indicators were lowest in Little Haiti, so I used those data to present the most accurate picture of the neighborhood where I did my fieldwork.

The Canadian Census Until 1996, the Canadian census only asked about ethnic ancestry, not race, which James Torcyzner (2001) argues led to a severe undercount of all blacks in Canada. For example, Torcyzner states that in the 1991 Canadian census, 40 percent of people born in Haiti chose French ethnicity (not Haitian) and 40 percent of people born in Jamaica chose English ancestry (not Jamaican). Some Caribbean immigrants in Canada may choose English or French ancestry to indicate how they see themselves fitting into the two large ethnic groups or traditions that make up Canada: the English and the French. In addition, Haiti’s status as a former French colony and Jamaica’s status as a formerly British colony might also explain why some immigrants from those countries chose French or English ethnicity. Using the 1996 Canadian census,

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researchers at the McGill Consortium for Ethnicity and Strategic Social Planning compared the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of all blacks to nonblacks in Montreal.4 Torcyzner’s analysis includes neighborhood data from four neighborhoods of Montreal where Haitians are close to 90 percent of all blacks, thus providing an accurate profile of Haitians (both foreign-born and Canadian-born) in their largest urban concentrations in Montreal. In chapter 4, I present data from just the two neighborhoods—Montreal North and Saint-Michel—with the highest number of Haitians of all areas in Montreal, because these neighborhoods present the closest comparison to Miami’s Little Haiti.

The French Census As I found no published census data on Haitians in France beyond two or three indicators of socioeconomic status, I extracted data from the 1999 French census for the purposes of this book.5 In order to extract this data, I worked with the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques ( INSEE) at its oYces in Paris.6 I collected data on all Haitians in both metropolitan France and the Antilles, and the data set allowed me to tabulate all of the variables at the national, regional, or municipal levels. As some 22,000 of the total of approximately 25,000 Haitians in metropolitan France live in or near Paris, I did not break the data down by region in France. I compared socioeconomic indicators for certain suburbs, such as Saint-Denis, to the rest of the Paris region, but saw little difference. Thus, in chapter 5, I present data on all Haitians in France.7

Immigration Data in the United States, Canada, and France OYcial data on migration were collected from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in the United States; Statistics Canada and Quebec’s Ministry for Relations with Citizens and Immigrants (MRCI); and the French bureau of the OYce des migrations inter-

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Table 2. Census Data on Haitians in the United States, Canada, and France United States

Canada

France

Data source

2000 U.S. census, sample 4 data. Author’s extraction.

1996 Canadian 1999 French cencensus. Data sus. Author’s published in extraction. Torcyzner 2001.

Ancestry/ citizenship question

Haitian ancestry (regardless of place of birth or citizenship).

Visible minority question (regardless of place of birth or citizenship).

Born in Haiti (Haitian citizen or naturalized French citizen) and Haitian citizens born in France.

nationales (OYce of International Migration) (OMI) and the OYce français de la protection des réfugiés et des apatrides (French OYce for Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) (OFPRA).

DATA A NA LYSIS

Data analysis began during the fieldwork itself. After each interview I conducted or event I observed, I would write summaries, compare my notes to my original questions, and revise my questionnaires to include emerging themes. For example, during my interviews with leaders, political advocacy, not just social services, emerged as an important question for Haitians’ adaptation. Once all of the interviews were summarized and transcribed, I closely coded from five to eight interviews using an open-coding approach.8 Once I had saturated the categories coming from these interviews and ethnographic memos, I developed a coding sheet that I followed to write coding memos for other interviews. As I reviewed my data, I also developed charts and diagrams to demonstrate relationships between

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themes and concepts. I also sought to generate new categories and concepts that apply across the different cases. The qualitative data analysis I present in this book consists of representative statements from detailed ethnographic observations and thousands of pages of journal notes and interview data analyzed in this fashion. Although the findings of this project are based on just one immigrant group—Haitians—the findings are generalizable to the extent that, like most qualitative social science, they help refine theory and generate new concepts and propositions. During my fieldwork, I took detailed notes of when my assumptions or concepts did not fit with what I was observing. Throughout the data collection and analysis, I constantly questioned my own assumptions and categories. After my fieldwork was completed, I wrote many drafts of my fi ndings and delivered countless oral presentations of my work, all of which helped me analyze and reanalyze my data in a community of scholars.

LI MITATIONS

I now briefly address some limitations of my research. I initially intended to interview mostly leaders of the Haitian communities of Miami, Montreal, and Paris, and thereby try to understand how religious service institutions such as Catholic Charities impacted Haitians’ adaptation across very different political contexts. But as I began my fieldwork, I became more and more curious about how Haitians not in leadership positions understood what adaptation means and what measures they took to improve their adaptation. Thus, after I had already begun my research, I added longer periods of ethnographic fieldwork and more in-depth interviews with more Haitian immigrants who were not in leadership positions in their church or ethnic community. At the outset, I expected to observe many Haitians adopting categories and boundaries established in the receiving societies. After reading this book, it might seem strange to learn that I expected more Haitians in Miami to assert that “all Americans are immigrants”; that I imagined many

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Haitians in Montreal would talk about how multiculturalism aYrms their uniqueness and at the same time makes them equal members of Canadian society; or that I thought that most Haitians in France would extol the equality granted to them by French republicanism. Even if such ideas may indeed have penetrated the thinking of some Haitian intellectuals, I heard few such comments among the people I met and interviewed in the Haitian Catholic communities. Rather, the Haitians I spoke with emphasized that they saw their dignity and equality with others as coming from being God's creatures. Although I cannot make within-case comparisons about the different religions Haitians may practice, my three-way cross-national comparison allows me to explore various elements of the political context that influence institutional mediation. The strength of my approach is that, had I dedicated my time to conducting survey research rather than observations at many Haitian religious and secular events, I do not expect I would have seen the importance of complementarity between cultural and institutional mediation. Although I collected census data at each site, in order to make confident comparisons about adaptation outcomes, I would need longitudinal survey data. Precious few such data exist about Haitians, perhaps in part due to the limited number of scholars who speak Haitian Creole and are familiar enough with Haitian culture to carry out reliable survey work. As already stated, however, my general observation is that Haitians in Miami are more likely to enjoy upward mobility than are Haitians in Montreal or Paris, but this is a claim my data suggest but cannot definitively demonstrate. Regardless of whether longitudinal survey data might tell us where Haitians are experiencing the greatest upward mobility, survey data do not answer all important questions about immigrant adaptation. In fact, comparative studies of immigrant adaptation should inquire about how immigrants perceive their agency in pursuing adaptation goals. Especially for highly religious immigrants who settle in largely secularized societies, we should also ask how they imagine themselves as members of their host societies, information not easily collected with surveys.

Methods / 243

Different Religions Haitians Practice In the interest of exploring further what I found to be most surprising at Notre Dame d’Haiti in Miami, I did not spend equal amounts of time at different types of Haitian organizations or even at different religious denominations in one site. The type of in-depth interview data I present in this book required many months of my regular presence at one religious setting in each city. Furthermore, I was extremely interested in both the North American comparison (Miami vs. Montreal) and the cross-Atlantic comparison (Miami vs. Paris). Thus, I compare a single religious institution—the Catholic Church—in three countries. Others considering a similar project might consider a two-by-two design, such as studying two types of religious communities in two cities, therefore varying both the religion and the context, but not the immigrant group.9 Another possibility for future research would be to study two immigrant groups of the same religion in two sites, therefore varying the immigrant group and the context, but not the religion.10 Because I only studied Haitian Catholics, I cannot definitively answer questions about the relationship between Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou in Haiti or its diaspora. Nor can I answer questions about conversions away from Vodou and/or from Catholicism to Protestantism. Even though several Haitians I interviewed told me they had converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, I did not purposefully seek out converts to Catholicism from Protestantism nor did I seek to interview people who had previously practiced Vodou but had ceased to do so. Scholars of Haitian religion have focused more on Vodou than either Haitian Protestants or Catholics, but this focus does not accurately reflect the religious demographics of Haiti and its diaspora, where Catholicism is the most common religion, followed by Protestantism, which has gained converts in recent years. The numerous ethnographic studies on Haitian Vodou might lead one to conclude this is the most practiced religion in Haiti, but survey data collected by Drexel G. Woodson and Mamadou A. Baro at the University of Arizona Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology suggest otherwise. Woodson and

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Baro sought to understand how religious practices influence household spending decisions, such as contributions to Vodou rituals or donations to Catholic parishes or Protestant congregations. Researchers surveyed households in thirty communities across different regions of Haiti. They found that 60 percent of household heads said they were Catholic, 26 percent said they were Protestant, and 11 percent said they “sèvi lwa” (a colloquial term for Vodou practice). Their data also suggest that it would be diYcult to generalize about religious practices in the country as a whole based on one community, because in certain places, there were virtually no Protestant households, whereas in others, nearly all households in a community said they were Protestant.11 Furthermore, my research does not support the common perception that Haitian Catholics generally also practice Vodou. Because some Haitians practice a combination of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou, scholars of Haitian religion such as Elizabeth McAlister, Karen Richman, and Karen McCarthy Brown talk about a continuum rather than hard boundaries between these religious groups. For example, McAlister proposes the continuum approach as an alternative to the approach in which Vodou and Catholicism are perceived as “a pair of binary opposites.”12 She describes how Haitians in the diaspora engage in codeswitching between Vodou and Catholicism; in other words, Vodouists who attend Catholic services hide that they are actually praying to the lwa (spirits), not to Jesus or the Christian saints, or perhaps to both at the same time. It is diYcult to generalize observations about code-switching among some Haitian Catholics to all Haitian Catholics, but some might be tempted to interpret much of the work on Haitian Vodou in that way. It is significant that both McAlister and Richman admit that at least some Haitian Catholics are fran katolik—roughly translated as “pure” Catholics, or simply Catholics who do not practice Vodou and may have virtually no knowledge of it. Further supporting the idea that some hard boundaries do indeed exist between Vodou and Catholicism, in her landmark work on Haitian Vodou, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, Karen McCarthy

Methods / 245

Brown indicates that many who practice Vodou also consider themselves Catholic, but she nonetheless also states that certain things about Christianity, such as salvation, sin, and incarnation, “cannot in the end be easily assimilated into a Vodou worldview.”13 Thus, the continuum approach to study Haitian religion, which has been the dominant approach, certainly has its limitations. In fact, according to Terry Rey, who has studied Vodou and Catholicism in both Haiti and the diaspora, “there are more fran katolik (Catholics who do not wittingly also practice Vodou) than scholars seem willing to admit.”14 Several things led me to conclude that people I interviewed can be considered fran katolik. First, the Haitians I interviewed and observed had strong devotion to the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and they firmly believed that God had become man in Jesus Christ, died on the Cross, and rose in three days. Each of these doctrines are specific to Christianity, and the belief that Eucharist is Jesus Christ’s body and blood is specific to Catholicism. Second, in his work on Marian devotion at Notre Dame in Miami, the same church where I conducted my research, Rey states that judging from frequent participant observation, from the dozens of formal interviews and informal conversations I have had with parishioners at Notre Dame over the last five years, and from the enthusiastic responses that rise from the congregation each time a priest denounces the ancestors or lwas, Vodou’s presence at Florida’s leading Haitian Catholic church is actually very weak and it would be wildly inaccurate to refer to its parishioners as “bireligious”. It is undeniable that Vodou informs a loose, vague, and fairly ubiquitous religio-cultural worldview for most Haitians. Yet this no more makes all Haitians practitioners of Vodou than do notions of the American dream make all Americans Puritans. Whatever the case may be, there is certainly much less indication of Vodouisant ritual and practice among Haitians at feast-day celebrations in the United States than in Haiti.15

Rey’s research supports my assertion that Haitian Catholicism in Miami is not extensively syncretist with Vodou. I support this assertion with

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ample evidence that Haitian Catholics express belief in particularly Christian and particularly Catholic doctrines. It might always be said that my interviewees simply hid their Vodou practices from me, but Rey’s work and the actions of the leaders of these three Haitian Catholic communities leads me to conclude that, if present, Vodou practice at my field sites was relatively weak. The continuum approach to studying Haitian religion may also obscure the substantial institutional differences between Vodou, Protestantism, and Catholicism that appeared clearly when I interviewed community leaders about their interactions with Haitian religious institutions generally. Furthermore, the types of institutional mediation I identify in the Haitian Catholic missions of Miami, Montreal, and Paris are rooted in Catholic social doctrine and strengthened by long histories of Catholic religious leaders and laypeople engaging in social and political affairs in both Haiti and the countries where Haitian immigrants have settled. Work by Terry Rey and Alex Stepick further confirms the unique cultural and institutional importance of Notre Dame and the Toussaint Center in Miami.16 Although my approach to Haitian Catholicism may differ from those of other scholars, my work in general concurs with theirs in pointing out how Haitians’ religious beliefs provide them with a narrative through which to understand their suffering. “Whether Catholic, Protestant, or Vodou, or any mix thereof, religion plays a central role both in shaping poor Haitians’ understanding of suffering and in fortifying them in their struggle to survive,” Terry Rey writes. Although religious practices may vary across the traditions—Catholics ask for the intercession of the Virgin Mary and the saints, Protestants tend to emphasize the ecstatic practices of Pentecostalism, and Vodou practitioners call on the lwa—they all ask for “protection, forgiveness, fullness of life, deliverance, or salvation. . . . [This is] done out of an unshakeable faith that these spiritual beings intercede and that religious practice elicits such intercession.”17

Methods / 247

Time and again during my fieldwork, I was reminded that religion matters to Haitians not just as a source of networks or material benefits, but because Haitians believe in God. Moreover, they assert that these beliefs have helped change their lives. This book thus points to the transformative power of religious beliefs and practices.

Appendix B

AY ITI CHER I: NOTES ON THE H A ITI A N HOM ELA N D

For readers already knowledgeable about Ayiti Cheri—“Dear Haiti”—as my interviewees called their homeland, this appendix may provide little new information. My intent here is not so much to answer pressing questions about Haiti’s history or future, but to guide readers unfamiliar with Haiti through important elements of Haitian history and some current events that shaped the events described in this book.

MIGR ATION FROM H A ITI

In many ways, Haitian immigrants are emblematic of the post-1965 waves of immigrants to North America who primarily come from the developing world rather than Europe, and who have low levels of human capital and few opportunities for legal migration. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and most Haitian migrants have low levels of education and little urban work experience. Haiti ranks 150th out of 175 countries on the Human Development Index, far behind the rest of Latin America and alongside some of the poorest African countries.1 Haiti’s 8.1 million people have a life expectancy of 52 years. In 2005, its annual GDP growth was 1.8 percent and per capita GDP average annual growth was 0.5 percent.2 Eighty percent of 249

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Appendix B

Haiti’s rural population lives in poverty, and 50 percent of adults are illiterate.3 Further complicating their adaptation, Haitians are racially distinct from the majorities of the countries of the West where they have settled, and they speak a language—Creole—only spoken on a few Caribbean islands. A long history of political violence and authoritarianism has further immersed Haiti’s people in poverty.4 During the brutal regimes of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier, who ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986, tens of thousands of Haitians were killed in state-sponsored violence and thousands more fled the country. Despite the Haitian government’s dismal human rights record, few Haitians were treated by the United States, Canadian, or French governments as political refugees or valid asylum-seekers.5 François Duvalier’s repressive politics generated the first large-scale emigration of Haitians to North America and Europe since the refugees who fled the fighting of the Haitian Revolution, which lasted from 1791 to 1804. Between 1950 and 1970, approximately 8 percent of the total Haitian population left their homeland. The middle- and upperclass elites, who had established connections with the United States and France when the Haitian economy grew in the early twentieth century, looked to their northern trading partners as logical places to migrate. In the 1950s and 1960s, many of the elite and urban middle class who were disenchanted by François Duvalier’s economic policies and targeted by his violent political repression established Haitian communities in New York, Montreal, and Paris.6 Despite its proximity to Haiti, Miami was not yet a destination of these middle- and upper-class migrants. At the time, the civil rights movement was growing in the United States, which highlighted the racial segregation of the American South and deterred Haitians from going there. Cities like New York were perceived as more welcoming to blacks, and New York City already was home to many Caribbean migrants. At the time, Montreal and Paris had very small black populations and offered well-educated Haitians a place where they could

Ayiti Cheri

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study or find work, speak French, and be relatively free of the racial stereotypes of the United States. Poor Haitians of rural origin followed well-established migration patterns to work on sugarcane plantations in the Dominican Republic. Although still functioning as a dictator and clamping down on political freedoms, Jean-Claude Duvalier sought to improve Haiti’s international image in order to attract increased international aid and investment. His ability to bring foreign capital into Haiti allowed him to develop a small commodity export industry—such as in producing baseballs. Under Jean-Claude Duvalier, U.S. foreign investment and aid focused on Haiti’s industrial sector to the detriment of its rural economy. Although this investment and aid did lead to some economic growth in the early 1980s, Haiti also began to rely more on agricultural imports to feed its population, which increased the cost of living for peasants.7 This unbalanced economic growth in Haiti, not just abject poverty, led to immigration. Jean-Claude Duvalier’s economic program largely ignored the rural sector, thereby exacerbating Haiti’s perennial unequal development. Even though Haiti enjoyed a 5 percent economic growth rate during the 1970s, agricultural production stagnated. As the food supply decreased and food prices increased, greater numbers of rural Haitians began abandoning their homes for cities in Haiti or to venture abroad.8 Rural migrants flocked to burgeoning Port-au-Prince, often living in abysmal poverty there. Others moved to Port-au-Prince as a stepping-stone for immigration to the United States, Canada, or France.9 Jean-Claude Duvalier’s economic policies and repression led tens of thousands of Haitians, mostly peasants, to head to South Florida on boats. During the period 1977–81 alone, around 50,000 to 70,000 Haitians arrived by boat in South Florida.10 The brutal Duvalier family regime ended in February 1986 when Jean-Claude Duvalier was finally forced to leave power. During the past two decades, however, continued political instability and poverty have only continued the push to leave Haiti.

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Appendix B

LIBER ATION THEOLOGY A ND POLITICS IN H A ITI

During the past twenty years of Haitian history, which I call the era of contested democracy, migration from Haiti to other Caribbean countries, North America, and Europe has continued. Haiti, like many other countries that embraced democracy in the so-called third wave of democratization that swept through much of the developing world in the 1980s and 1990s, has not been able to sustain democratic rule. Immediately following Jean-Claude Duvalier’s departure, a struggle for power ensued, and several different military figures ruled Haiti. With support from the international community, Haiti celebrated its first true national presidential democratic elections in December 1990. The winner, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a laicized Catholic priest,11 built his popularity as a liberation theologian and eloquent preacher speaking for the poor. Aristide’s election indicates the power of the liberation theology movement that swept the Catholic Church in much of Latin America. The Catholic Church’s ecumenical council Vatican II—which convened from 1961 to 1965—opened the door to new forms of engagement with modern society and politics. For example, the Council fathers proclaimed that although Catholic leaders must respect the separation of temporal power and church power, the Church nonetheless has a particular responsibility to form political consciousness and promote genuine human development.12 Aware that some equated the Catholic Church’s strong criticism of communism with a disdain for the plight of the oppressed, many Catholic theologians in Latin America began to emphasize what they called a preferential option for the poor. Haiti proved to be ripe ground for the implementation of many ideas from Vatican II related to the Catholic Church’s social justice doctrine. Notwithstanding that Catholic leaders and faithful interpreted and applied the church’s social teachings in numerous ways, of which liberation theology was just one, liberation theology gained a large influ-

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ence in Haiti’s two Catholic seminaries. Furthermore, both men’s and women’s religious orders explicitly sought to promote political goals as part of their pastoral work. Catholic faithful who participated in the Christian Base Community movement used the Bible to reflect on their social reality and political situation. Micial Nérestant, a leading scholar of religion and politics in Haiti, defines liberation theology as a reading of the Gospel and an understanding of Christ’s life that emphasizes political liberation. If we conceive of salvation as occurring when we arrive in the other world (heaven), religion may produce an otherworldly orientation that discourages people from engaging with concrete political and social problems. Liberation theology, however, promotes a this-worldly orientation and emphasizes that salvation should be manifested concretely through political action aimed at achieving economic justice. “Liberation theology promotes the principle that Scripture calls the poor to engage in political battle to free themselves from oppression and injustice,” Nérestant explains. “For liberation theologians, there is no such thing as theology that is not social and political. If theology must talk about God through Jesus who reveals himself in the struggle of the oppressed for liberty, then theology must necessarily take a political position and speak in the name of God on behalf of the poor and oppressed.”13 Liberation theology undoubtedly contributed to the first massive awakening of the political consciousness and widespread political movement of Haitians since the revolution that ended in 1804. Although many sectors of society joined together to oppose Jean-Claude Duvalier, it would be impossible to understand his fall and the subsequent election of Aristide without considering the impact of liberation theology in Haiti. As religious congregations and leaders demanded change from their government and Christian Base Communities explicitly linked their prayer lives to political action, liberation theology helped unleash a massive popular mobilization, with enormous political consequences.14 Many of the Haitian clergy and lay leaders I interviewed in Miami, Montreal, and Paris had been profoundly influenced by their participa-

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tion in the Catholic Church’s social, educational, and political projects in Haiti. Although Aristide represented hope in Haiti, it was terribly shortlived, because less than a year after his election, he was overthrown in a coup d’état led by General Raoul Cédras. This regime plunged Haiti into political repression and total economic stagnation, worsened by the trade and loan embargo the Organization of American States imposed on Haiti. The exodus of Haitian boat people during the Cédras regime created a humanitarian crisis. Some 50,000 Haitians made it to Florida, a few thousand likely died at sea, and others were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard and kept in camps in Guantánamo Bay or the Bahamas. The exodus of boat people from Cuba also reached crisis proportions in 1994, and U.S. Coast Guard and immigration oYcials felt overwhelmed.15 After three years in exile, Aristide triumphantly returned to Haiti in 1994 with the protection of 20,000 U.S. Marines. Back in power, with both popular support and international support, Aristide faced the challenge of uniting the divided and impoverished nation. His prime minister, René Préval, served as president from 1996 to 2000, and then Aristide was reelected in 2000. The year 2004, during which Haitians around the globe had hoped to jubilantly celebrate their two hundred years of independence, will surely be remembered as a low point in Haitian history. In February 2004, a month-long armed insurrection forced Aristide to flee Haiti once again. Aristide’s second departure marked the rapid end of many Haitians’ dreams of change. After Aristide’s departure, a transitional government took over and established order in order to organize elections. Even though René Préval won in a democratic election for the presidency once again in 2007, the rapid changes many had hoped would occur in the 1980s and 1990s will not materialize overnight. Change in Haiti, when it occurs, will likely happen incrementally and perhaps almost imperceptibly. For all of these reasons, greater scholarly attention to Haiti is timely and necessary.

NOTES

CH A PTER 1 1. Immigration scholars often use the terms “assimilation,” “adaptation,” “integration,” and “incorporation” to describe the general ways that immigrants become part of a new society, such as acquiring citizenship, learning a new language, fi nding a job, securing good housing, forming a new identity, and moving up the socioeconomic ladder. The terms “integration” and “incorporation” often are used to refer specifically to socioeconomic outcomes. I chose the term “adaptation” to emphasize first that I am studying primarily first-generation immigrants, many of whom have not been in their new country for even a decade, and second because I am interested in how people adapt to new situations, both in terms of cognitive strategies and by building institutions. The term “assimilation” best describes a multigenerational process of cultural adaptation and economic mobility. 2. Alex Stepick, who has been studying Haitian immigrants in Miami since the 1980s, notes that “the most popular organizations within [the Haitian community] are undoubtedly religious. . . . By far the most visible and important religious institution is the Haitian Catholic Center (another name for Notre Dame d’Haiti)” (1992, pp. 73–74). 3. In order to protect the confidentiality of many of my interviewees, I refer to Haitian immigrants only by fictional first names. However, leaders of 255

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/ Notes to Pages 8–34

the community agreed to be quoted in their current positions and names, so I refer to them by their real fi rst names and surnames. 4. See Alexandre 2001. 5. See Stepick 1982; 1992, pp. 73–74; 1998. 6. Richard Wood (2002) uses a similar term, “bridging institution,” to describe how faith-based organizing movements link local-level religious communities to other civil society organizations and the state. 7. See, e.g., Alba and Nee 1997, 2003; Gordon 1964. 8. See, e.g., Portes and Rumbaut 2001. 9. Portes and Rumbaut 2006. 10. On the Catholic Church’s support for Vietnamese refugees in New Orleans, see Zhou and Bankston 1998. 11. Torczyner 2001. 12. LeMieux and Montminy 2002. 13. Campbell 2002. 14. Although another estimated 27,000 live in the French overseas departments of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Guyane, I focus exclusively on Haitians in continental European France, which is often referred to as metropolitan France. 15. I have mixed Cuban and Irish American heritage. In Miami, most Haitians easily identified me as Cuban American by my appearance and my first name, Margarita. When speaking Creole and French, my accent and certain words I use further betrayed a Latina heritage. 16. Simeant 1998. 17. See, e.g., Wuthnow 2004. 18. “Vodou” is the spelling indicated in the oYcial Haitian Creole Orthography of 1987. For a discussion of spellings of Vodou, see Cosentino 1995.

CH A PTER 2 1. Handlin 1951; Warner and Srole 1945. 2. Taylor 1994. 3. Brubaker 1992; Hargreaves 1995; Horowitz and Noiriel 1992. 4. Herberg 1955. 5. The 1789 French Revolution greatly reduced the influence of the Catholic Church in France and launched an ideology of secularism. The separation of church and state in France was further codified in a 1905 law.

Notes to Pages 35–43

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6. Gordon 1964; Herberg 1955; Thomas and Znaniecki 1927; Tomasi 1975. 7. Gordon 1964, p. 246. 8. In recent years, numerous immigration scholars also took up the study of religion and immigrant adaptation, thus producing a rapidly growing body of work on this topic, e.g., Ecklund 2006; Hagan 2008; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007; Levitt 2001, 2007; Menjívar 1999, 2001, 2003; Zhou and Bankston 1998. Cadge and Ecklund 2007 summarizes the burgeoning scholarship on religion and immigration, arguing that this body of work has led scholars to reconsider how religion influences important questions in immigrant adaptation, such as identity, gender, civic engagement, and the adaptation of second-generation immigrants. Lest the renewed interest in religion and immigration lead readers to conclude that scholars always knew the importance of this topic, note that in the fi rst two editions (1990, 1996) of the modern classic Immigrant America: A Portrait, by Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut, these scholars dedicated much attention to labor market structures, race, and education, but did not address religion. However, in the third revised edition of Immigrant America, published in 2006, they added a new chapter called “Religion: The Enduring Presence,” in which they argue that religion interacts with nearly every other factor influencing immigrant adaptation. Portes and Rumbaut add that religion may even impede certain immigrant groups from experiencing downward socioeconomic mobility. 9. Berger and Neuhaus 2000, p. 144. 10. Elshtain 2000; Skocpol, Ganz, and Munson 2000. 11. Tocqueville 1994 [1835–40]. 12. See, e.g., Finke and Stark 1988, 1992. 13. Comparing a national sample of immigrants to the United States of different national origins and religions from the New Immigrant Survey, Phillip Connor found that immigrants’ religious participation after they move to the United States varies greatly across contexts. Specifically, immigrants report greater religious participation when they settle in areas with more people who share their religion and where levels of religious participation are already high. Connor 2009a, 2009b. 14. Connor 2008. 15. Connor, unpublished MS. 16. Mooney 2007. 17. Mooney 2006. 18. Mooney 2007.

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/ Notes to Pages 43–53

19. Wuthnow 2004. 20. In theory, the types of informal help that are often called social capital could come from any number of people with whom one has social ties. To test where people turned for this informal support, Wuthnow asked a random sample of 1,528 Americans whom they would ask for help if, hypothetically, a member of their immediate family became sick. Among all the respondents, which included both people who attend a church regularly and some who did not, Wuthnow found that “40% said they could count on church members—a proportion that ranks lower than counting on close friends, relatives or neighbors, but substantially higher than counting on people at work, volunteers, welfare agencies, nonprofit organizations, or members of a service club” (Wuthnow 2004, p. 83). In his analysis, Wuthnow controls for factors we might expect to influence how people obtain social capital, such as their income and education and even how outgoing (or what he calls “gregarious”) people are. Yet, he concludes that above and beyond personal characteristics that might distinguish church attenders from nonattenders, people who belong to religious organizations have greater access to social capital. 21. Wuthnow 2004, p. 96. 22. Berger 1967; Smith 2003. 23. Smith 2003, p. 16. 24. Stark and Finke 2000. 25. Smith 2007, p. 170.

CH A PTER 3 1. See, e.g., 1999; Rey 2004. 2. The reference is to Matt. 8:23–27; Mark 4:36–41; Luke 8:22–24. 3. For a discussion of inculturation of the faith, see Schreiter 1985. 4. For more on Haitians in New York City, see Laguerre 1984; PierreLouis 2006. For Haitian transnationalism, see Laguerre 1997, 1999. And for Haitians outside New York and Miami, see Jackson 2007, forthcoming. 5. Prior to the 1970s, rural Haitians primarily migrated to the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, or another island in the Caribbean. However, starting in the 1970s Haiti’s mostly subsistence agricultural system began to break down, causing a rural exodus not seen since the Haitian revolution of 1804. For more on how Haiti’s rural development crisis led thousands of peasants to move to North America, see Catanese 1999; DeWind and Kinley 1988. 6. Stepick 1992.

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7. Stepick 1992. 8. Stepick 1998. Farmer 1992 examines the stereotypes that led to the theory that AIDS came to North America from Haiti. 9. Mooney 2006. 10. For more on the history of Notre Dame, including its transnational activities, see Rey and Stepick, forthcoming [2009]. 11. Guest 2003 calls immigrant religious institutions in New York’s Chinatown liminal space. Tweed 1997 speaks of the prayers of Cuban Americans at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity being like entering a “translocative” and “transtemporal” space. 12. The number and size of the programs changes. For example, in 2005, the English classes, the first program offered at the Toussaint Center, merged with another English-language program at a different site. 13. The concept of ethnic enclave has been used to explain the success of Cubans in Miami and later to contrast Cubans’ success to the relative lack of successful mobility of other immigrant groups, such as Mexicans. See Portes and Bach 1985; Wilson and Portes 1980. 14. Based on his own fieldwork in the Haitian community, Alex Stepick and colleagues calculate that the census probably missed 50 percent of Haitians in Miami–Dade County. Stepick et al. 2001 estimate that 125,000 Haitians live in the city of Miami alone and perhaps 200,000 in all of Miami–Dade County. 15. I analyzed census tracts 14.01, 14.02, 20.01, 20.03, 20.04, i.e., the area roughly from Biscayne Boulevard in the east to Northwest Seventh Avenue in the west, and from Northeast Thirty-sixth Street in the south to Northeast Seventy-ninth Street in the north. Forty percent of the residents of these five tracts were Haitian; of those, census tract 14.02 has the largest Haitian population—49 percent—and census tract 20.03 has the lowest—27 percent. Many of the surrounding neighborhoods of these areas—in particular North Miami—also have a large number of Haitian residents. 16. According to my analysis of census data, in 2000, just over 50 percent of Miami–Dade County’s residents were foreign-born, and nearly two-thirds of the entire population (both U.S.-born and foreign-born) was of Hispanic origin. 17. According to my analysis of census data, the same figures for Haitians in Miami-Dade County overall are: 22 percent have less than nine years of education and 9.6 percent have attained a bachelor’s degree or higher, 16 percent were unemployed, the median income was $27,284, and 30 percent of all Haitian households fall under the poverty line.

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/ Notes to Pages 58–60

18. With regard to the Catholic Church’s welcoming of immigrants generally and Haitians in Miami specifically, it makes most sense to look at both the actions of the hierarchy and clergy and those of lay leaders and regular church members. Sociologists of religion such as R. Stephen Warner have argued that, even if immigrants belonged to religious communities in their country of origin that had a hierarchical structure, when they arrive in the United States, they tend to accommodate to the voluntaristic, lay-led model that has long characterized American religion (Warner and Wittner 1998). Finke and Stark (1992), however, provide evidence that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, religious institutions frequently sought out members, or “church[ed] them.” Religious leaders felt it was their duty both to educate newcomers in their faith and to provide them with a religious home. Furthermore, Finke and Stark argue that institutional resources, not donations from newcomers, built churches for immigrants. 19. The Catholic clergy was strongly dominated by the Irish, and many Catholic parishes were also de facto Irish parishes; however, they often were not called that, because services were in English, and not a foreign language. 20. Thomas and Znaniecki 1927; Tomasi 1975. 21. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the Catholic bishops in the United States began to move away from the national parish model. Several things led to this change. Many bishops felt that national parishes, which were often staffed by clergy ordained in foreign dioceses or from religious orders, often operated too independently of local authorities. This created problems when, for example, it was necessary to adapt these parishes to demographic changes in the neighborhood. Thus, today the Catholic Church in the United States mostly incorporates immigrants through ethnic ministries within already existing parishes. 22. Oates 1995. 23. Father Wenski was named auxiliary bishop of Miami in 1996, and then bishop of Orlando in 2002. 24. One Haitian priest deeply involved in liberation theology, Gérard JeanJuste, also came to Miami but the archbishop never accorded him a pastoral assignment in the Haitian community. Father Wenski tried to avoid the more confrontational style of Father Jean-Juste, who led the Haitian Refugee Center, an important political and social center for Haitians, until he returned to Haiti following Aristide’s restoration to power in 1994. 25. Father Wenski made this comment not only in reference to Notre Dame, but to other Haitian missions he helped begin in South Florida. As not

Notes to Pages 62–88

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all Haitians in South Florida live in Miami, Father Wenksi crisscrossed Miami– Dade and Broward counties beginning smaller Haitian Catholic missions in places like Homestead and Pompano Beach. With time, Catholic clergy came from Haiti to serve these communities, and other ordained Haitian priests in the archdiocese of Miami were often assigned to one of them. Several other mixed-ethnic Catholic parishes in Miami–Dade County, such as St. James, Holy Family, and Christ the King, have a Haitian apostolate that reaches out to Haitians, celebrate Mass in Creole, and may have a Haitian priest on staff. 26. Fitzpatrick 1966. 27. Oates 1995. 28. Stotzky 2004. 29. Haitian Catholic services both in Haiti and the diaspora frequently mix Creole and French. Father Wenski tried, as much as possible, to celebrate all parts of the Mass, including the readings from Scripture and the hymns, in Creole. During my fieldwork, the Haitian priests at Notre Dame used more French in the Mass and hymns than Father Wenski had previously done. 30. Matt. 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–8; Luke 9:28–36. 31. Ebaugh and Chaftez 2002; Hagan 2008; Levitt 2001; Tweed 1997. 32. This particular interview illustrates how I learned to conduct interviews with people who had suffered violent attacks and rape. In such interviews, I felt that the best response was to show empathy with my natural facial reactions but not to interrupt the interviewee’s words to interject my own words of compassion. For example, as Stephanie spoke to me about being raped, robbed, and threatened, I wanted to express my shock verbally, but I refrained from saying anything. However, I did not attempt to restrain the sorrowful look that must have come across my face. See Appendix A for a longer reflection on how I dealt with instances in which people revealed personal tragedies to me. 33. “In contrast to President Bush’s faith-based initiative, these [faithbased community-organizing movements] work through religious institutions to reshape government policy via the exercise of democratic power. Religious institutions thus become sociopolitical critics of government and social policy rather than channels for government-funded social services. . . . In contrast to the religious right’s emphasis on individual and moral change, these organizations struggle to improve the socioeconomic lot of poor, working-class, and middle-income Americans” (Wood 2002, p. 4). 34. PACT’s activities closely mirror those of the faith-based communityorganizing movements described in Wood 2002, which notes that there are 133 federations of such movements in the United States, mostly concentrated

262

/ Notes to Pages 89–115

in states with large numbers of immigrants, such as New York, Florida, Texas, California, and Illinois. 35. Ibid., p. 151. 36. Mooney 2006, 2007. 37. Laguerre 1984, 1999. 38. Little scholarly work has been done on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, but one Catholic bishop has written a brief history of these organizations. See Dolan 2005. 39. Miller 1984. 40. Campbell 2002 discusses how certain types of faith-based social service agencies, such as Catholic Charities, have the administrative support needed to access government funds, whereas other types of agencies do not. For a general overview of the number and scope of activity of religious congregations in America, including their engagement in social services, see Chaves 2004. 41. Wood 2002, p. 151.

CH A PTER 4 1. Lyon and Van Die 2000; Van Die 2001b. 2. Lyon 2000, p. 9. 3. Van Die 2001a, p. 4. 4. Lyon and Van Die 2000, p. 10. 5. The term “French Canadians” can be used to refer to populations in Quebec and other provinces of Canada, as well as in the northeastern United States. During the Quiet Revolution, the term “Quebecois” became more common to refer more specifically to French Canadians in Quebec and the political parties such as the Parti Québécois. 6. LeMieux and Montminy 2002; Perin 2001. 7. Perin 2001, p. 87. 8. Ibid., p. 90. 9. Ibid., p. 102. 10. Ibid., p. 88. 11. LeMieux and Montminy 2002, pp. 69, 70, 99. 12. Adelman 1994; Levine 1990. 13. Levine 1990. 14. Portes 1978 noted that as developing nations in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East modernized, better-educated

Notes to Pages 115–119 /

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citizens often looked to fulfill their professional aspirations abroad, and the resulting brain-drain migration opened the door for lower-skilled compatriots to follow their path. 15. Labelle and Midy 1999. 16. Dejean 1978. 17. Montreal has a small, mostly anglophone, black community that dates back to the 1800s, but Canada never had the types of legal segregation and Jim Crow laws found in the United States (Torczyner 2001). 18. Although Canada does not have a history of racial tensions comparable to those in the United States, some argue that language differences represent the most enduring source of social division in Canada. Although economic inequality between francophone and anglophone Canadians does not reach the levels of black-white inequality in the United States, language tensions nonetheless strike at the core of Canadian national identity and political debates in a comparable way to racial tensions in the United States. For comparison of French-English divisions in Quebec to black-white racial tensions in the United States, see Vallières 1968, 1971. 19. For more on the linguistic social and political movements that have divided Quebec since the 1960s, see Levine 1990. Although the violent elements of French-English tensions have subsided, Quebec politicians and citizens still debate separating from Canada. In fact, several referendums have barely lost in a bid to become independent, and this loss was blamed partially on immigrants, who tend to be in favor of remaining a part of Canada. Secession remains an oYcial goal of the Parti Québécois. 20. Labelle and Midy 1999. 21. Nérestant 1994. 22. Québec immigration et communautés culturelles 2005. 23. For convincing evidence, based on survey research and ethnographic work, that the first wave of migrants from a country or a community create social networks that facilitate the subsequent migration of more migrants, see Massey et al. 1987. Similarly, through family and institutional ties, Haitian professionals who migrated fi rst to Montreal paved the way for Haitians with fewer fi nancial resources to make the jump to Quebec. 24. Québec immigration et communautés culturelles 2005. 25. Labelle, Larose, and Piché 1983. 26. Labelle, Salée, and Frenette 2001. 27. Dejean 1978; Labelle, Larose, and Piché 1983. 28. Québec immigration et communautés culturelles 2005.

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Notes to Pages 120–123

29. Torczyner 2001. The objective of Torczyner’s study was to compare the socioeconomic status of blacks in Montreal with that of the rest of the city’s population. Until 1996, the Canadian census did not ask a race question separate from the ethnicity question, so the 1996 data are the fi rst that allow researchers to compare socioeconomic indicators across racial groups (which may indeed contain more than one ethnic group). In Montreal, however, more than 80 percent of French-speaking blacks are of Haitian origin, including nearly all black persons in Saint-Michel and Montreal North. Although these data likely include a few non-Haitian blacks (probably French-speaking Africans), Torcyzner’s detailed neighborhood-level analyses of Canadian census data on blacks are a good proxy for Haitians in Montreal North and SaintMichel. 30. Catholic parishes located in Saint-Michel and Montreal North also have many Haitian members mixed in with native Quebecois and people of other nationalities, but none of these parishes have a Haitian ethnic mission per se. In fact, when I spoke to the pastors of these parishes (one a native Quebecois and the other a Haitian who had immigrated to Quebec at age three), they recognized the importance of Haitians in the parish, but yet insisted that they treated everyone as equal in their ministry. They believed that expecting all Haitians to attend Mass in Creole at a specific Haitian Catholic ethnic mission would “ghettoize” Haitians; that is, separate them rather than help them adapt. 31. Given the high number of religious and lay missionaries from Quebec who go to Haiti, many people presumed I was a Quebecoise missionary who had spent time in Haiti and learned Creole there. As being able to speak French often serves as a class marker among Haitians, I did not want to address anyone fi rst in Creole, because that might be interpreted to imply that I thought the person I was speaking with was uneducated. Thus, I tried to speak first in French to all the Haitians I met in Montreal. As in Miami, I let the people I interviewed choose the language in which we spoke, and most people I met at Notre Dame chose to speak to me in Creole. However, most of the interviews with Haitian community leaders and nearly all of the interviews with Quebecois leaders were done in French (one was done in English). 32. A few other things caught my attention at this fi rst Mass. Notre Dame in Miami occupies what used to be a school cafeteria and does not look like a traditional church. Notre Dame in Montreal is the opposite: Saint-Edouard is a traditional gothic Catholic Church with wooden pews, kneelers, and a grand altar surrounded by numerous statues and paintings. To give the

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church a more Haitian appearance when they conduct Mass in Creole, a cloth tapestry of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was placed to the side of the altar, along with a Haitian flag and a Vatican flag. Whereas all services at Notre Dame in Miami were conducted exclusively in Creole, Notre Dame in Montreal mixes Creole and French during the Mass. I noticed parents in Montreal instructing children only to address adults in French, not in Creole, indicating that French is considered a superior and more polite language. 33. At the pilgrimage, I met a few members of the choir. As I was looking for a way to be a regular presence around the church community, and given how important music is to Haitian culture generally and to Haitian Catholic piety, I asked them if I could join the choir. That same evening, I attended my first choir rehearsal. Arnaud, whom I introduced earlier in the chapter, was the musical director, and I then met Jacques, who was in charge of the organization and moral direction of the choir. In addition to the choir, Jacques coordinated numerous prayer groups that meet at people’s homes during the week and at Notre Dame on weekends. 34. These cognitive strategies echo some of the interviewees in Lamont 2000. 35. When I interviewed him in 2002, nearly thirty years after he fi rst arrived in Montreal, Lucien had left the priesthood. In some ways, he admitted to me, he had even questioned his own faith. However, he made it clear that he did not share the anticlerical or antireligious sentiment that pervaded Quebec, but said simply that he no longer felt called to be a Catholic priest. 36. Dejean 1978; Labelle, Larose, and Piché 1983. 37. I was unable to interview Father Dejean, because he returned to Haiti after Jean-Claude Duvalier left Haiti in 1986. 38. According to a lay staff member of the Centre justice et foi, Elisabeth Garant, the center is funded entirely by the Jesuits. Its staff of ten includes both lay Catholics and Jesuit priests, who work together to reflect on social and political issues in Quebec, offer a social science library, and organize events on current issues in Quebec. During our interview, Garant estimated that close to 50 percent of Catholics who attended Mass on Sundays in Quebec were of recent immigrant origin. Thus, the Centre gives high priority to discussing issues of immigrant adaptation in Quebec and how immigration influences Quebecois identity, both within the Catholic Church and in society more generally. See, e.g., Biron 2000; Garant 2001. 39. Dejean 1978; Miller 1984.

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40. 41. 42. 43.

Notes to Pages 138–159

Dejean 1978; Quebec, MRCI, 2000. Miller 1984; Morin 1993. See, e.g., Baum 2000; Seljak 2000. Yamane 2005.

CH A PTER 5 Sections of this chapter were published in French in Mooney 2008. 1. Long and Haute Conseil à l’intégration 1993. 2. See, e.g., Simon 2000, 2003; Tribalat 1995. 3. See Mooney 2008 for annual figures on Haitian asylum requests in France for 1981–2006. 4. Body-Gendrot 2000; Kastoryano 2002; Leveau 1994. 5. Bastide, Morin, and Raveau 1974. 6. Alexis 1998, 1999a, 1999b. 7. On the French census, see also Appendix A. Unlike other European nations, France generally welcomed immigrants and refugees during the earlier part of the twentieth century and allowed them to become French citizens; see, e.g., Brubaker 1992. After World War II, the French government welcomed millions of war refugees from other European nations. Starting in the 1960s, the French government looked to North Africa, primarily Algeria, to recruit laborers. The original plan was that these temporary workers would return to North Africa after their contracts were over. However, when labor recruitment ceased in 1973, the majority of the hundreds of thousands of North Africans who entered France as labor migrants in the 1950s and 1960s not only remained in France but also brought their families to join them. Thus, the size of the foreign-born population actually increased after immigrant labor recruitment stopped, which in turn heightened concerns about immigrant adaptation (Hargreaves 1995; Weil 1995). 8. In 2005, OMI (established in 1945) and the Service social d’aide aux émigrants (SSAE, created in 1926) were merged into the Agence nationale de l’accueil des étrangers et des migrations (ANAEM). 9. For greater detail on Haitians’ mode of entry to France and their socioeconomic status there, see Mooney 2008. 10. The French census does not ask a question about household or individual income. 11. OECD 2002.

Notes to Pages 159–169 /

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12. Simon 2003. 13. Body-Gendrot 2000. 14. “After the Riots,” Economist, December 17, 2005. 15. Horowitz 1992. 16. Feldblum 1999, p. 20. 17. Hargreaves 1995. 18. Wihtol de Wenden 1994. 19. Body-Gendrot 2000; Howard 2001; Kastoryano 1996. 20. Lieberman 2001. 21. Hargreaves 1995. 22. Kastoryano 2002. 23. McKinnon and Castiglione 2003. 24. Schofer and Fourcade-Gourinchas 2001. 25. Esping-Andersen 1990. 26. Niel 1998. 27. Body-Gendrot 2000; Kastoryano 2002. 28. Wihtol de Wenden 1998. 29. Hervieu-Léger 1996, p. 296. 30. Mooney 2006. 31. Cesari 2007, p. 38. 32. Ibid., p. 37. 33. Ibid., p. 38. 34. Ibid. 35. Hervieu-Léger 1996. 36. Hervieu-Léger 1996, p. 189. 37. Hervieu-Léger 1996. 38. The French intellectual and political philosopher Jacques Maritain was just one of many prominent French Catholic intellectuals who helped form Christian Democratic parties not only in Europe but also in Latin America. 39. See Mooney 2006. 40. Casanova 1994. 41. One very concrete way in which some members of the Catholic clergy in France confronted immigration debates in France was by offering refuge to sans-papiers (undocumented persons) who occupied certain Catholic churches and carried out hunger strikes to protest their deportation orders. See Siméant 1998. In addition, Catholic Charities in France, although smaller than in the United States, is nonetheless one of the largest organizations in France’s nonprofit sector. See Archambault 2001.

268 /

Notes to Pages 170–187

42. In the fall of 2000, I had spent a few months in France doing preliminary research on the Catholic Church and immigration. When I returned in January 2003, I focused my attention on just the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, which meets at the Saint-Georges parish church. Many Haitian clergy and even some lay leaders move back and forth between different cities of the diaspora, and several Haitians I had met in Miami and Montreal gave me contacts in the Haitian community of Paris. As soon as I arrived in Paris, I phoned the priest in charge of the Communauté catholique haïtienne at the time, Father Romel Eustache, to ask him to allow me to introduce myself in Creole at Sunday Mass. I also asked Father Eustache if I could join their community for a few months, observe their activities, and conduct interviews with its members. 43. At the first choir rehearsal I attended, Father Eustache introduced me to a few people and then I took a seat among the women. The woman sitting next to me, who I later learned was named Emma, smiled, and I greeted her in Creole. This prompted the usual question—if I am not Haitian, how did I learn Creole? After I explained my project, I tried to fi nd a topic to spark a conversation, so I asked her if she knew Max, a Haitian I had met in Montreal who had previously lived in Paris for ten years and been a leader of the Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris before. Emma’s face lit up when I mentioned Max, and she then began introducing me to others in the choir as “moun Max,” which roughly translates as “Max’s friend.” 44. Although it is possible that Carmel may be exaggerating differences between Haitian and French children, her comments about raising her children “the Haitian way” resonated with what many other Haitian parents in Miami and in Montreal said and led me to rethink the issue of how black immigrants develop a cultural identity. Haitians like Carmel in Paris and Robert in Montreal explicitly told me that they did not want their children to become like native white Quebecois or French—at least not in all ways. Such comments made me realize that some black immigrants, whether they live in the United States, Canada, or France, may be just as wary about their children adapting to mainstream white culture as to mainstream black culture. In fact, what Haitian parents seemed to be saying was that adapting to mainstream American, Canadian, or French culture in general would prove problematic for their children’s long-term successful upward mobility. 45. Benjamin 2001. 46. Mooney 2006. 47. Costes 1995.

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48. Simeant 1998. 49. Esping-Andersen 1990. 50. Secours catholique 2002. 51. See Glaude 2001 for more on Haitian associations in Paris. 52. From my observations, despite being a numerically small group, Haitians are not by and large forming cross-ethnic ties either at the associational or at the community or neighborhood level. For example, I saw little cooperation between Africans and Haitians or Antillais and Haitians.

CH A PTER 6 1. For the United States, see, e.g., Alba and Nee 2003; Portes 1996; Portes, Fernandez-Kelly, and Haller 2005; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Rumbaut and Portes 2001; Waters 1999. For Canada, see, e.g., Beyer 2007; Labelle, Salée, and Frenette 2001. And for France, see e.g., Simon 2003; Tribalat 1995. 2. Foner and Alba 2008. 3. Cesari 2007, p. 39. 4. Ibid., p. 40. 5. Portes and Rumbaut 2006, p. 341. 6. Ibid. 7. Connor n.d. 8. Portes and Rumbaut 2001. 9. Portes and Rumbaut 2006, p. 323. 10. Gordon 1964. 11. See Torcyzner 2001. 12. Quoted ibid., p. 78. 13. As Peter Beyer argues in his work on second-generation immigrant youth in Canada, it is important to study, not only traditional measures of religious practice, but also spiritual seekership, or forms of religious practice that may take place outside of organized institutions. Many immigrant youths have parents whose culture is strongly influenced by their religious beliefs, but moving to a highly secularized society like Canada leads them to question their parents’ religion. In so doing, they may not entirely abandon their parents’ religion, but refashion it to fit in with their experience of the world (Beyer 2007). Robert Wuthnow (2007) makes a similar argument about American youth. 14. Lyon 2000.

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Notes to Pages 216–246

15. LeMieux and Montminy 2002. 16. See, e.g., Kao and Tienda 1998; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 1995. 17. See Rivas-Drake and Mooney 2008, 2009. 18. For an elaboration of how immigrants in France use moral categories to distinguish themselves from nonimmigrants, see Lamont 2000.

A PPENDI X A 1. For cross-national comparative studies of macrosocial outcomes, see, e.g., Lipset 1990 and Skocpol 1979. My work concurs closely with Lamont 2000, which shows how national traditions such as French republicanism and American individualism influence the way working-class people create symbolic boundaries. 2. Ragin 1987. 3. Burawoy 1991. 4. Torczyner 2001. 5. The only other substantial work on Haitians in France, Delachet-Guillon 1996, presents only basic data on Haitians from the 1990 census, such as the oYcial size of the population. 6. I selected the variables I was interested in, and Chantal Chaussy, an INSEE statistician, prepared the data extraction for me. 7. More detailed tables from this data can be found in Mooney 2008. 8. Berg 1998; Strauss and Corbin 1990. 9. Bloemraad 2006 compares Portuguese and Vietnamese immigrants in Boston and Toronto. 10. Peggy Levitt’s (2007) comparison of transnational religious connections among immigrants of various religions who have settled in diVerent countries also provides much insight on the importance of context in comparing immigrant religions. 11. For more on this study’s methodology and fi ndings, see Woodson and Baro 1997. 12. McAlister 1998, p. 137. 13. Brown 2001 [1991]. 14. Rey 2004b, p. 359; further elaborated in Rey 2008. 15. Ibid. 16. Rey and Stepick 2008. 17. Rey 2004a, p. 85.

Notes to Pages 249–254 /

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A PPENDI X B 1. United Nations Human Development Program 2003. 2. World Bank 2008. 3. World Bank 1998. 4. For more on Haiti’s politics and economics, see Dupuy 1989, 1997; Fatton 1992, 2007; Trouillot 1990. 5. Catanese 1999; DeWind and Kinley 1988. 6. Catanese 1999. 7. DeWind and Kinley 1988. 8. Haggerty 1991. 9. For more information on Jean-Claude Duvalier’s economic policies, see Weinstein and Segal 1992. 10. Stepick 1992. 11. Aristide is often referred to as a “former” Catholic priest, but the correct term is “laicized.” His priestly ordination cannot be reversed, but a priest can request a dispensation from his vows of obedience, celibacy, and poverty and thus live as a layperson. 12. See Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Pope Paul VI, November 21, 1964. 13. Nérestant 1994, p. 213. 14. For more on the Catholic Church and liberation theology in Haiti and other parts of Latin America, see Greene 1993; Smith 1991. 15. Miller 1984.

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INDEX

adaptation experience, immigrant: immigrant adaptation, use of term, 255n1; Church, and role in, 42–43; institutional mediation, and role in, 5, 26, 27, 35; in Miami, 5, 8–13, 49– 51, 67–69, 73–74, 76, 101–2, 104, 258n2; in Montreal, 5, 13, 16; moral community and, 42, 196, 224; Notre Dame d’Haiti in Miami, and role in, 5, 104; Notre Dame d’Haiti in Montreal, and role in, 13; in Paris, 5, 20, 21, 24, 152–53, 156, 160–61, 169; religious beliefs, and role in, 8, 15, 22, 25–26, 41, 48, 224, 257n13; religious institutions, and role in, 42; social services, and role in, 5; Toussaint Center, and role of, 104 Alba, Richard, 199 Anctil, Pierre, 142–43 Archambault, Edith, 267n41 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 252–54, 271n11 assimilation, 11, 161, 200–201, 255n1 Assimilation in American Life (Gordon), 35 associations: in Montreal, 136, 137; in

Paris, 163, 170, 186, 189–92, 269n52; research methods and, 233 asylum-seekers: in France, 22, 25; in Miami, 4, 53–54; in Paris, 153, 158, 187, 189; in Quebec province, 120, 137–39 banlieue, in Paris, 19–20, 152, 158–62 Baro, Mamadou A., 233–34 Benedict XVI, 167 Benjamin, Emma, 184 Benjamin, René: biography of, 170, 185; Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris and, 155, 172, 181, 184, 185, 186; Haïti Développement and, 24, 155–56, 185, 186–89; lay leadership, and role of, 170, 184, 185, 186. See also Haïti Développement Berger, Peter, 35, 45 Beyer, Peter, 269n13 Bloemraad, Irene, 270n9 Bowling Alone (Putnam), 43 British culture, in Quebec province, 18, 105, 110–12, 116, 263n19 Brown, Karen McCarthy, 244–45

285

286

Brubaker, Rogers, 266n7 Burawoy, Michael, 236–37 Bureau de la communauté chrétienne des Haïtiens à Montréal, 150; Quebec province; associations, and relations with, 136, 137; funding for, 17, 38, 135, 141; history and goals of, 17, 134–36, 141, 144–45; institutional mediation by, 135, 138–39, 140, 141; multiculturalism, and identity of, 145; Notre Dame d’Haiti’s relations with, 149; political advocacy by, 136–39; public perception, and activities of, 135–36, 144–45; social programs of, 17, 139–42; state relations with, 106, 138–39, 149, 198. See also Montreal Bureau of the Christian Community of Haitians in Montreal. See Bureau de la communauté chrétienne butterfly homily, 74–76 Cadge, Wendy, 257n8 Campbell, David, 262n40 Canada: census data from, 237, 238–39; Church in, 43, 106, 109–13; citizenship for immigrants in, 240t; civil society organizations in, 26, 28; French Canadians, and use of term in, 22n5, 110; immigration data from, 239; multiculturalism in, 10, 17, 18, 33, 142–43, 145; secularism in, 18, 40, 109–10, 112, 113, 149; state-church relations in, 13, 34, 37–41, 105, 112– 13; state funding for social services in, 40; visas in, 134. See also Montreal; Quebec province; Quiet Revolution Casanova, José, 169 Catholic Charities: in France, 22, 38, 169, 187, 188, 267n41; immigrant adaptation, and eVects of, 241; institutional mediation by, 141; in Miami, 3, 56, 91, 95–96, 98; in Paris, 169, 186–88; in Quebec, 38, 141; state funding, and role of, 262n40; in U.S., 17, 40, 262n40

/ Index

Catholic Church: France, and role of, 18–19, 40, 42, 43, 164, 167–69, 267nn38,41; fran katolik practices and, 30, 244–46; in Haiti, 42; history of social services provided by, 59; immigrant adaptation, and role of, 42–43; institutional mediation, and role of, 2, 36, 37, 197; melting-pot thesis, and role of, 34; in Miami, 2, 4–5, 58, 90, 260–61nn18,25; national parish model in, 58, 62, 260n21; political consciousness, and role of, 252–54; public to private sphere transition by leaders in, 90; in Quebec province, 17, 34, 37–38, 43, 105, 106, 109–13, 141–42, 147–48, 148–49, 214–16; Quiet Revolution, and role of, 17, 105, 148–49, 214–16; secularism and, 166–69; social and political context, and role of, 148, 167–68, 267n38; social and political context for, 166–67, 167–68, 267n38; state relations with, 90–92; in U.S., 34–35, 43, 58–29, 188, 260nn19,21 Le Catholicisme français (Rémond), 167 census data, 237–39, 240t, 270nn5–6 Centre justice et foi (Center for Justice and Faith), 136, 265n38 Centre social d’aide aux immigrants (Social Center for Aid to Immigrants), 136, 146–47 Cesari, Jocelyne, 165, 199–200 Charismatic Renewal: in Miami, 61, 77– 79, 89, 102; in Paris, 23, 173, 175, 178 children: Haiti, and sacrifices for, 132; Miami, and cultural identity for, 10, 193, 202, 208, 209, 222–23, 268n44; Miami, and future for, 29– 30, 38–39, 202–10, 222; Montreal, and cultural identity for, 193, 202, 212–13, 222–23, 268n44; Montreal, and future for, 14–16, 29–30, 38–39, 133–34, 148–50, 202–3, 210–15, 213– 15, 222, 269n13; Paris, and cultural identity for, 23, 174–76, 182, 202, 217,

Index / 287

222–23, 268n44; Paris, and future for, 25, 29–30, 38–39, 172–73, 202–3, 216–19, 222 citizenship for immigrants, 22, 25, 151, 159, 199, 240t civil society, and religious beliefs, 39–40 civil society organizations, 26, 28, 162– 64, 192 classism, 101, 190–92 Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris: Benjamin, and role in, 155, 172, 181, 184, 185, 186; cultural mediation in, 155; funding for, 183, 184; history of, 155, 183; institutional mediation by, 19, 23, 152, 155; priests serving in, 183–84; social services provided by, 152; state relations with, 152; structure of, 183–85 Connor, Phillip, 41–42, 200, 257n13 Creole: Caribbean Islands and, 250; children, and Mass in, 172, 214; cultural events in, 101; French language as marker versus, 264n31; French language versus, 64, 65; inculturation and, 73; literacy programs, 11, 12, 55, 87, 94, 95–96, 131, 140; Mass in, 4, 10, 55, 59–60, 101, 126, 170, 185, 260–61nn25,29, 264–65nn30,32; research methods and, 4, 122–23, 227–28, 230–31, 233, 242, 256n15, 264n31, 268nn42–43; songs in, 69, 108, 261n29; Wenski and, 59–60, 61, 65, 261n29 Le creuset français (Noiriel), 160 crossroads or liminal space, 55, 63, 259n11 Cuban Americans, 3, 100, 227, 231, 256n15, 259n11 Cuban immigrants, 11, 56, 254, 259n13 cultural mediation: comparison of, 197–98; described, 35–37; immigrant adaptation experience, and eVects of, 35–36; in Miami, 51–52, 68, 84, 100– 101; in Montreal, 14–16, 105, 150; moral community, and role in, 27, 29;

Notre Dame d’Haiti in Miami and, 51–52, 68, 84, 100–101; in Paris, 155, 169–70; religious beliefs, and role in, 9, 22, 27, 195, 196, 246–47; religious institutions, and role in, 11, 34–39; religious narratives, and role in, 6, 27, 105; Toussaint Center and, 51–52, 100; use of term, 9 Darbouze, Gérard, 60, 70, 71 Dejean, Paul, 135, 136–37, 144, 214, 265n37 Delachet-Guillon, Claude, 270n5 Deus caritas est (Benedict XVI), 167 discrimination issues, 16, 53, 116, 152, 153, 263n17 Dolan, Timothy M., 262n38 Dorélien, Jacques, 214–15 Douyon, Emerson, 212 Duvalier, François, 117, 118, 131 Duvalier, Jean-Claude, 54, 66, 87, 186, 250–53 Ecklund, Elaine Howard, 257n8 economic mobility: in Miami, 38, 56, 58, 193, 201; in Montreal, 38, 149–50, 193, 201; in Paris, 38, 153, 193, 194, 201; segmented assimilation perspective, and eVect on, 11, 200–201 education statistics: for Miami, 9, 57, 209, 259–60nn15,17; for Montreal, 13–14, 16, 118, 120; for Paris, 152, 159 English-French tensions, in Quebec province, 18, 105, 110–12, 116, 263n19 entrepreneurship, in Miami, 56–57 ethnic issues: author’s ethnicity and, 19, 256n25; ethnic enclave concept and, 56–57, 259n13; in France, 152, 161, 162, 164, 190, 269n52; in Miami, 8, 18; in Montreal, 18, 115, 124–26, 145; riots of 2005 in France and, 21, 25, 152, 159–60, 161–62, 193, 219; in U.S., 18

288

Europe: human capital level of immigrants in, 200–201; religious beliefs in, 41–42, 167, 199–200, 267n38; state-church relations in, 199–200 faith-based community organizing movements in, 84–89, 102, 261– 62nn33–34, 261n33 Favalora, John Clement, 3–4 Feldblum, Miriam, 160 Finke, Roger, 260n18 Fitzpatrick, Joseph F., 62 Foner, Nancy, 199 France: assimilation of immigrants in, 161; asylum-seekers in, 22, 25; Catholic Charities in, 22, 38, 169, 186–88, 267n41; census data from, 237, 239, 270n5, 270n6; Church’s role in, 18–19, 40, 42, 43, 164, 167–69, 267nn38,41; church-state relations in, 13, 24–25, 34, 37, 41, 162–63, 166, 256n5; citizenship for immigrants in, 22, 25, 151, 159, 199–200, 240t; civil society organizations in, 162–64, 192; ethnic issues in, 152, 161, 162, 164, 190, 269n52; family reunification, and immigration policies in, 157–58, 181, 187; historical context for immigrants in, 19, 160, 168, 188; immigrant regularization programs in, 22, 25; immigration data from, 239–40; immigration law reforms in, 165, 219; inclusion, and religious beliefs in, 163, 165–66, 199–200; institutional mediation in, 18–19, 22, 40, 42, 168–69, 188, 192–94, 267n41; moral community in, 29, 166, 167, 182, 191, 224; Muslim immigrants in, 164, 165–66, 217; population statistics for, 19, 21–22, 152, 256n14; public policies in, 164, 169; religious beliefs in, 41–42, 163, 164, 165–66, 199–200; republicanism in, 10, 21, 33, 151, 152, 160–62, 166, 193; riots of 2005 in, 21, 25, 152, 159–60, 161–62,

/ Index

193, 219; sans-papier strikes in, 187– 88, 267n41; secularism in, 40, 152– 53, 162–69, 193; social and political context for Church in, 166–68; social services in, 40, 162; working-class immigrants in territories of, 157, 266n7, 269n52. See also Paris fran katolik practices, 30, 244–46 French Catholic Bishops’ Conference, 164, 168, 187 French Catholicism (Rémond), 167 French language: education levels and, 153; literacy programs and, 140; Mass in, 170, 214, 261n29, 264–65n32; Quebec policies about, 113–16 The French Melting Pot (Noiriel), 160 French OYce for Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA), 24–25, 157, 158, 240, 266n8 Garant, Élisabeth, 265n38 Glaude, Smith, 190 Gordon, Milton, 35, 52, 210 government: Bureau, and relations with, 106, 138–39, 149, 198; Canada, and church relations with, 13, 34, 37–41, 105, 112–13; Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, and relations with, 152; democracy, and mediation role of, 219–20; Europe, and church relations with, 199–200; France, and church relations with, 13, 24–25, 34, 37, 41, 162–63, 166, 256n5; funding for social services by, 3, 11, 17, 40–41, 96–97, 262n40; Haïti Développement, and relations with, 156, 198–99; institutional mediation with, 221–22; Miami, and church relations with, 6, 12, 34, 90– 92; Miami, and institution relations with, 6, 28, 39, 52, 198; Montreal, and church relations with, 6, 13, 37, 105–6, 139, 146–47, 149; Montreal, and institution relations with, 6, 28, 37, 40, 42, 98, 113, 198; Notre Dame

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d’Haiti in Miami, and relations with, 52, 85, 99–100, 104; Paris, and church relations with, 13, 24–25, 34, 37, 41, 162–63, 166, 256n5; Paris, and institutional relations with, 6, 28, 154–55, 156, 161–62, 198–99; Quebec, and church relations with, 34, 37–38, 39–40, 41, 112–13; Quiet Revolution, and church relations with, 37, 105; religious beliefs, and role in, 40–43, 165; religious institutions, and relations with, 6, 11–12; social inclusion, and role of, 221; state policies in Paris and, 21, 152–53, 156, 160–61, 169; Toussaint Center, and relations with, 85, 99–100, 198; U.S., and church relations with, 6, 12, 34, 90–92 government agencies. See government Guest, Kenneth J., 259n11 Haiti: Ayiti Cheri, and terms for, 249; Church in, 42; economic crises, and emigration from, 53, 251, 254, 258n6; fieldwork on, 227; historical context for emigration from, 249–51; liberation theology in, 30, 65–66, 87, 252– 54; political history of, 4; poverty level in, 249–50, 251; religious institutions in, 42, 224, 229, 243–44; sacrifices for children in, 132; statistics on emigration from, 30 Haitian Catholic Center. See Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami Haitian Catholic Community of Paris. See Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris Haitian Independence Day celebration, 2–3, 4 Haïti Développement: Benjamin, and role in, 24, 155, 185, 186–89; funding for, 24–25, 38, 155, 188, 189, 198; history and goals of, 24, 155, 185, 186– 87; institutional mediation by, 24, 156, 185–89; social services provided

by, 155–56, 187, 189; state relations with, 156, 198–99 Hargreaves, Alec G., 160, 266n7 Harvey, Julien, 136, 138–39 Herberg, Will, 33–34 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle, 166, 168 human capital level of immigrants, 13, 16, 118, 159, 185–86, 200–201; in Paris, 159, 185–86 income statistics: for Miami, 8, 16, 57, 88, 259–60n17; for Montreal, 16; for Paris, 266n10 incorporation: use of term, 255n1 inculturation of the faith: in Miami, 50–51, 70, 73, 76; in Montreal, 121, 129, 148, 215; religious beliefs and, 196, 215 INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques), 164, 239, 270n6 institutional mediation: by Bureau de la communauté chrétienne (Montreal), 135, 138–39, 140, 141; by Catholic Charities, 141; Church, and role in, 2, 36, 37, 197; by Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris, 19, 23, 152, 155; comparison of, 198– 99; described, 35–37; in France, 18– 19, 22, 40, 42, 168–69, 188, 192–94, 267n41; by Haïti Développement, 24, 156, 185–89; immigrant adaptation, and role of, 5, 26, 27, 35; in Miami, 2–5, 26–27, 28, 51–52, 68, 84–85, 104, 255n2; in Montreal, 105–6, 149; moral community, and role of, 27; in Paris, 153, 163, 170, 186, 189–92, 269n52; in Quebec province, 118; religious beliefs and, 195; religious institutions, and role in, 2, 34–35, 34–39, 255n2, 257n8; research methods and, 28; social services, and role of, 5; Toussaint Center and, 51–52, 84, 98–99, 103; in U.S., 40; use of term, 9, 256n6

290

Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE), 164, 239, 270n6 integration: use of term, 255n1 interculturalism, 18, 148 Islam, 25, 42, 164, 165–66, 199–200, 217 Jean-Mary, Reginald, 66–67, 69, 70–74, 76–78, 205, 207–10 Kastoryano, Riva, 162 Krome Detention Center, 4, 90 laïcité. See secularism lakay nou, and liminal space, 55, 63, 259n11 Lamont, Michèle, 265n34, 270n1 Lévêque, Karl, 138, 140, 144 Levitt, Peggy, 270n10 liberation theology, 30, 60, 65–66, 87, 102, 252–54, 260n24 liminal space, 55, 63, 259n11 Little Haiti, 8–9, 55–57 Lyon, David, 109–10, 216 Mama Lola (Brown), 244–45 Mary (mother of Jesus), 2–3, 23–24, 246 Massey, Douglas S., 263n23 McAlister, Elizabeth, 244–45 McCarthy, Edward, 3, 60, 62–63, 90–93 melting pot thesis, 10–11, 33–34 Mexican immigrants, 11, 219n13 Miami: asylum-seekers in, 4, 53–54; Catholic Charities in, 3, 56, 91, 95–96, 98; children, and future of community in, 29–30, 38–39, 202–9, 222; children’s cultural identity in, 10, 193, 202, 208, 209, 222, 268n44; Church in, 2, 4–5, 58, 90, 260– 61nn18,25; church-state relations in, 6, 12, 34, 90–92; civil society— state relations in, 6, 28, 39, 52, 198; cross-class relations in, 101; cultural mediation in, 51–52; discrimination in, 53; Donald’s narrative in, 7–13,

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202–9, 222; economic mobility in, 38, 56, 58, 193, 201; education statistics for, 9, 57, 209, 259–60nn15,17; entrepreneurship in, 56–57; Erasma narrative in, 80–82; ethnic enclave concept in, 56–57, 259n13; ethnic issues in, 8, 18; Georgina’s narrative in, 79–80; government response to immigration settlement in, 53–55; Haitian Independence Day celebration in, 2–3, 4; historical context for immigration to, 49–50; immigrant adaptation experience in, 5, 8–13, 49– 51, 67–69, 73–74, 76, 101–2, 258n2; incarnation of God as man, beliefs in, 50–51; income statistics for, 8, 16, 57, 88, 259–60n17; institutional mediation in, 2–5, 26–27, 28, 51–52, 68, 84–85, 104, 255n2; interviews with informants in, 235, 236t; Krome Detention Center, 4, 90; liberation theology in, 60, 87, 102, 260n24; Little Haiti described, 8–9; moral community in, 28–29, 210, 224; national parish model in, 62–64; personal transformation in, 64–67, 74–76; population statistics for, 53, 57, 259n14; poverty level in, 9, 57, 259–60n17; priests, and training in seminaries in, 4; religious beliefs in, 18, 49–51, 67–69, 73–74, 76, 80, 101–2, 258n2; research methods in, 27, 121, 230–31; social capital in, 43–44, 258n20; Stephanie’s narrative in, 82–83; unemployment in, 8, 57, 259nn16–17; Vodou practices in, 59; Wilbur’s narrative in, 1, 47, 65–66, 77, 78, 80; working-class immigrants in, 5, 56–58, 259–60n17. See also Notre Dame d’Haiti in Miami; Toussaint Center; United States Mills, C. Wright, 6 Montreal: access to state social programs in, 143; active abandonment to God through prayer in, 128–31,

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133, 196–97; Anne-Marie’s narrative in, 127–28; Arnaud’s narrative in, 106–8; centeredness through prayer in, 126–28; children, and future of community in, 14–16, 29–30, 38– 39, 133–34, 148–50, 202–3, 210–15, 222, 269n13; children’s cultural identity in, 193, 202, 212–13, 222, 268n44; church-state relations in, 6, 13, 37, 105–6, 139, 146–47, 149; civil society—state relations in, 6, 28, 37, 40, 42, 98, 113, 198; cultural mediation in, 14–16, 105, 150; discrimination in, 16, 116, 263n17; economic mobility in, 38, 149–50, 193, 200–201; education statistics for, 13–14, 16, 118, 120; ethnic issues in, 18, 115, 124–26, 145; female-headed single-parent households in, 119, 120, 211; history of immigration to, 13; human capital level of immigrants in, 13, 16, 118; immigrant adaptation experience in, 5, 13, 16; incarnation of God as man, beliefs in, 121, 129; income statistics for, 16; inculturation of beliefs in, 121, 129, 148, 215; institutional mediation in, 105–6, 149; interviews with informants in, 235, 236t; Jacques’ narrative in, 123– 26, 265n34; Jean-François’ narrative in, 126–27; Lucien’s narrative in, 131–33, 265n35; Marie’s narrative in, 128–31; moral community concept in, 28–29, 224; personal transformation through prayer in, 107, 108, 121, 124–26; population statistics for, 116; poverty level in, 14, 16, 120; prayer lives in, 105–8; religious beliefs in, 41–42; research methods in, 13, 19, 27, 121, 230; Robert’s narrative in, 13–18, 123, 202–3, 210–15, 222; social capital in, 43–44, 123; spiritual and social support in, 106, 148–49; state funding in, 17, 41; unemployment in, 16, 118–19, 120, 212, 264n29;

working-class immigrants in, 5, 115, 118–21, 262–63n14, 262–63nn14,23. See also Bureau de la communauté chrétienne; Canada; Notre Dame d’Haiti in Montreal; Quebec province; Quiet Revolution moral community: benefits of, 29; cultural mediation, and role of, 27, 29; in France, 29, 166, 167, 182, 191, 224; immigrant adaptation, and maintaining, 42, 196, 224; institutional mediation, and role in, 27; in Miami, 28–29, 210, 224; in Montreal, 28–29, 224; in Paris, 171, 179–82, 191; religious beliefs, and role in, 43, 45–48, 166, 167; social capital issues, and eVect of, 43, 225 multiculturalism, 10, 17, 18, 33, 142– 43, 145 Muslim immigrants, 25, 42, 164, 165– 66, 199–200, 217 National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, 164, 239, 270n6 national parish model, 58, 62–64, 260n21 Nérestant, Micial M., 253 Neuhaus, Richard John, 35 Noiriel, Gérard, 160 Notre Dame d’Haiti in Miami: Charismatic Renewal in, 61, 77–79, 89, 102; children and future of community, and role of, 203–5, 207–10; Creole, and Mass in, 4, 55, 59–60, 101, 260– 61nn25,29; cultural mediation at, 51– 52, 68, 84, 100–101; Easter Sunday rituals at, 68, 73–76; enemies, and prayer at, 82–84; faith-based community organizing movements in, 84–89, 102, 261–62nn33–34, 261n33; Good Friday rituals at, 68–70; history and mission of, 12, 59–60; Holy Saturday rituals at, 71–73; Holy Week rituals at, 67–68, 76; immigrant adaptation, and role of, 5, 104;

292

Notre Dame d’Haiti (Miami) (continued) inculturation of beliefs in, 50–51, 70, 73, 76; institutional mediation at, 2–5, 51–52, 68, 104, 255n2; lakay nou, and liminal space in, 55, 63, 259n11; languages, and Mass at, 59– 60, 261n29; personal transformation, and role of, 64–67, 74–76, 102; prayer and prayer groups as giving to others at, 77–82, 102–3; public sphere, and role of, 5, 68, 84, 91, 100, 103–4; state relations with, 52, 85, 99–100, 104; Toussaint Center relations with, 97–98. See also Toussaint Center; Wenski, Thomas G. Notre Dame d’Haiti in Montreal: Bureau, and relations with, 149; children’s future, and role of, 213–15; history and description of, 121–22, 264–65nn30,32; immigrant adaptation, and role of, 13; languages and, 122–23, 264–65n32; religious beliefs in, 105–8, 121–34. See also Canada; Montreal; Quebec province OFPRA (OYce français de la protection des réfugiés et des apatrides), 24–25, 158, 240, 266n8 OMI (OYce de migrations internationales; OYce of International Migration), 157, 158, 266n8 PACT (People Acting for Community Together), 85–89, 261–62n34 Paris: associations in, 163, 170, 186, 189–92, 193, 194, 269n52; asylumseekers in, 153, 158, 187, 189; Augustin’s narrative in, 153–56; banlieue in, 19–20, 152, 158–62; Carl’s narrative in, 190–92; Carmel’s narrative in, 176–79; Catholic Charities in, 169, 186–88; Charismatic Renewal in, 23, 173, 175, 178; children’s cultural identity in, 23, 174–76, 182, 202, 217, 222, 268n44; children’s future in, 25,

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29–30, 38–39, 172–73, 202–3, 216–19, 222; church-state relations in, 13, 24–25, 34, 37, 41, 162–63, 166, 256n5; civil society–state relations in, 6, 28, 154–55, 156, 161–62, 198–99; classism among immigrants in, 190–92; discrimination in, 152, 153; education statistics for, 152, 159; Emma’s narrative in, 171–73; historical context for immigration to, 151, 156–59, 266n7; human capital level of immigrants in, 159, 185–86; immigrant adaptation in, 5, 20, 24, 152–53; incarnation of God as man beliefs in, 171–76, 182; income statistics for, 266n10; institutional mediation in, 153, 163, 170, 186, 189–92, 269n52; interviews with informants in, 235, 236t; Marlene’s narrative in, 19–25, 202–3, 216–19, 222; Michèle’s narrative in, 173–76; moral community, and prayer in, 171, 179–82, 191; population statistics for, 156, 158; poverty level in, 21; racial diversity versus solidarity in, 20; rassemblement, and prayer in, 171, 176–79, 182; religious beliefs in, 154– 55, 156, 170–82; research methods in, 27, 153, 168n43, 230, 268n42; Saint-Georges parish church in, 153, 169–70, 178, 183, 184, 268n42; secularism, and immigrants in, 152–53, 162–69, 193; single-parent households in, 23, 180; social capital in, 43–44; state funding in, 41; state policies, and immigrant adaptation in, 21, 152–53, 156, 160–61, 169; Therèse’s narrative in, 179–82; unemployment in, 20, 21, 159, 161; working-class immigrants in, 5, 157– 58, 190, 192. See also Communauté catholique haïtienne de Paris; France; Haïti Développement Péan, Gérard, 77, 78, 85–89, 93, 95, 209 Perin, Roberto, 111–12

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personal transformation: butterfly homily and, 74–76; in Miami, 64–67, 74–76, 102; in Montreal, 107, 108, 121, 124–26; religious beliefs and, 64– 67, 74–76, 102, 107, 108, 121, 124–26 Pierre-Louis, François, 71 Pierre Toussaint Center. See Toussaint Center political advocacy, 84, 89–92 political consciousness, and role of Church, 252–54 population statistics: for France, 19, 21–22, 152, 256n14; for Miami, 53, 57, 259n14; for Montreal, 116; for Paris, 156, 158; for Quebec province, 118 Portes, Alejandro, 11, 200, 204, 209, 257n8, 262–63n14 poverty level: in Haiti, 249–50; in Miami, 9, 57, 259–60n17; in Montreal, 14, 16, 120; in Paris, 21 priests, 4, 117–18, 183–84. See also specifi c priests professionals, in Quebec province, 113– 17, 262–63n14 public policies, in France, 164, 169 public sphere, 5, 68, 84, 91, 100, 103–4 Putnam, Robert, 43 Quebec province: asylum-seekers in, 120, 137–39; Catholic Charities in, 38, 141; Church in, 17, 34, 37–38, 106, 109–13, 110–13, 141–42, 147– 48, 148–49, 214–16; church-state relations in, 34, 37–38, 39–40, 41, 112–13; cultural identity in, 18; English-French tensions in, 18, 105, 110, 116, 263n19; French language, and immigration policies in, 113–16; historical context for immigration to, 113; institutional mediation in, 118; interculturalism, and immigrants in, 18, 148; political context, and changes in, 143–45; population statistics for, 118; priests, and immi-

gration to, 117–18; professionals, and immigration to, 113–17, 262–63n14; Quebecois identity and culture in, 18, 110–13, 262n5; religious beliefs, and public life in, 108–13; religious participation in, 41–42; secularism in, 18, 40, 149. See also Bureau de la communauté chrétienne; Montreal; Notre Dame d’Haiti in Montreal; Quiet Revolution Quiet Revolution: British culture, and goals of, 111, 112; Catholic Church in Quebec, and eVects of, 17, 105, 148– 49, 214–16; church-state relations, and eVects of, 37, 105; history of, 17, 105, 111–12; nationalist social and political movement, 113; religious activity, and eVects of, 34, 37, 105, 147–48; religious beliefs, and eVects of, 34, 37, 105, 147–48; secularism, and goals of, 112, 113 Ragin, Charles C., 236 religious beliefs: active abandonment to God through prayer, 128–31, 133, 196–97; centeredness through prayer, 126–28; civil society, and role of, 39–40; cultural mediation, and role of, 9, 22, 27, 195, 196, 246–47; death and resurrection, 27, 68, 73–74, 76, 105, 221, 229; divine intervention, 15; Easter Sunday rituals, 68, 73–76; enemies, and role of prayer, 82–84; in Europe, 41–42, 167, 199–200, 267n38; in France, 41–42, 163, 164, 165–66, 199–200; fran katolik practices and, 30, 244–46; giving to others and, 77– 82, 102–3, 105, 121; God can forgive sins, 30, 123; “God is good” (“Bondye bon”), 31; Good Friday rituals, 68–70; Holy Saturday rituals, 71–73; Holy Week rituals, 67–68, 76; immigrant adaptation, and role of, 8, 15, 22, 25– 26, 41, 48, 224, 257n13; incarnation of God as man, 30, 50–51, 121, 129,

294

religious beliefs (continued) 171–76, 182, 196; inculturation of beliefs, 196, 215; institutional mediation and, 195; material life, and role of, 220; melting-pot thesis, and role of, 33–34; in Miami, 18, 49–51, 67– 69, 73–74, 76, 80, 101–2, 258n2; in Montreal, 41–42, 105–8, 121–34; moral community, and role of, 43, 45–48, 166, 167; in Paris, 154–55, 156, 170–82; personal transformation through prayer and, 64–67, 74–76, 102, 107, 108, 121, 124–26; pilgrimages and, 23; providence, and acts of charity, 80; public life in Quebec province and, 108–13; Quiet Revolution, and eVects on, 34, 37, 105, 147– 48; rassemblement, and prayer, 171, 176–79, 182; social action, and role of, 30–32; social capital, and role of, 43–48; spiritual empowerment and, 15, 23; state, and role of, 40–43; suVering as part of redemption, 30, 68, 69, 105, 121, 123, 196; transfiguration concept and, 67; in U.S., 165, 199; visions and, 23–24 religious institutions: government, and relations with, 11–12; immigrant adaptation, and role of, 42; institutional mediation, and role of, 2, 34– 35, 34–39, 255n2, 257n8; mediation, and role of, 11, 34–39, 255n2; sociological studies, and role of, 6; state funding, and mediating role of, 40–41 religious narratives, 6, 27, 105. See also specifi c narratives under Miami, Montreal, and Paris Remond, René, 167–68 republicanism, 10, 21, 33, 151, 152, 160–62, 166, 193 research methods: analysis levels and, 5; associations and, 233; case studies and, 236–37; census data comparisons and, 237–39, 240t; Creole and,

/ Index

4, 122–23, 227–28, 230–31, 233, 242, 256n15, 264n31, 268nn42–43; cross-national comparative studies and, 236, 270n1; data analysis and, 240–41, 270n6; empathy and, 228–29, 261n32; fieldwork and, 227– 34; French language and, 256n15; immigration data and, 239–40; institutional mediation and, 28; interviews with informants and, 5, 8, 19, 234–36, 236t, 255–56n3; involvement of author and, 232–33; languages, and importance in, 7, 227–28, 264n31; limitations of, 241– 46; longitudinal survey data and, 41, 201, 208, 237, 242; in Miami, 27, 121, 230–31; in Montreal, 13, 19, 27, 121, 230; observation at institutions and, 5, 13, 19, 23; in Paris, 27, 153, 168n43, 230, 268n42; prayer life and, 232; religious beliefs of author and, 230; religious communities and, 243– 46, 270nn9–10; sensitive information and, 232 Rey, Terry, 245–46 riots of 2005, in France, 21, 25, 152, 159–60, 161–62, 193, 219 Rivas-Drake, Deborah, 223 Rumbaut, Rubén G., 11, 200, 204, 209, 257n8 Saint-Georges de la Villette parish church, 153, 169–70, 178, 183, 184, 268n42 sans-papier strikes, 187–88, 267n41 Saving America? (Wuthnow), 43–44, 269n13 secularism: in Canada, 18, 40, 109–10, 112, 113, 149; Church and, 166–69; in France, 40, 152–53, 162–69, 193; in Quebec province, 18, 40, 149; Quiet Revolution, and goals of, 112, 113; in U.S., 17 segmented assimilation perspective, 11, 200–201

Index / 295

Siméant, Johanna, 267n41 Simon, Patrick, 159 single-parent households, 23, 180 Smith, Christian, 45, 47–48 social capital, 43–48, 123, 225, 258n20 social services: Church, and history of, 59; Church, and role in, 59; Communauté catholique haïtienne, and role in, 152; in France, 40, 162; Haïti Développement, and role in, 155–56, 187, 189; immigrant adaptation, and role of, 5; institutional mediation, and role in, 5; state government, and funding for, 3, 11, 17, 40–41, 96–97, 262n40; Toussaint Center, and role in, 11, 94–96, 259n12; Wenski on faith, and receiving, 60–61, 260–61n25 social transformation, 102 Stark, Rodney, 260n18 Stasi Commission, 165, 219 state. See government Stepick, Alex, 4, 53, 63, 246, 255n2, 259n14 Stotzky, Irwin P., 63 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 39 Torczyner, James L., 238, 239, 240t, 263n17, 264n29 Toussaint Center: client statistics for, 55–56; crossroads or liminal space, and role of, 55, 259n11; cultural mediation by, 51–52, 100; history and goals of, 11, 12, 56, 59, 60, 92, 93–94; immigrant adaptation, and role of, 104; institutional mediation at, 51–52, 84, 98–99, 103; Notre Dame d’Haiti’s relations with, 97– 98; political advocacy at, 84, 89–92; public sphere, and role of, 84, 100, 103–4; social services provided by, 11, 94–96, 259n12; social transformation, and role of, 102; state funding for, 3, 11, 41, 96–97, 262n40; state relations with, 85, 99–100, 198; Wenski and,

11, 60. See also Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami Tweed, Thomas A., 259n11 unemployment: in Miami, 8, 57, 259nn16–17; in Montreal, 16, 118– 19, 120, 212, 264n29; in Paris, 20, 21, 159, 161 United States: Catholic Charities in, 17, 40, 262n40; census data from, 237, 238; Church, and role in, 34–35, 43, 58–29, 188, 260nn19,21; churchstate relations in, 6, 12, 34, 90–92; citizenship for immigrants in, 240t; civil society organizations in, 162, 163; discrimination in, 16; ethnic issues in, 18; immigration data from, 239; institutional mediation in, 40; melting-pot thesis in, 10–11, 33; religious beliefs in, 165, 199; secularism in, 17; state funding in, 17, 40. See also Miami U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 90–91, 188, 235, 262n38 Van Die, Marguerite, 109–10 Virgin Mary. See Mary (mother of Jesus) Vodou practices, 30, 59, 229, 243–46, 256n18 Warner, R. Stephen, 260n18 Weil, Patrick, 266n7 Wenski, Thomas G.: Church positions of, 60, 260n23; Creole spoken by, 59–60, 61, 65, 261n29; faith’s role in social services, and beliefs of, 60–61, 260–61n25; liberation theology and, 60, 260n24; national parish model, and role of, 62–64; Notre Dame, and role of, 59–60; personal transformation, and butterfly homily of, 74–76; social activism, and role of, 11; Toussaint Center, and role of, 11, 60; travels, and missions of, 61–62, 260–61n25

296

Wihtol de Wenden, Catherine, 164 Wittner, Judith, 260n18 Wood, Richard L., 84–85, 89, 101, 256n6, 261–62nn33,34 Woodson, Drexel G., 233–34 working-class immigrants: in Miami, 5, 56–58, 259–60n17; in Montreal, 5,

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115, 118–21, 262–63nn14,23; in Paris, 5, 157–58, 190, 192; in territories of France, 157, 266n7, 269n52 Wuthnow, Robert, 20, 43–44, 45, 258n20, 269n13 Yamane, David, 142

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