Immigration and Integration in North America: Canadian and Austrian Perspectives: Immigration und Integration in Nordamerika: Kanadische und österreichische Perspektiven 9783737002721, 9783847102724, 9783847002727

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Migrations- und Integrationsforschung Multidisziplinäre Perspektiven

Band 7

Herausgegeben von Heinz Fassmann, Richard Potz und Hildegard Weiss

Die Bände dieser Reihe sind peer-reviewed. Advisory Board: Christine Langenfeld (Göttingen), Andreas Pott (Osnabrück), Ludger Pries (Bochum)

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz / Fritz Peter Kirsch (eds.)

Immigration and Integration in North America: Canadian and Austrian Perspectives Immigration und Integration in Nordamerika: Kanadische und österreichische Perspektiven

V& R unipress Vienna University Press

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. ISBN 978-3-8471-0272-4 ISBN 978-3-8470-0272-7 (E-Book) Veröffentlichungen der Vienna University Press erscheinen im Verlag V& R unipress GmbH. Ó 2014, V& R unipress in Göttingen / www.vr-unipress.de Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Printed in Germany. Druck und Bindung: a Hubert & Co, Göttingen Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz and Fritz Peter Kirsch Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

David Staines Canada in the World: Literature at the Crossroads . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz Challenges for Immigrants in Canadian Autobiographies . . . . . . . . .

31

Martin Löschnigg ‘Translated’ Persons: Rendering Migrant Identities in Anglo-Canadian Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45

Carmen Birkle “Always becoming, will never be”: Caribbean (Im)Migration to Canada .

59

Ursula Mathis-Moser Dany LaferriÀre als ,kritischer Immigrant‘ in Montr¦al

. . . . . . . . . .

79

Andrea Strutz Labour, Land and Refuge: Austrian Immigration to Canada in the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz Migration and Literature – Migrating Across the Oceans: Challenges of Settlement in the USA and Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

6

Inhalt

Dirk Hoerder Autobiographische Reflexionen von Migranten im gesellschaftlichen Rahmen: Kanada und Frankreich seit den 1970er Jahren . . . . . . . . . 137 Fritz Peter Kirsch Immigration und Integration in Quebec: Ein österreichischer Kommentar zum Taylor-Bouchard-Bericht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Acknowledgements

The present volume had its origin in the ongoing interest of scholars from several disciplines who collaborate with one another in the context of the Canadian Studies Centre of the University of Vienna in the challenges for Canadian society resulting from the arrival of large numbers of immigrants and in the efforts made since the liberalization of Canadian immigration laws in the 1970s to cope with this phenomenon by facilitating the integration of the newcomers. The book is primarily the fruit of a one-day conference in May 2012 dealing with the significance of this endeavor and its potential as a model for various European countries faced with immigration, including Austria. This conference was made possible by grants from the Canadian government, from the Association of Canadian Studies in German-speaking countries (GKS), the cultural office of the City of Vienna, and the Association for the Promotion of North American Studies at Vienna University. The conference would not have been possible without the support of the small team involved in an Austrian Science Fund project directed by Waldemar Zacharasiewicz on “Canadian literature: Transatlantic, Transcontinental, Transcultural.” The team members were also responsible for the preparation of the manuscript of this collection, especially Alexandra Hauke. Integrated into this volume is also a keynote lecture that Waldemar Zacharasiewicz, the co-editor of the current volume, gave at a workshop on “Migration and Literature” in September 2012. This event was linked to an ambitious book project undertaken by members of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna and of the Committee on Migration of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. To these individuals and institutions the editors owe a debt of gratitude. The editors also gratefully acknowledge the inclusion of this volume in the series presenting research on Migration and Integration published by V& R unipress.

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz and Fritz Peter Kirsch

Preface

The title of the interdisciplinary conference of the Centre for Canadian Studies at the University of Vienna on May 5, 2012 was less general than the title of the present volume as the conference dealt more specifically with the applicability of Canadian models of integration to the debate over Austria’s role as a country of immigration. As some contributions include discussions of the USA and some European countries, an extension of the general theme seemed appropriate. Still, reflections on the model character of North America – and especially Canada – concerning the handling of problems of immigration and integration characterize the majority of the essays in this collection. At first glance this notion of North American models of integration functioning as a potential blueprint for Austria seems to derive from knowledge of the history of the North American continent and of the original status of all North Americans as immigrants, with the exception of the “First Nations.” If one ignores the drama of the conquest of the continent by European settlers, the history of migration comprises both periods of harmonious settlement and emotionally charged and highly conflicted phases. Over the centuries countless people who were impoverished, displaced and persecuted in Europe, and not only there, saw the promised land on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not only for the survivors of the Holocaust that America provided a refuge in times of dire need and a location of hope, with their expectations occasionally coming true. Those already well-established, born in their new country, gained a rich hoard of experience from their interaction with the newcomers, making possible a remarkable educational process over time and offering strong incentives for democratic developments. In Europe, the old, long-standing inhabitants had ample time over the centuries to develop their cultural standards in conformity with the shifting powerrelations between groups and communities and to construct their collective identities. The awareness of real migrations and of processes of mixing and hybridization was temporarily overlaid with notions of ethnic purity and authenticity, until the naturally evolving cultures of the Old World were faced in the

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late 20th century with migration on an unprecedented scale and their validity was thus challenged. While the European nations had formerly looked down upon the heterogeneous societies in North America with their patchwork of groups from the perspectives of fully evolved high cultures, they now felt that their own special values were being threatened by the influx of foreigners. They reacted by demanding more or less radically that the minorities adapt to the linguistic and cultural standards of the majorities, especially if they had come from abroad. The memory of the murderous ethnocentricism practiced in Nazi Germany may have somewhat moderated this demand, as did a renaissance in the cultures of the autochthonous minorities in Europe from the 1960s on. Here one needs to concede that the contrast between Europe with its ingrained nationalisms and the ostensibly hospitable continent of North America was not as great as it may appear to an observer relying on clich¦s. Both the USA and Canada have cultivated, on the basis of their historical experiences, their patriotic memoria and have developed myths of collective identities, which they presented to generations of later arrivals as more or less obligatory patterns to follow. In this context coercion and the potential marginalization of those who were different occurred from time to time, as had earlier been the case with the treatment of the indigenous population. Even though there are dark chapters in the history of US American and Canadian immigration, it is an indisputable fact that the protracted confrontation with ever new waves of immigrants, which shaped the collective consciousness in these countries, and the rich crop of experiences resulting from these confrontations may thus be of considerable interest to European countries. This is all the more the case as Canada, in particular, has demonstrated during the last few decades of the 20th century its ability to learn and has improved its immigration policy in many significant respects. Austria, in contrast, has seemed unprepared for dealing with increasing waves of immigration since the time of the regional economic miracle, and sometimes unable to cope with them and the guest-workers, who had been expected to return to their native countries as soon as they were no longer needed. Austria, with its predominantly German-speaking population, was in the past – over several centuries – a country of immigration, especially in and around the capital Vienna. The nationalisms of the 19th century and a lost war in the second decade of the 20th century terminated the alternation between ‘rivalry’ and ‘accommodation’ in a multi-ethnic country, and the collapse of the Monarchy led to the denial of its former traditional diversity. This process culminated in the annexation by Germany and in the catastrophes of the Third Reich. Both the Monarchy and Nazism failed, and are of very little significance in the political and cultural life of Austria today. Nevertheless, the legacy of the conflict between

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actual diversity and desired homogeneity survives. It feeds conflicts and requires solutions. The aftereffects of these antagonisms – only seemingly overcome – continue to shape public life, are manifested in political discourse as well as in the media, and represent a permanent challenge for research in cultural studies. The contributions collected in this volume accept this challenge to the extent that they look for aspects of the issue of integration in Canada – while also paying some attention to the situation in the USA and in France – which merit discussion in connection with the pertinent issues in Austria. In accordance with the interdisciplinary nature of this venture, questions are raised which concern the spheres of history, politics, and social reality. The emphasis is on analyses of fiction which allow insights into the psychological stimuli and complexes which play a role in the relationships between long-time residents and newcomers. It is appropriate that the opening contribution by an eminently qualified Canadian scholar underlines the positive aspects of Canadian immigration policy. David Staines uses literary history to provide a sketch of the evolution of Canada from being an English colony to that of an independent nation as fostered by literary work and shows how those born in the country and those naturalized there have since the second half of the 19th century established a unique cultural synthesis. The basis for this fruitful development has been provided since 1971 by Pierre Trudeau’s concept of “multiculturalism.” It was finally given legal form under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Remainders of racism exist, as Staines concedes, but are gradually disappearing, a situation quite different from that in the USA, where in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 chauvinism and paranoia have plagued society. The first of two essays by Waldemar Zacharasiewicz also offers a broad survey of immigration as a source of inspiration for Canadian fiction. Apart from dealing with the cultural and political climate and its literary reflection in Canada, the experiences of three children of immigrants from the margins of Europe (from Iceland, southern Italy and Ukraine) serve as illustrations of the difficulties faced by individuals from these ethnic groups before the adoption of the principle of multiculturalism, welcomed by these authors, signaled the end of discrimination and marginalization in Canadian society. The essay stresses the remarkable quality of the autobiographies of the three authors selected and of similar life writings originating in Asian ethnicities in Canada; it underlines their power in rendering the psychological tensions of the protagonists. The very term “challenge” in the title of the contribution points to a willingness to give expression to the negative aspects of the lives of immigrants. Tensions and conflicts are thus more clearly apparent than in the essay by David Staines. Martin Löschnigg links issues of migration with a concept of translation, which is also applied beyond the realm of language, drawing up a balance sheet which reveals a fundamental aspect of the condition of migrants: any person

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who “transfers” from one culture to another enters a space of uncertainty and ambivalence. This not only provides the artist with a large creative potential, but also produces a desire for stability which is difficult to satisfy. Carmen Birkle, focusing on immigration from the Caribbean, after a detailed review of research, describes the interconnection between inter- and transculturality as an unending process, which, in the texts analyzed, may end with the collapse and death of the individual, but, under favorable circumstances, may lead to the “third space” of hybridity. This contrasts with the orientation of the essay by Ursula Mathis-Moser on the Haitian-Canadian writer Dany LaferriÀre, which similarly underlines the dynamic nature of the development of the immigrants’ sense of identity, and demonstrates the desire of this author to feel at home in two places, and thus not to have recourse to hybridity. The last four contributions turn to socio-cultural problems resulting from historical circumstances which are treated less directly in literature. The writers of these essays introduce Austrian perspectives, and yet never lose sight of the psychograms of immigration. First, Andrea Strutz offers a broad survey of the different waves of Austrian emigration to North America against the background of changes in the history of Austria and Canada and relations between them. There were significant restrictions and strict selection of immigrants from different countries at different times. Africans, Jews and Asians tended to be among the unwelcome migrants, which was even the case with refugees fleeing from the Holocaust. Emigrants from the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy (Cisleithanien) never ranked among those highly welcome in Canada, in contrast to candidates from allegedly ideally suited countries, such as Britain and Scandinavia. Andrea Strutz argues that the doctrine of multiculturalism has fostered the acceptance of ethnic diversity in Canada, thus making it appear a potential model for Austria. A study by Waldemar Zacharasiewicz takes its departure from the reflection of the increased waves of immigration and the recognition of their cultural integration in recently published histories of literature of the USA and Canada, which appeared both in Europe and in North America. The contribution also deals with the undeniable discrimination of East Asian immigrants in the USA until after World War Two,, and even longer in Canada, and considers the fate of the numerous immigrants from Mexico and the Caribbean, whose presence as millions of “Undocumented Immigrants” represents a central political problem in the USA. The solution of this serious challenge, which is the concern of a bipartisan initiative in Congress intended to develop a humane regulation for the children of such migrants who are to be given the hope of eventually gaining American citizenship, relates to a topical problem in Austrian internal politics. Dirk Hoerder offers a very critical assessment of European migration policies on the basis of empirical research concerning the life writings of fairly large

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numbers of immigrants in Canada as well as of interviews with students in France. He arrives at a largely negative evaluation of the conditions in France, which has not yet overcome its traditional centralism, and also in Austria, which still seems to be partly influenced by xenophobia. A core statement of this contribution affirms that Canada may serve as an example, but France should not. The concluding commentary by Fritz Peter Kirsch on the report by Charles Taylor and G¦rard Bouchard on the issue of immigration and integration in Quebec (2008) differs in two respects from the other contributions to this volume. The essay, on the one hand, presents the concept of interculturalism which this report placed centre stage, a concept with which the francophone province contributed an independent idea differing from the concept of multiculturalism adopted by the federal authorities. On the other hand, this contribution offers against this theoretical background a recommendation to the responsible academics and politicians in Austria to initiate an analogous report on the development of Austria as a country of immigration and on the future perspectives of this evolution.

David Staines

Canada in the World: Literature at the Crossroads

In the spring of 1982, exactly thirty years ago, I was lecturing in Stockholm, Sweden, on the subject of the growth of Canadian fiction. At dinner one evening, Per Gedin, the foremost publisher of English-language works in Swedish, told me that his agents always used to fan out to London and New York to know what was happening there every fall season. But now he had stopped sending them – he was more interested in Australia, South Africa, and Canada. He proceeded to point out that Australia’s Patrick White had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and so Australia and its literature were being discovered. South Africa had all the problems of apartheid, and that situation was directing attention to itself and to its writers, including Nadine Gordimer. Canada, on the other hand, had no defining interest to the outside world – it had never had a war, it had no problems which would garner world attention – in other words, it was a safe place for fiction to grow and develop without the steady gaze of the outside world falling upon it. I have often thought of that conversation – Per Gedin’s thoughts – and the steady and unregarded growth of Canadian fiction. We have been developing without the rest of the world – or any part of it – paying attention. Now we have world-class authors, Margaret Atwood, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, and so many others, who are content to stay in Canada and, at the same time, reach out consistently and steadily to international audiences. Moreover, Canada can now boast – though we do not like to do this! – of a multicultural group of artists who are not frightened of the country or of one another. These writers are not frightened of choosing their own settings, even their own landscapes, and they write as they want – on subjects they have the freedom to choose. As a nation, Canada is a member of the Commonwealth which boasts representation from nations around the world. And Canadians are an incredibly diverse people – with men and women from all across the land as well as native Canadians from the far reaches of this 4,000-mile-wide country, native-born Canadians, and also naturalized Canadians, those citizens who came to Canada

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to adopt this new country’s ways while not leaving behind their former nation’s traits. And it is this conjunction of native-born and naturalized Canadians that gives the country its unique perspective on the world and on itself. In 1963, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson established a Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism to inquire into and report upon the existing state of bilingualism and biculturalism in Canada and to recommend what steps should be taken to develop the Canadian Confederation on the basis of an equal partnership between the two founding races, taking into account the contribution made by the other ethnic groups to the cultural enrichment of Canada and the measures that should be taken to safeguard that contribution. (Appendix to the Commission qtd. in Haque 5)

Even its very title, Bilingualism and Biculturalism, suggests something of the backward nature of this august body. Bilingualism meant that the Commission would be investigating and making recommendations about the two founding peoples of Canada, the English and the French. But the nation was much more complex than simply these two peoples. In 1965, Canadians received royal assent to their flag – originally it was going to be in two halves (English and French), united by the superimposed maple leaf. The flag finally got assent, as it is now, for a tripartite division: English, French, and other. And “other” raises a variety of questions: Where are the native peoples? Where are the immigrants? Where is Canada now? The Royal Commission issued their report and recommendations in 1969, and the then Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, put into effect a multiculturalism act – not a biculturalism act – in 1971 whereby Canada would adopt a multicultural policy, recognizing and respecting Canada’s multicultural heritage and ensuring that measures would be taken to protect this unique heritage. In 1982, Canada passed its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which specifically recognized multiculturalism as part of the fabric of Canadian society, stating in section 27 that “[t]his Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.” And in 1988, under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act became law, preserving and enhancing multiculturalism in Canada. In section 3, this Act does “recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturalism reflects the cultural and racial diversity of Canadian society and acknowledges the freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance and share their cultural heritage” (3). But this multiculturalism, this plea for racial tolerance and an enhancement of the multicultural dimensions of Canadian society, had already been anticipated in the slow and careful development of these external voices, these naturalized Canadian voices, in Canada’s increasingly complex and multifaceted growth as a

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literary nation. The ongoing and mutually re-assuring nature of the naturalized as well as the native-born voices of Canadians gives the country its unique place as a small-populated but infinitely rich home to the crossroads of the world which has come to this multicultural land. I would like to follow the development of Canadian fiction – down to the very present! – as a way of studying this country as a crossroads of literary expression and cultural content. And I will ponder the early stages of Canadian fiction, the maturity that Canadian fiction reached in the forties and fifties, and focus finally on the re-assuring co-existence of native and naturalized Canadian fiction. The history of Canadian writing is not that old – not as old as European countries, not as old as American writing. Canadian fiction begins in the late nineteenth century, it blossomed in the mid-twentieth century, and it accepted its position on the world stage in the later twentieth century. And all this time, there is a curious mingling of the native-born and the naturalized voices. For the earliest writers, Canada was a colony, where there must be the centre for the colonial mind. Here, unknown and undefined, remains a colonial and a critical preoccupation. Early-twentieth-century attempts to probe the meaning of here led to mid-century denials of its existence. Then, as the century moved to its close, the question of there and here underscores a belated movement of Canada’s literary identity from a clinging to the seeming periphery to a confident claim that the centre, however indefinable, is nonetheless unmistakably both here and nowhere and everywhere. And all through this journey the native and naturalized fiction writers continued to have a remarkably peaceful coexistence. In its beginnings, Canada had a major group of writers: Ernest Thompson Seton, born in Canada, and his Wild Animals I Have Known, which went through fifty-one reprintings in its first twenty-five years of publication; Ralph Connor, born in Scotland, and the gargantuan success of his moral tales; L.M. Montgomery, born on Prince Edward Island, and author of the incredibly popular Anne of Green Gables; and Stephen Leacock, born in England and the most celebrated humorist in the English-speaking world from 1910 until about 1930 – both native stock and men from the British Isles who became naturalized Canadians. Let us take Stephen Leacock as our example from this early period. In Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, he paints a charming fictional portrait of townspeople who are always conscious of the country to the south, specifically the metropolitan centre beyond their country’s border. Listen to what the narrator tells his readers: “Busy – well, I should think so! . . . Of course if you come to the place fresh from New York, you are deceived. Your standard of vision is all astray. You do think the place is quiet” (4). The townspeople realize that the centre is south of the border ; they love their world, but realize it is on the

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periphery. They present themselves and their town with a disarming, apologetic smile; their town is an outpost, a suburb, a province, a colony. If you do not alter your standard of vision, the narrator warns, you will think Canada different, and difference seems to contain the connotation of inferiority. English by birth, Canadian by upbringing, Leacock could not embrace a sense of his own country’s literature. Even into the 1930s he would state that “there is no such thing as Canadian literature today, meaning books written by Canadians in a Canadian way” (The Greatest Pages of American Humor 23). This early twentieth-century Canadian preoccupation with there, never acknowledging the possible centrality and independence of here, reaches its climax in the writings of Hugh MacLennan, who turned to the national novel in the 1940s and penned novels such as Barometer Rising (1941) and Two Solitudes (1945), which explore the growing self-consciousness of Canadian society. He saw his role as that of a cartographer, mapping the terrain in order to define the society. MacLennan was, however, a product of his cultural environment and thought that the colonial understanding of his own land was the key to the identity of his country. Canadians were, he often declared, a combination of the British and the American; they represented the best of both nationalities. To define Canada, MacLennan could use only other nations. There, in other words, was still the basis for any understanding of here. The Second World War found Canada a new nation on the world stage. Canada had entered the War, following England’s example, but it fought for six years and became a central player. At the end of the War, Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, could shout out from his seat in Parliament that he would welcome all immigrants, though his idea of foreigners included only people of Anglo-Saxon stock. But the tide was changing, and Canada and its literature were adapting to the new realities of post-war society. Emigrants from Italy flocked to Canada, and then in the 1950s the Hungarian revolution brought an unexpected number of Hungarians to Canada. The world was changing. A new novel, Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook (1959), first conceived in the late 1940s, written in 1950 and the years immediately following, and finally published in 1959, asserted that here and not there was the true concern of a Canadian writer. Her work contradicts Northop Frye’s generalization: There have been many fables about people who made long journeys to find some precious object. The moral is often that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is in their own backyard. But this is not the Canadian moral. The Canadian identity is bound up with the feeling that the end of the rainbow never falls on Canada. (“View” 7)

Sheila Watson was concerned with her own “backyard,” and for her, breaking with the colonial mentality made her country no longer a backyard but the only possible centre.

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Confronted with living on the seeming periphery, the colonial writer must create a work that will be acceptable to those reading at the seeming centre. MacLennan recalled his thoughts when writing his first novel: “When I first thought of writing this novel, Canada was virtually an unknown country . . . the international public . . . had never thought about Canada at all, and knew nothing whatever about us” (51 – 52). Although he stopped shunning his own world as the setting for his fiction, he remained preoccupied, as did much of his generation, with making his world acceptable to a metropolitan centre perceived to lie elsewhere. Sheila Watson, writing about her native British Columbia, knew too well the dilemma of the colonial artist. British Columbia was emblematic of the land’s colonialism; even its name denotes the colonial mentality. The province, remote from whatever may seem to be the centre of Canada, also shared Canada’s own remoteness from the imperial centre. The British Columbia where Watson was born and educated was conscious of its status as province and colony, firm in its belief that whatever is significant takes place elsewhere. She recalled her thoughts when writing her novel: I began the writing of The Double Hook as an answer to a challenge . . . a challenge that you could not write about particular places in Canada: that what you’d end up with was a regional novel of some kind. It was at the time, I suppose, when people were thinking that if you wrote a novel it had to be, in some mysterious way, international. It had to be about what I would call something else. And so I thought, I don’t see why : how do you . . . how are you international if you’re not international? If you’re very provincial, very local, and very much a part of your own milieu. (Open Letter 182)

Her novel, then, rejected the colonial implications of regionalism and denied any difference in the life lived in the local community and the life lived at the supposed centre. Contemporaneous with – and complementary to – The Double Hook’s declaration of here as an entity in and of itself was the appearance in Canadian fiction of ethnic voices, both of newcomers to the New World and of residents who found their here in those ethnic pockets of Canadian life which were asserting themselves as sections of the country’s literary mosaic. For example, Henry Kreisel, an Austrian who fled to England to escape the Nazis, was interned in England as an “enemy alien,” then sent to Canada to internment camps. In 1948, he published The Rich Man, which tells of an Austrian immigrant’s return to Vienna in 1935, his attempt to pass himself off as a wealthy designer when he is, in fact, a poor cloth presser in a Toronto factory. What is more striking about Kreisel is the fact that in 1944 he founded, along with Robert Weaver, the Modern Letters Club in Toronto. A naturalized Canadian took a leading role – along with native-born Canadians! – in establishing this Club. And in the 1950s there were

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astonishing novels by second-generation Canadians. Adele Wiseman’s The Sacrifice (1956) reflects its author’s Eastern European Jewish heritage as it rewrites the Abraham and Isaac story in the Jewish north end of Winnipeg, and Mordecai Richler marked off the urban Jewish ghetto of Montreal’s Saint Urbain Street as his particular world in his two early novels, Son of a Smaller Hero (1955) and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959). No sooner was here a seemingly defined entity than the entity itself was expanding to include ethnic cultures outside the hitherto accepted mainstream of Canadian life and fiction. As Frye observed, the writers of the 1950s “have begun to write in a world which is postCanadian, as it is post-American, post-British, and post everything except the world itself. There are no provinces in the empire of aeroplane and television, and no physical separation from the centres of culture, such as they are” (“Conclusion” 848). With a new and self-confident acceptance of here, fiction writers embarked on an examination or exhumation of the Canadian past, and this development underlines the acceptance of cultural maturity and the consequent move from colonial to post-colonial. The new preoccupation with the past is a search for heritages and traditions a colonial mentality could not even imagine. Canada’s history, for example, stands behind Margaret Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) and Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners (1974), where the uncovering of the personal and public past is the narrators’ and the authors’ essential journey. As the narrators identify with nineteenth-century Ontario writers, writers who had come from imperial centres, they resuscitate the cultural traditions that preceded them. And these writers are members of the “tribe,” to use Margaret Laurence’s term, who have brought a self-consciousness and maturity to Canadian fiction, which is possible only in a land that has embraced its post-colonial status through its new sense of a self-defined here. Canadian fiction’s new understanding of here, an independent understanding not based on a comparison with there, was symbolically embodied in Expo 67, Canada’s world’s fair in Montreal. The countries that used to be there were now coming here. Here, a defined space, was now home to there, the imperial nations now seeking exhibit space in their former colony. But where is Canadian fiction today? Harold Innis described Canadian history as the movement from colony to nation to colony. We might well describe the history of Canadian fiction as the movement from colony to nation to global village – a global village being a nation beyond nationalism – where the nation’s voices are so multifaceted that the distinction between international and national is no longer valid. And this situation is almost unique to Canada where the nation’s voices are co-existing, native-born and naturalized voices independently operating with some degree of cross-over, a case of life being lived at the crossroads. As Frye concluded in 1960, “the centre of reality is wherever one

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happens to be, and its circumference is whatever one’s imagination can make sense of” (“Letters” 460). In the latter part of the twentieth century moving into the twenty-first century, there has been a dramatic increase in the naturalized voices. Government studies show that the foreign-born population of Canada has risen from 16.1 % in 1991 to 18.4 % in 2001. That is almost a rise of 2 12 percent. And the rise between 2001 and 2011, still not available, would mean a much steeper incline. In metropolitan areas, the percentage of foreign-born people is remarkable: in Toronto, for example, there were 38 % foreign-born people in 1991, in 2001, it had jumped to 43.7 %; in Vancouver, there were 30.1 % foreign-born people in 1991, in 2001, it had jumped to 37.5 %. And these statistics would show a staggering jump in 2011. The population of the city of Vancouver, for example, is more than 50 % Asian – with the suburb of Richmond consisting roughly of 60 % Asian. Where does this leave Canadian fiction? Well, the fiction writers mirror this staggering transformation of the Canadian population. Perhaps the finest writer of short fiction today is Alice Munro, a native Canadian living in Southwestern Ontario. Yet all the time reading Munro’s newest fiction is Rohinton Mistry, whose three published novels and one collection of short fiction have earned him the title as the finest writer of longer fiction in Canada today. Born in Bombay in 1952, he emigrated to Canada in 1975. His collection of stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), tells the plight of a young man from Bombay who emigrates to Canada. Each of his three novels was a finalist for the Booker Prize, and each of them, set in Bombay, contains no Canadian characters or situations. Set in 1971 Bombay with its turbulent national politics complemented by worse tensions on the international level, his first novel, Such a Long Journey (1991), teems with the life of Bombay and the many Dickensian characters who travel its streets. The protagonist, Gustad Noble, a dedicated and somewhat innocent bank clerk, finds his familial and professional lives unraveling as his son eschews filial piety, his best friend involves him in political intrigue, and his own rationality and morality confront a world of change. His second novel, A Fine Balance (1995), takes place four years later during Indira Gandhi’s infamous state of emergency. Dina Dalai has a small apartment where she takes in her friend’s son, Maneck Kolah. And forcibly joining them are Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakesh, who have been driven from their village for challenging the caste system by apprenticing to Ashraf Chacha, a Muslim tailor. Dina’s slow discovery of the tribulations that the low-caste tailors endure in the city brings her to the realization that they are all in this world together. Ishvar insists that the patchwork quilt Dina is sewing teaches them all one important lesson, that the entire quilt is much more important than any individual square. Everything must be seen in a larger perspective. And Mistry

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offers a true mosaic of a global village where true identity is to be found not in the nation but in the dignity of the whole human family. Rohinton Mistry’s novel may well be the most significant novel to be published in Canada in the past twenty years, and Mistry regards himself as Canadian, not Indian-Canadian, but as a Canadian, someone who is actively participating in the mosaic that is Canada. Although he may not be the most popular fiction writer in India, he is acknowledged as the leading novelist in Canada today. Many of the novelists who emigrated to Canada in the second half of the twentieth century – and now well into the twenty-first century – were writers who came from Commonwealth countries. But this situation, too, has changed. Now let us turn to a final group of writers who represent the multicultural realm of present-day Canada. And we can do this best by referring to the major books that were published within the past twelve months. In my opinion, the finest novel of 2011 was Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table. A major poet, novelist, and playwright, Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka in 1943, emigrated to England in 1954, and moved to Canada in 1962. He has been – and continues to be – a leading figure in Canadian literature. He is also representative, like Mistry, of the Commonwealth immigrant who has brought so much wealth to the Canadian mosaic. A haunting reflection on the coming-of-age of a young Ceylonese boy, told by the boy as an adult and moving slowly backwards and forwards in time, The Cat’s Table, set in August and September of 1960 on board the large ship Oronsay going from Ceylon through the Indian Ocean, up to the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, and onto England, recounts an eleven-year-old boy’s first journey by ship: [I]t has been arranged I would be travelling to England by ship, and that I would be making the journey alone. No mention was made that this might be an unusual experience or that it could be exciting or dangerous, so I did not approach it with any joy or fear … The fact of my being at sea for twenty-one days was spoken of as having not much significance. (6)

He is seated at insignificant Table 76, known as the “cat’s table,” as far from the Captain’s table as can be, along with two other boys and an assortment of strange fellow passengers. “I try to imagine who the boy on the ship was,” he comments in the opening chapter. “Perhaps a sense of self is not even there in his nervous stillness in the narrow bunk, in this green grasshopper or little cricket, as if he has been smuggled away accidentally, with no knowledge of the act, into the future” (4). The boy Michael forms a bond with two other boys, the quiet and asthmatic Ramadhin, and Cassius, “a mix of stubbornness and kindness” (40). Vowing to

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do at least one thing that was forbidden every day, the trio set off to examine, to explore, and to understand the inner workings of the passengers, the ship’s crew, and the concealed occurrences onboard during their twenty-one-day experience, “a very brief period in a life” (41). From his adult perspective, Michael looks back lovingly, longingly, and quizzically at this brief span of time. After their sea voyage, he will never see Cassius again, though he would read about him or hear about his career as a “well-considered painter” in London (131). He would keep in touch with Ramadhin, “always the most generous of the three of us” (74), visiting him in London where his family lived, attending his funeral, even marrying his sister Massoumeh, a marriage that ends in divorce. The young boys meet all the adventures one can imagine. There is the chained criminal allowed to walk the ship only at night. There is the famous millionaire who dies and is buried at sea. There is Mr. Fonseka, who “seemed to draw forth an assurance or a calming quality from the books he read” (58). And then there is Mr. Daniels, conducting the young trio to his garden of plants and flowers down below in the bowels of the ship. These people are the focus of the young people’s activities, and as the ship moves on, the trio is drawn into the world and the stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another. As the story progresses from the decks and holds of the ship to the narrator’s adult years, it unravels a spellbinding tale about the often forbidden discoveries of childhood and the burden of merited understanding, about a lifelong journey which began – unexpectedly – with a twenty-one-day sea voyage. “I am someone who has a cold heart,” Michael reflects. “If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall” (141). Yet in his confrontation with the past, with this voyage and the times both before and after, he invites the reader to confront the self-portrait he is sketching. In looking back on his own life, the narrator glimpses the true portrait of himself buried under layers of complexities: “Sometimes we find our true and inherent selves during youth. It is a recognition of something that at first is small within us, that we will grow into somehow” (146). As he writes down his memories, he seeks a new understanding of his past: “Writing this, I do not want to end until I can understand it better, in a way that would calm me even now, all these years later” (116). He keeps searching, ready and eager to discover through his own writing the meaning of the past: The three weeks of the sea journey, as I originally remembered it, were placid. It is only now, years later, having been prompted by my children to describe the voyage, that it becomes an adventure, when seen through their eyes, even something significant in a life. A rite of passage. (53)

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Ondaatje cautions the reader in an author’s note: Although the novel sometimes uses the colouring and locations of memoir and autobiography, The Cat’s Table is fictional – from the captain and crew and all its passengers on the boat down to the narrator. And while there was a ship named the Oronsay (there were in fact several Oronsays), the ship in the novel is an imagined rendering. (267)

Yet the autobiographical form makes the book a deeply moving account of one man’s search for himself amidst the lives around him and during one remarkable sea voyage. The Cat’s Table transports the reader back to childhood days through the graphic power of memoir, that strange human feature that relives the past as well as one can imagine and always returns to the present and the writing of the finished text. The Cat’s Table is a major leader in terms of critical reviews and sales, yet in the Giller Prize for 2011, the most distinguished award for fiction in Canada, Ondaatje’s novel lost out to another novel by another near-immigrant, Esi Edugyan with her second novel, Half-Blood Blues. Born in Calgary, Alberta, of Ghanian parents, Edugyan has a remarkable command of fiction. The focus of the novel is Hieronymus Falk, a brilliant twenty-year-old Afro-German jazz musician, who is arrested by the Nazis and never heard from again. The son of a white German mother and black African soldier, Hiero, is a mixed-race German, one of the people who came to be known as “Rhineland bastards,” a stateless population refused their citizenship and horribly victimized by the controlling Nazis. A member of an international jazz ensemble, he has a life which is in double jeopardy : the Nazis labelled jazz the degenerate music of both blacks and Jews. Out of Hiero’s wartime story comes this novel, set in 1992, which tries to recover his story and, ultimately, himself. The novel belongs comfortably in the expanding traditions of black Canadian literature, in which biracial experience represents the challenge of reuniting black and national identities. The popularity of American jazz suffuses the European world. Even Louis Armstrong makes telling appearances in Half-Blood Blues. And its narrator, Sid, the only witness of Hiero’s arrest, ventures back to Poland to find out what happened to him. Thus begins his slow journey towards redemption, through a fascinating and little-known world of the Nazi persecutions and into the heart of his own guilty conscience. Hiero was an original, as Delilah tells Sid: But where did he come from? He just appeared, out of nowhere, without having played with anyone? Just showed up like this? . . . Lou was like him. When he was young. Would you say Lou’s talented? Do you still call it talent, if it blooms without any kind of nurturing? That’s got to be something else. (106)

The novel is a revealing account of racism within a story about love, friendship, and music. There is racism everywhere in the book, and Sid realizes that a chance

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meeting on the street or at a train station can mean the end of one’s life. And the fate of Germany’s black population under the Nazis is a hidden world now examined and awaiting further exploration. Edugyan’s first novel is even more instructive for our purposes. The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (2004) examines the difficult and ultimately lonely life of Samuel Tyne, a solid citizen who leaves Calgary when he inherits a house in the fictional town of Aster, Alberta, which is a rendering of the real-life black settlement of the Amber Valley. When she learned about this settlement, she started to create a novel which focuses on the eventual tragedy of Tyne’s move and his new life. Of her work on this novel, Edugyan says: When a young black person in western Canada harbours aspirations to be a writer, there aren’t a lot of precursors, so that s/he can start to feel disuaded. In that sense you may become a role model. But for me I think the role rests more on the act of writing, than on the actual subject natter – for that reason, I don’t necessarily feel that I must write solely about ‘black subject matter’ (whatever that is). The case might be different were I an historian. But as a fiction writer, it’s important for me to be able to explore different histories, different races, different age experiences – to be able to do that is a huge act of empathy. (Compton)

And I would add that this act of empathy is possible, indeed relatively easy, in a country which is prone to accept “different histories, different races, different age experiences.” Edugyan represents the new young Canadian writer, blazing forth amid a changing environment. Growing up in Calgary, road trips north to Edmonton meant driving through small towns, where her family would be taunted and jeered with racial epithets. She remembers well the terror she felt about a wellpublicized cross-burning in Provost, Alberta, when she was twelve. Although all is not perfect in Canada’s multicultural world, the country is moving along, its older and mainly rural inhabitants still clinging to racial and other facets of an uninformed existence. And its multicultural writers are leading the way to a more informed, more judicious, and more thoughtful form of existence. The best-selling novel of the year 2012 is The Winter Palace, a sprawling piece of historical fiction by Eva Stachniak, a Polish immigrant to Canada. The Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, is both the main setting and a symbol of the life lived in this opulent world of eighteenth-century Russia. A life of Catherine the Great, or rather the early life of Catherine, it is told by Catherine’s “gazette,” her “tongue,” a young girl named Varvara Nikolayevna, “Barbara,” a lower-class orphan from Poland who eventually becomes a spy at the Imperial Court. Young Barbara is too bright for the lowly position of potential servitude found for her, and she rises to become a confidante and a spy for the young Catherine. Throughout the novel there is a wealth of details about the Palace, the descrip-

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tions of the grand feasts, and the ornate draperies, gowns, and lush surroundings. And Stachniak, a dedicated researcher, has uncovered a treasury of rich materials about the women, both Catherine and her mother-in-law Elizabeth, and their reigns. No novelist has ever visited the legendary court of Imperial Russia’s only female leader, and this novel is the first of its kind in any language. The Canadian edition came out at the end of January, American and British editions followed, and translations are already underway into Dutch, German, and Polish – thus far. What is especially interesting – from our perspective – is the figure of young Barbara, a fictional embodiment, I believe, of Stachniak herself, another Pole who left Poland for, in her case, Canada. Born in 1952 in Wroclaw, Poland, she came to Canada in 1981 to study for a time at McGill University in Montreal. But her time there corresponded to all the upheaval in Poland when she had to stay in Montreal in the wake of martial law being imposed on Poland, and she was denied access again to her native country. Like her fictional Polish narrator, Stachniak has devoted her adult life to decoding the secrets of a foreign culture. She went on to complete a doctorate in English at McGill and spent twenty-five years teaching English and communications at Sheridan College in Toronto. She began to write after her time at McGill: her first short story, “Marble Heroes,” was published in The Antigonish Review in 1994, her first and perhaps her most interesting novel, Necessary Lies, was published in 2000 and won the Books in Canada/Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Necessary Lies is fiction based upon fact, beginning in 1981 in Montreal, leaping back to the heroine’s upbringing and early life in Wroclaw, Poland, then her second marriage to a Canadian, erasing at times her memories of her first marriage to a Pole, and her final return to Poland and an acceptance of who she was and who she has become. Stachniak plays the political situation in Poland off of the personal life of her heroine, the political turmoil mirroring the personal turmoil and the personal turmoil stemming from the political situation. At the moment, Stachniak is finishing the first draft of her sequel to The Winter Palace, tentatively titled The Empire of the Night. The remarkable sales of The Winter Palace, essentially a costume drama, eclipse the stronger fictional world of Necessary Lies. These writers, in particular, represent the multicultural world that is now – and has been for quite a while – Canada. These writers – and there are so many others whom I could name – have won national and international prizes – and yet they are all rooted in Canada, even if their fiction rarely portrays a Canadian scene. They represent multiculturalism as it is now being manifested in Canadian fiction where the number of native-born Canadian writers is increasingly augmented by naturalized Canadian voices, voices that are unafraid to tackle their own chosen landscapes from the safe world that is Canada.

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For the twenty-first century Canadian author, here, that famous designation we have been looking at, is now an indefinable area, encompassing Canada and the world, an area with no centre and therefore no periphery, with neither the possibility nor even the need of definition. Canadian fiction has come a long way in 130 years, moving from a sense of being on the circumference to embrace in the mid-twentieth century a self-sufficiency in place, a here defined without reference to there, and now the here of Canadian fiction is not defined but indefinable. This multicultural world of contemporary Canadian fiction anticipates the world that Canada is now entering. The foreign-born population of Canada is projected to rise to about 28 % of Canada’s entire population. In Toronto, for example, 43 % of the current population is a non-white visible minority – by 2031 that number will rise to 63 %, when white people would be a visible minority in the city. Now one in six people in Canada is a visible minority – by 2031, it will be one in three. And by 2031, nearly one-half (46 %) of Canadians aged 15 and over would be foreign-born. And this is the route now for Canadian authors, too. Rohinton Mistry is a devout Canadian, not an Indo-Canadian. So, too, Evelyn Lau, who wants to be regarded as Canadian, not as a Chinese-Canadian. There is a “new Canada,” and it is just over the horizon, a home to a diversity of skin tones, birth countries, languages, and religious faiths unprecedented in the nation’s history. And the new population will be composed of native Canadians and naturalized Canadians – except that in the future – over the next twenty years – the foreign-born population of Canada is expected to grow four times faster than those who are Canadian-born, and this change is expected to create the most diverse population since Confederation. And the new Canada will be – unlike in the past – not an eastern growth but a pacific Canada, with its strongest ties and biggest proportion of newcomers not coming from the European countries of old, but from Asian and Latin American neighbours with whom Canada shares a Pacific coast, and with Caribbean nations. And in terms of religion, Islam will be the fastest-growing religion in the country in the next twenty years, with other non-Christian religions such as Judaism, Buddhism, and Sikhism doubling their numbers, while the proportion following Christian religions is expected to slip from about 75 % of Canada’s population to 65 %, with the proportion reporting no religion will rise to 21 % from 17 %. So where does this leave us in regard to Canadian fiction? Well, the major writers of Canadian fiction show the way to this gargantuan shift in the country’s population make-up. In fact, these writers are already there, leading quiet but solid lives in the multicultural fabric which is now Canada.

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But all is not uniformly perfect in this new world. Esi Edugyan did encounter racism as she travelled north from Calgary, yet this racism is part of an old – dare I say outmoded? – way of life which is fast disappearing from modern Canada. The present mayor of Calgary is Naheed Nenshi, with a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Calgary and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard – a liberal thinker from an Islamic background. And this multicultural fabric separates Canada from its southern neighbour, the United States. There used to be the oversimplified comparison: the United States is a melting pot, Canada is a multicultural mosaic, yet this comparison has some degree of truth. For all its affirmation of its multicultural composition, Canada cannot help being a melting pot too, and the United States melting pot has never melted down the black, the Asiatic, the Native American. But since 9 – 11, the United States has invested so fully in racial profiling that Rohinton Mistry – on his last publicity tour in that country – was so exhausted by being stopped and stripped at airports that he cancelled his tour and now refuses to go back into the United States. This American degree of paranoic reactions to the threat of terrorism, not to mention the Republican Party’s behaviour in the 2012 elections throughout the country, has not yet entered Canada, a comparatively safe haven where writers as diverse as Edugyan and Mistry, Munro and Atwood, can continue to write, to publish, and to think apart from these excessive concerns that seem to cripple writers in other countries. And this present condition in Canada may ultimately reflect the newness of our literature. Scarcely more than a century old, Canadian fiction does not seem to suffer from the chauvinism of the United States and of other and older countries which have so much at stake in their lands’ history. Canada is young enough – Mordecai Richler used to speak of having only one ghost behind him, the kindly visage of Stephen Leacock, and not the burdens of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens – that there is not present this pressure to uphold what you already have. In this way, Canada has become a crossroads of people, and its fiction writers represent every nationality, every boundless particle of the entire world. In a recent survey, Statistics Canada learned that Canada was the only choice for 98 % of new immigrants to the country. The largest proportion said that they came to Canada for the quality of life and to improve the future for their families. Now the literature, just like the life of the country, no longer shows a balance solely between the best of the British and the best of the American, as Hugh MacLennan reflected. It is rather a balancing of voices in a global village whose citizens and their works are at once native-born and naturalized. This has already happened in the short life of Canadian fiction. It is happening, too, in the

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complexion of Canada where international and provincial have dissolved in our global village.

Bibliography “Canadian Multiculturalism Act 1985.” Government of Canada Justice Law Website. 18 Mar. 2013. 10 Apr. 2013 . “Charter of Rights and Freedom.” Canadian Heritage. 14 Jan. 2009. 15 Apr. 2013 . Compton, Wayde. “Black Writers in Search of Place.” The Tyee. 28 Feb. 2005. 15 Apr. 2013 . Edugyen, Esi. Half-Blood Blues. Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2011. ––. The Second Life of Samuel Tyne. Toronto: Knopf, 2004. Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion.” Literary History of Canada. Ed. Carl F. Klinck. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1965. 821 – 49. ––. “Letters in Canada: Poetry.” University of Toronto Quarterly 29 (July 1960): 440 – 60. ––. “View of Canada: Never a Believer in a Happy Ending.” Globe and Mail (Toronto) 6 April 1976: 7. Haque, Eve. Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework: Language and the Racial Ordering of Difference and Belonging in Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2012. Leacock, Stephen. The Greatest Pages of American Humour. Garden City, NY: Sun Dial Press, 1936. ––. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Toronto: Bell and Cockburn, 1912. MacLennan, Hugh. “Where is My Potted Palm?” Thirty & Three. Toronto: Macmillan, 1954. 49 – 54. Ondaatje, Michael. The Cat’s Table. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2011. Stachniak, Eva. Necessary Lies. Toronto: Dundurn, 2000. ––. The Winter Palace. Toronto: Doubleday, 2012. Watson, Sheila. “What I’m Going To Do.” Open Letter, series 3, no. l (Winter 1974 – 75): 181 – 83.

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz

Challenges for Immigrants in Canadian Autobiographies

Even a very perfunctory glance at the news reveals that mass migration is a prominent feature of our globalized world. Modern means of transportation permit the movement of large numbers of people across vast distances and the travails of journeys for passengers in steerage have been replaced by the moderate inconveniences of economy flights. The experience of crossing the Atlantic or even the Pacific ocean is over in as many hours as it took days before jet travel, but the challenges individuals face who are not tourists but seeking a new permanent home remain considerable. The new climate of opinion manifest in Canadian legislation on immigration since the early 1970s,1 mirrored in the concept of Multiculturalism enshrined in acts of Parliament in the 1980s and elucidated by David Staines,2 has not completely removed the hurdles individuals have to overcome when they want to find a new home in Canada. But we can observe that there has been a remarkable improvement. In the following remarks, I shall consider the reflection of the collective experience of ethnic migrants in Canada as well as shifts apparent in a reading of various autobiographical texts. Thirty years ago, Alfred Hornung described the 1980s in US American culture as the decade of autobiographical writing.3 Since that time, the proliferation of texts related to this broad category, more recently labeled ‘life writing,’ has prompted a spate of books and many articles exploring this phenomenon.4 It seems rewarding to consider the various factors which have stimulated the articulation of individual and collective experiences and to 1 Cf. the historical survey of the regulations concerning immigration to Canada provided by Valerie Knowles (2007) and the relevant essays in Ninette Kelley and Michael J. Trebilcock’s collection on The Making of the Mosaic (2010). 2 Cf. Staines, “Canadian Literature at the Millennium” (1999) and his essay in this collection. 3 Cf. Hornung, “American Autobiographies and Autobiography Criticism: Review Essays” (1990). 4 On the numerous volumes and individual essays on that topic, cf. my references in “In Search of Him/Herself” (2010, esp. 97 f) and Alfred Hornung’s “Transcultural life-writing” (2009).

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study the challenges depicted in the accounts of the arrival in and the sometimes delayed integration into the host society. I am going to look first at several representative examples selected from numerous texts, including works by three women who were born in 1890, 1924, and 1952 and thus belong to different generations. Their parents had been transplanted to Canada from the North, the East, and the South of Europe and put down their roots after leaving their homes where they had struggled with dire poverty and some political oppression. My examples are Laura Goodman Salverson, Penny Petrone and Janice Kulyk Keefer. It is significant that it was the daughters of immigrants who composed family memoirs and not their parents, who, as newcomers, had to channel all their energies into securing a home and a job, especially in the period of the Great Depression, when deportation might have been their fate if they had become a burden to the community. The parents were also severely hampered by their lack of capital and of proficiency in the dominant language. We note that these autobiographical texts were composed by women who achieved some prominence as writers and/ or scholars: Salverson’s Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter (1939), Petrone’s two autobiographies, Breaking the Mould (1995) and Embracing Serafina (2000), and Keefer’s Honey and Ashes: A Story of Family (1998) postdate instructive autobiographical texts written from about 1910 in the USA, especially by Jewish women. Mary Antin’s The Promised Land (1910) and Anzia Yezierska’s novels and quasi-autobiographical accounts (from 1920 onwards) reflect the wide range of responses to the immigrant experience in life writings by ethnic authors in the USA, and encompass both the celebration of successful integration in Antin’s case and the struggle to overcome discrimination and marginalization in jobs of manual labor and in sweatshops in Yezierska’s books.5 While European immigrants to the USA largely arrived via Ellis Island, which since 1892 had replaced Castle Garden as the main place of entry, immigrants to Canada were originally taken further into the country via the Saint Lawrence and sometimes held in quarantine near Quebec. By 1928, Pier 21 in Halifax had come to serve as the most important immigration point in Canada; this was also the place where Keefer’s grandmother and her two daughters arrived before they were ‘deloused and bathed’ after the transatlantic crossing, which had tortured her grandmother with seasickness.6 The Canadian National Railway had through the Railway Agreement of 1925 been permitted to arrange the transportation of 5 On the contrasted responses of young Jewish women to societal pressures and opportunities in their new home cf. my essay on “Self-Perception and Presentation of Jewish Immigrants” (2010). 6 On the function of Pier 21 in Halifax cf. Alexa Thompson and Debie Van de Wiel, “Pier 21” (2002). Cf. also Jean Bruce, After the War (1982).

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the immigrants inland to work on farms in the Prairie provinces, though often, especially during the years of drought and the Depression, quite a few among them returned to the urban centres in the east. This was the case, for example, with Janice K. Keefer’s maternal grandfather Tomasz, who, after failing to make a living on the prairies during his first years in Canada, made his way back to Toronto, where he awaited his family in the mid-1930s (Honey and Ashes 37 and 63 – 70). Laura G. Salverson’s parents, after having suffered the loss of their two sons to fevers in the 1880s on a ship from Iceland, were taken to Manitoba where her highly literate father found employment in a sweatshop though he repeatedly followed his romantic dream of leaving the leather business and attempted to prosper as a farmer. Penny Petrone’s parents, who had a peasant background, were from Calabria and met in Port Arthur on Lake Superior in the early 1920s, two years before her birth there. Like thousands of immigrants from Southern Italy her father Luigi had found employment there in construction jobs even as a young teenager.7 Petrone’s father had spent a number of years alone in Canada earning money. He then returned home to do his military service before taking steerage as a bachelor from Naples to New York, a journey taking 13 days, continuing by train to northwestern Ontario in 1912. Eight years later his future wife accompanied her mother to Port Arthur, the same city where she was soon to meet Luigi (cf. Breaking the Mould 9 – 11). Keefer’s grandfather Tomasz had a hard time persuading his wife Olena to join him in Toronto. Though she had already borne him several children, he was separated from her and the two surviving siblings for many years. He travelled back to their native Staromischyna, then part of Poland, but failed to persuade her to immediately lease the land there she had acquired with difficulty. Her granddaughter Janice’s narrative, based on long conversations with her mother and her aunt and the study of contracts, legal documents and photographs, shows that Olena used money sent by her husband to purchase farm land in the Old Place. Eventually, however, she followed him to Toronto though she retained the documents of the leases, hoping for a return to Staromischyna, which never happened (Honey and Ashes 73). The three chosen witnesses of the difficult process of putting down roots in Canada in their accounts refer in detail to the persistence of prejudices in the host society against immigrants – something their parents or they themselves experienced. Quite a few Canadians of British background had not concealed their skepticism when in 1896 the Canadian Minister of the Interior, Sir Clifford Sifton, encouraged the wholesale settlement of ethnic groups in the Prairie provinces, and Ruthenians/Ukrainians in large numbers settled there. Petrone mentions the fact that even Sifton had “grave doubts about the . . . cultural 7 Port Arthur was later merged with Fort William to form North Bay.

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acceptability of the Southern Europeans,” which went so far that he ruled: “No steps are to be taken to assist or encourage Italian immigration to Canada” (Breaking the Mould 21). That there was widespread concern is apparent in the reaction of individuals such as Stephen Leacock, the accomplished political scientist and humorist, who, in a speech he gave in 1910, ridiculed in a sarcastic phrase the influx of different ethnic groups. He departed dramatically from the optimistic assessment provided by popular writer Ralph Connor in The Foreigner (1909), where a positive forecast about the metamorphosis of immigrants in the new country occurred: “Out of breeds diverse in traditions, in ideals, in speech, in manner of life, Saxon and Slav, Teuton, Celt and Gaul, one people is being made” (Preface). For Leacock, the transformation of diverse heritages could only lead to degeneration, which prompted his sarcastic prophecy : “Out of all these we are to make a kind of mixed race in which is to be the political wisdom of the British, the chivalry of the French, the gall of the Galician, the hungriness of the Hungarians and the dirtiness of the Doukobor” (Leacock qtd. in Berger 151). Just as in the USA there was anxiety and fear that the arrival of so many speakers of foreign languages would result in a babel of tongues, with hybridity endangering the (Canadian) political system and the structure of the country. The first challenge the immigrants faced was their use as unskilled laborers and their positioning on a lower rung of the social ladder, a place in which they were expected to remain. Margaret Laurence was to render this phenomenon in her Manawaka fiction, where Ukrainians and other ethnic groups are disdained by the descendants of Scottish and Irish pioneers,8 whilst John Porter has retrospectively described the overt or tacit affirmation of a hierarchy among Canadians in the years between the World Wars as “the Vertical Mosaic” (1965). Numerous autobiographical texts reflect this collective experience of immigrants from among less favored nations. Laura Goodman Salverson, for example, related in retrospect her experiences after she had been relegated to the position of a domestic servant while working as a cook and housekeeper.9 Both Petrone’s first autobiography and Keefer’s account of the difficult rise of her grandparents and careers of her mother and aunt contain abundant evidence for their treatment as members of marginal groups. The lack of respect they found was bound up with their deficient command of English and thus the acquisition of proficiency in the language was a major challenge for the immigrants. Often immediately placed in lower grades in schools, together with much younger children, the offspring of immigrants were 8 Cf. for example Rachel’s problems with the Ukrainian Canadian Nick Kazlik, with whom she has a brief erotic relationship in A Jest of God (1966). 9 Cf. Confessions 326 – 41.

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embarrassed and looked down upon until the progress they made convinced their teachers of their (true) talents. In this context it is remarkable how late some immigrant kids were sent to school, and began to acquire the language of the majority. In the case of sickly Laura G. Salverson, who was ten before her energetic aunt Haldora insisted that she attend school (Confessions 179), this process included an eye-opening experience and a major stimulus for the girl. Her cultural capital was greater than that of other immigrant children as her father was a very articulate essayist writing for Icelandic magazines; he fed his daughter’s imagination with narratives of Icelandic heroes and heroines (Confessions 115 f and 178). Her joy in acquiring competence in the language of the majority was enhanced by the discovery that books written in this foreign tongue could be borrowed from a local library. The novels she read by George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy (Confessions 356, 378) offered the young girl wider vistas, and inspired her ambition to rise above the manual tasks of a seamstress and later a cook for which she seemed destined (Confessions 332ff, 344ff, 389ff). Eventually she gave expression to her own and her kin’s experiences and dreams in English. This ambition bore fruit in the 1920s in Salverson’s first novels10 and in 1939 in her prize-winning autobiography. The delay in the acquisition of English is also true for another prominent creative writer of immigrant background, the Mennonite Rudy Wiebe, whose childhood and youth in Saskatchewan was marked by poverty not prevented by the drudgery of his parents, recent refugees from the Soviet Union. As rendered in his autobiography, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest (2006), the encounter with English in school provided a major stimulus, inspiring the boy to passionately reflect on words and on language in general (cf. Ch. 4, 131 – 35), which eventually took him on the way to literary authorship and wide recognition. Salverson’s success as a voice of her people was also dependent on the support of generous fellow writers such as Nellie McClung, the fiction writer and political activist (cf. Confessions 399 – 400, 407 – 08), as the recognition of immigrants from non-English backgrounds was not easily achieved in Canadian society prior to the work of the ‘Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism’ in the 1960s. Even when beginning to be successful in professional careers, these immigrants or their descendants were often expected to resign themselves to subsidiary roles. Keefer’s aunt Vira, for instance, who had brilliantly achieved her medical degree, was confronted with the suggestion of a senior physician that she, as an accomplished young intern, should apply for a job at a clinic catering to the needs of immigrants (referring to the Labour Temple where her father had 10 Cf. her first book, The Viking Heart (1923).

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imbibed radical ideas) rather than at a regular hospital for WASPS. She rejected this piece of advice (Honey and Ashes 148). Even more unpleasant was the assumption during the early 1950s – the McCarthy era – that migrants associated with such radical ethnic institutions as the Labour Temple in Toronto, as Janice’s forebears had been, and especially speakers of Slavonic tongues – the ‘Bohunks’11 – were a potential risk to society. This fact accounts for the abandonment of Ukrainian in everyday conversation in Janice Keefer’s own family, a severe handicap in her contacts with her maternal grandparents who had achieved only very limited proficiency in English but whom she loved dearly and to whom she was later to dedicate her ‘family memoir.’ This resulted in the de facto loss of Ukrainian by the young generation (Honey and Ashes 149). Later attendance at Saturday morning classes in Ukrainian or ethnic camps could not remedy this lack. One of the consequences of the lack of that recognition that Charles Taylor has eloquently demanded for minorities in multicultural societies has been the inclination of young members of various minorities to accelerate their acculturation by embracing the language and cultural life style of the majority. This is apparent in all three autobiographical texts under scrutiny : like many fellow immigrants from Iceland, as a teenager Salverson sensed the appropriateness of shedding her “Icelandic hide” and of acquiring “a blameless Canadian skin, and Canadian habits” after suffering condescension and even ostracism (cf. Confessions 244 – 45 and 357). Petrone relates her rebellion as a teenager, unwilling to wear the knitted garments in the color of the Italian flag which her mother had made (cf. Breaking the Mould 35); as soon as she was legally able, she quickly abandoned her ethnically marked name Serafina in favor of Penny (Breaking the Mould 145 – 46), as she reported in her two autobiographies composed only when she was in her seventies. Even more telling are the sustained efforts of talented immigrant children to improve their proficiency in English and to excel in this self-imposed task, which eventually qualified them to become teachers of English. Petrone further scandalized her family by deciding to go abroad and teach English, first in Germany and France (1955 – 1958), and later in Africa (1963 – 1964).12 Her global experiences indirectly fostered her interest in other, often marginalized, cultures, and later inspired her activities on behalf of marginalized cultures in her own

11 This word was used as a disparaging term for a person of east central European decent, usually an unskilled foreign-born laborer, later also for immigrants from southeastern Europe. Used since about 1903, it was originally a portmanteau word based on the nouns “Bohemians” and “Hungarians.” 12 On her adventures and sight-seeing in the Old World, cf. Embracing Serafina, 68 – 261.

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country. This led to her pioneer role as an editor of anthologies of First Nations literature.13 Keefer similarly perfected her command of English and launched a career as a creative writer and academic, doing postgraduate studies in England and then teaching in the Maritimes. Her early choice of an “Anglik” as her spouse, like her deliberate choice of her field of study contrary to her mother’s wishes, was not coincidental either (Honey and Ashes 143). Its implication, a break with ethnically marked habits and an escape from the closely knit family circle, are spelt out in her autobiography. They are also present in an enhanced fictional form in the story entitled “Prodigals” (Travelling Ladies 237 – 58), which relates the pangs of conscience the protagonist Anna feels when, due to her migratory existence, she is only belatedly reached by a message sent by her parents that her beloved grandmother was seriously ill. She fails to return in time to say goodbye to her Nana. As Honey and Ashes shows, Keefer has even attributed a specific dream14 of her beloved grandmother Olena she had had herself to her protagonist Anna (Honey and Ashes 15). She has sharpened the poignancy of the sense of loss and implied an awareness of her desertion in the fictional narrative. The tension between the restricted ethnic sphere and the wide world of the Anglophones had prompted her flight from family ties for which Janice’s alter ego Anna has had to pay a price. Yet while registering the factual and imagined difficulties for immigrant families – the problems with the majority culture and the tensions inside immigrant families due to the different paces of members of different generations in the process of acculturation – Keefer’s family narrative establishes a fair balance by acknowledging the support and encouragement both her mother Natalia and her aunt Vira received from her Canadian secondary school teachers, Ms. Ferguson and Ms. Sinclair, for which they were deeply grateful (Honey and Ashes 132 – 34). Her mother made it to the Toronto School of Design and developed her talent so as to design fashionable clothes (Honey and Ashes 140 – 42), while her aunt, through her excellent marks and dedication, managed to get into Medical School of Toronto University. This account of generous support parallels the narrative of the debt of gratitude Anzia Yezierska’s fictional heroine feels to one of her teachers in New York in a short story in Hungry Hearts 25 years previously. That very teacher gave her a sense that her new country was interested not only in her

13 Cf. her pioneer publications First People, First Voices (1984) and Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present (1990). 14 Cf. Anna’s dream in “Prodigals,” 256 – 58.

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physical strength and ready to exploit her energy but also in her as a human being.15 Admittedly, the ethnic groups themselves initially also viewed with great misgivings the possibility that their children would cross ethnic borders in choosing their partners, as Keefer relates in connection with her aunt Vira. She needed nine years of courtship before she felt right in marrying outside her ethnic group, against the wishes of her parents, another Anglik, a young IrishCanadian (cf. Honey and Ashes 153) though she herself had meanwhile become a successful pediatrician. That ancient animosities and enmities outlasted residence in Europe and persisted even in the new home country is, incidentally, memorably depicted in Henry Kreisel’s story “The Almost Meeting.” In this narrative the marriage of two lovers, Lukas and Helena, is ruined by the insistence of the wife’s father that her partner from another ethnic group be rejected as he belongs to a nation hostile in Europe to that of her family (The Almost Meeting 1 – 12). Meanwhile, of course, the increasing frequency of intermarriages and the way in which more and more Canadians answer pertinent questions concerning ‘belonging’ in the census forms – they give Canadian as their ‘origin’ rather than particular ethnic groups16 – indicate that progress has been made towards a bridging of such categorical divisions. In the epilogue to her family memoir, Keefer confesses that she envies in a way the young woman who was her guide in L’viv for the certainty with which she knows where she belongs. Having been preoccupied with the home of her maternal ancestors in spite of disappointments she experienced when trying to find her roots on the other side of the Atlantic, Keefer cannot confidently give one name and location for her home. In her adolescence she admits she wanted “to dis-invent” herself, pretend that she came “from nowhere, nothing but clear or empty water,” and as a mature writer she continues, “I know that what I really want is only this: to be at home” (Honey and Ashes 328). But this home she needs, she suggests, is “open, conflicted, uncertain”, and includes being “marked by the past” (Honey and Ashes 329), that of her ancestors, now fully acknowledged. A similar, though more dramatic experience of recognition is ascribed to the protagonist of Keefer’s fictional exploration of the heritage of Eva Chown in The Green Library (1996). She discovers to her dismay that her biological father was not the middle class Torontonian Garth whom she had thought of as her progenitor, but a displaced individual from Eastern Europe. During her journey to 15 Cf. “How I Found America” in Yezierska, Hungry Hearts 292 – 98. 16 In the census of 2006, 10,066,290 people gave “Canadian” rather than another specific ethnic or national group as their origin (5,748,720 as single response, 4,317,570 as one of multiple responses). Cf. Statistics Canada (2013).

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find her roots in Ukraine, she herself gets intimately involved with another Ukrainian, and eventually acknowledges her own past and embraces her hitherto unknown heritage from the other hemisphere while returning to her Canadian home. That such a r¦sum¦ can be provided by the accomplished Canadian writer and critic (and that she affirms that she herself has and needs a home that is “uncertain and open”) is an indication of the distance Canadian society has traveled since the liberalization of the immigration laws in the 1970s. It is possible for an author ostensibly belonging to a group formerly marginalized and discriminated against to speak up and profess loyalty to her heritage, though such assertion is not to the detriment of the culture of her own country. It is no coincidence that Keefer has been one of the firmest advocates of the concept of multiculturalism in Canada and that she has repeatedly explicated its implications and celebrated the transformation of the discourse of the “ethnic mosaic” by the concept of interculturality, or rather transculturality. Her essays (of 1991 and 1996) laud the potential of such an approach and bear witness to the conviction that such an attitude can energize the culture of her country and vitalize the imagination of spokespersons of groups which formerly found no voice and remained silent. The recognition granted to them since the adoption of the principle of multiculturalism and the reorientation of Canadian society has encouraged many to tell stories about their kin, to explore the past of their families and relate poignant facts linked to their old home and traditions. This has prompted a remarkable increase in the number of accounts of ethnic childhoods and of the cultural heritage of immigrants. The productivity of the broad genre of lifewriting is demonstrated in Hornung’s contribution to The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature (2009) and the full integration of Canada in global processes as demonstrated in the following essay of this book by Neil Ten Kortenaar (556 – 74). This highlights the significant contribution of second-wave immigrants from Third World countries and implicitly reveals the impetus representatives of less favored European ethnic groups received from the example of award-winning authors originally from ‘exotic’ countries. The recognition to be granted to naturalized people born elsewhere and their descendants also implied concrete measures, among them financial support for ethnic communities and their cultural projects including ethnic presses. As it is well documented that there is a strong trend to adopt English as the home language and not to continue using the mother tongue, such support seems to be called for in view of the principle of multiculturalism and the recognition of the

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value of different heritages.17 At the same time that heritage languages were recognized and supported through grants, naturalized Canadians received encouragement and concrete support to acquire the languages of the founding nations. Second Language Instruction is regarded as a necessary pre-requisite for economic survival. Only since World War II have language and citizenship programs for adult newcomers been in existence in the provinces. One of the momentous changes brought about by the reform of Canadian immigration laws since the 1960s was that it has enabled members of erstwhile less desirable nations and ethnic groups to apply for immigration, and this has attracted many young professionals, especially from South Asia and China, to come. While the life stories of some of the descendants of earlier Chinese immigrants relate the difficulties they faced in the bachelor societies of Chinatowns and the uncomfortable categorization they regularly encountered – we may recall Fred Wah’s account in his prose biotext Diamond Grill (1996) of his identification by his teacher as a member of a marginalized group although he was only 25 percent Chinese (Diamond Grill 53) – the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Chinese and other visible minorities, which currently make up more than 5 millions, i. e. more than 16 % of Canadians, has metamorphosed Canadian society. Other Chinese Canadians, who are less hybrid, have offered ‘Memoir[s] of a Past Lost and Found’ – this is the subtitle of Wayson Choy’s Paper Shadows (1999) – recounting their life stories with the original restrictions, the appeal of different cultures to the young, and their eventual acknowledgment in a transformed society. Following the debate about the implementation of multiculturalism, a discussion was initiated about citizenship, and the rights, responsibilities and duties it implied. The significance of Joy Kogawa’s critical intervention in 1981 when in Obasan she exposed the injustices experienced by second and third generation Japanese Canadians (the nisei and sansei) already naturalized in the country, who in World War II were interned and deprived of their rights of citizenship, is beyond doubt. The discussion was continued by her in a text entitled Itsuka, which, in revised form appeared in 2005 as Emily Kato, where the debate inside the Japanese Canadian community was also conveyed to a larger readership; a debate that is still continuing. In addition, Ondaatje’s intervention through his fictional demonstration of the contribution of marginalized ethnic groups to the building of central urban structures in Toronto in his novel In the Skin of a Lion (1987) amplified the discussion, while his earlier rendition of familial collective experiences in Running in the Family (1982) directed attention to the individual past of new Canadians outside the federal country to which 17 Cf. the Heritage Language Program in Ontario and other provinces as described by Barbara J. Burnaby in “Language Policy” (1999): 1293 – 95.

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he had come as a very promising student. And quite a few young professionals who arrived with excellent qualifications – a second wave of newcomers from Third World countries – decided to become full-time writers and give voice to the ethnic groups they belonged to. David Staines has drawn attention to their significant role at the millennium (1999) and he has elaborated on the topic since then. The attention paid to narratives by Rohinton Mistry and M. G. Vassanji about their own past and their countries of origin, has clearly benefitted from the appeal of ‘difference,’ while an educated readership, which seems to have internalized a change in social paradigms, has apparently appreciated the selection of their works for the numerous prestigious awards they have received. One of the significant results of the fundamental reorientation of Canadian society has been the (delayed) willingness of the children of immigrants, even eagerness to find out about the past of their families, the exploration of poignant facts related to their old home and to traditional habits. This has prompted a remarkable increase in the number of accounts of ethnic childhoods and of the cultural heritage of immigrants. It is not coincidental that writers of distinct ethnic backgrounds, such as Keefer, have celebrated the transformation of the discourse on the “ethnic mosaic” by the use of notions such as multiculturalism, or interculturality or rather “transculturality”.18 The recognition granted to authors ostensibly belonging to groups formerly discriminated against has encouraged others to speak up and profess loyalty to their heritage, though not to the detriment of the national culture of Canada. The willingness of writers of “oriental” provenance to look back towards their old homes encouraged representatives of European ethnicities to recapture the features of their “old place.” Thus, in a good measure, well educated graduates from Third World countries who followed their inclination to turn their eyes back to their countries of origin anticipated similar efforts of spokespersons of European ethnic groups in Canada. Ondaatje, Mistry, and Vassanji thus helped to open doors for ethnic writers of European background to speak out and give expression to their imaginaries, including narratives of difficulties overcome and solutions found in their new country of residence. Meanwhile, life stories and narratives of formerly silenced groups have become such regular phenomena that experts have recently debated the question whether one could diagnose the emergence of “Asian Canadian Writing beyond Autoethnography.”19 It is not far-fetched to regard this debate as a sign that some of the more painful challenges of the migration experience have been mastered by many who have crossed the oceans to settle in Canada. 18 Cf. the debate of these terms by Heinz Antor in his essay “From Postcolonialism and Interculturalism to the Ethics of Transculturalism in The Age of Globalization” (2010). 19 Cf. Eleanor Ty and Christl Verduyn in their collection with the same title, published in 2008.

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One wonders whether and when European countries will significantly tap the reservoir of talent from these regions and whether they will similarly be rewarded by fictional works of art reflecting the integration of these newcomers to the labor market into the countries in which they are naturalized.

Bibliography Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. 1910. New York: Penguin, 1997. Antor, Heinz. “From Postcolonialism and Interculturalism to the Ethics of Transculturalism in The Age of Globalization.” From Interculturalism to Transculturalism: Mediating Encounters in Cosmopolitan Contexts. Eds. Heinz Antor, Matthias Merkl, Klaus Stierstorfer, and Laurenz Volkmann. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2010. 1 – 13. Berger, Carl. The Sense of Power: Studies in the Idea of Canadian Imperialism, 1867 – 1914. 1970. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1976. Bruce, Jean. After the War. Documentation of Canadian Immigration between 1945 and 1965. Don Mills, Ontario: Fitz Henry and Whiteside, 1982. Burnaby, Barbara J. “Language Policy.” The Canadian Encyclopedia: Year 2000 Edition. Ed. James H. Marsh. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999. 1293 – 95. Choy, Wayson. Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood. New York: Picador USA, 1999. Connor, Ralph. The Foreigner. Toronto: Westminster, 1909. Ertler, Klaus Dieter, Martin Löschnigg, and Yvonne Völkl, eds. Cultural Constructions of Migration in Canada. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011. Hornung, Alfred. “American Autobiographies and Autobiography Criticism: Review Essays.” American Studies/Amerikastudien 35.3 (Fall 1990): 371 – 405. ––. “Transcultural life-writing.” The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature. Ed. Coral Ann Howells and Eva-Marie Kröller. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 536 – 55. Kadar, Marlene. Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992. Keefer, Janice Kulyk. “Coming Across Bones: Historiographic Ethnofiction.” Essays on Canadian Writing 57 (Winter 1995): 84 – 104. ––. “From Dialogue to Polylogue: Canadian Transcultural Writing During the Deluge.” Difference and Community: Canadian and European Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Peter Easingwood, Konrad Groß and Lynette Hunter. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. 59 – 70. ––. “From Mosaic to Kaleidoscope.” Books in Canada 20:6 (Sept. 1991): 13 – 16. ––. The Green Library. 1996. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1998. ––. Honey and Ashes: A Story of a Family. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1998. ––. Travelling Ladies. 1990. Toronto: Harper Collins Perennial, 1992. Kelley, Ninette, and Michael J. Trebilcock. The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy. 2nd ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010. Knowles, Valerie. Strangers at our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540 – 2006. Rev. ed. Toronto: Dundurn, 2007. Kogawa, Joy. Emily Kato. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005. ––. Itsuka. New York: Anchor, 1992.

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––. Obasan. Boston: Godine, 1981. Kreisel, Henry. The Almost Meeting and Other Stories. 1981. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2004. Kortenaar, Neil. “Multiculturalism and Globalization.” The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature. Ed. Coral Ann Howells and Eva-Marie Kröller. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 556 – 79. Laurence, Margaret. A Jest of God. 1966. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974. McClung, Nellie. Clearing the West: My Own Story. Toronto: T. Allen, 1935. Neuman, Shirley. “Reading Canadian Autobiography.” Essays on Canadian Writing 60 (Winter 1996): 1 – 274. Ondaatje, Michael. In the Skin of a Lion. 1987. London: Picador, 1988. ––. Running in the Family. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982. Petrone, Penny. Breaking the Mould. 1995. Toronto: Guernica, 2004. ––. Embracing Serafina. Toronto: Guernica, 2000. Porter, John. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1965. Salverson, Laura Goodman. Confessions of an Immigrant Daughter. 1939. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1981. ––. The Viking Heart. 1923. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975. Statistics Canada. 2006 Census. 2013. 11 January 2013 . Staines, David. “Canadian Literature at the Millenium.” Canada and the Millenium. Ed. Anna Jakabfi. Budapest: Lörand Eötvös UP, 1999. 32 – 44. Taylor, Charles. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Ed. Amy Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994. Thompson, Alexa, and Debie Van de Wiel. Pier 21: An Illustrated History of Canada’s Gateway. Halifax: Nimbus, 2002. Ty, Eleanor and Christl Verduyn, eds. Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfried Laurier UP, 2008. Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. 1996. Edmonton: NeWest P, 2004. Wiebe, Rudy. Of this Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2006. Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. 1925. New York: Persea Books, 1975. ––. Hungry Hearts and Other Stories. 1920. New York: Persea Books, 1985. ––. Red Ribbon on a White Horse. 1950. New York: Persea Books, 1987. Zacharasiewicz, Waldemar. “In Search Him/Herself: Autobiographical Perspectives of European Immigrants in Canadian Literature.” Social and Cultural Interaction and Literary Landscapes in the Canadian West: Impressions of an Exploratory Field Trip and Academic Interaction in the Canadian West. Ed. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz and Fritz Peter Kirsch. Wien: Facultas, 2010. 97 – 109. ––. “Self-Perception and Presentation of Jewish Immigrants in North American Discourse, 1900 – 1940.” Imagology Revisited. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 443 – 63.

Martin Löschnigg

‘Translated’ Persons: Rendering Migrant Identities in Anglo-Canadian Literature

In his essay “Imaginary Homelands,” Indo-British writer Salman Rushdie refers to himself as a ‘translated’ person, using the word in its etymological meaning of ‘bearing across.’ Migrants and exiles like Rushdie are thus people who have been borne across the world, living in translation and being sometimes “lost in translation,” to quote the title of Eva Hoffman’s memoir. Having emigrated from communist Poland to North America after the regime had opened the borders for Jews in 1957, Hoffman experienced how ‘life in a new language’ may create a profound sense of disorientation: “. . . the problem is that the signifier has become severed from the signified. The words I learn now don’t stand for things in the same unquestioned way they did in my native tongue” (106). If cultural anxieties will be aggravated by transferring to a foreign language environment, as in the case of Hoffman, they are by no means limited to such a transfer. Accordingly, Madelaine Hron, like Rushdie, employs ‘translation’ not only in a linguistic, but also in a wider socio-cultural sense to refer to a cluster of identitary questions which are raised by migration.1 However, while Rushdie challenges the view that “something always gets lost in translation,” contending “that something can also be gained” (17), that new layers of meaning may be added to experience and to one’s sense of identity, Hron emphasizes ‘immigrant suffering,’ challenging the cultural theorizing that often deflects from the ‘hard facts’ about migration. She rightly argues that for instance theory has tended to disregard the obvious and has failed to consider distinctions between refugees, immigrants and (intellectual) exiles (6 – 15). Also, she claims, immigrant writing has frequently leveled the complex responses to the migrant experience by streamlining them into a teleological pattern of acculturation through hardships.2 Whether migration is involuntary or self-chosen, whether its reasons are war, political repression or economic deprivation on the one hand, or the mobility 1 Cf. Madelaine Hron, Translating Pain 16. 2 Cf. Hron 15 – 20.

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that comes with economic globalization on the other, it always creates a state of uncertainty. In particular, this refers to the effects of migration on an individual’s or a community’s sense of identity. Loss vs. gain, the attempt at reaching for some ‘core’ identity vs. opening oneself up to a new culture – these are the poles which circumscribe the range of responses to the experience of migration. In this essay, I shall discuss renderings of such responses in literary texts which deal with various stages in the history of immigration to Canada. As I shall try to show, these texts do not render teleological narratives of success or failure, but centre on the ambivalences created by socio-cultural (including linguistic) ‘translation.’ Examples will range from Susanna Moodie’s rendering of her experiences as an early nineteenth-century settler in Roughing It in the Bush (1852) to non-European immigration to Canada’s urban centres as rendered by SKY Lee, Rohinton Mistry and Madeleine Thien, contemporary Canadian writers of Asian extraction. If Moodie and these later writers may appear to be very unevenly matched, I will try to show how in each case – as in that of my other examples – narratives render the impact of migration and of cultural ‘translation’ on the protagonists’ sense of self. Before I do so, however, some reflections on the relation between literature and migration are called for, and I will be very brief here. Like all real-life phenomena, migration, too, is embedded in conceptual frameworks which are determined not least by cultural factors. ‘Migrant identity’ and the ‘migrant self ’ are thus concepts in which the values and norms of cultures, in this case those of the host and guest cultures, are reflected. Literature is clearly an indicator of these values and norms, and is therefore expressive of how societies view ‘migration’ and ‘migrants.’ Above all, however, it is in the form of cultural practices such as literature that the ‘human factor’ in migration expresses itself. The fictionalizing of experience in imaginative literature means that writers can explore alternative versions of ‘self ’ and ‘other,’ thereby making visible the processes which apply in the socio-cultural construction of ‘migrant identities.’ Indeed, the literature of migration includes a wide range of autobiographical, semi-autobiographical and fictional accounts, and the borderlines between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ are often very difficult to draw. In some instances, as for example in Frederick Philip Grove’s A Search for America (1927) and In Search of Myself (1946), different, more or less openly fictionalized, versions of an author’s immigrant experience exist side by side. In Foucauldian terms, literature is a means by which individuals make sense of and define their existence through historically and culturally constituted ‘subject positions’ such as, in this case, that of ‘the migrant.’ Since these subject positions are expressive of power relations, narratives of migration, whether

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fictional or factual, reflect the ‘discursive formations’ which justify, rationalize and reproduce ‘migrant identities.’3 They render the experiential dimension of these identities by showing how ‘migrant identities’ are lived and experienced by people in particular social locations. Literary texts dealing with migration render the experience of living and writing in ‘translation,’ as it were, i. e. the experience of living in between or within the overlap of several languages, societies and cultures. They render aspects of trans-culturation and the blurring of cultural boundaries in the wake of migration, and the multiplicity and transitory nature of migrant identities. As a result, the literature of migration frequently shows the following characteristics: 1. an interplay of characters and of locations which function as representatives of different generations and cultural norms; 2. chronological structures which combine the past and present of migrant protagonists or their communities; 3. multiple perspectives which emphasize relativity and undermine essentializing notions of cultural identity ; 4. an interweaving of fact and fiction which mirrors the de-stabilizing and redefinition of self in the process of trans-culturation; and, 5. in many cases, a preference for genres whose openness reflects the fragmentary and fluid nature of migrant identity constructs, such as for instance the short story cycle. Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush is the classic account of early nineteenth-century settlement in Upper Canada. It is an account which is suffused with the author’s middle-class sensibilities and her feeling of being in fact an exiled English gentlewoman. Indeed, the main motivation of the Moodies for leaving England seems to have been to preserve their social status in the face of dwindling funds. As they found themselves disappointed in their hopes, one of the explicitly stated aims of Moodie’s book became that of preventing more of her class, England’s genteel poor, from falling victims to wily land-speculators and their promises of a Canadian Garden of Eden.4 The narrative renders Moodie’s desolation and despair as she and her family suffer all kinds of hardships and setbacks following their arrival in the New World in 1832. However, it also renders the author’s determination in the face of adversity and her belief in the ultimate benevolence of God. The interest which the book still holds today results mostly from its rendering of the tensions inside the author as she finds herself in an environment so completely different from the genteel world which she has left behind. These tensions, which Margaret Atwood has 3 Cf. Foucault: “Afterword: The Subject and Power” (1982). 4 Cf. Moodie, “Introduction” (2007).

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famously summarized by stating that Moodie was “divided down the middle” (62), result mainly from Moodie’s class-consciousness, which is now faced with the egalitarian values of a pioneer society. Moodie expresses her revulsion at the vulgarity of her social surroundings and the impudence, as it appears to her, of servants who now consider themselves on a par with their betters. Accordingly, her memoir expresses a great deal of nostalgia for home and frustration with her new life: “At that period my love for Canada was a feeling very nearly allied to that which the condemned criminal entertains for his cell – his only hope for escape being through the portals of the grave” (Roughing It 91). Moodie’s account of her life in Canada is continued in Life in the Clearings versus the Bush (1853); this sequel to Roughing It renders the Moodies’ life in the small town of Belleville, where they moved in 1838, after John Dunbar Moodie had been appointed Sheriff of Victoria district. This marks a return from a liminal ‘green world’, although a distinctly harsh and challenging one, to the comforts of small town life, from an anarchic world where established social conventions toppled, to the stability of a community in which the order and values of Victorian Britain were to be reproduced. It is upon this basis that she can also speak, in retrospect, about her growing love for Canada: . . . my love for the country has steadily increased, from year to year, and my attachment to Canada is now so strong that I cannot imagine any inducement, short of absolute necessity, which could induce me to leave the colony, where as a wife and mother, some of the happiest years of my life have been spent. (Roughing It 346)5

Moodie’s ambivalence is reflected in the composition and heterogeneous structure of Roughing It, which is in essence a collection of vividly rendered sketches, a form which she had already practiced back home in England. Including material which the author had previously published in diverse literary magazines, the book contains personal impressions, descriptions of eccentric characters and of the sublimity of the Canadian wild, as well as poems by Moodie’s husband. As John Thurston has noted, “Moodie invests her narrative with the hope of restoring a unitary sense of herself. This unitary self is associated with her English past, and with the genres of the lyric, short story and romance” (qtd. in Moodie 439). However, Thurston goes on to say, Moodie’s attempts at re-writing an English self are subverted by the disparity of her material and her own cultural anxieties, and a profound sense of failure emerges. Although a consciously literary work, Moodie’s Roughing It is still a memoir which is largely based on authentic experience. Early immigration and settlement have also been dealt with, however, in a number of recent historical novels, for instance in Jane Urquhart’s Away (1993), which renders, from the per5 This also appears in the introduction to the 1871 edition of Roughing It in the Bush.

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spectives of several women protagonists, the story of a family of Irish immigrants. The Stone Carvers (2001) by the same author deals with German immigrants and the commemoration of the First World War. Bernice Morgan’s Random Passage (1992) is about the struggles of a young Englishwoman whose family have come to live in nineteenth-century Newfoundland.6 Other examples include novels which deal with the early history of Non-European immigration to Canada, like for instance Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981), which portrays the fates of Japanese Canadians especially during the Second World War, and SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe (1990), a family saga which spans several generations of Vancouver’s Chinese community. The plot of Disappearing Moon Cafe touches on important events in ChineseCanadian history. In particular, it deals with the consequences of the 1885 and 1923 immigration laws which aimed at barring further Chinese immigration to Canada after the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway had brought a considerable number of Chinese into the country.7 As Lee’s novel shows, one of the effects of the new immigration laws was the ghettoizing of the Chinese due to hostile attitudes prevailing among the majority (‘Keep Canada White!’), but also, to a certain extent, due to voluntary segregation. Another result was the creation of a bachelor society, as it became difficult for the Chinese to bring over wives or families: “. . . Chinatown in 1924 . . . had become a self-contained community of men” (Lee 92).8 Lee’s novel renders the history of the Wong family through the voice of Kae Ying Woo, a member of the fourth generation. Frequently ironic in tone, Kae’s narrative reveals the racist and sexist imperatives which have shaped the lives of Chinese Vancouverites, and the uneasy mixture of acceptance and resistance regarding these imperatives which characterizes Chinese attitudes. Lee’s narrative technique is complex, using multiple perspectives in order to render the theme of a search for identity, and breaking the chronology to convey the interrelation of past and present. As Kae’s narrative comprises the perspectives of other characters, she transcends the conventional boundaries which apply to first-person narrators and approaches a heterodiegetic voice. The novel’s technical ‘syncretism,’ however, is not only evident with regard to narrative perspective and chronology, but also in the fusion of writing and oral tradition. All this is characteristic of works written from an intercultural point of view, combining different socio-cultural systems of reference. 6 For a perceptive study of recent Canadian historical novels, cf. Herb Wyile, Speculative Fictions (2002). 7 On the history of the Chinese in Canada, cf. Susanne Hilf ’s concisely informative account in Writing the Hyphen (2000), especially chapter 2.1., “Socio-historical Background – Chinese Migration to Canada,” 27 – 36. Cf. also Kay J. Anderson: Vancouver’s Chinatown (1991) and Ronald B. Hatch, “Chinatown Ghosts in the White Empire” (1996). 8 SKY [= Sharon Kwan Ying] Lee.

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The novel begins with the search of Gwei Chang, the founder of the family, for the remains of Chinese workers who died along the tracks. Organized by Chinese family clans, the repatriation of bones was motivated by the veneration of ancestors in Taoism and Confucianism. Correspondingly, the living, including those already born in Canada, long for the old world and are driven by a desire to retain their ethno-cultural purity. The Chinese characters in Disappearing Moon Cafe act within a frame set by the norms of the dominant European Canadians. In the segregated space of Vancouver’s Chinatown, they try to compensate restriction by clinging to an ‘authentic’ Chinese identity. White racism breeds an equal amount of racial hatred on the side of the Chinese, as is manifested in the demonizing of the ‘other.’ Lee’s novel shows how on both sides feelings of superiority are linked with misguided concepts of cultural ‘authenticity.’ Such essentializing notions of ethno-cultural identity, however, are undermined by the curiously hybrid restaurant of the Wongs, the Disappearing Moon Cafe of the title, a higly symbolic space which is part traditional Chinese tea house, part modern bar and diner : . . . Choy Fuk liked the more modern counter-and-booth section better. He loved the highly polished chrome and brightly lit glass, the checkerboard tiles on the floor, the marble countertop. And except for the customers, his mother, and perhaps the cacti, there was nothing chinese [sic] about it. (43)

Kae, the narrator, recognizes her family’s obsession with their ‘true’ Chinese heritage as a mistake which in fact instigated the family’s decline. Also, she is aware that the failure to speak out against racially motivated injustice has played into the hands of the dominant culture: “Maybe this is a chinese-in-Canada [sic] trait, a part of the great wall of silence and invisibility we have built around us. I have a misgiving that the telling of our history is forbidden” (242). What may have been opportune at the time of restrictive legislation, namely to keep a low profile, is now seen in a negative light, especially since the pressure of cultural contact has dismantled traditional norms and values. For the members of the younger generation in particular, ‘Chinese-Canadian’ signifies hybridity, plurality, and heterogeneity. This does not mean, however, that this generation finds it so much easier to acculturate. On the contrary, they feel profoundly disoriented, confronted as they are with their parents’ nostalgia for China on the one hand and their own desire for a ‘Canadian’ identity on the other : “Chineseness made me uncomfortable” (89), as the narrator, who is torn between traditionalism and the demands of a modern professional career, comes to admit. In the end, however, Kae succeeds in freeing herself from the encroachment of tradition: she becomes a writer who will re-define her cultural

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identity, or what Roy Miki has termed “Asiancy,”9 in a new, trans-cultural sense.10 In recent Canadian literature, representations of ‘migrant identity’ have been situated within a socio-cultural framework which has been shaped by the country’s multicultural policy. As Donna Bennett has emphasized, multiculturalism provides a cultural and political environment which “encourages individuals to see their identity simultaneously in terms of place of origin and of place of residency” (10). In Canadian literature, this is manifested in numerous narratives of origin, which have appealed to the reading public as testimonies to the richness of contemporary Canada’s cultural heritage. Until the 1980s, more or less, immigrant writers concentrated on immigrant life and the difficulties of acculturation, of ‘fitting in.’ One of the best-known examples is Austin Clarke’s trilogy of novels on the lives of Caribbean immigrants in Toronto, The Meeting Point (1967), Storm of Fortune (1971), and The Bigger Light (1975). Also, there is John Marlyn’s Under the Ribs of Death (1957), a novel on Winnipeg’s Hungarian community, and Brian Moore’s The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960), the story of a hapless Irish immigrant in Montreal. Since the 1980s, however, Canadian immigrant writers have increasingly turned to their countries of origin and their family histories. Thus, Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe (2003) describes the troubled life of a woman in a fictionalized version of the author’s native Barbados, and his earlier memoir Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack (1980) reviews the exigencies of a childhood and youth shaped by the island’s colonial past. Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion (1987) deals with the unnamed immigrants mainly from South-Eastern Europe who helped to build modern Toronto. His earlier Running in the Family (1981), however, presents an anecdotal family history, interspersed with poems and photographs, in search of the author’s roots. Anil’s Ghost (2000) is a novel on the civil war in Ondaatje’s native Sri Lanka, while his most recent novel, The Cat’s Table (2011), renders events during a passage from Sri Lanka to Britain, and a youthful protagonist whose migration is clearly based on Ondaatje’s own. In this connection, one must also mention the works of M. G. Vassanji, the author of several novels and collections of short stories which are mostly set among the Indian community of East Africa. This is where the author himself grew up before migrating first to the United States, and then to Canada, where he now lives in Toronto. With the exception of No New Land (1991), a novel about a group of Ismaili Indians in a Toronto apartment building, the role of Canada in Vassanji’s works is restricted 9 Cf. Roy Miki, “Asiancy : Making Space for Asian Canadian Writing” (1995). Cf. also Aparajita Nanda, “Identity Politics and the Voice of Autobiography in SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe.” 10 On the trans-cultural dimension in Lee’s novel, cf. my essay “‘How do you say AIDS in Cree?’” (2007).

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to that of a vantage point from which immigrants look back upon their old worlds. This tendency to ‘search for one’s roots’ can also be observed with writers from the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic mainstream, if one may use this expression, such as Alice Munro. Winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature, she is unanimously considered to be one of the major short story writers in the English language today. In her collection The View from Castle Rock (2006), she engages with the history of her family and their immigration from Scotland to the wilds of nineteenth-century Ontario. Munro’s book consists of a series of closely linked stories which are firmly rooted in the author’s family history and in her own life. The first part renders the story of her Scottish ancestors, the Laidlaws, who immigrated to Canada in the nineteenth century. Their migration and experiences in the New World set the frame for the second part of the book, which presents episodes from the life of the first-person narrator in the terms of a progression towards individual stages in life, thereby providing a variation on the time-honoured trope of life as a journey – a variation, one should add, which is of particular relevance within the Canadian cultural context. Exploring the spaces in between these stages, which are closely associated with actual geographical locations, Munro underlines the idea of migration. She emphasizes transition and the ‘rites of passage’ which apply in each case and which provide a figurative equivalent to the passage of her ancestors across the Atlantic. In particular, these rites include an alternating pattern of expectations and disillusionment which is prefigured in the episode that has given the book its title, an episode which centres on the delusive view of a ‘promised land.’11 A group that has made a considerable contribution to Canadian literature is that of the Mennonites, Low-German-speaking Anabaptists who settled mainly on the prairies at the beginning of the twentieth century. Retaining the use of Plautdietsch within their communities (and of Standard German as the language of Bible reading and Church services), while at the same time interacting with allophone environments (Slavic, Spanish, English) as a result of their migrations, the Mennonites have lived in permanent linguistic and socio-cultural translation. Their migrations throughout the centuries are the subject of Rudy Wiebe’s novel Sweeter than All the World (2001). While Wiebe’s best-known historical novels, The Temptations of Big Bear (1973), The Scorched-Wood People (1977), and A Discovery of Strangers (1994), are concerned with the troubled history of European and Native Canadian relations, the settlement of the Canadian West and the exploration of the North, Sweeter than All the World refers to the author’s own Mennonite heritage. The novel starts with the be11 For a detailed study of the significance of migration in Munro’s book, cf. my essay “Rites of Passage” (2009).

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ginning of the Anabaptist movement in the early sixteenth century and follows the Mennonites’ migrations through time, from the Low Countries to Poland, Russia, and, eventually, to either South America or Canada. As the novel vividly illustrates, the story of the Mennonites is one of religious persecution, socioeconomic repression, and of living in displacement. Wiebe’s ‘Mennonite novel’ concentrates on themes which are characteristic of diasporic literature, namely the “experience of displacement,” the “process of acculturation or integration,” “gaps between generations,” and the “tensions between individuals and their communities” (Kamboureli 13). Above all, however, Wiebe’s narrative expresses a longing for stability. In the course of their migrations, the Mennonites live in close contact with other cultures. Unlike many other migration narratives, however, which emphasize the idea of a resulting cultural hybridity, Sweeter than All the World seems to be concerned with the search for an authentic core – a stable element amid the inter-cultural experiences of the Mennonite community, and a continuity of tradition.12 In the following, I should like to discuss very briefly aspects of ‘translation’ and cultural ambivalence in two short stories by Canadian writers with Asian backgrounds, Rohinton Mistry and Madeleine Thien. Rohinton Mistry, born in 1952, grew up within the Parsi community of Mumbai and immigrated to Canada in his early twenties. Of the stories in his collection Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), only the last, “Swimming Lessons,” is set in Canada. In this story, the multi-national inhabitants of a Toronto apartment building represent the Canadian cultural mosaic in microcosm. Among them is the first-person narrator, a young Parsi recently arrived from Mumbai, who is trying to find his bearings in the new country, suffering a series of frustrations in the process but winning through to optimism in the end. As he does so, the narrative shifts between Canada and India, between the protagonist’s present and his past, and to his parents back home who are eagerly awaiting news from their son. What they eventually receive is a book of his stories, the very Tales from Firozsha Baag, a metaleptic touch which strikes home the intimate connection between fact and fiction in much immigrant writing: The last story they liked the best of all, because it had the most in it about Canada, and now they felt they knew at least a little bit, even if it was a very little bit, about his day-today life in his apartment; and Father said if he continues to write about such things he will become popular because I am sure they are interested there in reading about life through the eyes of an immigrant, it provides a different viewpoint; the only danger is if he changes and becomes so much like them that he will write like one of them and lose the important difference. (Mistry 248) 12 On Wiebe’s novel, cf. my essay “Historical Perspectives on Migrant Communities in the Contemporary Canadian Novel” (2004).

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Rendering the perspective of the young man’s parents, this passage reflects on the complexities of immigrant writing through its ironic play on difference and acculturation, on integration and opposition and on self and other. As is also illustrated by Mistry’s story, Canada in recent works by immigrant writers frequently provides a point of departure from which these writers transcend places and chronological strictures, looking back on their old worlds and showing how these intersect with Canada. This is evident also in the transitional and transnational spaces in some of the stories by M. G. Vassanji, such as “The London-Returned,” in Rachna Mara’s short story collection Of Customs and Excise (1991), which renders the lives and migrations of an Indian family’s women from an inter-generational point of view, in Lydia Kwa’s novel This Place Called Absence (2000), and in Madeleine Thien’s Certainty (2006), to give just a few examples. In these texts, different times and places merge in the sweep of a narrative (or in the combination of individual narratives in the case of the story collections), yet there is Canada as a vanishing point in which timelines and geographical axes seem to converge. These works do not place Canada in the centre of their writings in the way earlier writers did; they concentrate on movement rather than arrival and on cultural interaction and exchange rather than the pangs of having to re-define one’s cultural identity, thus rendering notions of hybridity and trans-culturalism. Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver in 1974 as the daughter of MalaysianChinese parents who had immigrated to Canada in the 1960s. “A Map of the City,” the concluding piece in her volume of short stories, Simple Recipes (2001), renders the lives of a Vancouverite family of Asian immigrants. The narrative voice is that of the daughter, and as in Mistry’s “Swimming Lessons,” the chronology shifts between the past and the first-person narrator’s present. The central character, and the one who is most strongly linked to the past, is the narrator’s Chinese-Indonesian father : “My father seemed lost in the past and I did not trust myself to guide him into the present. So I kept my distance and thought from time to time how things might have turned out differently” (Thien 166). While the narrator’s mother seems to have won through to an immigrant perspective, i. e. an acceptance of her new surroundings and a readiness to adapt to the realities of Canada, the father’s point of view remains that of the emigrant, whose main focus is backwards to his origins: That country [i.e. Indonesia] lay like a stone between my parents. Once here, my mother did not look back. She worked herself to the bone but set her sights on the future. But my father could not see so far ahead. He held on to those old photographs of Indonesia, and when he pulled them out, he examined them with an appraising eye. As if to see whether the photographs were true to the memory he carried, if a picture could ever do his country justice. (201)

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The father’s profound cultural insecurity and inability to provide for his family make him return, temporarily, to Asia, and then live on welfare in a run-down Vancouver apartment: “The bad luck of his life was not, as he thought, a lack of opportunity or ingenuity. It was the tragedy of place. To always be in the wrong country at the wrong time, the home that needs you less than you need it” (201 – 02). At the end of the story, his failed attempt at suicide opens up a prospect of reconciliation with his wife and daughter. Significantly, the father is associated with closed spaces such as his furniture store, which figures prominently in the narrator’s childhood memories as a reclusive space only rarely invaded by the odd customer, or the constricted apartment. The fact that the family used to drive around town in the sealed comfort of their large car provides a tellingly ambivalent image, signifying confinement and an attempt at overcoming boundaries at the same time: My parents and I would drive across the city, going nowhere in particular, all of us bundled into the Buick. Through downtown and Chinatown – those narrow streets flooded with people – then out to the suburbs. On the highway, we caught glimpses of ocean, blue and sudden. I was the only one of us born in Canada, and so I prided myself on knowing Vancouver better than my parents did – the streets, Rupert, Renfrew, Nanaimo, Victoria. Ticking them off as we passed each set of lights, go, go, go. Stop. (178)

In contrast, the narrator’s flashbacks to her parents’ time in Indonesia and her wanderings about a city whose “familiarity . . . comforted me” (173) indicate an imaginative appropriation of wider horizons and an acceptance of her transcultural identity, thus showing what Reingard M. Nischik refers to as a “‘rooted cosmopolitanism’” (149). Thien’s story opens up a plurality of spatial and temporal associations, ranging from the confined and static to the de-limited and transitory. With regard to the narrator, in any case, “A Map of the City” clearly implies that the individual experience of life in an urban conglomerate is more important for shaping her sense of identity than ethnic ties. Migration and exile have turned, in the words of Edward Said, “into a potent, even enriching, motif of modern culture” (363), as they epitomize conceptions of individual and communal identities as unstable and relative. In the literature of migration, this instability is often expressed through shifts in time and location or through multiple perspectives. In general, there is a sophisticated handling of narrative technique which clearly reflects a consciousness on the part of authors of the function of narrative structures in creating meaning and in rendering ideas about the complexity of ‘translated’ identities. Above all, however, there is in most of these narratives a tension between trans-culturalism and a desire for stability in the face of social, cultural, and linguistic translation.

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Bibliography Anderson, Kay J. Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875 – 1980. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1991. Atwood, Margaret. The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1970. Bennett, Donna. “Getting Beyond Binaries: Polybridity in Contemporary Canadian Literature.” Moveable Margins. The Shifting Spaces of Canadian Literature. Ed. Chelva Kanaganayakam. Toronto: TSAR, 2005. 9 – 25. Foucault, Michel. “Afterword: The Subject and Power.” Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Ed. H. L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinov. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982. 208 – 64. Hatch, Ronald B. “Chinatown Ghosts in the White Empire.” Intercultural Studies: Fictions of Empire. anglistik & englischunterricht 58. Ed. Vera and Ansgar Nünning. Heidelberg: Winter, 1996. 193 – 210. Hilf, Susanne. Writing the Hyphen: The Articulation of Interculturalism in Contemporary Chinese-Canadian Literature. European University Studies 14.378. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2000. Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in A New Language. London: Penguin, 1989. Hron, Madelaine. Translating Pain. Immigrant Suffering in Literature and Culture. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2009. Kamboureli, Smaro. “Introduction.” Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literature. Ed. Smaro Kamboureli. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1996. Lee, SKY. Disappearing Moon Cafe. Vancouver : Douglas & McIntyre, 1990. Löschnigg, Martin. “‘How do you say AIDS in Cree?’ Zur Darstellung von Kulturkontakt und Transkulturalität in SKY Lees Disappearing Moon Cafe (1990) und Tomson Highways Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998).” Sprachkunst 38.1 (2007): 109 – 22. ––. “Historical Perspectives on Migrant Communities in the Contemporary Canadian Novel: The Case of Rudy Wiebe’s Sweeter than All the World.” Canada in the Sign of Migration and Trans-Culturalism/Le Canada sous le signe de la migration et du transculturalisme. Ed. Klaus-Dieter Ertler and Martin Löschnigg. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004. 183 – 94. ––. “Rites of Passage: Migration as Reality and Trope in Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock.” Migration and Fiction: Narratives of Migration in Contemporary Canadian Literature. Anglistische Forschungen 396. Ed. Maria and Martin Löschnigg. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009. 215 – 26. Miki, Roy. “Asiancy : Making Space for Asian Canadian Writing.” Privileging Positions: The Sites of Asian American Studies. Ed. Gary Y. Okihiro et al. Pullman: Washington State UP, 1995. 131 – 51. Mistry, Rohinton. Tales from Firozsha Baag. 1987. London: Faber & Faber, 1992. Moodie, Susanna. Roughing It in the Bush. Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism. 1852. Ed. Michael A. Peterman. London: Norton, 2007. Nanda, Aparajita. “Identity Politics and the Voice of Autobiography in SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe.” Fiction and Autobiography : Modes and Models of Interaction. Salzburg Studies in English Literature and Culture 3. Ed. Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Wolfgang Görtschacher. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2006. 245 – 53.

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Nischik, Reingard M. “‘Heights and Depths I Never Guessed At’: Cultural Locations of Ethnicity in Vancouver Short Fiction by First Nations and Chinese Canadian Writers.” The Canadian Mosaic in the Age of Transnationalism. Ed. Jutta Ernst and Brigitte Glaser. Heidelberg: Winter, 2010. Rushdie, Salman. “Imaginary Homelands.” 1982. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981 – 1991. Ed. Salman Rushdie. London: Granta, 1991. 9 – 21. Said, Edward. “Reflections on Exile”. Out There. Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Ed. Russell Ferguson et al. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1990. Thien, Madeleine. “A Map of the City.” Simple Recipes. 2001. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2002. Thurston, John. “Rewriting Roughing It.” Future Indicative: Literary Theory and Canadian Literature. Ed. John Moss. Ottawa: U of Ottawa P, 1987. 195 – 203. Repr. in Moodie. Roughing It in the Bush. 433 – 42. Wyile, Herb. Speculative Fictions. Contemporary Canadian Novelists and the Writing of History. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2002.

Carmen Birkle

“Always becoming, will never be”: Caribbean (Im)Migration to Canada

1.

(Im)Migration and Life In-Between Cultures

“Always becoming, will never be” is a quotation from Shani Mootoo’s poem “Mantra for Migrants” (2001), in which she, who herself is of Irish and Caribbean origins and who migrated via the Caribbean island of Trinidad to Vancouver, describes the migratory situation as a never-ending process. This process hardly allows for the formation of a distinct identity and evokes a journey that will never reach its destination. Rather, the status of living inbetween, between “back home” and “home unfathomable,” remains permanent so that the persona in the poem draws the following conclusion: “I pledge citizenship, unerring / Loyalty, to this State of Migrancy” (81). This constant process of oscillation, the experience of a “deterritorialization of culture” (Papastergiadis 115) and an “irreparable fissuring of self from homeland” (Chancy 2) are decisive for the very different manifestations of (im)migration visible in various cultural contexts, for example, in language, clothes, religion, rituals, customs and manners, and as part of the latter, also, for example, in foodways. Furthermore, life in-between cultures, also in spaces that are called either cultural contact zones according to Mary Louise Pratt, if people want to emphasize cultural confrontation and interaction, or diasporas, if the stress lies on community, is often perceived as homogenous and people experiencing this form of life see themselves as displaced from their original homeland. Frequently, writers thematizing such a life situation might also look back – themselves or through one of their characters – to their homelands as the ideal place to be, trying to ignore the reasons for emigration. Salman Rushdie calls this phenomenon “imaginary homelands,” arguing that those longing for a lost home in the past tend to idealize their origins and also freeze them in the moment they last experienced it, thus not realizing that these locations also change with time. It is the particular role of the (im)migrant writer to offer insights into life in-between cultures, to mediate between home and host countries, to make people understand that it can never be an either/or choice of

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identity, but an identity that goes beyond national and ethnic boundaries in search of a new space of in-betweenness. This, however, is a difficult process, as Linda Hutcheon argues in Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions: “Caught between two worlds, the immigrant negotiates a new social space; caught between two cultures and often languages, the writer negotiates a new literary space” (9). The following paper will take as its focus Canadian writers of Caribbean origins to be situated in the context of a discourse on cultural encounters, variously described as multiculturalism, interculturality, and transculturation, on the one hand, and on the spaces of encounter as in cultural contact zones, diasporas, and imaginary homelands, on the other hand (“Traveling Cultures”). This terminology as well as the writers and their texts will briefly be embedded in the history of Caribbean Canadian relations (“Crossroads of Cultures”). A first analytical section (“Selling Illusions”) will focus on Neil Bissoondath and Austin Clarke who describe the process of (im)migration and first encounters in the host country, thus the realities of multiculturalism. A discussion of Shani Mootoo’s fiction, a few selected short stories in particular, will then shed light on some of the characters’ (im)possibilities of, or at least difficulties in, reconciling past and present (“Ethnic Confusions”). The final section (“Cosmopolitan Profusions”) will ultimately show how Dionne Brand, a Trinidadian Canadian, in her most recent city novel, What We All Long For (2005), goes beyond ethnic boundaries and presents what I consider to be a process of transculturation. Ultimately, I suggest that Caribbean Canadian writers over the last few decades, and with them all (im)migrant writers in various manifestations, have gradually turned away from the binary oppositions of homeland and host countries, of past and present, of us and them, the self and the other, to mention but a few terms often used in this context, toward a more open, multi-ethnic life, combining a variation of ethnic practices into something new. This process of transculturation can also be seen as what Homi Bhabha and Edward Soja call the creation of a “Third Space” or “Thirdspace,” respectively.

2.

Traveling Cultures

Theories of cultural contacts have exploded in numbers in recent decades and steadily increase with an ever-growing presence of people with a migration background in almost any country of the world. While previous concepts such as the melting pot, cultural pluralism, the salad bowl or the mosaic have more or less been discarded as inadequate for a description of nations such as the US and Canada, since the late twentieth century, the terms multiculturalism, interculturality, and transculturation have replaced these early twentieth-century

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concepts and are discussed jointly with ideas of contact zones, diaspora, and imaginary homelands. Multiculturalism has been used in a variety of meanings and was certainly made popular in Canada’s Multiculturalism Act of 1988. In contrast to the political program embraced by this Act and in view of its rivaling concepts of interculturality and transculturation, I will use the term “as an overarching more neutral expression to describe the existence of . . . various cultural groups” (Birkle, Migration 6) in a cultural contact zone.1 Interculturality, then, is the first step that goes beyond a mere multicultural coexistence because the emphasis here lies more on acting with or sometimes also against each other, as the prefix inter suggests. As soon as interaction is accepted, monocultural cultures will gradually disappear because of a dynamic process of cultural changes. Here, first of all, Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the contact zone is important. Pratt defines “contact zones” as “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination – such as colonialism and slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today” (7). According to Pratt, the encounters that take place in these zones are never between two equal parties but are always defined by power struggles, hierarchies, and often violent confrontations. Asymmetrical relationships are most obvious in an (im)migration process. While such a cultural contact zone is an essential location not only for cultural encounters but also for the formation of new identities and emphasizes “contact” as a key factor, the term “diaspora” rather evokes a sense of separation and distance. It involves, as Sylvia Langwald points out, with reference to Vijay Mishra, “a sense of being haunted by an absence (that of the homeland)” (142). Diaspora, deriving “from the Greek verb speiro (to sow) and the preposition dia (over)” (Cohen ix) and meaning “scattering” or “dispersion,” first of all points to this bipolar way of seeing home and host countries, which is often the case for first-generation immigrants. However, for Stuart Hall, diaspora is also defined by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity ; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference. (402)

While “[c]ultures, as well as identities, are constantly being remade,” “[d]iasporic cultural identity” (Boyarin and Boyarin 721), as the product of “traveling cultures” (Clifford), implies a mixture of cultures as the only possibility for a 1 Cf. Welsch, “Transkulturalität: Zwischen Globalisierung und Partikularisierung“ 49.

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continued existence.2 This understanding of the concept often represents the life of second-generation immigrants, as my discussion of Brand’s novel will reveal. Diaspora is also the place where Rushdie’s “imaginary homelands” are created, with both terms suggesting that the country of origin seems to be the more important and “true” home of the (im)migrant: “. . . it’s my present that is foreign, and . . . the past is home, albeit a lost home in a lost city in the mists of lost time” (9). However, upon a visit of his home city Bombay and his family’s former house, Rushdie realizes that the past he remembers and the present encounter with what he believes to remember are incongruent and not to be reconciled. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge – which gives rise to profound uncertainties – that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind. (10)

Ultimately, what takes place in the contact zones is a process of transculturation. The term was originally coined by the Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz in the 1940s as a counter-philosophy to ideas of acculturation and assimilation. FranÅoise Lionnet agrees with the Cuban poet Nancy Morejûn who wrote in 1982 that “[t]ransculturation means the constant interaction, the transmutation between two or more cultural components with the unconscious goal of creating a third cultural entity – in other words, a culture – that is new and independent even though rooted in the preceding elements. Reciprocal influence is the determining factor here, for no single element superimposes itself on another ; on the contrary, each one changes into the other so that both can be transformed into a third.” (qtd. in Lionnet 15 – 16)

The resulting transculturality can no longer be referred back to national or geographical identities or boundaries, but follows for the first time purely cultural processes of exchange. Canada, as a country of (im)migrants, has experienced precisely these processes.

3. Crossroads of Cultures “The history of Canada, as it was taught to most of us, is the history of immigration” (Hutcheon 10). This is what Linda Hutcheon rightly claims in Other Solitudes, referring to the various waves of immigration over the centuries, but also to “the history of European colonialism . . .” (Hutcheon 10). But it was not 2 Cf. Boyarin and Boyarin, “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity” 721.

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before 1946 that major waves of immigrants from the Caribbean came to Canada, often via England. The Caribbean islands as such were and still are crossroads of cultures since their geographical position in-between North and South America, the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans turned them into a preferred location for imperial, economic, cultural, and ethnographic explorations. Ever since Christopher Columbus’s so-called discovery of the West Indies in 1492, the Caribbean islands have been the stage of European power struggles, colonization, and finally decolonization and political independence, which, however, in most cases resulted in rather difficult, post-independent inner-island crises. Because of the slave trade, European colonization, Asian influx as well as the presence of Caribbean or Amerindian natives, hybrid cultures have developed in this cultural contact zone with concepts of nationhood that are much more open. As Êdouard Glissant points out in his Po¦tique de la relation: “Nos barques sont ouvertes, pour tous nous les naviguons” (21). However, the frequently desolate post-independent situation of poverty and political tyranny3 has motivated quite a number of people from the Caribbean to migrate northward to the U.S. and/or Canada, hoping for an improvement of their living conditions. The Canadian version of the American Dream, to rise from rags to riches rapidly, attracted many people from the Caribbean to Canada as another promised land next to the United States. In contrast to the US, “Canada seem[ed] more accessible because of British Commonwealth links and, from the distance at any rate, because of a favorable racial image” (Brown 27). Like many of their immigrant colleagues from other nations, Caribbeans settled in the major cities, above all in Toronto. And it was not before the 1960s – with a “dramatic increase in Caribbean immigration to Canada” (Brown 5) – that writers of Caribbean origins were recognized in Canada. In 1947, when Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced that Canada had the right to decide who would be allowed to immigrate, Caribbeans were not among the preferred group (Anderson 17). However, Canada – depleted of its workforce after World War I and II and thus in need of human resources – and some of the Caribbean islands agreed on a contract allowing domestic servants to enter Canada under the Crown Colony Government Status. The first servants arrived in 1956.4 In 1962, Caribbean migration patterns shifted from the US and Britain to Canada because of “the ending of the ‘open-door’ immigration policy that had traditionally existed between the ‘mother country’ and her ‘commonwealth dependencies’” (Anderson 38). The 1962 Regulations of the Canadian Immigration Act removed, at least in theory, “racial discrimination as major feature of Canada’s immigration policy” and 3 Cf. Waller, Contradictory Violence (2005). 4 Cf. Anderson, Caribbean Immigrants 17.

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“explicitly establish[ed] skill as the main criterion in the selection of unsponsored immigrants” (Anderson 39). More revisions of Canada’s immigration policy followed in the next two decades.5 When multiculturalism became part of the official politics in 1971 in Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s speech before the House of Commons (Oct. 8, 1971) and in 1988 in the Canadian Multiculturalism Act,6 Canada officially recognized the presence of diverse ethnic groups. The immigration of Caribbeans has varied over the years depending on shifting push and pull factors, on legal regulations, and an increase in illegal immigration resulting in stricter visa regulations.7 As Lloyd Brown points out: “Caribbean immigrants to Canada, therefore, stand at the intersection of two powerful myths: one reflects the outsider’s limited perception of the Caribbean as idyll, and the other reflects the islanders’ idealistic expectations of Canada” (2). For Caribbean immigrants both myths have long been demythified in the confrontation with the hardships of a migratory existence. What Canadian writers of Caribbean descent therefore often thematize is the racism that they as – usually – black Caribbeans encounter(ed) upon arrival.8 From a Canadian point of view, all Caribbean immigrants have been labeled as “Black,” but, as Wolseley Anderson poignantly maintains, this label is “grossly inaccurate” (28). For Anderson, the Caribbean population represents a “‘rainbow’ phenomenon,” which means that “[t]he pigmentation or colour spectrum for Caribbean-Canadians ranges from white (Europeans and Euro-Americans) through an intricate pattern of gradations and mixtures to black (from Africa and its diaspora)” (28). Additionally, this irrational racism as well as the general status of in-between cultures and living in a diaspora produces an emotional 5 In 1967, Caribbean immigration to Canada amounted to 3.8 % of Canada’s total immigration (8,403 compared to 222,876); in 1989, it had risen to 7.4 % (14,099 compared to 189,956) (cf. Anderson 59). 6 “. . . the Government of Canada recognizes the diversity of Canadians as regards race, national or ethnic origin, colour and religion as a fundamental characteristic of Canadian society and is committed to a policy of multiculturalism designed to preserve and enhance the multicultural heritage of Canadians while working to achieve the equality of all Canadians in the economic, social, cultural and political life of Canada . . .” (qtd. in Hutcheon 370). 7 In her foreword to the collection Voices: Canadian Writers of African Descent, Ayanna Black similarly emphasizes the relevance of African descent for black writers as “a new generation of griots – town criers, or spiritual messengers – whose stories have been transferred to the printed page. Despite the diversity of our cultural backgrounds, we write out of a collective African consciousness – a consciousness embodied in the fabric of oral traditions, woven from one generation to the next, through myths, storytelling, fables, proverbs, rituals, worksongs and sermons meshed with Western literary forms” (xi). 8 While racism is part of an immigrant experience in Canada, in 1989, Neil Bissoondath puts “such Canadian racial intolerance in context: ‘racism is as Canadian as maple syrup,’ he writes, but ‘it is also as American as apple pie, as French as croissants, as Jamaican as ackee, as Indian as aloo, as Chinese as chow mein’” (qtd. in Hutcheon 8).

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“tension between wanting to belong to the new society and yet wanting to retain the culture of the old one . . .” (Hutcheon 12). Clearly, immigrating people carry their cultures with them, influencing their host countries in significant and multiple ways. The actions and reactions are individually chosen, but generally cultural encounters will lead to a process of gradual transculturation.

4.

Selling Illusions

“Selling Illusions” (1994) is the title of the Trinidadian Canadian Neil Bissoondath’s (*1955) autobiographical discussion of The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada, as the subtitle explains. As Bissoondath emphatically states in his introduction to the revised edition: “Selling Illusions did no more than point out what all could see but few dared declare: the multicultural emperor had no clothes” (xi). Bissoondath, himself a Canadian writer of Indian and Trinidadian descent, grew up in Trinidad until he migrated to Canada to study at York University in Toronto at the age of 18 in 1973. To his disappointment, he gradually had to realize that the same form of racial segregation and discrimination he saw in Trinidad was at work in Canada and that the official politics of multiculturalism of later years recognized and endorsed differences rather than similarities, and still does so today, as he emphasizes. In his book, Bissoondath frequently thematizes the relationship between his country of origin and Canada, and Toronto in particular, which he describes, in parental terms, as his “adopted city” (24) and Canada as the “Caribbean North” (24). He describes his identity in flux, forever changing, and, as in a palimpsest, a process of adding layer and layer of crucial experiences that contribute to the formation of his identity : My own roots are portable, adaptable, the source of a personal freedom that allows me to feel “at home” in a variety of places and languages without ever forgetting who I am or what brought me here. My roots travel with me, in my pocket, as it were, there to guide or succor me as need may be. They are, in the end, the sum of my experience, historical, familial and personal. There [sic] are, in the end, my sense of self. We can change homes. We can grow attached to new places, new people, new ways of doing things and looking at the world. What we cannot do, indeed, what we must never attempt to do, is forget the homes of the past, for they too have shaped us. (25)

According to Bissoondath, Canada has to cease erecting walls between the shards of the mosaic and to begin opening up doors between them so that as individuals make their way through territory previously unknown, distinctiveness will blur in the shards but take shape in the whole. Despite the varying pasts that have shaped us, we are all in the final analysis Canadians, with a

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common country and common interests that can, if permitted, lead to a common future. (239)

Ultimately, he proposes to accept the reality of the process of transculturation. More than a generation before Bissoondath, Austin Clarke (*1934) had moved to Canada from Barbados to study at the University of Toronto and ended up becoming a writer. While some of his early stories and novels are set in Barbados and describe the poverty and hardships of people there as motivating factors for emigration to North America, and frequently to one of Canada’s major cities, his later fiction predominantly deals with the life of Caribbean immigrants in Canada, most often in Toronto, the poverty they face, and the racism they encounter, thus agreeing with Bissoondath’s criticism of Canada. In contrast to Bissoondath, for Clarke Canada is not his home but a country where he chose to reside and became a citizen thereof in 1981. Unlike Bissoondath, Clarke segregates Canada and the Caribbean within himself and thereby confirms Bissoondath’s idea of Canada’s “cult” of multiculturalism as manifest in the separation of ethnic groups. Austin Clarke has worked on many of these issues in his fiction. The short story “Canadian Experience” (1986) presents the situation of a non-landed immigrant, i. e., of someone who is not admitted to Canada for permanent residence at first. This man is the son of a plantation owner in Barbados who has not come to Canada as a student but as someone looking for new experiences and work. But during his eight years in Canada, he is only able to get low-paying and temporary jobs, and when he is finally asked for a job interview at a bank, he is too afraid to actually introduce himself. Having no job, no money, and about to be thrown out of his room, his final escape is suicide by throwing himself in front of a subway train. Returning to Barbados is not possible for this young man because he left his home against the will of his father and has thus become an outsider in both cultures. In spite of his failure to come to terms with life in a diaspora, with Canada as a contact zone and life in-between cultures as a home, Austin Clarke joins Bissoondath in his attempt to make Canada his home, as he explains in a 1991 interview: . . . I am concerned with determining or defining an identity for the Caribbean man who has lived in Toronto for some time, in such a way that he will no longer consider himself an immigrant, an outsider, or a minority person; but would come to understand that his presence here, and the ease with which he continues to live here, is caused by the solid foundation that he got from the West Indies. In other words, what I am going to do next is to draw a character who despises and disregards the national controversy around federalism and a national cultural identity involving the two solitudes,9 a character who because he has lived here for so long – it might be ten years or 9 “Two solitudes” is a reference to Hugh MacLennan’s novel Two Solitudes (1945), in which he

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three decades – is able to see that this is where he belongs. (Clarke, “CaribbeanCanadians” 101)

Immigrants have to come to terms with a tension between their “strong need to achieve and to belong” and their feeling of “exclusion and rejection,” as Lloyd Brown explains (57). Therefore, we might conclude that Mootoo’s pessimistic outlook of “will never be” seems to be a real-life experience of Caribbean immigrants to Canada. Bissoondath and Clarke, in their works, emphasize the push and pull factors for (im)migration but also the difficulties of coming to terms with such a new life. Multiculturalism in the sense of the simple presence of multiple cultures in the cultural contact zone is affirmed and racism as an almost universal phenomenon is acknowledged as part of the migratory experience in Canada. Most Canadians, as Bissoondath argues at the beginning of Selling Illusions with reference to a 1993 survey, seem to “believe the multicultural mosaic isn’t working and should be replaced by a cultural melting pot . . .” (1). However, this melting-pot idea has similarly proven impossible and, perhaps, also undesirable in a US-American context ever since the early twentieth century as it seems to erase all differences. Shani Mootoo’s short fiction and its questions about recognition in the context of the multicultural society of Vancouver reveals the melting pot as a non-functioning concept and the difficulties in rejoining past and present in order to develop a satisfying ethnic identity, and, thus, in rejecting the ethnic and gendered power structures and hierarchies at work.

5.

Ethnic Confusions

Shani Mootoo was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1958, raised in Trinidad, and is of mixed Indian and Nepalese origins. When she was nineteen, she moved to Canada (1977) and became a videomaker, painter, and multimedia artist. In her work, Mootoo explores human hybridity as well as gender and sexuality. Additionally, “Mootoo’s experiences as a multiple immigrant . . . emerge as central themes in her work” (Dias). In the following, I will look at the title story of the collection Out on Main Street (1993), which negotiates questions of Indian Trinidadian Canadian identity and diaspora that ultimately render any fixed and singular notions of individual or cultural identity inadequate. The city of Vancouver, more precisely its Main Street, becomes a cultural contact zone in which describes the two so-called founding nations, the British and the French, as the two solitudes. In contrast, Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond’s collection Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions (1990) claims that Canadian writing has always been ethnic and, therefore, multicultural because of Canada’s population of Native and immigrant peoples.

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multiple cultural, ethnic, and sexual origins and affiliations have to face and somehow come to terms with each other. In contrast to Austin Clarke’s “Canadian Experience,” Shani Mootoo’s story no longer focuses on the binary opposition of minority vs. mainstream cultures or non-white vs. white ethnicities. I would suggest the use of the Barbadian poet and theorist Kamau Brathwaite’s term “tidalectics.” “Tidalectics,” according to Wayde Compton based on Brathwaite, “describes a way of seeing history as a palimpsest, where generations overlap generations, and eras wash over eras like a tide on a stretch of beach. . . . in tidalectics, we do not improve upon the past, but are ourselves versions of the past” (17). In this sense, the past is always present, and identity is shaped by the past like a palimpsest that adds layer upon layer, motivating change but never completely erasing any of the layers, which is what the protagonist experiences in Mootoo’s story. “Out on Main Street,” with its setting on Main Street in Vancouver, is written in what Marlene Nourbese Philip calls “‘Caribbean demotic’” (qtd. in Billingham 78), which “constitutes a language of, for and by the people, a variant of English bearing the history and experience of diaspora in a way that the ‘Queen’s English’ never can . . .” (Billingham 78). The unnamed first-person narrator, a young lesbian, and her girl-friend Janet feel like outsiders on Main Street because, in spite of their brown skin and their Hindu ancestors, they have no close affiliation with India; they are, as the narrator tells us right at the beginning of the story, “watered-down Indians – we ain’t good grade A Indians” (45) but “kitchen Indians” who have remained “overly authentic” (45) ever since their ancestors arrived in Port of Spain more than 160 years before.10 On the ethnic level, “Out on Main Street” is about how to be(come) authentically Indian but also about the impossibility of this process. While the narrator believes to be “a Hindu par excellence” (47) in Trinidad, her confrontation with shop-owners in Vancouver, who claim authentic Indianness for themselves, tells her a different story. For them, language and food are clear indicators that she is not authentically Indian: Yuh ask dem a question in English and dey insist on giving de answer in Hindi or Punjabi or Urdu or Gujarati. How I suppose to know de difference even! And den dey look at yuh disdainful disdainful—like yuh disloyal, like yuh is a traitor. (48)

Language is coupled with food when the two women go into “Kush Valley Sweets” to eat some of the sweets. The narrator tries to remember the names for some of them as she knew them in Trinidad. However, while her memory works 10 Her ancestors must have arrived in Trinidad in the 1830s after the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies (1834). The resulting labor shortage “led to the importation of indentured workers from India and other parts of Asia” (Henry 5). Economic “push factors” led to their later emigration to Europe, the US, and Canada (cf. Henry 6).

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fine, the terms she knows have a slightly different meaning in Canada. For her, “meethai” is a specific kind of sweets, but for the waiters it is a generic term for all sweets. And immediately, the question of origins is posed: “‘Where are you from?’” (51). Instead of considering it simply as a difference in usage, the young woman begins to doubt her own Indianness, as she says to her girl-friend Janet: “Cultural bastards, Janet, cultural bastards. Dat is what we is. . . . all a we in Trinidad is cultural bastards, Janet, all a we. Toutes bagailles! Chinese people, Black people, White people. Syrian. Lebanese. I looking forward to de day I find out dat place inside me where I am nothing else but Trinidadian, whatever dat could turn out to be.” (51 – 52)

Trinidad is presented as a crossroads of cultures, as a cultural contact zone where cultures meet and mingle. This constitutes a definition of a hybrid Trinidadian identity, but the narrator cannot accept it as such for her because she has internalized a concept of identity that is not shifting and hybrid but fixed and pure. She believes that there is somewhere within her an essence that – when and if found – once and forever tells her who she is. The relativity of such a definition, however, is almost ironically exposed to the reader of the story in the next scene when two drunken white Canadian men enter the shop and greet everyone with what they believe to be an Indian greeting (as they must have seen on TVor read in fairytales): “‘Alarm o salay koom’” (52), and then one asks the owner : “‘Are you Sikh?’” (52 – 53), to which the latter cleverly answers: “‘No, I think I am fine, thank you. But I am sorry if I look sick, Sir’” (53). This pun confuses the two white men because their stereotypes do not seem to fit, and immediately they ask the question of origins: “‘Where are you from?’” (53). The response, “‘Fiji, Sir’” (53), is an eye-opener for the informed reader. None of these men is actually from India, but all of them believe that they are authentically Indian. Indianness, as a consequence, becomes a matter of subjective perception and a desire for authenticity. We could ultimately argue with the protagonist in another one of Mootoo’s stories, “Sushila’s Bhakti,” that “Canada was a country full of rootless and floating people” (60), and, thus, being Canadian by definition means being hybrid and transcultural.11 It is precisely this rootlessness that offers the possibility of new identity-formations in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For.

11 As the title of the story suggests, Sushila attempts to practice “bhakti,” a term coming from Sanskrit and meaning love and devotion to a personalized god. She performs the act of bhakti in order to find out “why it is that all that she has of her Indian heritage are her name, Sushila, and her skin colour, both of which are like lies about her identity” (61).

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Cosmopolitan Profusions

Dionne Brand, who was born in Guayguayare in Trinidad in 1953 and has lived in Canada since 1970, is an example of a rather successful Caribbean woman writer and filmmaker. While Brand wants to preserve “her distinct Afro-West Indian identity” (Ramraj 227), in her more recent work, and in particular in her novel What We All Long For (2005), Brand has turned toward a rather cosmopolitan and transcultural position. To speak with Jessica Harris: “All would maintain the culinary traditions of their homelands and add their own ingredients to the regional mix” (38). In her novel, Dionne Brand emphasizes the cosmopolitan flair of the Canadian city of Toronto: There are Italian neighbourhoods and Vietnamese neighbourhoods in this city ; there are Chinese ones and Ukrainian ones and Pakistani ones and Korean ones and African ones. Name a region on the planet and there’s someone from there, here. All of them sit on Ojibway land, but hardly any of them know it or care because that genealogy is wilfully untraceable except in the name of the city itself. (4)

The name of the city – Toronto – comes from its original settlers, the Iroquois, who named it “meeting place” because, as Caroline Rosenthal points out, “in it several forest trails to the Upper Great Lakes crossed” (259). Thus, literally, Toronto is a crossroad of cultures, including those of the First Nations, a contact zone where cultures meet and clash. Brand describes the impressions of Toronto early in the morning when people leave their private places and intermingle in this “crossroads of the city” (3). It is through “‘aromas, smells, scents’” as “‘active means of crossing and linking’” that people forge “new connections and new ways in which we think about the world” (Rosenthal 219). Brand further elaborates on the multicultural set-up of the city : In this city there are Bulgarian mechanics, there are Eritrean accountants, Colombian caf¦ owners, Latvian book publishers, Welsh roofers, Afghani dancers, Iranian mathematicians, Tamil cooks in Thai restaurants, Calabrese boys with Jamaican accents, Fushen deejays, Filipina-Saudi beauticians; Russian doctors changing tires, there are Romanian bill collectors, Cape Croker fishmongers, Japanese grocery clerks, French gas meter readers, German bakers, Haitian and Bengali taxi drivers with Irish dispatchers. (5)

This meeting, encountering, and mingling on the “crossroads of the city” (3) makes it arduous for people to keep ethnicities apart because lives are narratives to be told differently in different contexts and for different purposes: Lives in the city are doubled, tripled, conjugated – women and men all trying to handle their own chain of events, trying to keep the story straight in their own heads. At times they catch themselves in sensational lies, embellishing or avoiding a nasty secret here

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and there, juggling the lines of causality, and before you know it, it’s impossible to tell one thread from another. (5)

The four protagonists – Tuyen, Carla, Oku, Jackie – are described as being “born in the city from people born elsewhere” (20) and their friendship as one of “opposition to the state of things” (19). Without disentangling any of their conflicts and oppositions, the city holds them together. As children of Vietnamese, Africadian,12 African Jamaican, and African Caribbean Italian parents they feel as if living in-between worlds, those of their parents and those of their own. While their parents remain rooted in their respective ethnicities, prefer life in their own ethnic communities, often in the suburbs to get away from other immigrants, and thus lead a rather marginalized but, as they desperately hope, ethnically authentic life, the second generation is successful in crossing ethnic and cultural borders and mostly live downtown in the center of the urban experience:13 “. . . the second-generation characters begin to sketch out the possibilities of a territorialized cosmopolitan that allows for a connection with the diasporic cultures of their parents and the multi-ethnic cultures of the globalized city, and that emphasizes mutability over authenticity” (Johansen 49). They lead lives that are “in fact, borderless” (Brand 213). Crossing geographical borders is what Carla, for example, does for a profession. As a courier, her bike rides take her to different neighborhoods of the city and “celebrate the rich texture of the city” (Rosenthal 226), thus literally map the city in all its diversity, create a new cartography, and go beyond the borders of the previous generations and of the roles of femininity which Carla ignores. In contrast, Tuyen as an artist experiences the polyvocality of the city as “a kind of new vocabulary” (154), which she begins to learn, understand, and interpret. This “younger generation . . . rejects places in Toronto – markets, ethnic neighborhoods, housing developments – that compartmentalize and petrify ethnic origins” (Rosenthal 236). As the depiction of the city as multicultural and Carla’s profession show, the space of Toronto and the specific places the novel delineates shape the respective characters’ socio-cultural identity while, at the same time, this process in turn also shapes the city.14 As David Tavares and Marc Brosseau point out, “the places and spaces of Toronto, and their quotidian inhabitation by characters in the novel, play a key role in structuring the urban 12 Africadian is a term which George Elliot Clarke “coined for black settlers in Nova Scotia” (Rosenthal 259). 13 Cf. Rosenthal 248. 14 Constanze Müller shows with reference to Kamau Brathwaite’s poem “Coral” (1969) that the “idea that the city is a part of nature, something alive, questions the idea of the city as something given by an authority ; urban space is produced by those who live in it, the coral is shaped by the polyps – it is not the polyps who adapt to an ever-unchanging, fixed coral” (48).

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lives and identities of Brand’s immigrant characters and their second-generation children alike” (11). “Informal urban citizenship,” as they argue, is created and immediately “contested in Canada’s most culturally diverse city” (12).15 Furthermore, in this novel, in addition to space, foodways take on a particular relevance in the creation of “informal urban citizenship,” which, in contrast to legal citizenship, may be constantly in flux. It pertains to the socio-cultural practices and processes through which individuals and social groups negotiate the terms of their membership within the urban public. Informal urban citizenship has to do with identity and identification, social recognition, participation and influence and the ways in which these are variously acquired, interpreted, contested, and, importantly, denied in urban contexts. . . . (Tavares and Brosseau 14)

In What We All Long For, food and eating habits play a prominent role in these cultural negotiations of identity politics. Because of their poor English, Tuyen’s parents, Tuan and Cam Vu, are unable and not allowed to work in their original professions as a doctor (mother) and a civil engineer (father). Rather, they subject themselves to the authority of the dominant stereotypes of the Vietnamese in Canada, and become cooks and owners of a Vietnamese restaurant, “The Saigon Pearl,” close to Chinatown, even though they do not even know how to cook in any particular way : The restaurant became their life. They were being defined by the city. Once they accepted that, it was easy to see themselves the way the city saw them: Vietnamese food. Neither Cam nor Tuan cooked very well, but how would their customers know? Eager Anglos ready to taste the fare of their multicultural city wouldn’t know the differences. (66 – 67)

To overcome the trauma of migration, Tuyen’s parents perform authenticity through Vietnamese food because this is the only stereotypical identity allowed to them. The restaurant’s financial success allows them to move out to the suburbs “where immigrants go to get away from other immigrants . . .” (54). Tuyen, however, deliberately turns her back toward her static cultural heritage 15 In their analysis of Brand’s novel, Tavares and Brosseau introduce three streams of scholarship that bring literature and geography together. Humanistic geography is “concerned primarily with either the experience of urban space . . . or sense of place . . . as captured in urban novels” (12). A second stream considers “literature as a source of geographical epistemology – alternative ways of knowing and writing the city – that act as a complement or counterpoint to academic discourses” (13), which includes the analysis of “textual practices” (13). For the purpose of my discussion of migratory experiences, it seems to me that the third stream, namely a focus on “the cultural politics of identity played out in literary representations of urban life (13), is the most relevant one. Brand uses the interaction between the multicultural city of Toronto and her protagonists in order to show how they appropriate the city for their own identity-building process.

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and imposed ethnic identity, rejects learning how to cook, and chooses as her preferable dish simply potatoes with melted butter : “She could eat potatoes any time of day or night, huge bowlfuls. Potatoes were perfect, neutral, and glamorous. Meaning not at all like her family” (130). The same is true for Carla whose stepmother’s attempt to cook Jamaican dishes for Carla’s father provokes disgust, resistance, and rejection in Carla. In contrast, Oku, of African Jamaican origins, is a formidable cook. He succeeds in overcoming the resistance in Carla and Tuyen by learning with enthusiasm and without any prejudices different kinds of foodways. His choice of ingredients as well as their combination is shaped by Jamaican, Vietnamese, Canadian, and Tamil influences. His talents in cooking are concomitant with the cultural development of the city and are presented as a process of extension and diversity, in which all ethnic ingredients are present but receive new functions and form new olfactory and taste directions. In short, he resists “the racialization of his urban social identity” (23), as Tavares and Brosseau suggest: He had taken his mother’s training and augmented it along the way with all the training of all the mothers of the friends he had. His father would probably not approve, preferring the monoculture of Jamaican food, but Oku’s tastes had expanded from this base to a repertoire that was vast and cosmopolitan. . . . Odd that the same foods they [Carla und Tuyen] were averse to in their childhoods they now revered in Oku’s hands. (132 – 33)

“Vast and cosmopolitan” is what the city of Toronto represents and what the second-generation immigrants prefer, as Oku’s view of his parents also demonstrates: “As people who somehow lived in the near past and were unable or unwilling to step into the present” (190).16 Contrasting ethnic monoculture and cosmopolitan multi-culture via the metaphor of cooking and eating shows the diversity of disconnected cultures of the generations of immigrants, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the process of continual mixing of these cultures without hierarchies in the second generation. Tuyen’s and Carla’s liking for Oku’s cooking talents shows their rejection of an imposed, seemingly authentic ethnic affiliation by birth, their dislike for a cultural memory that their parents are trying to preserve, and the young generation’s conscious opening up to and appropriation of multiple cultures that all contribute their share to Canadian culture.17 The foodways that Tuyen and her friends prefer are multi-ethnically mixed but still individually 16 Oku’s insight is based on his parents’ rootedness in their Caribbean origins, shopping almost exclusively in West Indian stores, identifying with these foodways (cf. Brand 190) and, thus, creating what the Caribbean American writer Michelle Cliff calls “home away from home” (75). 17 Cf. Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity (1986).

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visible and are, like the city of Toronto, in a constant process of transculturation in ever new combinations. Foodways together with the physical mapping and the pictorial appropriation of Toronto in Brand’s novel reveal the heterogeneity of origins, the difficulties of intercultural interaction, but also a gradual process of transculturation, in which old and new, past and present, here and there are at work in a perpetual polylogue which forms and transforms Canadian society. The city of Toronto and “its everyday urban spaces” are “the site where difference is contained, encountered, negotiated” (Tavares and Brosseau 29). However, not to be mistaken, these transformations do not happen without power struggles, tension, and conflicts, as the four friends’ recognition that “[t]hey’d never been able to join in what their parents called ‘regular Canadian life’” (Brand 47) and the final beating of Tuyen’s long lost brother by Carla’s criminal black brother Jamal show. Racism is still a presence, but Brand’s revised cartography of the cosmopolitan city also offers alternatives for the formation of new and transcultural identities.

7.

From Migration to Transculturation

Neil Bissoondath, Austin Clarke, Shani Mootoo, and Dionne Brand are caught between two or more worlds that, at times, seem to exclude each other. They recreate these worlds in writing and thus connect life in the Caribbean with that in Canada. In these literary as well as social and national spaces, they see colonizing and discriminating forces at work, based on ethno-racial and gendered Otherness. Through their characters they expose the mechanisms of Othering that are often based on a collaborative internalization and mimicry of colonial forces. All characters have trouble coming to terms with an identification through others, with a politics of recognition18 that is not their own. In all cases, the stories communicate the need for self-identification that is independent from ethnic and cultural markers such as food, music, clothes, skin color, rituals, etc. While the first generations in Clarke’s story and Brand’s novel remain forever stuck in the past and within clearly fixed borders of ethnic affiliations, the second generation in Mootoo’s story is still struggling with the in-betweenness of their lives, looking for an either/or solution but – without realizing – already undergo a process of transculturation. Brand’s second generation has already gone a step further in its friendship of opposition. It is the city that enables the friends to freely choose their affiliations and actively transform them into something new. This marks the never-ending processes of transculturation or, in Mootoo’s words, of “always becoming, will never be” (81). 18 Cf. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition” (1994).

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Bibliography Algoo-Baksh, Stella. Austin Clarke: A Biography. Barbados: P of the U of the West Indies; Toronto: ECW P, 1994. Anderson, Wolseley W. Caribbean Immigrants: A Socio-Demographic Profile. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ P, 1993. Antor, Heinz, et al., eds. From Interculturalism to Transculturalism: Mediating Encounters in Cosmopolitan Contexts. Heidelberg: Winter, 2010. Bhabha, Homi. “Culture’s In Between.” Artforum 32.1 (Sept. 1003): 167 – 68, 211 – 14. Rpt. in Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity. Ed. David Bennett. New York: Routledge, 1998. 29 – 36. Billingham, Susan. “Migratory Subjects in Shani Mootoo’s Out on Main Street.” Identity, Community, Nation: Essays on Canadian Writing. Ed. Danielle Schau and Christl Verduyn. Jerusalem: The Hebrew U Magnes P, 2002. 74 – 88. Birkle, Carmen. Migration – Miscegenation – Transculturation: Writing Multicultural America into the Twentieth Century. Heidelberg: Winter, 2004. ––. “‘We Are an Internally Colonized People’: Emancipatory Strategies in Dionne Brand’s Short Stories.” Femmes et ¦criture au Canada. Ed. DaniÀle Pitavy. Dijon: Êditions Universitaires de Dijon, 2001. 117 – 30. ––. “Comparing Caribbean and Irish (De)Colonizations: Dionne Brand’s and Eavan Boland’s Recovery of the ‘Lost Land.’” Sites of Ethnicity : Europe and the Americas. Ed. William Boelhower, Roc†o Davis, and Carmen Birkle. Heidelberg: Winter, 2004. 347 – 60. Bissoondath, Neil. Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. 1994. Revised and Updated. Toronto: Penguin, 2002. Black, Ayanna. Foreword. Voices: Canadian Writers of African Descent. Ed. Ayanna Black. Toronto: HarperPerennial, 1992. xi-xiii. Boyarin, Daniel, and Jonathan Boyarin. “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity.” Critical Inquiry 19.4 (Summer 1993): 693 – 725. Brand, Dionne. What We All Long For. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2005. Brown, Lloyd W. El Dorado and Paradise: Canada and the Caribbean in Austin Clarke’s Fiction. Parkersburg, IA: Caribbean Books, 1989. Chancy, Myriam J. A. Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1997. Clarke, Austin. “Canadian Experience.” Nine Men Who Laughed. Markham, ON: Penguin Canada, 1986. 31 – 51. ––. “Caribbean-Canadians.” Frontiers of Caribbean Literature in English. Ed. Frank Birbalsingh. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1996. 86 – 105. Cliff, Michelle. No Telephone to Heaven. 1987. New York: Vintage, 1989. Clifford, James. “Diaspora.” Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997. 244 – 77. ––. “Traveling Cultures.” Cultural Studies. Ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler. New York: Routledge, 1992. 96 – 112. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1997.

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Compton, Wayde. Introduction. Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp P, 2001. 17 – 40. Dias, Candice. “Shani Mootoo.” 7 Mar 2005. 13 Nov 2005 . Gadpaille, Michelle. “‘In Exchange for a String of Islands’: A Meditation on Diasporic Caribbean Writing in Canada.” Migration and Fiction: Narratives of Migration in Contemporary Canadian Literature. Ed. Maria Löschnigg and Martin Löschnigg. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009. 161 – 70. Glissant, Êdouard. Po¦tique de la relation. Paris: Gallimard, 1990. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory : A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. 1993. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. 392 – 403. Harris, Jessica B. “Caribbean Foodways.” Foodways. Ed. John T. Edge. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2007. 37 – 39. Harris, Amy Lavender. Imagining Toronto. Toronto: Mansfield, 2010. Henry, Frances. The Caribbean Diaspora in Toronto: Learning to Live with Racism. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1994. Hutcheon, Linda. Introduction. Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions. Ed. Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1990. 1 – 16. Johansen, Emily. “‘Streets are the dwelling place of the collective’: Public Space and Cosmopolitan Citizenship in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For.” Canadian Literature 196 (2008): 48 – 62. Langwald, Sylvia. “From Destructive to Productive? Perspectives on Identity Crises and the Diasporic Experience in Recent Caribbean-Canadian Novels.” Narratives of Crisis – Crises of Narrative. Ed. Martin Kuester et al. Augsburg: Wißner, 2012. 140 – 56. Lionnet, FranÅoise. Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1989. Mayer, Ruth. Diaspora: Eine kritische Begriffsbestimmung. Bielefeld: transcript, 2005. Mootoo, Shani. “Mantra for Migrants.” The Predicament of Or. Vancouver : Polestar, 2001. 81. ––. “Out on Main Street.” Out on Main Street. Vancouver : Press Gang, 1993. 45 – 57. ––. “Sushila’s Bhakti.” Out on Main Street. Vancouver : Press Gang, 1993. 58 – 67. Müller, Constanze. “‘A yellow mote of sand dreams in the polyp’s eye …’: On Intertextuality and the Formation of ‘New Narratives’ in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For.” Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 33.1 (2013): 34 – 50. Papastergiadis, Nikos. The Turbulence of Migration. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Porter, John. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1966. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 1992. New York: Routledge, 2008. Ramraj, Victor J. “Diasporas and Multiculturalism.” New National and Post-Colonial Literatures. Ed. Bruce King. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1986. 214 – 29. Rosenthal, Caroline. New York and Toronto Novels after Postmodernism: Explorations of the Urban. Rochester, NY: Camden, 2011. Rushdie, Salman. “Imaginary Homelands.” 1982. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981 – 1991. London: Granta, 1991. 9 – 21.

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Soja, Edward W. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996. Sollors, Werner. Beyond Ethnicity : Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Su‚rez, Isabel Carrera. “Toronto in the Global City : Flows and Places in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For.” Reading(s) from a Distance: European Perspectives on Canadian Women’s Writing. Ed. Charlotte Sturgess and Martin Kuester. Augsburg: Wißner, 2008. 187 – 99. Taylor, Charles. “The Politics of Recognition.” Multiculturalism. Ed. Amy Gutmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1994. 25 – 73. Tavares, David, and Marc Brosseau. “The Spatial Politics of Informal Urban Citizenship: Reading the Literary Geographies of Toronto in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For.” Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 33.1 (2013): 9 – 33. Waller, Nicole. Contradictory Violence: Revolution and Subversion in the Caribbean. Heidelberg: Winter, 2005. Welsch, Wolfgang. “Transkulturalität: Zwischen Globalisierung und Partikularisierung.” Interkulturalität: Grundprobleme der Kulturbegegnung. Ed. Studium generale der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Mainz, 1999. 45 – 72.

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Dany Laferrière als ,kritischer Immigrant‘ in Montréal

Dany LaferriÀre, den Romanisten wohl vertraut, in deutschen Landen in Ermangelung einer deutschen Übersetzung noch eine unbekannte Größe, gilt in Fachkreisen zu Recht als einer der kreativsten, produktivsten und humorvollsten Migrationsautoren Kanadas. Die problematische Erfahrung von (Im-) Migration und Integration bildet das Kernelement seiner Vita, mit dem er sich im literarischen Werk – quasi in konzentrischen Kreisen – unermüdlich und zugleich kritisch auseinandersetzt. Dabei trifft „kritisch“ hier keine der Bedeutungsnuancen, die das Standardwörterbuch mit „eine starke Gefährdung bedeutend,“ „eine Wende andeutend,“ „negativ beurteilend“ oder gar „nach präzisen wissenschaftlichen, künstlerischen o. ä. Maßstäben gewissenhaft, streng prüfend und beurteilend“ (Duden online) bereit hält: Dany LaferriÀre bedeutet für das kanadische Gemeinwesen weder Gefahr noch Wende, er gibt keine negativen Urteile von sich und strenge wissenschaftliche Maßstäbe sind ihm fremd. Auf die Frage, ob er sich als Visionär verstehe oder doch (nur) als Träumer, entscheidet er sich für den Traum. Er träume „pour [s]e reposer,“ um sich zu entspannen und zu erholen, und nicht „pour pouvoir [s]e mettre debout et aller changer le monde.“ Zugleich sieht sich LaferriÀre jedoch als „intuitif,“ (Sroka 185) der Zusammenhänge der inneren und äußeren Welt spontan erfasst und seinen Leser gerade dadurch fasziniert, dass er wie immer geartete Lebenswelten in ihrer Diversität und Widersprüchlichkeit in einem Blick erkennt und mit geradezu nachtwandlerischer Sicherheit in Worte zu kleiden versteht. LaferriÀre erforscht also weder gesellschaftliche Hintergründe noch dahinterliegende Bewertungssysteme und Ideologien. Er schlägt keine Korrekturen oder Verbesserungen der Welt vor. Er lebt und transkribiert Welterfahrung, perspektiviert und entwirft Szenarien, die den Leser anregen oder verunsichern können. In diesem Sinne hat ,kritisch‘ hier nichts mit einer Warnung oder versteckten Drohung zu tun, sondern verweist vielmehr auf die Metaebene des literarischen Texts, auf der im Sinn eines Laboratoriums für Lebenswissen die verschiedensten Erfahrungen, darunter auch die der Immigration, ,durchgespielt‘ werden.

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Der Immigrant – einer, der alte durch neue Wurzeln ersetzt? Wie bei vielen zeitgenössischen Autoren stellt auch bei LaferriÀre die Vita – es wurde bereits erwähnt – die unabdingbare Folie des literarischen Werkes dar. 1953 in Port-au-Prince geboren, aus politischen Gründen mit 23 Jahren nach Qu¦bec emigriert, wo er je nach Gesichtspunkt ,immer noch‘, ,auch‘ oder ,wieder‘ lebt, verbringt LaferriÀre seine Kindheit in dem Provinzstädtchen PetitGo–ve, bevor er mit zwölf Jahren in die Hauptstadt zurückkehrt und seine Schulbildung abschließt. Von 1971 bis 1976 arbeitet er als Journalist für Radio und Zeitung. 1976 wagt er es mit seinem Freund Raymond Gasner über Streiks zu berichten, worauf dieser brutal ermordet wird. LaferriÀre ist dem Regime suspekt, der Weg ins Exil bietet sich als einzige Lösung an. Gleichzeitig wiederholt sich damit auf tragische Weise das Schicksal des Vaters, der kurz nach der Machtübernahme von FranÅois Duvalier ebenfalls das Land verlassen musste und sich in New York niederließ. Er war zuvor Lehrer und Journalist, vorübergehend als Bürgermeister, Staatssekretär und Konsul aber auch politisch tätig und sollte das Exil nicht bzw. nur als gebrochener Mann überleben, wie sich aus LaferriÀres autofiktionalen Texten erschließen lässt. LaferriÀre kommt also im Jahre 1976 nach Montr¦al und schlägt sich zunächst mehr schlecht als recht durch, wohnt bescheiden, nimmt jede Form von Arbeit an, bis es ihm 1985 gelingt, mit dem Roman Comment faire l’amour avec un NÀgre sans se fatiguer den literarischen Durchbruch zu schaffen. Comment faire l’amour, seine „einzige Chance“ (Demers 44), wie er später kommentiert, wird auf Anhieb ein Riesenerfolg. Plötzlich öffnen sich die Türen: LaferriÀre tritt in Fernsehsendungen auf und wird ein Mann der Medien – „[a] man of amazing wit and tremendous culture, . . . a media figure of rare proportions“ (Pelletier B6) – so sehr, dass er es zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre vorzieht, mit seiner Frau und seinen drei Töchtern nach Miami zu ziehen, um in einer wieder neuen Umgebung, einem wieder neuen sprachlichen Umfeld sozusagen ein zweites Mal die Erfahrung des d¦paysement, des Fremdseins, zu machen. Die Jahre in Miami sollten literarisch zu LaferriÀres produktivsten zählen, wobei er – als Pendler zwischen zwei Welten – den Kontakt zu Montr¦al nie abreißen lässt. Seit September 2004 lebt der Autor denn auch wieder in Kanada, in Montr¦al, ohne auf seine extreme Reisetätigkeit zu verzichten, die ihn inzwischen unzählige Male nach Port-au-Prince und in letzter Zeit zunehmend auch nach Europa geführt hat. LaferriÀre ist Immigrant, doch das Wort ,Zuhause‘ oder ,neues Zuhause‘ ist das falsche, denn er ist überall zugleich: „On parle toujours de moi en termes de territoire. Or, je ne me sens pas Hatien ni Qu¦b¦cois. Plutút Am¦ricain“ (Bordelau 10), meint er 1994 in einem Interview. An anderer Stelle behauptet er beinahe das Gegenteil: „[Je] demeure montr¦alais, mais surtout profond¦ment hatien dans l’–me“ („Dany LaferriÀre“ 49). Und an wieder anderer Stelle: „I hate

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my roots – and I hate any roots of anybody“ (Marchand D3), „life and literature . . . are stories that unfold discontinuously, for the simple reason that continuity, like the self, does not exist“ (Diamond 6). Diese provokante Aussage führt zum nächsten Punkt, dem Versuch einer Begriffsbestimmung des Wortes ,Immigrant.‘ Die Standardwerke lassen diesbezüglich keinerlei Zweifel offen: Ein Immigrant ist eine Person, die „in ein Land gekommen ist, um dort zu bleiben und zu arbeiten“ (Götz 502), eine Person, „who leaves one country to settle permanently in another,“ „who comes to a country where they were not born in order to settle there“ (Free Dictionary) and „who comes to a country to take up permanent residence“ (Merriam Webster). Aber sprechen die Lebenswege tatsächlich dieselbe Sprache wie Administration und Bürokratie? Zweifel erscheinen berechtigt. Das Fallbeispiel LaferriÀre bestätigt nämlich, was jüngst in einer umfangreichen wissenschaftlichen Arbeit, dem ersten Lexikon zeitgenössischer französischer MigrationsautorInnen,1 nachgewiesen werden konnte: Nur in den seltensten Fällen verlässt der Immigrant das Mutterland ein für allemal. Sehr häufig folgt auf die Auswanderung die punktuelle, temporäre oder sogar wiederholte Rückkehr ins Ursprungsland, was bedeutet, dass im Immigranten selbst der Vergleich zwischen den beiden Polen nicht zur Ruhe kommt. Jede neue Begegnung mit dem Ursprungsland und dem Zielland reaktiviert und transformiert zugleich die – dann doppelte – Erfahrung der Entwurzelung, facht den Vergleich zwischen den beiden Polen neu an, verlangt erneutes Ausbalancieren. Oft auch – gerade wenn man Österreich oder Frankreich in den Blick nimmt – ist die Immigration Ausgangspunkt einer weiteren Emigration. Auch dies belegt das genannte Lexikon zur französischen Migrationsliteratur, das Leben und Werk von 300 zeitgenössischen Migrationsautoren der Jahre 1981 bis 2011 behandelt und den bezeichnenden Titel Passages et ancrages en France – also ,Durchgang‘ und ,Verwurzelung‘ – trägt. Auch der Immigrant LaferriÀre ist nicht wirklich sedentär, sondern pendelt ununterbrochen zwischen Port-au-Prince und Montr¦al, so wie er zehn Jahre lang zwischen Miami und Montr¦al gependelt ist. Er pendelt physisch – und als Schriftsteller, dessen Fiktionen weder Zeit noch Raum Grenzen setzen, pendelt er auch mental. Mehr als die Hälfte seiner Bücher evozieren, zumindest partiell, einen haitianischen Hintergrund, sein letzter Roman trägt den bezeichnenden Titel L’¦nigme du retour (2009). Es ist also fraglich, ob man den Immigranten als Person definieren soll, die sich ,verpflanzen‘ lässt und neue ,Wurzeln schlägt‘ oder ob ,Zuhause-Sein‘ nicht eher dort beginnt, wohin man zurückzukehren wünscht. Im Falle LaferriÀres ist das zweifelsohne Montr¦al bzw. eben auch Montr¦al2 und in einem Interview aus dem Jahr 2010 bestätigt er, wie sehr diese 1 Cf. Mathis-Moser und Mertz-Baumgartner, Passages et ancrages en France (2012). 2 Cf. Mathis-Moser, „,Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage‘“ (2013).

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neue ,Heimat‘ mit der alten verflochten ist: „. . . Montr¦al est une ville qui m’habite profond¦ment et, je l’ai dit, qui m’a permis de r¦v¦ler, litt¦ralement, toute la part hatienne enracin¦e en moi. . . . c’est une ville — laquelle je ne pense plus car elle m’habite dor¦navant“ (Sroka 206).

Der ,Andere‘ – die Fremde als Ort der Selbstfindung Montr¦al bedeutet somit für den Immigranten LaferriÀre weit mehr als Endstation. Es ist der Ort der Selbstfindung und der Kreation. In Interviews und essayistischen Texten, in seinen Romanen Comment faire l’amour und Chronique de la d¦rive douce wird er nicht müde darauf hinzuweisen, dass das sogenannte Exil – LaferriÀre weigert sich lange Zeit, diesen Begriff zu verwenden – nicht nur negative Seiten kennt. Dennoch spricht auch er zunächst von einem schockartigen Erkennen der Differenz, doch tut er dies mit gebührendem Humor : Qu¦bec erinnere ihn an einen Eiskasten, in dem 6 Millionen Menschen kaltgestellt sind, einige von ihnen im Tiefkühlfach; dazu komme der Schnee, die Farbe Weiß, die sich in den Gesichtern der Quebecker fortsetzt.3 Ganz abgesehen davon, dass diese Beobachtung aus dem Jahr 1994 auf ein noch deutlich weniger multikulturelles Qu¦bec verweist, als es heute der Fall ist, macht sie dem Ich schlagartig klar, dass es den Gegenpol, das Nicht-Weiße, das Andere repräsentiert und zunächst auch nur über diesen einen Marker der Differenz wahrgenommen wird, der ihm bis dato in dieser Weise nicht bewusst war : „. . . je ne me vois pas noir, je me vois moi. Ma couleur ne repr¦sente qu’un milliÀme de ce que je suis, mÞme si parfois, selon l’¦v¦nement, cela prend toute sa place“ (Marcotte 80 – 81). Die Weiß-Schwarz-Malerei aber, um einen konkreten Sachverhalt als Metapher weiterzuspinnen, ist letztlich der Urgrund jedes Rassismus, da sie eine einzige von vielen Facetten absolut setzt. LaferriÀre verwehrt sich so vehement wie konstant gegen diesen Essentialismus und trifft sich hierin mit einer anderen gewichtigen Stimme des frankophonen Raums, mit Amin Maalouf, der 1998 in seinem Buch Les identit¦s meurtriÀres das Grunddilemma der Integration und des friedlichen Zusammenlebens von Menschen analysiert. Wie LaferriÀre scheint auch Maalouf gerade aufgrund seiner Lebenserfahrung im plurikulturellen Raum dazu prädestiniert, Denkanstöße zu geben. 1949 im Libanon geboren, arabischer Muttersprache, Angehöriger einer christlichen Minderheit, zugleich englisch- und französischsprachig, lebt Maalouf wie LaferriÀre seit 1976 im Exil und schreibt in französischer Sprache. Seine erste Prämisse ist die unverwechselbare Identität des Menschen, die sich jedoch nicht auf eine einzige nationale, ethnische oder religiöse Zugehörigkeit reduzieren 3 Cf. LaferriÀre, Chronique de la d¦rive douce 99.

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lässt. Zahllose Zugehörigkeiten bestimmen das Subjekt, welche für dieses zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten in unterschiedlichen Kombinationen unterschiedliche Bedeutungen tragen und zueinander durchaus im Widerspruch stehen können. Die jeweils ,einmalige‘ Identität eines Menschen ist also ein dynamischer Prozess, ein Wechselspiel von ,appartenances‘; wird eine davon dominant gesetzt, erweist sie sich als ,meurtriÀre‘, todbringend, mörderisch. In diesem Sinn aber behauptet der ,Immigrant‘ LaferriÀre zu Recht: „Je ne suis pas un immigrant. Je ne suis un immigrant que selon les critÀres du ministÀre de l’Immigration. Le reste du temps, je suis, enfin, plein de choses“ (Babin 1). Oder an anderer Stelle: „Je ne suis pas un ¦crivain noir, un ¦crivain hatien, un ¦crivain immigrant. . . . Par contre, je suis Noir, je suis Hatien, je suis immigrant“ (Souli¦ E4). Diese Erkenntnis, die LaferriÀre aus der gelebten Erfahrung des Immigranten erwächst, geht Hand in Hand mit anderen Momenten der Selbstentdeckung. Einsamkeit und Indifferenz der neuen Umgebung haben nämlich durchaus auch einen befreienden Effekt, werfen sie doch das Ich auf sich selbst, auf seine Freiheit und seinen Erfindungsreichtum zurück. So ist auch das folgende Zitat zu verstehen: „La grande aventure, la derniÀre, c’est d’arriver (dans cette situation d’inf¦riorit¦) dans une ville nouvelle, dans des codes nouveaux, dans un climat nouveau: la page blanche, quoi!“ (LaferriÀre, „Un homme“ 19). Diese so fundamental neue Situation erlaubt es dem Autor überhaupt erst, für sich selbst Verantwortung zu übernehmen. Hier ist nicht mehr von den eingangs zitierten ,roots‘ die Rede, die Handlungsrichtlinien vorgeben wollen und LaferriÀre verdächtig erscheinen, sondern von der Freiheit des Selbstentwurfs und letztlich auch von der Hoffnung des Immigranten, als Individuum, als Person wahrgenommen und geachtet zu werden.

Das kreative Potential der (Im-)Migration Ein Blick auf die demographische und ideengeschichtliche Entwicklung Qu¦becs während der letzten dreißig Jahre zeigt, dass in den 1980er und 1990er Jahren ein Paradigmenwechsel von der ,uniculturalit¦‘ der 1960er Jahre zur ,transculturalit¦‘ der 1980er und 1990er stattgefunden hat.4 In dem berühmten Gedicht „Speak what?“ aus dem Jahr 1989 wirft der aus Italien stammende Marco Micone der Quebecker Bourgeoisie vor, selbst an die Stelle des einst verhassten anglophonen Anderen getreten zu sein, während jenseits von Weiß und Schwarz die Belle Province inzwischen viele Farben trage. Aus dieser bunten Realität nicht wegzudenken ist dabei die haitianische Gemeinde, die nach Le Blanc5 von 4 Cf. Moisan und Hildebrand, Ces ¦trangers du dedans (2001). 5 Cf. Le Blanc 137.

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1961 bis 1991 von 3.000 auf 50.000 Personen angewachsen ist. Neuere Zahlen bescheinigen 80.000 bis 100.000 Haitianer für Montr¦al, das als die kanadische Stadt mit dem höchsten Anteil an Haitianern gilt. Angesichts dieser Tatsachen erstaunt es nicht, dass auch in der Literatur von einer wahren Explosion haitianischer Autoren gesprochen werden kann. Bereits in den 1980er Jahren stammten 50 % der literarischen Produktion Haitis aus der Montr¦alaiser und New Yorker Diaspora;6 beide Städten verfügten über die entsprechende Infrastruktur, so Montr¦al etwa über mehrere literarische Zeitschriften – wie Nouvelle Optique, Collectif Paroles, Chemins critiques oder D¦rives – und über einschlägige Verlage wie Nouvelle Optique, M¦moire d‘encrier oder CIDIHCA. Autoren haitianischer Herkunft fanden Eingang in Quebecker Anthologien, sie arbeiteten im Bildungswesen, an der Universität, in Journalismus, Übersetzung und Edition. Die haitianische Diaspora in Qu¦bec war – und ist – also überaus rege und wird im literarischen Output lediglich von der italienischen übertrumpft. Die Frage, die sich in diesem Zusammenhang fast notgedrungen stellt, ist unausweichlich: Hat dieser Boom der kreativen Kräfte etwa mit der Situation der Immigration zu tun? Dazu sei noch einmal der Fall LaferriÀre bemüht. LaferriÀres erster literarischer Text Comment faire l’amour erscheint neun Jahre nach seiner Ankunft in Qu¦bec, im Jahre 1985, und seither hat der Autor nicht weniger als 20 weitere, zum Teil umfangreiche Bände vorgelegt. Die ersten zehn seiner Texte fasst er zu einer nicht chronologischen, sondern ,gebrochenen‘ Autobiographie am¦ricaine zusammen. Es sind zum einen Streifzüge durch ein Nordamerika, das keine nationalen Grenzen kennt, zum anderen geistige Streifzüge in eine Vergangenheit, in der sich Fiktion und Wirklichkeit vermengen. Die Romane der ,grands espaces‘ spielen in Montr¦al und anderen Metropolen Amerikas, die Romane der Erinnerung in Haiti; sie evozieren kritische Punkte aus Kindheit und Adoleszenz des Ich, bis hin zum Aufbruch ins Exil und zur späteren kurzfristigen Rückkehr auf die Insel. Auf die Autobiographie am¦ricaine folgen ab 2000 essayistisch-dokumentarische Texte wie J’¦cris comme je vis, Je suis fatigu¦ (2001) oder das im Genre unbestimmte Tout bouge autour de moi, in dem LaferriÀre über das Erdbeben in Haiti (2010) reflektiert. 2008 und 2009 publiziert er zwei viel beachtete Romane, höchst witzig der eine, Je suis un ¦crivain japonais, zurückhaltender und bisweilen fast melancholisch der andere, L’¦nigme du retour. Letzterer wird in Paris mit dem Prix M¦dicis ausgezeichnet. Zu erwähnen sind ferner die ,r¦-¦criture‘ dreier Romane, mehrere Filmszenarios, Kinderbücher und diverse ,enregistrements sonores‘. LaferriÀre ist damit tatsächlich einer der produktivsten zeitgenössischen Schriftsteller Qu¦becs. 6 Cf. Klaus 7.

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Was aber bedeutet Schreiben und was Montr¦al für den Schreiber selbst? „Je suis n¦ physiquement en Hati, mais comme ¦crivain — Montr¦al“ (Marcotte 81), stellt LaferriÀre unmissverständlich fest. In Haiti, so an anderer Stelle, wäre er nie Schriftsteller geworden, und nicht von ungefähr zeichnen die beiden ausschließlich in Montr¦al spielenden Texte der Autobiographie am¦ricaine, Comment faire l’amour und Chronique de la d¦rive douce, die ,venue — l’¦criture‘ der beiden Protagonisten nach. In Chronique de la d¦rive douce begleitet der Leser einen jungen Immigranten aus einer „dictature tropicale en folie“ (LaferriÀre, Comment faire l’amour 11) durch sein erstes, oft mühevolles Jahr in Montr¦al, bis zu dem Punkt, wo sich das Ich entscheidet, seine Arbeit wieder aufzugeben, um sich ,seinem Roman‘ zu widmen. Ganz anders dagegen der erste Roman, der an Chronique de la d¦rive douce anzuschließen scheint. Im Zentrum steht ein schwarzes Ich, gebildet, Frauenheld, das durch Montr¦al streift, mit seinem Zimmergenossen Bouba die abendländische Philosophie ad absurdum führt und weiße anglokanadische Studentinnen aus gutem Haus beglückt. Dieses Ich schreibt an seinem ersten Roman, Das Paradies des schwarzen Aufreißers,7 und lässt den Leser insofern an einem skurrilen Schreibprozess teilnehmen, als dessen Produkt, der Roman, bereits in der Auslage liegt – von der Presse bewundert und kommentiert: „Je n’ai jamais rien lu d’aussi fort, d’aussi neuf, d’aussi ¦vident“ (LaferriÀre, Comment faire l’amour 166) – während das Ich daran schreibt. Verlässt man die Metaebene der Figur und wendet sich erneut dem Autor zu, so heißt für diesen Schreiben vieles.8 Der Immigrant LaferriÀre schreibt unter anderem, um Demütigung, elende Lebensbedingungen und verschlossene Türen hinter sich zu lassen, um den ,Prinzen‘ in sich zu retten und kein ,Hund‘ zu sein, um sozial aufzusteigen, reich und unabhängig zu werden. Er schreibt aber auch, „um sich wiederzufinden“ in der „Zersplitterung“ (L’Heureux 6) des Exils, das ihm die Verdoppelung, ja Multiplikation von Perspektiven, von sprachlichen, sozialen, historischen Erfahrungswelten aufzwängen will, und es klingt wie ein Echo zu den oben zitierten Passagen, wenn LaferriÀre feststellt: „Le noir n’existe qu’en pr¦sence du blanc. . . . Cette d¦couverte m’a comme chavir¦ dans un univers neuf. Il me fallait rendre compte de tout cela, il me fallait pour cela devenir ¦crivain“ (Soci¦t¦ Radio-Canada 34). Der Schreibprozess bietet also die Gewähr, die Differenz aufarbeiten zu können, die Nicht-Existenz zu füllen und wieder ,dazu zu gehören‘, „[d’]appartenir“(Martel B2). Denn man schreibe „— cause d’un manque. D’un TROU“ (LaferriÀre, Cette grenade 108), aus Mangel. 7 Meine Übersetzung; Orig. Le paradis du dragueur nÀgre. cf. LaferriÀre, Comment faire l‘amour 165. 8 Cf. Mathis-Moser, Dany LaferriÀre 41 – 43 und 31 – 34.

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Die Situation des Schreibens steht somit auf mannigfaltige Weise in einem kausalen Zusammenhang mit dem Faktum der (Im-)Migration und dem Migrantendasein. (Im-)Migration,9 ob gewählt oder erzwungen, erfordert von ihren Akteuren Energie, Flexibilität und Erfindungsreichtum, denn sie impliziert stets den Verzicht auf „soziale und kulturelle Schutzmechanismen“ und ein „erhöhtes ,Verletzungsrisiko‘“ (Holz). Umgekehrt erweitert sie aber auch das Repertoire der psychosozialen Möglichkeiten des sozialen und kulturellen Akteurs. Wie Geburt, Tod etc. stellt auch die (Im-)Migrationserfahrung einen jener „semantische[n] Verdichtungsräume von Lebenswissen“ (Ette 26) dar, die sich durch ihre Vielschichtigkeit, aber auch durch die Vielschichtigkeit ihrer Interpretation auszeichnen. Immigration kann also nicht nur als Ort der traumatisierenden Erfahrung von Trennung und Entfremdung, von Verlust und Stigmatisierung begriffen werden, sondern auch und vor allem als Raum für kreative Energie und als Auslöser schöpferischer Prozesse. Kreatives Potenzial steckt insbesondere für den Künstler und den Intellektuellen in der Erfahrung des Grenzübertritts, in der Loslösung von alten Werten, in der Öffnung zu Neuem und Unbekanntem. Die Distanz erlaubt es dem ,Fremden‘ gleichzeitig sich selbst und die anderen zu sehen, er ist ,in der Schwebe‘; all dies aber auch in einem positiven Sinn. Die Erfahrung der (Im-)Migration wird damit beschreibbar als Ermöglichungsraum kognitiver und letztlich kultureller Prozesse, als Freiraum für künstlerische Produktivität.

Wie Immigration und Integration gelingen könnten Wie schließlich Immigration und Integration gelingen könnten, diese Frage schwingt unterschwellig in fast allen Werken LaferriÀres mit, denn auch die auf Haiti fokussierten Texte kennen zumeist eine Erzählerfigur, die sich als Emigrant entpuppt.10 Nirgends jedoch lässt sich der Autor zu apodiktischen Aussagen hinreißen, nirgends belehrt er. Wie seine Figuren bleibt er spielerisch, unbestimmt, schillernd, und taucht positive wie negative Beobachtungen in den Sarkasmus des Faktischen oder das milde Licht des Humors. Als Fabeln einer gelungenen Integration können mit Sicherheit die Romane Comment faire l’amour und Chronique de la d¦rive douce gelten, denn die Protagonisten beider Texte nähern sich dem selbstgewählten Ziel. Zweischneidiger ist die Situation in LaferriÀres Film Comment conqu¦rir l’Am¦rique en une 9 Der folgende Absatz stammt aus CEnT der Universität Innsbruck (2012), 16. Das Kapitel 2.2. (Migration) wurde von Ursula Mathis-Moser verfasst. 10 Ausnahmen stellen L’odeur du caf¦ und Le charme des aprÀs-midi sans fin dar. In La chair du ma„tre wird die Immigration zwar verschiedentlich thematisiert, allerdings ohne dass der jeweilige Ich-Erzähler Emigrant sein muss.

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nuit (2004), wo der Protagonist Fanfan nach zwanzig Jahren11 ,bunter‘, aber zumindest nicht negativ erlebter Integration nach Haiti zurückkehrt, um sich erneut, unter umgekehrten Vorzeichen, der Problematik der ,Einwanderung‘ zu stellen. Gerade im Film bleibt dem Zuschauer dabei die Härte des Immigrantenschicksals keineswegs verborgen: Der Immigrant fühlt sich zerrissen „en trois morceaux;“ sein Gesprächspartner ist das Fernsehen, und die Metapher des Ertrinkens, des Sinkens versinnbildlicht den bitteren Rest: J’avais l’impression de couler sans jamais atteindre le fond. Quand tu coules, faut t’attendre — avaler une certaine quantit¦ d’eau. Je pouvais bien boire toute l’eau du Saint-Laurent sans trouver personne pour me tendre la main. Et j’entendais leurs rires, leurs jeux, leurs amours. Le fond du fleuve est une magnifique cage acoustique. (32)

Dennoch verweisen sämtliche Texte LaferriÀres auch auf die positive Kehrseite der Medaille, die Begegnung von Mensch zu Mensch, die Sensibilität dessen, der ,schon da‘ ist, wenn der andere kommt, und der dessen Situation intuitiv erfasst. Es sind dies im genannten Film die beiden Quebeckerinnen, die dem Einwanderer Freundschaft entgegenbringen; es sind das in Chronique de la d¦rive douce die alten Damen, die den Arbeitslosen aufnehmen, der Unbekannte am Bahnhof, der ihn vor der Polizei warnt, die Buchhändlerin, die ihn verköstigt, der Beamte, der ihm statt 20 Dollar 120 in das Kuvert steckt. Ein besonders berührendes Beispiel menschlichen Einfühlungsvermögens findet sich in L’¦nigme du retour, wo die Besitzerin eines Restaurants den Vater des Ich für das Konsumierte nur scheinbar bezahlen lässt, indem sie ihm Tag für Tag das Bezahlte wieder herausgibt. Eine wesentliche Voraussetzung dafür, dass der Immigrant der Belastung der neuen Situation standhält, sind also mit Taktgefühl gesetzte Zeichen der Menschlichkeit, behutsame Gesten, um das verletzliche Selbstwertgefühl des ,Fremden‘ nicht weiter zu unterminieren. Aber auch Institutionen, die soziale Hilfestellung leisten und mit denen sich gerade Qu¦bec in den 1980er Jahren einen Namen gemacht hat, erweisen sich durchaus als Teil der erzählten Welt. Dennoch scheint LaferriÀre immer wieder zu einem zentralen Punkt zurückzukehren: Die milde Gabe aus privater und staatlicher Hand geht ins Leere, solange ,der Andere‘, ,der Fremde‘ auf eine einzige Facette seiner Identität reduziert und in der Folge von der Mehrheitskultur in seiner Besonderheit und in seiner Leistung verkannt wird. Nicht von ungefähr zeichnet LaferriÀre Bouba und den Icherzähler in Comment faire l’amour als weit belesener als die EliteStudentinnen von McGill und Fanfan, den so simplen Taxifahrer, lässt er noch zwanzig Jahre nach seiner Ankunft in Montr¦al davon träumen, ein Poet zu sein. Gelungene Integration, so sollte LaferriÀre wohl gelesen werden, hat zu einem beachtlichen Ausmaß ihren Sitz im Mentalen, und dies betrifft sowohl den 11 „Moi, Åa fait plus de vingt ans que je suis ici et je ne me sens toujours pas chez moi“ (34).

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,Heimischen‘ wie den noch ,Heimatlosen‘. Gerade letzterer ist immer wieder gefordert, an seinem eigenen Bewusstsein zu arbeiten. Nicht zu Unrecht macht Marco Micone deutlich, dass sich der Immigrant zwischen Aufbruch und tatsächlichem ,Ankommen‘ in der Zielgesellschaft in einer physisch und mental besonders prekären Situation der Verunsicherung befindet, die ihn für jede Form von Ausbeutung, eigener wie fremder, anfällig macht. Es steht zwar außer Zweifel, dass sich der Immigrant trotz der so anderen Farben, Düfte, Klänge und Gebräuche an das Neue anpassen muss, wie das Ich in Chronique de la d¦rive douce es formuliert: Je dois dire qu’on ne mange pas de la mÞme nourriture, qu’on ne s’habille pas de la mÞme maniÀre, qu’on ne danse pas aux mÞmes rythmes, qu’on n’a pas les mÞmes odeurs ni les mÞmes accents, et surtout qu’on ne rÞve pas de la mÞme faÅon, mais c’est — moi de m’adapter. (134)

Dennoch ist im selben Buch auch davon die Rede, dass Überanpassung wie im Fall der Brüder Josaphat tödliche Folgen haben kann. Anpassung darf nicht bedingungslos, nicht zwanghaft erfolgen – oder humorvoll ausgedrückt: Es ist nicht zielführend „[de] pisse[r] sagement dans le bol de toilette, comme la police t’a recommand¦ de le faire“ (Comment conqu¦rir 34). So erscheinen auch die Zimmer von LaferriÀres Protagonisten mit ihrem bunten Gemisch von Objekten unterschiedlichster kultureller Provenienz in einem ganz besonderen Licht. Die tausend und abertausend Episoden aber, die der Schriftsteller für erzählenswert hält, lassen den Leser Schritt um Schritt die Erkenntnis gewinnen, dass Ankommen Aushandeln bedeutet und dieser Prozess in gegenseitigem Respekt – Respekt vor dem jeweils Anderen, aber Respekt auch vor sich selbst – zu erfolgen hat. (Im-)Migrant sein heißt schließlich – und damit sei auf das in letzter Zeit von LaferriÀre immer häufiger aufgegriffene Thema des „retour“ verwiesen –, zu erkennen und zu akzeptieren, dass der Ausgangspunkt in seiner ursprünglichen Form für immer verloren ist. Wer aufgebrochen ist, hat den ,Sesshaften‘ den Rücken gekehrt und auf jene ,sicheren‘ Wurzeln verzichtet, die LaferriÀre so suspekt erscheinen. Kehrt er zurück, so kommt er als ,Anderer‘ wieder, der letztlich erneut seine Position zu verhandeln hat und im Bewusstsein des unwiederbringlich Verlorenen Ja sagt zu einer neuen beweglichen Identität.

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„Ich liebe Dich, Québec“: eine Liebeserklärung an das Aufnahmeland Dany LaferriÀre hat sich nicht oft, wohl aber regelmäßig zu Qu¦bec geäußert und er hat dies unter anderem aus einer gesamtamerikanischen Perspektive getan. So verstanden ist er in Miami, Port-au-Prince, Petit-Go–ve, New York und Montr¦al in gleicher Weise ,zu Hause‘. Er hat zugleich aber auch der Provinz Qu¦bec und Montr¦al stets einen besonderen Stellenwert eingeräumt, in dem Sinne, dass die beiden Orte mit Port-au-Prince zu jenen Orten zählen, zu denen der (Ein) Wanderer zurückzukehren wünscht. LaferriÀre hat die Provinz Qu¦bec mit den Vereinigten Staaten verglichen und ihre größere Weltoffenheit, ihre Art und Weise gelobt, wie sie Rassismen im Zaum zu halten versucht; er hat Qu¦bec Haiti gegenüber gestellt und wie dieses als „monomaniaque[s]“ (Marcotte 81) bezeichnet, da Qu¦bec – so wie Haiti um die Diktatur – gedanklich unablässig um die französische Sprache und seine Unabhängigkeit kreise. Haiti besitze seit 1804, was Qu¦bec noch heute suche, und in einer liebenswürdigen Boutade lässt LaferriÀre schließlich den soeben angekommenen G¦g¦ dem Quebecker D¦panneur naiv erklären: „Je sens d¦j— que je vais aimer le Canada.“ Worauf dieser zwischen den Zähnen zischt: „Encore un aut’ qui va voter NON, s’tie“ (Comment conqu¦rir 67). Gerade dieses letzte Zitat zeigt deutlich, wie LaferriÀre auch ernste Fragen mit Understatement, Witz und Humor auf die richtige Dimension zu reduzieren versteht. Und wenn er Ähnlichkeit und Differenz zwischen den beiden Ländern in aphoristischer Kürze erfasst, so hindert ihn das nicht, in seinem letzten Roman, L’¦nigme du retour, genauso treffend Montr¦al und Port-au-Prince zu einem einzigen Sehnsuchtsort verschmelzen zu lassen. Er bestätigt damit die These: Der Immigrant ist eine Person, die mindestens zu zwei Orten zurückzukehren wünscht: . . . je pense tout — coup — Montr¦al Comme il m’arrive de penser õ Port-au-Prince quand je suis — Montr¦al. On pense — ce qui nous manque. (Comment conqu¦rir 153) La mort serait de n’Þtre plus Dans aucune de ces deux villes (126)

oder aber . . . l—-bas, c’est devenu pareil qu’ici . . . (247)

Davon abgesehen aber verbindet den Immigranten LaferriÀre eine ganz persönliche Liebesgeschichte mit Stadt und Provinz: Beide haben ihn angenommen, man spricht ihn auf der Straße an und äußert Mitgefühl für die Erdbe-

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benopfer des Jahres 2010, den Prix M¦dicis, den der Schriftsteller 2009 für L’¦nigme du retour erhalten hat, feiert Qu¦bec, als gelte er der Provinz. Aber auch Dany LaferriÀre hat Qu¦bec schon sehr früh eine Liebeserklärung gemacht, wenn es im offiziellen Text für die FÞte de la Saint-Jean im Jahre 1997 heißt: Il est naturel d’aimer le pays qui nous a accueillis quand la dictature, la faim ou la foi aveugle nous en voulait — mort. Et, se souvenant de la l¦gende du „Survenant“, ce pays a mis — notre disposition: son ciel, ses riviÀres, ses saisons et sa langue. . . . Mwen renmen ou, Qu¦bec. Je t’aime, Qu¦bec. (zit. in Mathis-Moser, Dany LaferriÀre 68)12

Bibliographie Babin, Denise. „Entrevue avec Dany LaferriÀre. Les mots pour le dire.“ Alternatives 4.2 (Octobre 1997): 1. Bordeleau, Francine. „Dany LaferriÀre sans arme et dangereux. Entrevue.“ Lettres qu¦b¦coises 73 (Printemps 1994): 9 – 10. Cultural Encounters and Transfers [CEnT]. Arbeitsbericht der Forschungsplattform CEnT für die Jahre 2010 – 2012. Innsbruck: 2012. „Dany LaferriÀre: ,Jamais je ne me suis senti plus prÀs de Hati.‘“ Le Journal de Montr¦al 23 Mai 1996: 49. Demers, Dominique. „Un Hatien errant.“ L’Actualit¦ 16.13 (Septembre 1991): 44 – 51. Diamond, Ann. „Why Must a Woman Writer Write about Dany LaferriÀre?“ Paragraph. The Canadian Fiction Review 16 (1995): 2 – 6. Ette, Ottmar. „Literaturwissenschaft als Lebenswissenschaft. Eine Programmschrift im Jahre der Geisteswissenschaften.“ lendemains 125 (2007): 26. Götz, Dieter, Günther Haensch und Hans Wellmann eds. Langenscheidts Großwörterbuch. Deutsch als Fremdsprache. 5. Ausgabe. Berlin-München: Langenscheidt KG, 1997. Holz, Steffi. „MigrantInnen.“ ASA-Programm. 31. Juli 2009. 5. März 2013 . „Immigrant.“ The Free Dictionary. 15. Feb 2013 . „Immigrant.“ Götz et al. 502. „Immigrant.“ Merriam Webster Online Dictionary and Thesaurus. 15. Feb. 2013 . Klaus, Peter. „Kanada und Haiti: eine literarische Süd-Nord-Beziehung besonderer Art.“ Neue Romania 17 (1996): 7 – 16. Ed. Christian Foltys und Brigitta Rohdewohld. Rpt. in Dulce et decorum est philologiam colere. Eine Festschrift für Dietrich Briesemeister zu seinem 65. Geburtstag. Ed. Sybille Groß und Axel Schönberger. Berlin: Domus Editoria Europaea, 1999. 1355 – 66. 12 Affiche „FÞte nationale du Qu¦bec 1997“, Gouvernement du Qu¦bec, ministÀre des Affaires municipales.

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„Kritisch.“ Duden online. 15. Feb. 2013. . LaferriÀre, Dany. Cette grenade dans la main du jeune NÀgre est-elle une arme ou un fruit? Montr¦al: vlb ¦diteur, 1993. —. Chronique de la d¦rive douce. Montr¦al: vlb ¦diteur, 1994. —. Comment faire l’amour avec un NÀgre sans se fatiguer. 1985. Paris: J’ai lu, 1990. —. Comment conqu¦rir l’Am¦rique en une nuit. Sc¦nario. Outremont: Lanctút Êditeur, 2004. —. L’¦nigme du retour. Montr¦al: Bor¦al, 2009. —. „Un homme en trois morceaux. In¦dit.“ Tribune juive 13,6 (Ao˜t 1996): 18 – 19. Le Blanc, G¦rald. Racines. Montr¦al: Meridien, 1993. L’Heureux, Serge. „La vie en Am¦rique pour Dany LaferriÀre. Le beau rÞve n’est que cauchemar.“ Le Nouvelliste 8 Janvier 1994: P6. Maalouf, Amin. Les identit¦s meutriÀres. Paris: Êditions Grasset, 1998. Marchand, Philip. „Author loves to keep ’em guessing.“ The Toronto Star 19 Octobre 1994: D3. Marcotte, H¦lÀne. „Je suis n¦ comme ¦crivain — Montr¦al.“ Qu¦bec franÅais 79 (1990): 80 – 81. Martel, R¦ginald. „Dany LaferriÀre. L’¦crivain-pÀlerin au pays sans chapeau. Des chroniques ,hatiennes‘ bien peu cr¦dibles.“ La Presse 19 Mai 1996: B1-B2. Mathis-Moser, Ursula. Dany LaferriÀre. La d¦rive am¦ricaine. Montr¦al: vlb ¦diteur, 2003. —. „,Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage‘ (Joachim Du Bellay): figurations du retour dans l’œuvre laferrienne.“ Interkulturelle Kommunikation in der frankophonen Welt. Literatur, Medien, Kulturtransfer. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink. La communication interculturelle dans le monde francophone. Transferts culturels, litt¦raires et m¦diatiques. M¦langes offerts — Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink — l’occasion de son 60e anniversaire. Ed. Robert Dion, Ute Fendler, Albert Gouaffo und Christoph Vatter. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2013. 39 – 55. —. „Le Montr¦al de Dany LaferriÀre: extrapolations du parcours d’un ,acteur (trans)culturel‘.“ Dialogues transculturels dans la Nouvelle Romania. Litt¦ratures migrantes — New York et — Montreal. Di‚logos transculturales en la Nueva Romania. Literaturas migrantes en Nueva York y en Montreal. Ed. Anne Brüske und HerleChristin Jessen. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. —, und Birgit Mertz-Baumgartner, eds. Passages et ancrages en France. Dictionnaire des ¦crivains migrants de langue franÅaise (1981 – 2011). Paris: Honor¦ Champion, 2012. Moisan, Cl¦ment und Renate Hildebrand. Ces ¦trangers du dedans. Une histoire de l’¦criture migrante au Qu¦bec (1937—1997). Qu¦bec: Nota bene, 2001. Pelletier, Francine. „Black magic. Three funny men represent French TV mini-revolution.“ Montreal Gazette 15 Juin 1993: B6. Soci¦t¦ Radio-Canada. Dialogue d’„le en „le, de Montr¦al — Hati. Montr¦al: Êditions du Cidihca – Radio-Canada, 1996: 32 – 52. Souli¦, Jean-Paul. „Dany LaferriÀre, ¦crivain. Je veux m’emparer du monde.“ La Presse 5 Avril 1986: E4. Sroka, Ghila. „Êcrire, c’est une faÅon de se tenir debout dans le monde.“ Conversations avec Dany LaferriÀre. Interviews de Ghila Sroka. Montr¦al: Les Êditions de La Parole M¦tÀque, 2010. 183 – 206.

Andrea Strutz

Labour, Land and Refuge: Austrian Immigration to Canada in the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Upon Confederation in 1867 it was manifest that the Dominion of Canada would highly depend on migrants to pursue systematic settlement: the subsequent territorial expansion of Canada to the West indicated that immigration rates would have to increase significantly in order to be able to populate these provinces. However, various promotional state activities of that period, and especially the early twentieth century political debate regarding what type of immigration Canada needed, affected the Canadian immigration policy over a long period of time. This political debate was triggered by difficulties caused by the diversity of social and cultural backgrounds of the newly arrived masses of European immigrants.1 This paper provides an overview of migration movements from Austria to Canada against the background of the Canadian immigration policy, ranging from the late nineteenth century to the early 1960s. The article discusses emigration waves to Canada according to periods of the Austrian political development, in which different forms of migrations such as economically motivated as well as forced migrations can be observed. In particular Austrian immigration to Canada during the late imperial period of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in the interwar years of the First Republic and after the “Anschluss” 1938, as well as during the post-World War II period until 1962, will be evaluated.

Commentary on mass migrations from Austria-Hungary to the Americas The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a multi-ethnic state with about fifty-one million inhabitants. From 1867 onwards the monarchy consisted of two states. Approximately 55 % of the population (28.5 million) lived in the Austrian crown 1 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock 65.

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lands,2 which was the Western half of the Dual Monarchy called Cisleithania (meaning on this side of the river Leitha). The term Transleithania referred to the territory under the reign of the Hungarian Crown.3 In the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire the population density as well as the socio-economic conditions differed very much. For instance, the crown lands Galicia and Bukovina were the most populated regions with about nine million inhabitants but, economically speaking, at the same time also the poorest lands. This is one essential factor why this region became a major emigration area. Beside economic reasons, the ethno-political situation and motives of religious nature triggered both internal and overseas migration flows from these crown lands.4 However, certain legislative and technical preconditions had to be fulfilled before the masses could leave Austria for the Americas around 1900. With the proclamation of the Fundamental Laws (Staatsgrundgesetz) in 1867, the individual right to emigrate was granted to every Austrian citizen with the restriction that men had to complete their military service before departure. This law did not apply in other European Empires.5 Other essential factors in overseas mobility were technical innovations such as the extension of the railway network throughout the monarchy connecting the periphery with the main harbours such as Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Trieste. The introduction of steamships in the late nineteenth century further increased mass mobility. Thus, ship passages to other continents became not only faster but also cheaper, and therefore poorer segments of society could afford such tickets.6 In some regions migrations were also socially accepted as a possible solution for the existing socio-economic problems.7 Hence, the transatlantic journey became a central migration route from Europe to the Americas. At the turn of the century overseas migration from the Austro-Hungarian, the German, and the Russian Empires advanced to a mass movement. It also developed into a thriving business for European and American shipping companies, who in fierce competition with each other established a huge network of agents throughout Europe. They recruited possible emigrants through the selling of tickets.8

2 Austrian lands: Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Salzburg, Tirol, Vorarlberg, Carniola and the Coastlands (Gorizia, Trieste, Istria), Dalmatia, Bohemia, Moravia, AustriaSilesia, Galicia and Bukovina. 3 This had been: Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Slavonia, Fiume, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (incorporated into the kingdom in 1908). 4 Cf. Lichtblau, Als hätten wir dazu gehört 43 – 61. 5 Cf. John 56. 6 Cf. Faßmann, “Auswanderung” 48. 7 Cf. Faßmann, “Europäische” 37. 8 Cf. Chmelar 118 – 25. Cf. Also Martin Pollack’s novel Kaiser von Amerika, in which he de-

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According to port statistics (Hafenstatistik; lists that were created when migrants departed from European harbours) approximately 3.55 million Austro-Hungarians migrated overseas between the years 1876 and 1910. About 1.8 million of them emigrated from the Austrian half of the monarchy ; two thirds were men between fifteen and forty years of age, around half of whom came from an agrarian background. The most desirable destination for Austrian emigrants was the United States of America (83 %), the ‘promised land.’ Emigration to regions such as Canada (8.2 %), Argentina (5.1 %), and Brazil (3 %) was relatively low at the beginning but these destinations became increasingly more interesting at the turn of the century. Similar to the Austrians, migrants from the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy (1.75 millions) also preferred immigration to the US (83.5 %). But in regard to other destinations great differences between the two groups of migrants from Austria-Hungary can be observed: while for Hungarian migrants Argentina came in second place (15.5 %), immigration to Canada was far behind. Before 1910 roughly 7,000, i. e. only 0.4 % of migrants from regions of the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire decided on settling in Canada.

Opening the gates to populate the West: Effects of the Canadian immigration policy on the Austro-Hungarian influx before World War I Within forty years the Dominion of Canada doubled its population, growing from 3.49 million in 1871 to 7.2 million in 1911.9 Crucial for the population growth was a national policy that not only actively promoted the influx of settlers from Great Britain, the US, and Continental Europe, but also their mobility inside Canada. The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CRP) from 1881 to 1886 was one essential factor contributing to this increase because it “opened up the West for settlement by providing a transportation lifeline to Eastern Canada” (Knowles 81). Nevertheless, until the mid-1890s the Canadian West grew only slowly in terms of population. On the one hand, this was due to poor economic conditions such as low grain prices as a consequence of the “Great Depression” (1873 – 1896) as well as risky farming conditions caused by the prairies’ climate. But, on the other hand, the practised immigration policy of the last decades of the nineteenth century certainly contributed to that. At this point promotional activities where more or less limited to the British Isles in scribes the agent system impressively, is using the example of the Austrian crown land of Galicia. 9 Canada Year Book (1922 – 23) 140.

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order to maintain a white settler society with a British cultural background in Canada, whereas “persons considered to be racially and culturally unassimilable were discouraged from coming” (Neuwirth and De Vries 34). Clifford Sifton, who, under the cabinet of Wilfried Laurier (1896 – 1911), was appointed Minister of the Interior (1896 – 1905), developed an even more aggressive immigration and settlement policy to fill the empty western provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. He truly believed that “massive agricultural immigration was the key to general Canadian prosperity” (Knowles 84). To achieve this goal, he carried out a reform of the internal settlement administration and abolished the Dominion Lands Board in Winnipeg, which, in his opinion, had proven incapable of running the Western settlement. Sifton centralized policy- and decision-making in Ottawa, made unused railway land available for settlement and also modified the regulations of the Dominion Lands Act so that immigrants could acquire homesteads and land more quickly (Knowles 87). More importantly, he expanded the search for suitable immigrants for Canada beyond the British Isles. To attract farmers, peasant farmers and farm labourers he launched extensive advertising campaigns in the United States as well as in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. The recruitment of immigrants in the United States was organized by newly established Canadian agencies that operated closely with the Canadian Pacific Railway, which, in addition, carried out a settler recruitment campaign of their own in the American Middle West. Apart from that, the Department of the Interior established good relations with the national American press and advertised constantly in agricultural papers. They also issued a great number of supporting pamphlets and literature to attract possible immigrants with slogans such as “The Last Best West” or “Prosperity Follows Settlement”. However, black American immigrants were not welcome to settle in the prairies; the Immigration Branch operated in tune with public opinion in the West and elsewhere in Canada, maintaining that the prairies should be kept white and turning down such applicants in most cases.10 For the systematic recruitment of suitable immigrants in Europe the North Atlantic Trading Company was founded in 1899 and operated until 1906. It was a “clandestine network of European shipping agents who agreed, whenever possible, to direct agricultural settlers to Canada in return for a larger bonus” (Knowles 92). The focus was on regions such as Galicia, Poland, Romania and Serbia (parts of those areas belonged to Austria-Hungary), but also on Russia, Northern Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. These regions were inhabited by a large number of peasant farmers and rural workers, and Canadian authorities expected them to be more accustomed to a pioneering life, rendering these settlers fit to meet the challenges of a life in the Canadian West. Especially 10 Cf. Hawkins, Critical Years 6 – 7; Knowles 117 – 19.

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Galicians, Ruthenians and Poles were considered to be hardworking, persistent and modest and thus, seemed to be very suitable immigrants.11 Efforts made by the Immigration Branch to populate the West quickly paid off. Overall 3.2 million immigrants could be attracted between the years of 1897 and 1915. Roughly 2.1 million of those immigrants came from Europe (1.2 million from the United Kingdom and about 880,000 from Continental Europe) and more than a million Americans also moved north. As 45 % of these immigrants landed in Canada between 1911 and 1914, the pre-World War One immigration reached its peak during these years. In the main target areas of Canadian immigration policy (the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan) the population trebled within a decade from 420,000 inhabitants in 1901 to 1.3 million in 1911.12 In regard to the Austrian immigration to Canada from 1876 onwards until World War One the following migration pattern can be observed according to historical sources:13 Before 1900 the influx was relatively low, as within a period of twenty-five years the port statistics registered only approximately 25,200 Austrian emigrants destined for Canada.14 But after the turn of the century immigration from Austria-Hungary boomed, forming a trend closely linked to the Canadian promotional activities in Europe at the time. According to Canadian arrival statistics the country in subsequent years received roughly 207,000 immigrants from the Habsburg Empire (1901 – 1915). From 1901 onwards until World War I the Canadian immigration statistics also registered the ethnic background of certain immigrants and therefore it is possible to gain some insight into the ethnic composition of Austro-Hungarian migrants:15 Over a 11 Cf. Caro 105. 12 Cf. Canada Year Book (1911) 2. The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were founded in 1905, taking their territories from a division of the Northwest Territories. 13 The analysis is based on historical data such as the port statistics created in European harbours between 1876 – 1910, on pre- World War One Canadian immigration statistics and on Canadian census data (1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, and 1911). But these data were created at a certain time with a special focus and used different criteria and definitions (e. g. who is Austrian). Therefore these sources can neither be compared, nor are they complementary, e. g. port statistics were based on calendar years, whereas Canadian immigration statistics are/were based on fiscal years (Neuwirth and de Vries 33 – 34; Schober, 47 – 49). Despite all that the historical pre-WWI data proved to be very useful in assessing the dimensions of the pre-WWI Austro-Hungarian immigration to Canada as well as in providing an overall impression of the settlement process. 14 Cf. Englisch 74. 15 The classification of immigrants in the arrival statistics of the Canada Year Book is unclear. It is neither explained how the criteria for the subdivision of Austro-Hungrians were created, nor who identified them (immigrants or Canadian officers?). The classification is a mix of nationality, ethnic origin and also religion as the term “Hebrew, Austrians” shows. In that period, the addition “Polish” and “Hebrew” was also applied to certain German and Russian immigrants.

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third was registered as Galicians (35.3 % or 73,200) and Ruthenians show a percentage of 28.9 % (60,000). Another group of 30,000 immigrants was labeled at their arrival as “Austrians” (14,4 %), roughly 7,5 % were identified as so called “Polish Austrians” (15,600), and 1,3 % or 2,700 were registered in the statistic as Jews by the term “Hebrew Austrian.” These groups were most likely Germanspeakers. Roughly 14,000 or 6.6 % of the Austro-Hungarians originated from the Bukovina and the smallest group were the Hungarians (12,300), their share only covering 6 %.16 According to these figures the vast majority of settlers came from the Austrian half of the monarchy, whereas the share of migrants from the Hungarian part can be considered marginal.17 A particular motivational factor for immigration to Canada was the possibility to purchase land under favourable conditions. “According to the provisions of the Dominion Land Act of 1872, any male twenty-one years of age or older, and any sole head of a family, upon the payment of a $ 10 registration fee, could obtain a quarter section consisting of 160 acres of public homestead land” (Kelley and Trebilcock 69).18 The settlement conditions required cultivation of a portion of the land, to live on the farm for at least half a year and to become naturalized.19 Between 1893 and 1913 about 18 % of immigrants who purchased a homestead were British, 33 % were American, and 29 % were from Central Europe.20 Austro-Hungarian settlers were also attracted by homesteading, as the increasing entry number until World War One shows: For the year 1893 just seventy-eight homestead entries of Austro-Hungarians in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are registered, but ten years later in 1903 already 2,805 Austro-Hungarians took over Dominion land. In subsequent years until 1915 the annual number of homestead entries from Austro-Hungarians remained that high.21 It is important to mention that these numbers just report annual homestead entries but they do not give any information on how many settlers finally succeeded in homesteading, braving the elements and challenges of Canadian farming in the prairies. Many homesteaders of that period failed, “they were simply worn down by the vagaries of the climate, the isolation of the

16 Cf. Canada Year Book (1911) 396; (1913) 106; (1914) 86; (1918) 120. 17 More recent Canadian immigration statistics often display a lower number of Austrian immigrants until the First World War, because the Galician immigration later was mostly identified only as Ukrainian immigration and not as Austro-Hungarian. 18 Women were only allowed to purchase homesteads if they were the sole head of the family. This regulation put women as compared to men at a great disadvantage for many decades. 19 Cf. Schober, “Imperial Period” 51 – 52. 20 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock 125. 21 Cf. Canada Year Book (1893) 95; (1903) 74; (1911) 394; (1918) 509. The Canada Year Book shows that the overall numbers of homestead entries per year differed considerably. Entries fluctuated between 3,890 (1893), 31,383 (1903), 33,699 (1913), and 24,088 (1915).

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settlements, and unfamiliarity with the grains and cultivation techniques necessary to make farming on the prairies a success” (Kelley and Trebilcock 73). Numerous Austro-Hungarians settled in the Western provinces, together with the majority of immigrants of that period, as was intended by Canadian immigration policy. By 1911 the number of Austro-Hungarians living in Canada had increased sevenfold, from about 18,200 in 1901 to 129,000 settlers. According to the 1911 census, 32.3 % of the Austro-Hungarians lived in Saskatchewan, 30.7 % in Manitoba, and 20.5 % in Alberta. Canadian regions in the East such as Ontario (9.1 %) or Quebec (1.0 %), which became major immigration areas for post-45 Austrian immigration, account for a substantially lower proportion.22 However, Clifford Sifton’s welcoming immigration policy towards peasants and farm labourers from Central and Eastern Europe also provoked serious criticism. “It was the arrival en masse of tens of thousands Eastern and central Europeans each year that alarmed those who believed such immigrants to be inferior and unable to assimilate in Canada” (Kelley and Trebilcock 133). Supporters of an ethnically selective immigration policy feared that immigrants “alien in race, language and religion” (133) would be a threat to the AngloCanadian culture and its values. They demanded that only immigrants willing to learn English and to assimilate according to British traditions should be admitted. In particular, they opposed immigrants from Asia, certain groups from Central Europe such as Galicians, and black Americans.23 Regardless of the strong dissent, Clifford Sifton kept defending the admission of Galician immigrants until he resigned from his post in 1905. His successor Frank Oliver (1905 – 1911), a liberal like Sifton but also one of his severest critics, introduced a more selective Canadian immigration policy. Sifton’s policy had been selective as well but “in the sense that it promoted the immigration of farmers and farm labourers above all other types of immigrants”, while for Oliver “the ethnic and cultural origins of prospective immigrants took precedence over occupation” (Knowles 106). As a consequence, the Canadian immigration policy was revised. In the Immigration Act of 1906 a class of undesirable persons was created by paying special attention to the moral, mental and physical condition of prospective immigrants. Now the mentally challenged or sick, as well as epileptics, persons with infectious diseases or the disabled (e. g. blind, deaf and/or dumb) unless they were accompanied by family on board or 22 Cf. Englisch 105. 23 The Chinese were already discouraged from coming to Canada in 1885 when the first Chinese Immigration Act was issued. Chinese immigrants were forced to pay a certain sum (head tax) upon entry. The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 virtually prohibited all persons of Asian descent from entering Canada with only a few exceptions. The discriminating legislation lasted until 1946 (Knowles 136).

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had relatives in Canada) were barred from landing. Also the entry of indigent persons, beggars and tramps, who were most likely to become a burden through relying on public welfare, as well as that of criminals, prostitutes and their procurers, was prohibited.24 Furthermore, the legislation sanctioned the deportation of undesirable immigrants; those who within two years after their arrival became dependent on welfare or were jailed or hospitalized could be deported. “Thanks largely to the clauses dealing with exclusion and deportation, this act would become the first legal mechanism for enforcing a policy of selective, i. e., restrictive, immigration” (Knowles 108). In addition, Frank Oliver reduced promotional activities in Continental Europe and cancelled the agreement with the North Atlantic Trading Company. However, the discussion as to whether an increasing number of non-English speaking immigrants would be a threat to the homogeneity of the Canadian population and to the dominating Anglo-Saxon culture continued, and was even fuelled by the economic downturn in 1907.25 In order to regulate the volume as well as the ethnic and occupational composition of prospective settlers, the discretionary power of the Immigration Branch was widely extended under the guidance of Frank Oliver in the Immigration Act of 1910. The legislation introduced exclusionary provisions to prohibit the entry of “immigrants belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada” (Knowles 110 – 11). The act did not explicitly bar any group belonging to a specific racial or ethnic background or nationality, but aimed at a “White Canada policy,” and eventually formed the basis for a restrictive Canadian immigration policy lasting until the early 1960s. After 1910 Austro-Hungarian immigrants were not classified as “desirable” anymore, but nevertheless kept coming to Canada in large numbers, mostly as farm labourers or peasant farmers, railway workers or craftsmen.26 Still Oliver’s restrictions on immigration from Central Europe affected the ethnic composition of Austro-Hungarian immigrants to some extent, because the number of Galician and Bukovinian immigrants decreased, whereas the quantity of Ruthenians and German-speaking Austrians among migrants from the Dual Monarchy rose. According to historical data, approximately 232,000 Austro-Hungarians took part in the transatlantic journey to Canada between 1876 and 1915.27 The Austro24 Cf. Caro 102 – 03. 25 Despite the anxiety concerning undesirable immigrants, more than 70 % of the immigrants annually admitted were still of British, Scottish, Irish or American origin. 26 Cf. Schober, “Imperial” 53 – 54. 27 The overall number refers to a synopsis of the European port statistics analysed by Karl Ritter von Englisch and Canadian immigration data prior to World War One. The historian Hans Chmelar in his analysis estimated that roughly 240,000 migrants moved to Canada. The

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Hungarian immigration reached its peak between 1901 and 1910 when about 105,000 settlers arrived. In that decade Austro-Hungarians became the third largest group of immigrants beside the British and Americans.28 However, with the outbreak of World War One the period of mass migration movements from Europe to North America ended and immigration flows to Canada greatly declined.

Closing the doors: Interwar period and National Socialism During the inter-war period, immigration to Canada became more and more exclusive. Particularly the new economic realities such as a recession in Canada immediately after the Great War, and the consequences of the Depression years from 1929 onwards, are reflected in many of the Canadian federal government’s orders passed to control immigration flows. In the amendment of the Immigration Act in 1919, the list of undesired immigrants was again extended and among others the category “enemy aliens” was added, which concerned Austrians and others until 1923.29 Also the Cabinet was further empowered to “prohibit or limit . . . the landing . . . of immigrants belonging to any nationality or race or of immigrants of any specified class or occupation, by reason of any economic, industrial or other condition temporarily existing in Canada or because such immigrants are deemed unsuitable having regard to the climatic, industrial, social, educational, labour or other conditions or requirements of Canada” (Hawkins, Critical Years 17). As Hawkins states this provision became the “principal instrument through which the White Canada policy in immigration was implemented; it was in active use for 50 years” (17). Thus, subsequent exclusionary measures, also on racial grounds, were introduced to bar Asian immigration or to impose significant restrictions on immigration of certain groups such as black Americans or Jews.30 Interwar Canadian immigration policy and its practical enforcement also led to differences in the acceptance of European immigrants. British subjects or American citizens, as well as those of Northern and Western European states, such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Germany (since 1926), Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and France experienced no restrictions since they came from “preferred countries.” However, those who were nationals of countries listed as “nonpreferred,” such as Austria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, mismatch is most probably due to missing data, different periods of counting, and acquisition of inaccurate data regarding nationality or ethnic origin (Chmelar 63). 28 Cf. Englisch 104. 29 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock 172, 187 – 88; Schober, “World Wars” 61. 30 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock 202 – 10.

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Latvia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, could only be admitted as agriculturalists, farm labourers, domestics, and sponsored family members.31 During the interwar period, economic crises as well as changing legal systems (e. g. the introduction of a US quota system in 1921) vigorously shaped the opportunities for the transatlantic migration of Europeans.32 In terms of emigration from Austria (whose territory after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918 was reduced to that of a minor state with only about 6.4 million, mainly German-speaking inhabitants) the effects of a changing Canadian migration regime between the wars can be observed. As Austrians were “enemy aliens” until 1923 and, furthermore, belonged to the category of nonpreferred countries, a significant immigration to Canada started only in 1926 and lasted for about six years. Austrian emigration statistics show that 5,201 Austrians (according to citizenship) left for Canada between 1923 and 1931. From 1923 to 1925 the annual emigration rate was about 70 persons, but it increased in 1926 to 514. It peaked at 1,396 emigrants in 1927, which is the highest annual figure in this period. For 1929 and 1930 Austrian statistics report 1,032 emigrants and 621 respectively, whereas in 1931 the number again dropped considerably to a mere forty-seven; it stayed that low in subsequent years.33 For the interwar period, Austrian emigration statistics and Canadian immigration numbers correlate quite well. According to Canadian immigration statistics, approximately 5,500 Austrian nationals arrived in Canada until 1931.34 But a few hundred Austrian nationals represented in the Canadian immigration statistics did not move from Austria directly but from the US to Canada, which explains the difference to Austrian emigration numbers of about 300 persons.35 Austrian immigration to Canada between 1926 and 1931 was mainly triggered by the so-called Railway Agreement (1925 – 1930), which permitted the Canadian National and the Canadian Pacific Railways to recruit and transport European farmers and agricultural labourers from both preferred and non-preferred countries. Canada’s transportation companies had been the strongest lobbyists for less rigorous immigration policies.36 The tight Canadian entry regulations for the few thousand Austrian immigrants during the interwar period (reduced admittance as farmers, farm workers, domestics or sponsored 31 Cf. Hawkins, Critical Years 26 – 27. Most of the Southern European countries were not even mentioned. 32 Cf. Faßmann, “Europäische” 41 – 42. 33 Cf. Statistisches Handbuch für die Republik Österreich (13.1933) 34. In 1927 and 1928 the rates of emigration to Canada (1,396 and 1,377) interestingly were higher than those to the USA (875 and 1,268), thus reversing an earlier trend in which migrants had favoured the US. 34 Cf. Neuwirth 35. 35 Cf. Canada Year Book (1927 – 28) 194; (1930) 168; (1934) 190. 36 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock 198 – 99: Schober, “World Wars” 61 – 62.

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family members) are clearly reflected in their professions: 82 % of the emigrants in 1926 were farm labourers or agriculturists, 4 % industrial workers, 4 % domestics, and 7 % were dependents. By 1930, the composition had slightly changed, but the majority still consisted of farm workers (68 %), followed by domestic servants at 13 %. In that year the rate of industrial workers among immigrants dropped to 1 %, whereas the number of dependants increased to 15 %.37 Most of the Austrians left for Canada because of unemployment, especially those from economically weak regions such as Burgenland (50 %) and Styria (17 %). About 11 % came from the province of Upper Austria, 9 % percent from Carinthia, also 9 % from Lower Austria, 4 % percent from Vorarlberg and just 1 % percent from Tirol (Schober, “World Wars” 60). Due to the economic situation and the growing unemployment in the 1920s, “Austrian authorities now regarded emigration as an antidote to mass unemployment and even provided some financial assistance to facilitate the process.” (61) However, the 1929 crash of the New York Stock Market and the subsequent collapse of the Canadian economy severely affected immigration flows from 1930 onwards. Therefore, also Austrian immigration came to an end at a total of about 5,500 migrants for the interwar years. The Canadian government stopped promotional activities and limited admissible immigrants to (preferably white) British subjects from the Commonwealth, Americans, and to agriculturalists with sufficient means to run a farm in Canada. The result was a dramatic decline of the immigration level by about 90 % within a few years: from 104,000 arrivals in 1930, numbers dropped to only 11,200 in 1935.38 The experience of the dire depression, with a third of Canada’s population out of work, intensified the trend that Canadian society, as well as its political leaders, became more intolerant, narrow-minded, and xenophobic during the interwar period, “which shaded off into anti-Semitism and a total indifference to the plight of Jewish refugees in Europe in the 1930s” (Hawkins, Critical Years 30). According to the White Canada policy, Jews were considered to be unassimilable and, just like Orientals and blacks, at the bottom of the ranking of desired immigrants.39 Canada under Prime Minister William Mackenzie King, “who had only two political objectives: to keep Canada united and to stay in power” (Hawkins, Critical Years 29), did not create a special humanitarian classification for Jews seeking refuge from the Third Reich. Instead, immigration authorities treated Hitler refugees as if they were ordinary immigrants, wherefore their applications often failed. Apart from a few exceptions, Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany usually could not fulfill the tight Canadian immigration 37 Cf. Statistisches Handbuch für die Republik Österreich (8.1927) 46; (12.1931) 51. 38 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock 220; Statistics Canada Table A 350. 39 Cf. Abella and Troper, “The line” 182.

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requirements effective since 1931.40 Mastermind of the anti-Semitic refugee policy was the director of the Immigration Branch Charles Frederic Blair, who also refused the admission of the desperate passengers on the St. Louis in June 1939 with the argument that “these refugees did not qualify under immigration laws for admission and that, in any case, Canada had already done too much for the Jews” (Abella and Troper, “The line” 179). Eventually the doors for Jewish refugees closed completely, when Canada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939. From this day onwards the Cabinet prohibited “the landing of ‘enemy aliens and nationals of any country now occupied by an enemy country’, which of course included Austrians” (Pichler and Tyrnauer 89). Nevertheless a group of about 2,300 refugees of Austrian and German descent, almost all Jewish, landed in Canada in July 1940. But they did not arrive as refugees; they were deported as “enemy aliens” from Great Britain together with German prisoners of war and civilian internees with a certain security risk, overall about 6,700 men (Koch 262). Since they came as “enemy aliens”, they all – also Jewish refugees – were interned in Eastern Canada. Following an offer of the British government about half of the Jewish refugees returned to Great Britain in mid-1941. The remaining Jewish deportees, altogether 972 Austrian and German men, were released from detention in Eastern Canada between October 1941 and December 1942. Despite the experience of internment and anti-Semitism, many of these refugees remained in Canada, because at that time the country offered great chances for academic education and career opportunities.41 The exact number of Jews who found refuge in Canada during the twelve years of Nazi terror (1933/38 – 1945) can only be assumed today because Canadian prewar statistics have no refugee classification. According to the findings of Harold Troper and Irving Abella, Canada exhibits the worst record of all refugee-receiving states, since fewer than 5,000 Jewish expellees from Europe were absorbed (Abella and Troper, None XXII); it is estimated that by the end of the Second World War only about 680 Austrian Jewish refugees had found asylum in Canada (Moser 75), many of whom settled in Quebec (preferably in Montreal) and Ontario (mainly in the Toronto and Ottawa area).

40 Cf. Pichler and Tyrnauer 91 – 93. 41 Cf. Draper 98 – 108; Strutz 184 – 92. It is assumed that approximately 600 to 800 Austrians were among the 2,300 refugees. The particular fate of these Austrian Jewish refugees in Canada is part of ongoing research by the author. Up to this day we only have limited knowledge about their experiences and memories as well as their subsequent lives and careers in Canada. In this respect Eugen Banauch’s work is a rare exception. In his book Fluid Exile he analyses the literary work and the cultural production of Jewish writers in Canada who came as internees in 1940 and stayed on after 1945.

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Re-opening the doors:Canadian immigration policy caught between persistence and change In the period between the end of the Second World War and the early 1960s, Canadian immigration policy was shaped by the continuity of the restrictive, exclusive and selective policy which had already been practiced in Canada over decades. For the time being the leitmotifs can be outlined as such: Although immigration was a necessity for Canada’s socio-economic development and population growth, it had to be selective and to relate to the absorptive capacity of the country (Harzig 201 – 03; Hawkins, Canada 92 – 94). Furthermore, “immigration was not to change the fundamental demographic character of the community, which necessitated continued restrictions on Asian immigration.” (Kelley and Trebilcock 317 – 18) During the immediate post-war years, Canada feared a recession. The anxiety was fuelled by the painful memory of the aftermath of World War I. As a result, authorities wished to keep arrival rates low in order to prevent unemployment caused by a surplus of manpower through immigration. However, soon the opposite happened: Canada experienced a strong economic upturn which was triggered by increasing export figures through the European recovery program and major investments for the improvement of the country’s infrastructure (e. g. hydro-electric power plants, transportation systems, etc.). As a consequence of that, but also to prevent losing face in the international political forum which engaged in the relief of the tense refugee situation in post-war Europe and included countries such as Australia and the United States, the Canadian government also participated in international refugee programs from mid-1947 onwards. The implementation of such programs for displaced persons in the following years already shows a shift in Canadian political culture towards a more liberal and humanitarian approach in refugee matters, as compared to the inhuman and anti-Semitic response to Jewish refugees in the 1930s (Harzig 207 – 08). Until 1953, Canada authorized the entry of 165,000 stateless European refugees and displaced persons, who predominantly were screened and recruited in DP-camps in Austria, Germany and Italy.42 The demand for manpower on the Canadian labour market, especially for labour in primary industries but also in skilled occupations, steadily increased. Therefore, the Canadian government intensified its promotional activities in 42 Cf. Knowles 157 – 70; Kelley and Trebilcock 318. Among the stateless DPs were many Polish Jews, who had been forced to flee their home lands that were under communist influence after 1945, due to anti-Semitism and pogroms. Another significant group were refugees from the Soviet Union; some had even been forced labourers. They could not return to their native country because they suffered from repressions such as internment, as the Soviet Union treated forced labourers as if they had been Nazi collaborators.

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Europe once again, where during the Second World War all the overseas immigration posts except for the London office had been closed. For instance, in the late 1940s, offices abroad were opened in France (Paris 1946), Great Britain (Glasgow 1948, Liverpool 1949), the Netherlands (The Hague 1947), Belgium (Brussels 1948), Sweden (Stockholm 1948), Italy (Rome 1948), Germany (Karlsruhe 1948), in Greece (Athens 1949), and also in Austria (Salzburg 1949). In order to manage the numerous admissions Canada received it was necessary “to enlarge the narrow existing categories for admission and to revise and modernize the old restrictive Immigration Act.” (Hawkins, Canada 99). The Immigration Act of 1952 was meant to replace the outdated illiberal legislation of 1910, but it was in many respects disappointing. For instance, the legislation “established a hierarchy of preferences, reflecting an immigration policy that was highly selective with respect to the country of origin” (Kelley and Trebilcock 334). According to the four-class-hierarchy of immigrants introduced in the mid-1920s, citizens from countries such as Great Britain, France, the United States and many former (predominantly white) British dominions were privileged. Other nationals from Western European countries belonged to the second class of preferred immigrants, as did Austrians. Prospective immigrants from Eastern European countries and Turkey, but also from the Middle East and Israel belonged to the third category of immigrants and were admissible if they had relatives in Canada who would sponsor them. Asians and also Africans, unless certain quotas were issued for immigration from countries such as India, Pakistan or Ceylon, belonged to the fourth category of preferred migrants and could only move to Canada if they were a husband, wife, child, father or mother of a Canadian citizen who was in a position to sponsor them (333 – 34). In that respect, the 1952-Act was not a modern tool at all, it rather maintained the traditional concept of Canada being a dominantly white society with European roots. Austrians thus belonged to the second class of preferred citizens and were therefore only marginally affected by the 1952 Immigration Act. Similar to the aftermath of World War One, at first the entry of Austrians, as well as that of Germans to Canada was prohibited, because of their classification as “enemy aliens”. For Austrians that classification was already revoked by Canadian authorities in November 194743, while German citizens had to wait until September 1950.44 Quite a few young Austrian women and men typically perceived transatlantic emigration as an opportunity for better living conditions; therefore the Canadian promotional activities created great interest in Austria. The promotion 43 Cf. Steinhauser 104 – 05. 44 Cf. Hawkins, Canada 99.

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aimed at attracting certain professions needed on the Canadian labour market such as miners, skilled industrial workers, farm labourers, woodworkers but also domestic servants and nurses. Furthermore, financial help was offered by the Assisted Passage Loan Scheme (introduced in 1951) to those who could not afford the costs of the overseas passage. However, the number of Austrians who applied for such a travel loan was relatively small.45 According to Canadian immigration statistics the influx of Austrians rapidly increased from only 395 arrivals in the year 1950 up to 3,628 in 1951. For the next years the annual rate remained quite high and by 1957 70 % of the overall post 1945 quantity of Austrian immigrants had arrived in Canada, amounting to roughly 24,000 persons. Afterwards the number continuously declined to only a few hundred newcomers each year. By 1972, the last year in Canadian statistics counting for the post-war period, approximately 34,300 Austrians had migrated to Canada.46 The province of Ontario, especially the Greater Toronto area including Hamilton and the Waterloo-Kitchener region, received about half of the Austrian settlers because of a great number and variety of jobs there (e. g. in the steel industry, automotive industry, mines, agriculture, domestics and other service sectors). Quebec, preferably Montreal, absorbed another 20 % and more than 5 % chose Alberta. Also British Columbia, especially Vancouver, was an attractive destination for Austrian immigrants. A sociological survey of Austrian immigrants reveals that the poor economic outlook in Austria and the scarcity of housing in the early 1950s as a consequence of the war, but also Austrian party political nepotism, the Russian occupation (until 1955), and wanderlust were main motives for emigration. In most cases a number of different reasons were cited by the people involved. Apart from job and career opportunities, especially the presence of relatives and friends in Canada proved to be a pull factor for at least a third of the group of Austrians studied. Another result of that survey shows that the majority of the post-45 Austrian immigrants came from the eastern provinces, especially from Vienna, Burgenland and Styria.47 The pattern of the Austrian immigration wave – with over two thirds of the post-war migrants having already arrived by 1957 – corresponds to the general trend of European immigration in Canada during the period. A recession that began in 1958, caused a sharp decline of immigrant arrivals in Canada until 1961 due to immigration restrictions. In 1962 recovery began and led in Canada and the USA, as well as in Western Europe, to a longer economic boom. As a consequence, the number of available immigrants from Great Britain and Western Europe dropped significantly. For Canada a modification of the traditional 45 Cf. Steinhauser 109 – 10. 46 Cf. 1972 Immigration Statistics Canada 22. 47 Cf. Suschnigg 130 – 33; 136 – 37.

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immigration laws favouring British, American and European immigration, was inevitable, and this time Canada took the opportunity to develop a modern system without ethnic and racial discrimination. The result is a points system which reduces the traditionally discretionary power of the immigration officials, and instead is based on various criteria for prospective immigrants, such as age, education, occupational skills and training, and knowledge of English and French. In order to obtain an entry visa also pre-arranged employment contracts and relatives already living in Canada are evaluated. The new regulations became effective in 1967. Subsequently, the composition of Canada’s immigration intake changed drastically and Asian countries were to become the main source of immigrants.48 Thus, Canadian society was confronted with the challenge of a rapidly growing racial, cultural and religious diversity of its population, the demands of which were met by the adoption of a multiculturalism policy in Canada during the 1970s and the 1980s. The state-initiated policy of multiculturalism may not be an instrument to solve all problems of the present Canadian society, but it seems that the acceptance of diversity and the possibility for individuals to maintain strong ties with their ethnic and cultural backgrounds has a positive effect on social cohesion. This should provide sufficient reason for Austria, which has also changed significantly, from a traditional emigration country until the 1960s, to an immigration society, to be inspired by the modern Canadian model of how to integrate – and thus to benefit from migrants from ethnic and diverse cultural backgrounds.

References Abella, Irving, and Harold Troper. “‘The line must be drawn somewhere:’ Canada and Jewish Refugees 1933 – 9.” Canadian Historical Review 60.2 (1979): 178 – 209. –– . None is too many. Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933 – 1948. 3rd ed. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002. Banauch, Eugen. Fluid Exile. Jewish Exile Writers in Canada 1940 – 2006 (Anglistische Forschungen 395). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009. Caro, Leopold. Auswanderung und Auswanderungspolitik in Österreich. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1909. Chmelar, Hans. Höhepunkte der österreichischen Auswanderung. Die Auswanderung aus den im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreichen und Ländern 1905 – 1914 (Studien zur Geschichte der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie 14). Wien: VÖAW, 1974. Daper, Paula Jean. “The Accidental Immigrants. Canada and the Interned Refugees: Part 2.” Canadian Jewish Historical Society Journal 2 (Fall 1978): 80 – 112. 48 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock 353 – 63.

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Engelmann, Frederic C., Manfred Prokop, and Franz A. J. Szabo, eds. A History of the Austrian Migration to Canada. Ottawa: Carlton UP, 1996. Englisch, Karl Ritter von. “Die österreichische Auswanderungsstatistik.“ Statistische Monatsschrift, Neue Folge 18 (1913): 65 – 167. Faßmann, Heinz. “Auswanderung aus der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie 1869 – 1910.” Auswanderungen aus Österreich. Von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Traude Horvath and Gerda Neyer. Wien, Köln, Weimar : Böhlau, 1996. 33 – 55. ––. “Europäische Migration im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.“ Migrationen. Globale Entwicklung seit 1850. Ed. Albert Kraler et al. Wien: Mandelbaum, 2005. 32 – 53. Harzig, Christiane. Einwanderung und Politik. Historische Erinnerung und Politische Kultur als Gestaltungsressourcen in den Niederlanden, Schweden und Kanada (Transkulturelle Perspektiven 1). Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2004. Hawkins, Freda. Critical Years in Immigration. Canada and Australia Compared (McGillQueen’s Studies in Ethnic History 2). 2nd ed. Montreal et al.: McGill-Queen UP, 1991. ––. Canada and Immigration: Public Policy and Public Concern. 2nd ed. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queens UP, 1988. John, Michael. “Push and Pull Factors for Overseas Migrants from Austria-Hungary in the 19th and 20th Centuries.” Austrian Immigration to Canada. Selected Essays. Ed. Franz A. J. Szabo. Ottawa: Carlton UP, 1996. 55 – 82. Kelley, Ninette, and Michael Trebilcock. The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy. 2nd ed. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2000. Knowles, Valerie. Strangers at our Gates. Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540 – 2006. Rev. ed. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2007. Koch, Eric. Deemed Suspect: A Wartime Blunder. Toronto: Methuen, 1980. Lichtblau, Albert, ed. Als hätten wir dazu gehört. Österreichisch-jüdische Lebensgeschichte aus der Habsburgermonarchie. Wien, Köln, Weimar : Böhlau Verlag, 1999. Moser, Jonny. Demographie der jüdischen Bevölkerung Österreichs 1938 – 1945 (Schriftenreihe des Dokumentationsarchivs des österreichischen Widerstandes zur Geschichte der NS-Gewaltverbrechen 5). Wien: DÖW, 1999. Neuwirth, Gertrud, and John De Vries. “Demographic Patterns of Austrian Canadians 1900 – 1991.” Szabo 33 – 54. Pichler, Anna Maria, and Gabrielle Tyrnauer. “Austrian refugees of World War II.” A History of the Austrian Migration to Canada. Engelmann et al. 75 – 99. Pollack, Martin. Der Kaiser von Amerika. Die große Flucht aus Galizien. Wien: Paul Zsolnay, 2010. Sautter, Udo. Geschichte Kanadas. 2. Aufl. München: C.H. Beck, 2007. Schober, Michaela C. “Austrian Immigration to Canada in the Imperial Period.” Engelmann et al. 45 – 58. ––. “Austrian Immigration between the World Wars.” Engelmann et al. 59 – 73. Steinhauser, Bettina S. “Post-war Austrian immigration to Canada.” Engelmann et al. 101 – 22. Strutz, Andrea. “Effects of the Cultural Capital in Careers of Young Austrian Jewish Refugees in Canada. A Biographical Approach to their Life Stories.” Cultural Challenges of Migration in Canada. Les d¦fis culturels de la migration au Canada (Canadiana 12). Ed. Klaus-Dieter Ertler and Patrick Imbert. Frankfurt et al.: Peter Lang, 2013. 175 – 93.

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Suschnigg, Peter. “A sociological profile of Austrian-Canadians.” Engelmann et al. 123 – 56. Szabo, Franz A. J., ed. Austrian Immigration to Canada. Selected Essays. Ottawa: Carlton UP, 1996.

Historical and web sources 1972 Immigration Statistics Canada. Immigration Division. Ed. Department of Manpower and Immigration. Ottawa: n.p., 1974. Statistisches Handbuch für die Republik Österreich. Ed. Österreichisches Statistisches Zentralamt. Wien: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, 8. 1927; 12. 1931; 13. 1932. Canada Year Book 1893, 1897, 1903, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1918, 1922 – 23. Statistics Canada, Historical Collection Canada Year Book. 9 Apr. 2013 . Statistics Canada, Section A: Population and Migration, Immigration (Series A350 – 416). Table A350 Immigrant arrivals in Canada, 1852 to 1977. 12 May 2013 .

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz

Migration and Literature – Migrating Across the Oceans: Challenges of Settlement in the USA and Canada

I. Both the USA and Canada have seen mass immigration over the course of the last two centuries, with a distinct time-lag in the nineteenth century in the case of Canada. The arrival of newcomers eager to settle in the two neighboring countries was shaped by different forces at different times and the challenges migrants experienced in them have also differed considerably. The rendition of the migratory experience in the two literatures has come to make up a significant portion of the textual corpus, thus reflecting an increased awareness of ethnic diversity and an enhanced sense of its relevance. In the limited compass of this essay I will attempt to survey these complex developments and illustrate them by considering the reflection of the experience of migrants from various ethnic groups, especially since the 1940s. The changes brought about by the movement of hundreds of thousands of people to North America from the four corners of the world are mirrored in recent scholarly discourse, especially in the new literary histories of both the United States and Canada. Anybody consulting the recently published Cambridge History of Canadian Literature (2009), edited by Coral Ann Howells and Eva-Marie Kröller, will discover that the two final chapters of the section on Anglophone literature are concerned with this crucial phenomenon. Alfred Hornung’s discussion of “Transcultural life-writing” (536 – 55) deals with a remarkably productive genre which has flourished since the 1980s and is also particularly receptive to the rendition of experiences of migration. “Life writing,” introduced as a term covering autobiographies, diaries, and related texts, has received much scholarly attention and has been the subject of many investigations, especially in Canada.1 Hornung’s essay in the Cambridge History of Canadian Literature, for instance, reviews recent family histories based on the 1 On the terms used cf. Donald Winslow, Life Writing. A Glossary of Terms in Biography, Autobiography, and Related Forms (1980).

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experiences of survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants and comments on the narration of the collective experience of migrants from China and Japan, including a history of discrimination and exclusion. The complementary essay by Neil T. Kortenaar on “Multiculturalism and Globalization” (556 – 79) stresses the importance of two distinct waves of immigration, the later one bringing migrants with special skills from Asia and Africa to Canada, some of whom became highly successful writers who managed to influence the climate of opinion concerning new Canadians and the perception of Canadian literature both inside and outside Canada. The prominence of migration as a literary theme and of the ethnic heritage of the settlers is similarly evident in Kanadische Literaturgeschichte (2005), coedited by Konrad Groß, Wolfgang Klooß and Reingard Nischik. In this volume, Hartmut Lutz has contributed a long chapter on multiculturalism as a particular strength of contemporary Canadian society (310 – 24, 325 – 36). European Canadian ethnic traditions, African Canadian, and Asian Canadian authors are examined in several subchapters.2 William H. New’s A History of Canadian Literature (2nd edition, 2003, 224 – 32) is less obviously structured along these lines, but brings the reader up to date on “paradigms of identity” with subchapters on immigrant writing by South Asian, East Asian, Latin American, African, and Caribbean authors.3 The presence of “Canadian Multicultural Fictions” was, however, documented as early as 1990 in an anthology of short stories and excerpts from novels, and interviews with their respective authors by Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond in Other Solitudes.4 The full range of multicultural fictions and poetry was documented by Smaro Kamboureli in Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Fictions (1996). US-American literary historiography similarly underwent significant changes, and following the struggle for civil rights of African Americans, the contributions of various ethnic groups were also increasingly recognized in anthologies used at colleges, as well as in literary histories. In Hubert Zapf ’s Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte (2004, 415 – 87), the issue of multiculturality is addressed in successive discussions of African American, Jewish American, 2 The contributors in Reingard Nischik’s English version of the History of Literature in Canada (2008) similarly address this issue (413 – 28). 3 That the presence of migrant voices is acknowledged and paid its due is a significant change if one compares New’s book with William J. Keith’s Canadian Literature in English (1st ed. 1985) which did not delineate such trends, and also in the 2nd ed. (2006) pays less attention to the literature produced by “new Canadians.” 4 The title alludes to Hugh MacLennan’s fictional representation in Two Solitudes (1945) of the problems of the bicultural composition of Canada, with the two founding nations not interacting with each other in a constructive way.

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Chicano, and Asian American literature, with a significant portion of those categories focusing on the ethnic immigrant experience. The current prominence of texts depicting the challenges to migrants and their presence in USAmerican literature is equally taken note of in Richard Gray’s A History of American Literature (2004, 771 – 801). Its last chapter, titled “Creating New Americas,” comprises subchapters on European immigrant writing, Chicano/ Chicana and Latino/Latina writing, and Asian American writing. The significant change in the practice of literary historiography in the USA, due to the recognition of the contribution of migrants and their descendants, is also apparent in the shift in the contents of literary anthologies widely used in US colleges. The new emphasis on ethnic writing in the two volume Heath Anthology of American Literature (gen. ed. Paul Lauter et. al., 2005), in which many ethnic voices were substituted for the focus on the Puritan tradition, was initially, in 1989, controversial but since then has been adopted in many other anthologies.

II. In the eyes of some North American commentators, these developments have, however, not gone far enough. In Canada, the awareness of the fairly rapid demographic changes following the liberalization of immigration laws in the 1960s and the adoption of the principle of ‘Multiculturalism’ in the 1980 s5 have prompted, at least in Anglophone Canada, statements referring to the country as a post-national society. The fact that in the Toronto area the proportion of people who were born abroad had risen dramatically, so that by 2006 forty-six percent of its residents (belonging to 140 ethnicities) came from outside Canada,6 has given credence to this claim. The limitations placed upon the sovereign power of the federal government, faced with increasingly strong multinational companies and the general effects of globalization, have only served to strengthen it.7 As local loyalties have remained, their combination with the effects of globalization has resulted in the emergence and affirmation of the concept of the ‘glocal.’ This trend has apparently been approved of by some observers such as Frank Davey, the avant-garde poet and Canadian critic, who, in 1993, published a monograph, entitled Postnational Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone Novel Since 1967. His thesis was carried further by Martin Genetsch in a study of the fictions 5 Cf. the survey by Valerie Knowles, Strangers At Our Gates (2007). And see below the study by Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic (2010). 6 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock 419. 7 Cf. Wilfried von Bredow, “Ironische Mythen der Souveränität. Kanadas Sorgen um seine staatliche Einheit” (2000).

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of three new Canadians, The Texture of Identity: The Fiction of M. G. Vassanji, Neil Bissoondath, and Rohinton Mistry (2007).8 The metamorphosis of Canadian society following the demographic shift of the countries of origin of new citizens has speeded up the tendency towards heterogeneity in Canadian society, and trends towards hybridization have been noted by prominent intellectuals in North America, such as Homi Bhabha,9 who are often advocates of post-colonialism and themselves of migrant backgrounds. Observers have also welcomed the new climate of opinion, fostering the gradual erosion of prejudices against certain groups, and the legislative steps taken to reduce discrimination, of which the country had certainly been guilty in the past; an issue to which we will return later. These processes also implied a weakening of asymmetrical relations of power in ‘contact zones’ originally pointed out as a phenomenon by Mary Louise Pratt in her analysis of Latin American regions in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992). This work helped to disseminate the latter concept of the give-and-take between disparate cultures and the concept of “autoethnography” central to the literary reflection of late twentieth-century migration. We will later illustrate these tendencies by considering some examples from a multiplicity of texts favorably received in Canadian society, as numerous awards given to books published by “new Canadians” demonstrate. These have earned for the Canada of today the distinction of being an ‘open’ society, a phenomenon less noticeable in the United States. Yet in the aftermath of the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, academic programs concerned with ethnic heritages and centers of ethnic studies were established in the USA and the reflection of immigration in literature became a significant topic. In Europe the scholarly debate of this issue was initiated in the former colonial empires and prompted by the move of members of colonial societies to the centers. Thus, discussions of literary texts produced by arrivals from the colonies attracted the attention of critics and generated debates on a suitable terminology.10 Meanwhile various US scholarly associations concerned with literature have taken note of the reciprocal influences of different national cultures and have suggested as a timely strategy that of going beyond the paradigm of a national literature in the study of texts. Some controversies have been created by the insistence of individual scholars to cross national borders in their investigations

8 Cf. the more recent debate of this issue in Gunilla Florby, Mark Shackleton and Katri Suhonen, Canada: Images of a Post/National Society (2009). 9 Cf. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (1994). 10 On the debate of the exclusion and the creative potential of migrants and their integration in literary studies in Europe cf. Wiebke Sievers, “Zwischen Ausgrenzung und kreativem Potential” (2011).

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and to practice, for instance, “Hemispheric Studies.”11 These deal with social and literary phenomena on the North American continent since the borders of the neighboring countries linked through NAFTA are permeable, and the regular massive exchange of goods and people is a salient feature of reality. Other scholars, such as William Boelhower,12 have insisted that American Studies, that is the study of the United States, should become part of “Atlantic Studies,” thus including not only the obvious links to Europe, originally the origin of the vast majority of immigrants to the USA, but also Africa, as implied in Paul Gilroy’s path-breaking The Black Atlantic (1993). While taking note of these trends in both countries, one cannot overlook the fact that in the USA the rituals associated with the granting of American citizenship have always been much more elaborate than in Canada. The familiar distinction between the historically dominant tropes under which the integration of immigrants was to occur – the “melting-pot” in the USA and the “mosaic” in Canada – need not be explicated here. The concepts certainly did not function in the way the rhetoric of politicians in both countries implied, as neither the melting down of differences between migrants in the USA nor the ostensible retention of distinct cultural features brought over from the country of origin in Canada was truly effected. Yet North American intellectuals are still keenly aware of significant differences between the two national cultures, which also shape the lives of settlers finding their new home. It is a commonplace that the dominant myths shaping the evolution of the two countries as described by Northrop Frye in Canada and, much earlier, by Frederick Jackson Turner for the USA, take their origin from the pristine conditions of settlement. Frye accounted for the differences between the two cultures by highlighting the greater physical challenges in the northern country, which necessitated a joint effort of a group of settlers, fostering a “garrison” mentality in the dominion, while the progressing settlement in the more southern part of the continent permitted individual efforts of pioneers, creating the reality and the myth of ‘the frontier.’13 Frye encapsulated the ‘grand r¦cit’ of Canadian national culture in his concluding essay to the Literary History of Canada, edited by Carl Klinck and first published in 1965. Frye sketched the factors indirectly shaping the ideals in the gradually developing societies: while in Canada the appreciation of good government resulted from the necessity to ally oneself with neighbors in the struggle with overwhelming difficulties in a harsh and inhospitable environment, in the 11 Cf. the collection edited by Levander and Levine, Hemispheric American Studies (2008). 12 Cf. Boelhower’s survey, “The Rise of the New Atlantic Studies Matrix” (2008). 13 Cf. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893). Turner later expanded and modified his theory by stressing the significance of the sections in American history.

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United States the possibility of moving as an individual beyond the borders of civilization fostered the wish to limit the potential interference of any higher authority. Though technological progress has clearly reduced man’s dependence on the physical circumstances of the environment, the construction of the two societies today still reflects to some degree traditional patterns of behavior also registered by outside observers. Thus these differences between the two neighboring countries “linked by the longest undefended border,” were stressed by the prominent American sociologist and political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset, who, more than twenty years ago in a comparative study entitled Continental Divide: Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (1989), contrasted the attitudes, political cultures and value systems of the United States and Canada. His careful analysis is still not outdated and deserves consideration when comparing the impact of the two societies on newcomers. In a separate study (American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, 1996), Lipset also analyzed the affirmation of the exceptional role ascribed to the United States, a notion inherited from the Puritans and their mission in the New World, retained in secularized versions. This further helps to explain some differences in the encounters between migrants and citizens in the two countries.14 This seemingly exceptional status of the USA was challenged by the events of September 11, and the trauma of this collective experience has affected the lives of many individuals, especially of some ethnic groups, notably of immigrants from the Orient, and particularly those of Arab background. The political reaction to the events was the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and the patrolling of the borders to the south and the north, and the increased vigilance concerning potential immigrants. The Patriot Act of October 2001 was rushed through Congress, and the additional screening of anybody crossing US borders was initiated. The alleged laxity of Canadian border controls was criticized and so a tightening of regulations through new Canadian legislation was demanded.15 More than 160 books, mainly novels, which have been produced in the USA during the last twelve years dealing with September 11th bear witness to the tremendous impact of this occurrence and its effect on the collective consciousness of US Americans.16

14 Lipset served as a highly respected president of both the American Political Science Association (1979 – 80) and the American Sociological Association (1992 – 93). 15 Cf. the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, assented to on Nov. 1, 2001, came into law in Canada on June 28, 2002 (cf. Knowles 257). 16 Cf. the comprehensive study by Birgit Däwes, Ground Zero Fiction (2011).

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III. If we now turn to issues of recent immigration and its reflection in Canada, we must briefly take note of the significant change that occurred after the work of the “Royal Commission for Bilingualism and Biculturalism” (1963 – 1969),17 convened with the intention to resolve the tensions between the two founding nations. With the abolition of quotas as important categories for the admission to Canada and the introduction of three new categories according to which immigrants would be admitted – the economic, the family class, and thirdly, the refugee category – the clear preference for immigrants from the British Isles and Northern Europe came to an end. John Porter’s concept of the “Vertical Mosaic” (1965) adequately describes, for the four decades after the 1920s, the general attitude to other groups of immigrants, who were placed on the lower rungs of the social ladder. The hierarchy tacitly or explicitly adopted implied that the descendants of English and Scottish settlers were to claim the role of political leaders in the country, while less desirable ethnicities were kept at bay, or – as we shall see – not even admitted. Various surveys by historians and sociologists provide factual demographic information on the waves of immigration which produced the ostensible mosaic in Canada,18 and engendered the variety of ethnic heritages in the USA. These documents offer the background against which one must read the wide spectrum of literary texts composed by spokespersons of different ethnic groups in the two countries.19 Early isolated autobiographical documents such as Laura Goodman Salverson’s Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter (1939)20 illustrate the pressures exerted in Canada by the majority, which fostered the desire of the younger generation to copy the habits and tastes of the Anglo-Saxons. Marginalized as they were by their poverty and the need to work in menial jobs, their lack of proficiency in English, which many children of immigrants acquired only late when entering schools, was a major factor in prolonging their failure to ameliorate their social status. Like other children of immigrant families, Salverson 17 Racial discrimination was legally eliminated in 1962 (cf. Knowles 187 – 90). 18 Cf. Kelley and Trebilcock, especially 352 – 472 on the years 1963 – 1976 (“Democracy and New Process”) and 380 – 416 on the years 1977 – 1994 (“The Frame of the Consensus”). Cf. also Knowles on the arrival of refugees from Asia, Africa and Latin America (212 – 15). 19 For an earlier comparison and survey of the regulation of immigration in the two neighboring countries and their reflection in literary texts, see also Zacharasiewicz, “Opportunities and Challenges of Multiculturalism in the United States and Canada” (2008). Cf. also note 56 below for surveys of the immigration to the USA, and Udo J. Hebel, Einführung in die Amerikanistik/American Studies (2008), 58 – 64 and 238 – 45. 20 For a more detailed discussion of the challenges Salverson experienced, see my other essay in this collection and my article, “In Search of Him/Herself: Autobiographical Perspectives of European Immigrants in Canadian Literature” (2010).

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began to attend school only when she was ten, but then she swiftly desired acculturation, yearning to copy the life style of the majority and suffering from a “comparison mania.” She was for a while embarrassed about her Icelandic heritage, which, like her ethnic peers, she wanted to shed. It was only later that she was able to draw on the cultural capital manifest in the journalistic activities of her highly literate father. After Salverson received encouragement from enlightened individuals, she was able to write not only novels focusing on the collective experience of her ethnic group in The Viking Heart (1923) and their contribution to Canadian nation-building, but also the first genuine – and award-winning – ethnic autobiography in English produced in Canada (1939). A more striking pattern of distancing herself from her ethnic background is apparent in the life story of Penny Petrone, the daughter of Calabrian immigrants, who grew up in North Bay on Lake Superior in the far west of Ontario. At the earliest opportunity she emancipated herself from the mores of her southern Italian background, regarded in 1896 as unsuitable for settlers on the prairies even by an enlightened Canadian politician advocating the immigration of Europeans such as Sir Clifford Sifton: she abandoned her first name Serafina, which marked her as an outsider, and adopted that of Penny instead. Like other talented children of immigrants, eager for integration and advancement, Penny improved her proficiency in English so much that she was qualified to teach the language abroad. This gave her an opportunity to leave her restrictive milieu and teach English in Europe. Eventually she felt the appeal of colonial Africa while teaching there, and having observed the lack of respect for the African native oral tradition, she felt that the situation should be remedied. This in turn triggered in her an awareness of a hitherto ignored tradition closer to home. When she returned to Canada, she was the first to publish anthologies of First Nations’ literature.21 It was only after these achievements that Petrone set about writing autobiographical texts. The first one appeared in 1995 with the title Breaking the Mould. She now finally had the self-confidence to speak about the often painful process of acculturation and to acknowledge the disappointments and the burden that the lack of respect in the host society meant. In Breaking the Mould, Petrone relates her difficulties with her mother, who like other parents had anxiously observed the estrangement of her daughter from traditional habits, societal norms, and religious practices. In Embracing Serafina (2000), her second autobiography, Petrone shows how it took her until 2000, well into her seventies, before this pioneer of aboriginal studies was “finally able to exorcise the hatred so deeply rooted in [her] psyche for [her] Italian name Serafina” (8). It was only then that she had completed the search for herself and arrived at a full 21 Cf. First People, First Voices (1984), Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present (1990), Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English (1992).

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recognition of her double identity, reflecting her hybrid experience as the descendant of Calabrian settlers in Canada. It was more difficult for her than for Salverson because of the relative absence of sophisticated literary and cultural patterns which might have fully supported a self-confident unification of a divided self; to meet on an equal footing with the majority culture thus took much longer. The career of a highly articulate descendant of Ukrainian Canadians, Janice Kulyk Keefer, an academic and writer of fiction, can provide an instructive third case. Like Petrone, Keefer, one generation later, left her nuclear family to study abroad, married an Anglophone Canadian and later entered the teaching profession. Honey and Ashes: A Story of Family (1998) bears witness to the difficult task of her ancestors of putting down roots in Canada. It relates the stories of her maternal grandparents and her parents before providing an account of Keefer’s own visit to the place where her maternal relatives came from, Staromischyna, originally in Galicia, but meanwhile an insignificant village in western Ukraine. Always retaining the hope of being able to return to her native village, her grandmother only acquired the rudiments of English, and as an adolescent. Keefer had difficulties in communicating with her. Due to the unfavorable climate in the McCarthy era even in Canada, she had not been encouraged to acquire Ukrainian, which, as a language spoken in the Soviet bloc, was suspect and regarded as a potential risk to Canadian society. That Keefer herself escaped from the closely-knit family circle is also spelled out in Honey and Ashes, and individuals who resemble the author in background and experience and who are shown to have abandoned the ties to their families turn up in her other narratives. One such story, in the collection Travelling Ladies (1990), entitled “Prodigals,” relates the belated realization of its protagonist Anna that she has missed important moments. She failed to say goodbye to her grandmother and only in a dream experienced a proper farewell and received a gift from her now deceased Nana.22 Considering these facts, the experience of marginalization and the attempted complete acculturation by the young, it is no coincidence that Keefer, as a mature academic and creative writer, has repeatedly spoken out in favor of the metamorphosis of Canadian society. She praises the potential of multiculturalism and believes that the new social climate can vitalize the imagination of writers belonging to groups which formerly found no voice.23 The currency of these concepts in Canada is due to the affirmation of the 22 On this story and the parallels between Keefer’s own experience and that of her “alter ego” Anna, cf. my other essay in this collection. 23 Cf. her essays published in Books in Canada (1991), in Essays on Canadian Writing (1995) and in the collection Difference and Community (1996).

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multicultural character of Canada by the Canadian Parliament in the 1980s and the lively debate that has been generated by the application of this principle and the measures taken by the federal government. The recommendations of the ‘Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism,’ which demanded a revaluation and recognition of diverse ethnic heritages, were thus transformed into binding law. Canada’s demographic composition underwent a dramatic change following the fundamental revision of the immigration laws, which permitted within the three categories of potential migrants the unrestricted admission of individuals from other continents whose skin color differed from what in the USA is called “Caucasian,” and who in Canada are now labeled as belonging to “Visible Minorities.”24 It is in this context, and in connection with the complex issue of the originally bilingual nature of the dominion and the controversies and tensions resulting from it, that sociologists and philosophers such as Charles Taylor (“The Politics of Recognition,” 1992) have spoken out.25 They have expressed their conviction of the value of ethnic diversity and the need to grant recognition and respect to migrants from every corner of the globe. It would, however, be wrong to ignore the voices of dissent of some new Canadians disputing the value and effectiveness of the “multiculturalism” concept as laid down in the Multiculturalism Act.26 The most articulate among them is that of Neil Bissoondath27 from Trinidad. He has emphatically advocated a complete social integration of the newcomers in the new country of choice (not only a systemic integration28 as social scientists might say) on the basis of his own experience in the postcolonial phase in the Caribbean, where the continuing sharp distinctions between ethnic groups negatively affected political life. One felicitous effect of the new socio-political paradigm in Canada in the sphere of literature has been the creativity of new Canadians. Numerous spokespersons of ethnic groups formerly on the margins of or even excluded from society had the impetus to tell stories about their own childhood, about their kin, the past of their families, and their countries of origin. Moreover they were now able to find publishers ensuring the dissemination of their (often 24 Two thirds of the immigrants in the last 25 years have come from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, including the Caribbean, which has significantly changed the demography of the country (Statistics Canada, censuses of population 1981 – 2006). Meanwhile, more than five million Canadians belong to the category of “Visible Minority Population,” thus making up more than 16 % of the population (Statistics Canada, census 2006). 25 Another widely respected advocate of multicultural citizenship and the politics of recognition is Will Kymlicka, cf. Multicultural Citizenship (1995) and Multicultural Odysseys (2007). 26 While the act was initiated in 1985, it was passed in 1988. 27 Cf. Bissoondath, Selling Illusions (1994, rev. ed. 2002). 28 For the difference between these two kinds of integration, see Heinz Fassmann, “Der Integrationsbegriff: missverständlich und allgegenwärtig. Eine Erläuterung” (2006).

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fictionalized) experiences. Acclaimed authors among these “new Canadians”, such as Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, and M.G. Vassanji, chose their own South Asian or African countries of origin as the settings for their books, and depicted the formative experiences of their alter egos, and rendered the complex situation in the societies there. Instead of the archetypal Canadian question “where is here?”, they offered answers – as David Staines has memorably put it – to the question “what is there?”29 It may well be that it was also the exotic aura of narratives about a Parsi childhood in Bombay, as, for instance, in the realistic stories and novels by Rohinton Mistry,30 or about the problems of India in his later fiction, or, the adolescence and youth of Michael Ondaatje in Sri Lanka (in his early quasi-autobiography Running in the Family, 1982), or the exploration of ethnic warfare there in Anil’s Ghost (2000), which appealed to the Canadian readership. It secured for them many prestigious prizes, among them Governor General’s Awards. Similarly Vassanji31 gained attention with his focus on the diasporic lives of Indian families in Africa. It is highly probable that the literary creations of those second-wave immigrants from Third World countries who arrived as talented students or highly trained professionals32 and then became writers provided an impetus, through their uninhibited narratives about their own ethnic pasts and countries of origin, to representatives of European ethnic groups formerly marginalized and silent in Canada. They encouraged them to recount what the challenges of the transition of their ethnic peers to their new home meant to them. The writers of Asian or African backgrounds thus furthered the preoccupation of their European Canadian counterparts with their own heritage and former home countries. The recognition granted to naturalized people born elsewhere and involving concrete measures, such as financial support for ethnic communities and for the “Heritage Language Programmes” in Ontario and other provinces, have similarly fostered retrospective views and the recovery of previously ignored countries of origin. This has led to the composition of award-winning fiction or other narratives focused, for instance, on Italian Canadians.33

29 Cf. his essay “Canadian Literature at the Millennium” (1999), 32 – 33, and also his earlier book, Beyond the Provinces. Literary Canada at Century’s End (1995). 30 Cf. Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1995), Family Matters (2002). 31 Cf. his books, The Gunny Sack (1989) and The Book of Secrets (1994). 32 Cf. Kortenaar, “Multiculturalism and Globalization,” 561 – 66. 33 Cf. the books by Nino Ricci, who has received two Governor General’s awards, first for Lives of the Saints (1990), the opening volume of a trilogy still set in a peasant community in Italy, and secondly for The Origin of Species (2008).

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IV. The events of September 11, however, have again made it more difficult for some groups – such as Arabs or Orientals from the South of Asia – to gain a foothold in the countries of the western hemisphere, as suspicion and concerns with public security have increased. That such factors played a major role also in the more distant past is evident when one considers the collective experience of discrimination against Japanese and Chinese immigrants and when one takes note of the numerous life stories published by members of these groups in the last two or three decades. They were not welcome, and legislation intended to discourage or even prevent their immigration was put in place as early as the late nineteenth century, both in Canada and in the USA. As a result of the head tax – which was intended to stop the arrival of Chinese immigrants in the “gold mountain” immediately after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1885 – migration from China to Canada became a trickle.34Due to the absence of young women, bachelor societies developed in the Chinatowns on the margins of Canadian cities. They notoriously lacked stable family structures until the restrictions to Chinese immigration were lifted after World War II, in recognition of the challenges the Chinese shared with Southeast Asian countries which had suffered under Japanese expansionism. In the USA, the exclusion of Chinese immigrants was initiated as early as 1875, and with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 ever more stringent rules were applied until the quota laws of the early 1920s effectively barred the Chinese from entering the US. It was the reform of the immigration laws in the 1960s and the termination of discriminatory clauses in the regulations which dramatically changed the picture and transformed the demographic composition of immigration both in the USA and in Canada.35 Yet the impact of many decades of official discriminatory practices has been reflected in a significant number of life writings by Chinese Canadian writers. Wayson Choy’s autobiographical account in Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood (1999) describes the challenges his parents had to face when rearing him, their adopted child, in Vancouver (47 – 56). He relates his own preference for cowboy films over the Chinese operas with their mythic characters to which his mother repeatedly took him as a very small child (69 – 71, 87). One of his 34 Cf. the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 in Canada, through which an entrance fee was introduced, and the following amendments, which finally increased the head tax to $500 in 1903, a truly prohibitive tax at the time. 35 Due to the waves of immigrants, especially from the Hong Kong area to Canadian cities, there are meanwhile significantly more than 1.2 million people of Chinese background in Canada, either recent immigrants or the descendants of Chinese Canadians.

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“uncles,” not a relative but a solitary bachelor satisfying a human need for contact with and caring for a young human being, a much practiced habit in the Chinese Diaspora, had treated him to visits to the cinema. Linked to this competition between cultural offers was young Wayson’s resistance to acquiring a command of Chinese, his inclination to speak “Chinglish,” and then the end of his attendance of Chinese school.36 The problems of Asian Canadians growing up in a society with a definite sense of the hierarchy on the “Vertical Mosaic” is vividly mirrored in a very instructive book by the prominent contemporary Canadian poet and critic Fred Wah. His “biotext” Diamond Grill (1996) illustrates the absurdities of attempts to pigeonhole everybody. Wah, as the son of Swedish, Scots-Irish and Chinese parents is – to say the least – of mixed heritage. He challenges conceptions of identity by relating the absurd insistence of his primary school teacher on ascribing a Chinese identity to young Fred, though he had only 25 % of that ethnic gene pool (53). He also reports the refusal of the members of the Chinese Canadian community to accept him as one of their own. In his avant-garde text, composed of more than 130 short segments, Wah provides abundant evidence for the myopia of those who cling to very fixed and inflexible notions of ethnic and cultural identity. As a founding member of the TISH movement and a prolific critic, Wah in Diamond Grill uses space and food imagery to underline the connections between his lived hybrid experience and the problematic perception of individuals by Canadian society and the world at large.37 Another novel by a Chinese Canadian author, SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Caf¦ (1990), has similarly received much academic attention. It is set in the racially segregated urban geography of Vancouver’s Chinatown, and renders the eagerness with which a male heir is expected in a Chinese family. It also demonstrates the dubious issue of ethnic purity in the clan, prompting the desertion of a wife with indigenous ancestry. Meanwhile, several critics who have paid close attention to the rendition of the representation of the Asian “Other”38 have begun to feel that the long-delayed 36 The difficult and complex lives of Chinese Canadians were also presented by Choy in two novels set in the same environment and depicting Chinatown in The Jade Peony (1995) and in its sequel, All That Matters (2004). Cf. also his more recent book Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying (2009), dealing with asthmatic attacks he had and a long hospital period in his sixties. 37 Using the impressions of his childhood and youth in his father’s restaurant, and the dishes prepared there, especially ‘mixed grill,’ he makes the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room of the restaurant a symbol of the borderline between the different cultures, the tensions which existed there, and also of the need to negotiate a resolution. 38 Cf. Lien Chao, Beyond Silence (1997). After surveying Chinese Canadian history and describing the struggle to establish Chinese Canadian literature in English, the book deals with prose works but also with Chinese Canadian poetry and theater. Eleanor Ty in The Politics of

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need for acknowledgement of diverse ethnic selves has been sufficiently satisfied so that one can envisage or even diagnose a move in Asian Canadian writing beyond autoethnography.39 The collective experience of Chinese Americans, which was shaped by discrimination and marginalization but also by strict internal ethnic rules shaping the lives of the younger generation, has similarly attracted much attention. Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) has meanwhile achieved the status of a classic and has been the object of many competent readings.40 Equally complex and challenging have been the fortunes of Japanese migrants to North America and of their descendants. The notorious fate of Japanese Canadians, who, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, were swiftly removed from the coastal regions of British Columbia, even though they were citizens and perhaps second- or third-generation Japanese Canadians, as nisei and sansei, was memorably presented in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981).41 She rendered their experience of internment early in 1942, when their belongings were confiscated. More than 20,000 Japanese Canadians were then moved to the interior of BC and later, in many cases, to the Prairie provinces, without receiving any compensation for the loss of their property. Relating the shock experienced by the young girl Naomi Nakane and the ordeal the removal to the Prairie provinces meant for her aging relatives, Kogawa’s book showed that literature may occasionally have some power : It triggered a long debate which was ended only in the late 1980s with compensation payments and with a “formal and sincere apology for those injustices,” for the unjustified suspicion and painful sufferings of the ethnic group by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on September 22, 1988. At the end of the war a number of Japanese Canadians – about 4,000 – had even been urged to choose voluntary repatriation to Japan.42

39 40

41 42

the Visible in Asian North American Narratives (2004) addresses both Chinese Canadian and Chinese American literary texts, illustrating the emergence of this literature from early historiographic autoethnography onwards. Her monograph includes not only texts by Chinese North Americans but also by Filipino and Japanese North American writers. More recently Eleanor Ty and Christl Verduyn have raised this issue in the collection Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography (2008). Cf. also the comments in Ty’s The Politics of the Visible (2004) on Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991) which, like its well-known predecessor, The Joy Luck Club (1989), juxtaposes present-day American culture with the mythic way of life in China before the 1950s, rendering the opposed worlds from the angles of mothers and daughters. Joy Kogawa has since then produced a sequel to Obasan, a book entitled Itsuka (1992), published in a revised form, under the title Emily Kato (2005). On the long efforts to achieve redress and an official apology see Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time (1991). As one of the most articulate critics of that belated acknowledgment of discrimination and unjustified punishment of a whole group, Roy Miki also convened a conference of Canadian writers in 1994 to which only writers of color were

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Japanese Americans experienced a comparable fate, as more than 120,000 of them living on the West Coast were, following an Executive Order of President Roosevelt, also incarcerated as security risks after Pearl Harbor and held in internment camps. But they were set free following a decision by the Supreme Court and permitted to return to their original homes as early as 1945. Thus they fared better than their Canadian peers, as they also received compensation earlier. Yet there was an additional problem during the war in the USA, namely the demand to declare their loyalty and the need for young Nisei men to serve in the US Armed Forces. Those who refused to do so in the camps were called “No-No Boys,” which is the title of John Okada’s exploration of the very tough situation of young Japanese Americans, published as early as 1957.43

V. The complex challenges of the arrival and attempted integration of migrants from many lands in North America are also graphically rendered in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For (2005). This novel by the Caribbean Canadian author, largely set in Toronto, offers through the use of multiple perspectives the contrasted ideas and desires of members of two generations of ethnic groups largely belonging to visible minorities. The children of immigrants from Jamaica, of refugees from Vietnam and the descendants of Africadians and Italians seek to realize their dreams.44 The young distance themselves from the accommodating attitudes of their own parents, who sought full integration and modest success in trades for which they were not really trained. For instance, the Vietnamese couple take on the stereotypical role of Oriental cooks and do not work in their previous profession.45 Irrespective of the tragedy that the restless inquiry after a child lost on the flight of the Vietnamese boat people involves in invited. This was a controversial procedure, which, however, shows that they had certainly gained prestige, leverage, and influence. 43 John Okada, No-No Boy (1957). 44 Tuyen, the daughter of Vietnamese professionals now owning a restaurant, catering to the needs and tastes of members of the Vietnamese minority, leads a bohemian life and interacts with Carla, who angrily quarrels with her irresponsible Jamaican father while caring for her brother, a juvenile delinquent. Meanwhile, Oku, a Jamaican drop-out from his literature courses, hopelessly yearns for the attention and love of Jackie, a black beauty with an Africadian background. 45 Cf. the study of the topography of ethnic communities in the Toronto region and the move of the younger generation beyond their borders in David Tavares and Marc Brosseau, “The Spatial Politics of Informal Urban Citizenship: Reading the Literary Geographies of Toronto in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For” (2013).

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this polyphonic novel, the cosmopolitan blending of manners and culinary practices by the young protagonists suggests that, in spite of severe difficulties faced by the migrants and their offspring, a resolution of many problems seems possible in cosmopolitan Canadian society.46 Considering this “laissez-faire” for new Canadians it seems proper not to ignore the issues connected to the language question in Quebec.47 While “litt¦rature migrante” represents a fully acknowledged segment of francophone literature in the province,48 the provincial elections in Quebec in September 2012 have highlighted definite anxieties and concerns of the so-called allophones in that province, mainly resident in the Montreal region. The declared intention of Pauline Marois, the new prime minister of the province and leader of the Parti Qu¦b¦cois heading a minority government, to strengthen the regulations concerning language requirements in school attendance of children of immigrants originally set down in Loi 101, and at variance with federal legislation,49 has given rise to passionate debates and agitation among those concerned. We shall see whether the rational approach to these burning issues of language and culture in Quebec advocated by G¦rard Bouchard and Charles Taylor in their official report50 will be listened to and will ease the divisiveness of the cultural conflict in one of the two core provinces of Canada.

VI. While the USA has not officially adopted multiculturalism as a guiding principle of its political life, it has adopted legislation ensuring fairness to various ethnic groups, and has introduced “affirmative action” programs through “executive orders.” It has thus encouraged members of various ethnic groups to ac46 It is worth observing that in their lives these young ethnics in their Torontonian home do not interact much with Anglo-Saxons and other descendants of European origin, and thus their integration is limited. The only exception is the fact that Jackie’s boyfriend Reiner-Maria is of German background. 47 The francophone majority in Quebec has, through its provincial government, obtained the right to select its own independent class immigrants and has adopted an “interculturalism” policy towards immigrants that differs from the strong multiculturalism policies practiced by the Canadian federal government. Cf. Knowles 218 – 19, and Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys (2007) 142. 48 Cf. especially Marco Micone’s plays, which are generally considered a significant contribution to francophone literature. Cf. for instance, the treatment in Howells and Kröller, 561 – 69 and 623. 49 Cf. the adoption of the Charter of the French Language, dating from 1977. 50 Cf. the assessment of the importance of this report, published in 2008, by Fritz Peter Kirsch in this collection.

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knowledge and affirm their heritage.51 We should add here that most of these immigrants of European descent who were less welcome and referred to in fiction with derogatory nicknames52 have meanwhile been completely integrated, assimilated, and Americanized, and after having been subsumed under the label of Whites/Caucasians, are not any longer distinguished from the WASPs. But other ethnic groups corresponding to the “visible minorities” in Canada have faced greater challenges when seeking a new home in the USA. An accommodation and far-reaching integration in the culture of the new American environment seems to have been achieved by those immigrants from Asia with a particularly painful collective experience, namely refugees from Indochina. A number of literary texts based on their experience of flight, dislocation, and then dispersal in the USA, where they eventually congregated in large numbers in California, but also settled in the South, where they found work in shrimp fishing, reflect their being suspended between two worlds. Richard Gray, in A Web of Words (2007), has analyzed recent literature from the Deep South which articulates this experience, and shows how the protagonists of fiction, for instance, by Lan Cao or Robert Olen Butler try to realize “the Vietnamese version of the American dream” (Cao qtd. in Gray, Web of Words 226).53 A sign of their imaginative integration in the culture of the region is, ostensibly, the repeated fusion of their trauma of the Vietnam War with that of the military campaign of the American Civil War, which is still part of the region’s imaginary.54 While the Vietnamese who were brought to the USA as allies in adversity benefited from this status, other immigrants from the two hemispheres have, since the liberal Immigration Act of 1965, struggled to gain a foothold in the USA and become American citizens, often relying on the support of their own ethnic groups. The successes of their co-nationals in the USA were a major pull factor in encouraging their departure from countries with dictatorial/autocratic regimes, such as Cuba or Haiti in the Caribbean. Yet the primary arrival route of Latinos has been through Mexico. The dramatically increased number of Hispanics in a number of states in the Southwest of the USA, many of whom entered the country 51 On the earlier official attitude towards immigration and ethnicity, cf. Sylvia Pedraza and Ruben Rumbaut, Origins and Destinies (1996). 52 On the disrespect for the Irish, caricatured as Teagues and early as bogtrotters, the representation of Jewish immigrants as Kikes or Hebes, and of Italians as Dagos or Wops, cf. various essays in American Studies by James H. Dorman (1985 and 1991), who also includes caricatures of Orientals, especially Chinese in America. 53 Gray refers to “more than a million Vietnamese and native-born Americans of Vietnamese descent [who] now live in the United States; . . . about three hundred thousand of these have gathered in the southern region of the country” (222). 54 Cf. the stories contained in Robert Olen Butler’s collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992) or Lan Cao’s novel, Monkey Bridge (1997).

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illegally, has created major problems and has given impetus not only to efforts to make English the official language of the USA but also to deport many of the UDIs (“undocumented immigrants”) and to erect a fence prohibiting further “invasion.”55 This is one of the most controversially debated issues of today in the southwestern states from California via Arizona and New Mexico to Texas. While Canada is rarely entered from the sea and the admission of up to 250,000 immigrants per year has allowed Asians, Africans, and Caribbeans to seek a new home in Canada, where they may gain citizenship after at least three years of permanent residence, the United States is faced with the unresolved situation of having millions of Latinos in the country who had no immigration permits and have no title to being in the USA.56 Many of these undocumented immigrants originally worked as temporary farm workers, but remained after the harvests had ended and now make up a significant fraction of the population in some districts. Trying to resolve this situation in the past, President Reagan signed an “Immigration Reform and Control Act” in 1986, which granted “legal permanent residency status” to about three million people. This amnesty encouraged many more to slip across the US border seeking a better life in the north. Meanwhile, the emergence and dissemination of Chicano literature, i. e. the poetry and narrative prose of US Americans of Mexican background, who since the 1960s have been increasingly aware and confident of their heritage, has given additional weight to this ethnic group and to the plight of illegal immigrants in a vast territory, which was part of Mexico until the mid-nineteenth century. The people in Arizona in particular resent these illegal residents and their competition in the labor market. Due to their dissatisfaction with the lack of initiatives to resolve this issue through the accelerated erection of fences and installations to prevent a crossing of the border, vigilante groups have been formed to patrol the border in order to stop illicit traffic across it. These patrols are organized in areas in which many deaths have occurred due to thirst and lack of supplies, tragedies resulting from the desperate attempt to cross over and benefit from the realization of the American Dream. Congress has for many years been unable to arrive at a solution of this urgent problem, which also became an issue in the months leading up to the presidential elections in November 2012. It was not until the first half of 2012 that a new initiative to partly remedy the situation 55 On the arrival and delayed integration of Latin Americans from Mexico and Puerto Rico, cf. Pedraza and Rumbaut, 84 – 109, on undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, cf. 250 – 62, and on Cuba’s refugees, cf. 263 – 79. Cf. also the longish essay, “A Nation of Immigrants” by Bernard A. Weisberger (1994). 56 According to statistics on immigration to the United States, about 1.05 million people were new legal permanent residents in the United States in 2010; among them about 150,000 came from Mexico. In the last decade of the twentieth century more than ten million people were apparently admitted as legal immigrants, on average about one million arriving each year.

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of UDIs was made public, which revealed wide differences of opinion between politicians and in the population. Then US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced an intended amnesty for the children of illegal immigrants who have attended schools and colleges. They are to be given the hope that they might not only continue to stay in the country and not be deported, but also to be allowed in the future to apply for work permits and eventually become American citizens. In August 2012 the Obama administration initiated through executive action a program granting a temporary suspension of the deportations of young illegal immigrants who had entered the country as children, attended schools, and resided in the USA since 15 June, 2007. They were also to be given authorization to work in the USA following their application and the payment of a relatively high application fee ($ 465). Within a year almost 560,000 of an estimated number of 900,000 eligible for such applications submitted their papers for review and most of them were approved, which meant the suspension of deportation for two years. Three quarters of the applicants had been born in Mexico. This initiative no doubt influenced the voting patterns in the presidential elections and helped Obama to secure the support of the Latino voters. The re-elected president afterwards announced the intention to permanently resolve this critical issue. The Democratic Party is seeking support for a bipartisan stance in Congress to ease the plight of millions of undocumented immigrants from Latin America.57 Fictional texts have contributed significantly to bringing this burning issue to the attention of a wide reading public. T. C. Boyle’s sixth novel The Tortilla Curtain (1995) provoked a very lively debate and conflict due to its daring adoption of the perspective of an immigrant couple from Mexico who eke out their lives for a while in the vicinity of Los Angeles, taking shelter at the bottom of the Topanga Canyon on the outskirts of the city. Boyle’s novel, which has achieved the status of a new classic widely used in schools and colleges, mediates to the readership the pathos of the travails of illegal immigrants as it graphically renders the point of view of C‚ndido Rincûn and his common law wife Am¦rica, who fear being picked up by the police and being sent back across the Mexican border. The book’s impact depends, however, even more on the juxtaposition of their sorry lot with that of a wealthy American couple, Delaney and Kyra 57 How complex the situation in the USA is with respect to these immigrants, and how many European observers fail to understand the intricate situation, may be gathered from the fact that children of UDIs in a number of states are permitted to attend college and are eligible to pay the reduced tuition fees of in-state students, and that they are allowed to serve in the military. Originally only a number of states treated children of UDIs in this fashion. Meanwhile, according to the Brookings Institute, if resident, they are eligible for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities in 19 states, and can apply for a driver’s license in 45 states. Cf. Immigration facts provided by Singer and Svajlenka (14 Aug 2013).

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Mossbacher, who live in a community surrounded by nature on the outskirts of the metropolis and enjoy all the benefits of their social position as citizens. The novel achieves its effectiveness by alternating between the perspectives of the haves and the have-nots. Its most provocative aspect, however, results from the deterioration of the initially liberal attitude of Delaney, whose enlightened perspective gradually gives way to racism. Originally, he had affirmed his belief that “[i]mmigrants are the lifeblood of this country – we’re a nation of immigrants – and neither of us would be standing here today if it wasn’t” (101), but eventually he is won over by those who would like to drive away all intruders who threaten to vandalize the perfectly groomed immediate neighborhood. The nature-lover Delaney is gradually persuaded by neighbors to support the building of a high wall to ensure that the gated community of Arroyo Blanco Estates is sufficiently insulated from their surroundings. Obsessed with the idea that the Mexicans are responsible for some unpleasant events and dangerous acts and ought to be expelled from the area, Delaney blames their presence for the conflagration which threatens the gated community. Finally he even takes a gun to pursue the suspect, but the culprit is not the suspicious Mexican character, Jos¦ Navidad, who threatened the American couple and raped Am¦rica, C‚ndido’s pregnant young wife, when she returned from an errand. The fire was inadvertently caused by C‚ndido, the unfortunate UDI, who had been cheated and robbed after eventually having earned some money at the end of weeks of near starvation when he had sometimes to rely on garbage to fill his stomach. There is tragic irony in the fact that the conflagration in Topanga Canyon is really started by him when he attempts to roast a frozen turkey, given to him in a moment of unexpected luck for Thanksgiving Day. And there is pathos in the concluding scene. At the moment when Delaney catches up with the culprit, a huge landslide in the canyon deprives him of the freedom to act and almost kills him. He is, indeed, only saved by C‚ndido, though the Mexican couple lose their sickly child in this final incident, which destroys part of the canyon. Critics have argued that through the use of a passage from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as the epigraph to the book, Boyle suggests a critical assessment of the cataclysmic divide between the haves and the have-nots, and eloquently pleads for empathy with and for a humane treatment of Latino UDIs.58 Not all Latino immigrants, however, belong to this problematical category, as other books demonstrate, which mirror thoroughly different experiences of Hispanic immigrants to the USA. This is obvious in the fortunes of the protagonists of Julia Alvarez’s How the Garc†a Girls Lost Their Accents (1991). The 58 Cf. Heather J. Hicks, “On Whiteness in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain” 56.

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four sisters, who present their own life stories from varying perspectives,59 belonged originally to the social elite of the Dominican Republic and arrived in the USA with their parents as political refugees, escaping Trujillo’s autocratic regime. The long process of acculturation over several decades until their full social integration in American society and estrangement from the traditional value system on the island with its hierarchical structures and restrained patterns of behavior shaped by patriarchy, is vividly rendered in the book. Dramatic changes in the conduct of the sisters during adolescence and youth on their way from school through college parallel their acquisition of perfect English and the partial loss of their native Spanish, as the return visit to the island of the most articulate sister, Yolanda, shows. The book effectively inverts the temporal sequence while recapturing in many narrative segments the painful crises and revealing the fragmented identities of the sisters. These result partly from their unprepared exposure to the pressures of their peers in school and college in the USA and the new liberties and sexual mores in the rebellious 1960s and 1970s. Some scholars have stressed that it is debatable whether the life stories of these members of a social elite in their country of origin and then in New York represent the experience of Latinas. They have argued that a reading of the book should pay more attention to its political dimension and be aware of the “critical resistance to the contemporary forces of globalization” (Chandra 848). However, Alvarez’s novel captures at least one aspect of a crucial social phenomenon in the USA.

VII. If we are to attempt a summary and a comparison of the handling of the very complex challenges that the annual arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants has created in the USA and Canada and in its literary reflection, a few facts stick out: Canada has largely – though not completely – been without the historical burden of having a part of its population as involuntary – forced – immigrants: the ancestors of most African Americans who came as slaves.60 The rhetoric of the traditional acceptance of the ethnic mosaic also dis59 The chronology in the book is inverted: the opening chapter explores a visit by Yolanda in 1989 to the island on which she was born, many years after they had left it, while the following chapters, using multiple perspectives, go back as far as 1956, several years before their arrival in New York City to stay there. 60 The questioning of the notion of Canada as a haven for fugitive slaves has been a more recent endeavor, cf. Lawrence Hill, A Book of Negroes (2007), and the efforts of George Elliott Clarke to put the historical record right as far as the negative collective experience of the Africadians is concerned.

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tinguishes Canada from the conventional expression of the dominant ideology of its southern neighbor (though notions such as the “salad bowl” of diverse heritages have since the 1960s also gained currency in the USA and have replaced the unsuitable concept of the melting pot). A closer look at the historical development in Canada, however, reveals some limitations of the ostensibly liberal attitude of its society. The literary transcription of collective experiences of allophone settlers and the life writings of many children of less favored European immigrants expose the fact that Canadians were not above the use of ethnic stereotypes and “profiling.” The treatment of Canadian citizens of Japanese descent in World War II was clearly harsher and more reprehensible than that in the USA, and the decades of discrimination against Chinese immigrants in Canada are also amply documented in literary texts which have fairly recently become significant objects of study. The liberalization of the Canadian immigration laws and the application of the principles of multiculturalism have, however, significantly and permanently changed the picture, and have placed the creative contributions of visible minorities in Canada almost centre stage, making them catalysts for “life writing” by Canadian settlers of European descent originally on the margins of society. There were parallels between the Canadian reception of immigrants from outside Europe and the corresponding practice in the USA in the first half of the twentieth century, and the challenges for newcomers were similar. The more elaborate entrance rituals in the USA and the notion of its exceptional status as well as the wide-spread skepticism concerning the intervention of the state, limiting public support for newcomers, have distinguished the two societies as destinations and “recipients” of migrants crossing the oceans; the events of 2001 have further widened the gap between the two neighboring countries. Yet as the USA currently has a population of more than 36 million African Americans and meanwhile an even greater number of Hispanics, among them many new arrivals, the dividing lines between European ethnicities have lost their significance in the USA. These groups are not any longer clearly distinguished from the WASPs, and their life stories have recently not attracted much attention as literary subject matter, with the exception of traumatized Holocaust survivors. Yet immigration to the USA is currently a much contested field, primarily because the country has attracted millions of undocumented immigrants, especially from Latin America and the Caribbean, whose presence as speakers of Spanish, and desired or feared integration, is a highly political issue. As we have seen, literary texts have given expression to haunting aspects of this complex phenomenon, and literary studies have explored its ramifications, which deserve further scrutiny. Dealing with such texts from Canada and the USA may contribute to heightening the general awareness of major problems of

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today, which urgently demand some resolution in our globalized world; this is also true of Austria in the heart of Europe.

Bibliography Alvarez, Julia. How the Garc†a Girls Lost Their Accent. 1991. New York: Penguin, 1992. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Bissoondath, Neil. Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. 1994. Rev. ed. Toronto: Penguin, 2002. Boelhower, William. “The Rise of the New Atlantic Studies Matrix.” American Literary History 20.1 – 2 (2008): 83 – 101. Boyle, T. Coraghessan. The Tortilla Curtain. 1995. New York: Penguin, 1996. Bredow, Wilfried von. “Ironische Mythen der Souveränität. Kanadas Sorgen um seine staatliche Einheit.” Kanada / Europa: Chancen und Probleme der Interkulturalität; Canada / Europe: Opportunities and Problems of Interculturality; Canada / Europe: Chances et malaises de l’interculturalit¦. Ed. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz and Fritz Peter Kirsch. Hagen: ISL-Verlag, 2000. Butler, Robert Olen. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. New York: Holt, 1992. Chandra, Sarika. “Re-Producing a Nationalist Literature in the Age of Globalization: Reading (Im)migration in Julia Alvarez’s How the Garc†a Girls Lost Their Accents.” American Quarterly 60.3 (2008): 829 – 50. Chao, Lien. Beyond Silence: Chinese Canadian Literature in English. Toronto: TSAR Publications, 1997. Choy, Wayson. Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood. 1999. New York: Picador, 2000. Clarke, George Elliott. Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002. Davey, Frank. Post-National Arguments: Politics of the Anglophone Novel Since 1967. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993. Däwes, Birgit. Ground Zero Fiction. History, Memory, and Representation in the American 9/11 Novel. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011. Dorman, James H. “American Popular Culture and the New Immigration Ethnics: The Vaudeville Stage and the Process of Ethnic Ascription.” American Studies/Amerikastudien 36.2 (1991): 179 – 93. ––. “Ethnic Stereotyping in American Popular Culture. The depiction of American Ethnics in the Cartoon Periodicals of the Gilded Age.” American Studies/ Amerikastudien 30.4 (1985): 489 – 507. Ertler, Klaus-Dieter, Martin Löschnigg, and Yvonne Völkl, eds. Cultural Constructions of Migration in Canada. Constructions culturelles de la migration au Canada. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. Fassmann, Heinz. “Der Integrationsbegriff: missverständlich und allgegenwärtig. Eine Erläuterung.” Die missglückte Integration? Wege und Irrwege in Europa. Ed. Manfred Oberlechner. Sociologica 10. Wien: Braumüller, 2006. 225 – 38. Florby, Gunilla, Mark Shackleton, and Katri Suhonen, eds. Canada: Images of a Post/ National Society. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009.

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Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion.” A Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English. Ed. Carl F. Klinck. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1965. Genetsch, Martin. The Texture of Identity : The Fiction of M. G. Vassanji, Neil Bissoondath, and Rohinton Mistry. Toronto: TSAR Publications, 2007. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993. Grace, Sherrill. On the Art of Being Canadian. Vancouver: UBC P, 2009. Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. 2004. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. ––. AWeb of Words: The Great Dialogue of Southern Literature. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 2007. Groß, Konrad, Wolfgang Klooß, and Reingard M. Nischik, eds. Kanadische Literaturgeschichte. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2005. Hebel, Udo J. Einführung in die Amerikanistik/American Studies. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2008. Hicks, Heather J. “On Whiteness in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 45.1 (2003):43 – 64. Hornung, Alfred. “American Autobiographies and Autobiography Criticism: Review Essay.“ American Studies/Amerikastudien 35.3 (Fall 1990): 371 – 405. ––. “Transcultural Life-Writing.” Howells and Kröller 536 – 55. Howells, Coral Ann, and Eva-Marie Kröller, eds. The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Hutcheon, Linda, and Marion Richmond, eds. Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1990. Kadar, Marlene, ed. Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992. Kamboureli, Smaro, ed. Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Fictions. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1996. Keefer, Janice Kulyk. “Coming Across Bones: Historiographic Ethnofiction.” Essays on Canadian Writing 57 (Winter 1995): 84 – 104. ––. “From Dialogue to Polylogue: Canadian Transcultural Writing During the Deluge.” Difference and Community: Canadian and European Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Peter Easingwood, Konrad Gross, and Lynette Hunter. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. 59 – 70. ––. “From Mosaic to Kaleidoscope.” Books in Canada XX (Sept. 1991): 13 – 16. ––. Honey and Ashes: A Story of Family. Toronto: Harper Flamingo, 1998. ––. “Prodigals.” Travelling Ladies. 1990. Toronto: Harper Collins Perennial, 1992. 237 – 58. Keith, William J. Canadian Literature in English. 1985. 2nd edition. Erin: Porcupine’s Quill, 2006. Kelley, Ninette, and Michael Trebilcock. The Making of the Mosaic: A History of the Canadian Immigration Policy. 2nd ed. U of Toronto P, 2010. Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior : Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. 1976. New York: Vintage, 1989. Knapp, Kathy. “‘Ain’t no friend of mine’: Immigration Policy, the Gated Community, and the Problem with the Disposable Worker in T.C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain.“ Atenea 28.2 (Dec. 2008): 121 – 34. Knowles, Valerie. Strangers At Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy. 1540 – 2006. 2nd ed. Toronto: Dundurn P, 2007.

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Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. 1981. Boston, MA: Godine, 1982. Kortenaar, Neil Ten. “Multiculturalism and Globalization.” Howells and Kröller 556 – 79. Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. 1995. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. ––. Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Lauter, Paul, et. al., eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 1989. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Lee, SKY. Disappearing Moon Caf¦. Vancouver : Douglas & McIntyre, 1990. Levander, Caroline F., and Robert S. Levine, eds. Hemispheric American Studies. Essays Beyond the Nation. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2008. Lipset, Seymour Martin. American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. ––. Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada. New York: Routledge, 1989. Löschnigg, Maria, and Martin Löschnigg. Migration and Fiction. Narratives of Migration in Contemporary Canadian Literature. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009. Lutz, Hartmut. “Multikulturalität als Stärke der zeitgenössischen kanadischen Literatur.“ Groß, Klooß, and Nischik 310 – 24. MacLennan, Hugh. Two Solitudes. 1945. Toronto: McMillan, 1986. Matas Llorente, Manuela. “And Why Did the Garc†a Girls Lose Their Accents? Language Identity and the Immigrant Experience in Julia Alvarez’s How the Garc†a Girls Lost Their Accent.” Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos 8 (2001): 69 – 75. Miki, Roy, and Cassandra Kobayashi. Justice in our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991. Mistry, Rohinton. Family Matters. London: Faber & Faber, 2002. ––. A Fine Balance. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995. ––. Such a Long Journey. London: Faber & Faber, 1991. ––. Tales from Firozsha Baag.1987. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2000. New, William H. A History of Canadian Literature. 2nd ed. Montreal: McGill, 2003. Nischik, Reingard M., ed. History of Literature in Canada: English-Canadian and FrenchCanadian. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. Ondaatje, Michael. Anil’s Ghost. 2000. London: Picador, 2001. ––. Running in the Family. 1982. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2001. Okada, John. No-No Boy. 1957. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1979. Pedraza, Sylvia, and Ruben Rumbaut, eds. Origins and Destinies: Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1996. Petrone, Penny. Breaking the Mould. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 1995. ––. Embracing Serafina. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2000. ––, ed. First People, First Voices. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1984. ––. Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. ––. Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1988. Porter, John. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1965.

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Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. 1992. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2008. Ricci, Nino. Lives of the Saints. Dunvegan: Cormorant Books, 1990. Salverson, Laura Goodman. Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter. 1939. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1981. Sievers, Wiebke. “Zwischen Ausgrenzung und kreativem Potential: Migration und Integration in der Literaturwissenschaft.” Migrations- und Integrationsforschung – multidisziplinäre Perspektiven. Ein Reader. Ed. Heinz Fassmann and Julia Dahlvik. Wien: Vienna UP, 2011. 189 – 210. Singer, Audrey, and Nicole Prchal Svajlenka. “Immigration Facts: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.” Brookings. 14 Aug 2013. 28 Nov 2013 . Staines, David. Beyond the Provinces. Literary Canada at Century’s End. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1995. ––. “Canadian Literature at the Millennium.” Canada and the Millennium. Proceedings of the 2nd Canadian Studies Conference in Central Europe. A Selection. Ed. Anna Jakabfi. Budapest: Eötvös Lor‚nd UP, 1999. 32 – 44. Stefanko, Jacqueline. “New Ways of Telling: Latinas’ Narratives of Exile and Return.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 17.2 (1996): 50 – 69. Tavares, David, and Marc Brosseau. “The Spatial Politics of Informal Urban Citizenship: Reading the Literary Geographies of Toronto in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For.” Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 33.1 (2013): 9 – 33. Taylor, Charles. “The Politics of Recognition.” Multiculturalism. Examining the Politics of Recognition. Ed. Amy Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. 25 – 73. Turner, Frederick Jackson. History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays by Frederick Jackson Turner. Introduction by Martin Ridge. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1993. Ty, Eleanor. The Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives. Toronto: Toronto UP, 2004. ––, and Christl Verduyn, eds. Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2008. Vassanji, M.G. The Gunny Sack. London: Heinemann, 1989. Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. 1996. Edmonton: NeWest, 2004. Weisberger, Bernard A. “A Nation of Immigrants.” American Heritage 45.1 (1994): 75 – 91. Winslow, Donald J. Life-Writing. A Glossary of Terms in Biography, Autobiography and Related Forms. Honolulu: U of Hawai‘i P, 1980. Zapf, Hubert, ed. Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte. 1997. 2nd edition. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2004. Zacharasiewicz, Waldemar. “In Search of Him/Herself: Autobiographical Perspectives of European Immigrants in Canadian Literature.” Social and Cultural Integration and Literary Landscapes in the Canadian West. Ed. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz and Fritz Peter Kirsch. Wien: WUV-Verlag, 2010. 97 – 109. ––. “Opportunities and Challenges of Multiculturalism in the United States and Canada” Diversity Management: Eine Transdisziplinäre Herausforderung. Ed. Karoline Iber and Birgit Virtbauer. Göttingen: Vienna UP, 2008. 113 – 30.

Dirk Hoerder

Autobiographische Reflexionen von Migranten im gesellschaftlichen Rahmen: Kanada und Frankreich seit den 1970er Jahren

MigrantInnen, Männer und Frauen, die individuell oder in familiären Verbindungen wandern, werden in nationalen Geschichtsschreibungen oft kaum erwähnt oder bewusst verschwiegen.1 Ihr Kommen, ihre Anwesenheit und Arbeit ist in der jeweiligen gesamtgesellschaftlichen Leistungsbilanz, dem Bruttoinlandsprodukt, enthalten. Statistiken makroökonomischer Daten sind freilich gesichtslos. Doch MigrantInnen schaffen auch individuelle Lebenszeugnisse, Tagebücher, Briefe, Autobiographien, Stellungnahmen, Interviews. Auf diese stützt sich die hier vorgelegte kurze Darstellung von Lebenswegen und Entscheidungen im Rahmen von Optionen, die die aufnehmenden Gesellschaften bieten, und von Grenzen, die sie setzen. Die Auswirkungen von Rahmenbedingungen sollen durch den Vergleich von MigrantInnen in Kanada und Frankreich bearbeitet und für eine Debatte in Österreich genutzt werden.

Drei Staaten-Gesellschaften im Vergleich Österreich war als deutschsprachiger Teil der Habsburgermonarchie vielkulturell, Kanada ist multikulturell. Frankreich war und ist strukturell, aber nicht kulturell zentralistisch. Den Vielvölkerstaat haben ausgrenzende Diskurse und Hasstiraden von Eliten in den 1. Weltkrieg geführt – Antisemitismus gegen ÖsterreicherInnen jüdischen Glaubens, Antifremdenmentalität gegen Menschen tschechischer, slowenischer oder kroatischer Sprache, Antiselbstbestimmungskampf gegen die anderen Nationalitäten im Reich. Das Resultat war Zerstörung und am Ende des gewollten Krieges blieb der gegenwärtige Kleinstaat übrig, deutschnational, von eingeengter Mentalität, in der nationalen Geschichtsschreibung die germanischen Ursprünge hervorhebend, die keltischen 1 Vgl. Lies my teacher told me von James Loewen (1995), eine amerikanische Zusammenfassung dieser Art von historischer Erinnerung. Für eine grundlegende Kritik, vgl. Kiran Klaus Patel, Nach der Nationalfixiertheit (2004).

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lange und die slawischen immer noch verschweigend, und Zuwanderer nicht erwähnend.2 Auch in Kanada war das Konzept einer vielkulturellen Einwanderungsgesellschaft durchaus nicht von Anfang an selbstverständlich. Stattdessen standen sich die über die Generationen zugewanderten Britisch-Kanadier und FrankoKanadier gegenüber. Selbst die Differenzierung der Geschlechter fehlte: kein Text erwähnte, dass sich auch Britisch- und Franko-Kanadierinnen gegenüberstanden. Alle waren von Männern geschrieben.3 Die anglophone Seite bezog sich auf England und auf London (und kaum auf Schottland, Wales oder Irland – obwohl viele KanadierInnen von dort stammten). Nur dort, im „Mutterland,“ schien es für Anglokanada Hochkultur zu geben, war es doch bis zum Beginn der 1950er Jahre – self-colonized – nicht fähig, Eigenes wahr zu nehmen. Die Quebecer Gesellschaft, ebenfalls selbstbezogen, war von der französischen Krone an die britische Krone abgetreten worden, damit nach dem Ende eines der vielen atlantikweiten imperialen Kriege die Gewinn bringenden karibischen Kolonien, die mit Sklavenarbeit Zucker für den Weltmarkt produzierten, Frankreich erhalten blieben (Friedensverhandlungen von Paris, 1763). Die Eingliederung in das liberale britische System befreite die frankokanadische Gesellschaft von der zentralistischen Gängelung der Wirtschaft durch den französischen Intendanten. Die britische Administration beließ den BewohnerInnen Quebecs die eigenen Alltagspraktiken und Rechte: ihre Kultur, ihre Sprache und ihr Rechtssystem blieben erhalten. Erst in den 1830er und 1840er Jahren zwangen die katholischen Kirchenmänner die Gesellschaft in einen repli sur soi-mÞme, eine Haltung der Abschließung und des Selbstbezugs. Die noch vorhandene – mentale – Anbindung an Frankreich lösten die Institution Kirche und ihre Elite 1871 nach dem von ihnen verdammten Commune-Aufstand auf, als sie im päpstlichen Rom ihren einzigen Bezugspunkt sahen. Damit war Kanada durch die Selbstwahrnehmungen der beiden „Gründernationen“ eng ethnozentrisch geprägt. Da jedoch keine der beiden founding nations Hegemonie erreichen konnte, hat diese Prägung – und dies ist entscheidend für spätere Entwicklungen – dualen oder pluralen Charakter. Die Beschäftigung mit sich selbst und der nicht gerade zukunftsweisende Streit über Vorrang der einen

2 Vgl. Heinz Fassmann, „A Survey of Patterns and Structures of Migration in Austria, 1850 – 1900“ (1985); Fassmann und Rainer Münz, Einwanderungsland Österreich? (1995), und Michael John und Oto Luthar, Un-Verständnis der Kulturen (1997). 3 Frauen gründeten die Women’s Canadian Historical Society in Toronto im Jahr 1895 und in Ottawa um 1900. Für den Women’s Canadian Club in Manitoba schrieb der Bibliothekar der Provinz 1923 Women of the Red River, ein Werk, das nur weiße Frauen erwähnte. Diese Aktivitäten wurden nicht Teil der mainstream-Historiografie.

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über die andere Gründerkultur bedeutete Freiraum für eine dritte Kraft, die Zuwanderer und Zuwanderinnen und ihre Kinder, die ethnics.4 Frankreich vor dem Zeitalter der Nationalstaaten war, wie das gesamte Europa, durch regionale Vielfalt gekennzeichnet. Diese wurde jedoch übersehen, da die Hegemonie des Hofes und die Dominanz der Verwaltung, kurz „Paris“, alle Besonderheiten überdeckte. Die eigenständige südfranzösische Kultur und Sprache – langue d’oc – war schon durch einen innereuropäischen Kreuzzug zu Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts mit der Vernichtung der Albigenser zerstört worden. Bretonen und Basken wurde – anders als den Quebecern im britischen Imperium – kein eigener Kulturraum zugestanden. Als Regelsprache galt das Pariser Französisch. Allerdings mussten bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Armee Soldaten aus den diversen Regionen von zweisprachigen Offizieren, die Hochfranzösisch in die Dialekte übersetzen konnten, geführt werden.5 Keines der drei Länder – Österreich, die beiden Kanadas, Frankreich – ebenso wie auch Großbritannien, war also im modernen Sinn multikulturell. Aber alle hatten Erfahrungen mit der Vielkulturalität dynastischer Gesellschaften, in denen einigendes Moment der Untertanenstatus und die Loyalität gegenüber dem jeweiligen Monarchen oder der Monarchin waren. Der demokratisierende Aspekt der von Frankreich und den mittleren und unteren Schichten seiner Bevölkerung ausgehenden Revolutionen ab 1789 bedeutete für Vielkulturalität eher Rück- als Fortschritt. Le peuple wurde als einheitlicher revolutionärer Machtblock gegen die Vorherrschaft der alten Adelsschicht konstruiert. In der Folge war in Frankreichs Schulbüchern von „nos ancÞtres, les Gaulois“ die Rede. In „Kanada“ – und hier ist die Differenzierung wichtig: in den beiden Kanadas – gab es immerhin zwei Versionen von kultureller Ahnenschaft, die lautstark miteinander konkurrierten. Neuankommende Männer und Frauen und ganz besonders Kinder in den Schulen,6 die sich mit der ansässigen Gesellschaft zusammensetzen wollten – deshalb waren sie gekommen – mussten sich stattdessen bis in die 1960er Jahre mit abstrakten Nationskonstrukten auseinandersetzen. Als Beispiel können die Erfahrungen von Serafina Petrone dienen. Als Tochter italienischer Einwanderer 4 Vgl. Jean Burnet, „Myths and Multiculturalism“ (1979); Jean Burnet et al., Migration and the Transformation of Cultures (1992); Dirk Hoerder, „Ethnic Cultures under Multiculturalism: Retention or Change“ (1994); Wsevolod W. Isajiw, Understanding Diversity. Ethnicity and Race in the Canadian Context (1999). 5 Vgl. G¦rard Noiriel, Le Creuset franÅais (1988); Toute la France. Histoire de l’immigration en France au XXe siÀcle (1998); Yves Lequin (ed.), La mosaque France: histoire des ¦trangers et de l’immigration (1988). 6 Vgl. M. Lee Manning und Leroy G. Baruth, Multicultural Education of Children and Adolescents (1991, 3rd ed. 2000); Dirk Hoerder, „Education for a Life-World or for an Imperial Construct? Schooling in the British Imperial Sphere, 1830s to 1960s, in Comparative Perspective,“ (2006, unpublished paper).

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ging sie in den 1930er Jahren in Ontario zur Schule und wurde – so erinnert sie sich in ihrer Autobiographie – als Schulkind in eine schwere Identitätskrise gestoßen. Im anglokanadischen Unterricht musste sie inselbritische Längen-, Flüssigkeitsmaße und Geldeinheiten ebenso auswendig lernen wie die britischimperialen Kriege: Sieg gegen die Buren, Kalkutta, Plains of Abraham, Khartum. Die gut bezahlten Schulbürokraten, die den ärmeren ZuwanderInnen vorwarfen, sich abzuschließen und in clanishness zu verfallen, hatten sich selbst der Realität „Kanada“ verschlossen und klammerten sich an Großbritannien und sein Imperium. Nichts von dem, was Serafina Petrone lernte, hatte mit ihrer Lebenswirklichkeit in Kanada zu tun. Um sich vor dem schizophrenen Weltbild zu schützen, versuchte Serafina ihre italienisch-kanadische Kultur zu verneinen. Selbst ihren Namen änderte sie in „Penny,“ weil ihre Lehrer „Serafina“ weder aussprechen noch erinnern konnten. War sie kanadisch oder italienisch, britisch oder britisch-kanadisch, kanadisch-italienisch?7 Oder gar „ontarisch“ zum Unterschied von gesamtkanadisch? Die sich selbst zelebrierenden „Briten“ hatten sich gerade erst aus Angeln, Sachsen, Schotten, Orkneymen, Walisern und anderen konstruiert.8 Ob die Iren dazu gehörten oder nicht, wurde noch debattiert. „Ontario education was British in substance. British and Canadian were synonymous“ – dies wurde Serafina Petrone mitgeteilt, als sie Lehrerin werden wollte. Auch Frantisˇek (oder Franz?) Kafka, jüdischen Glaubens in einem katholisierten Staat, wurde sozialisiert gemäß den Eigentümlichkeiten eines Segmentes der scheinbar einheitlichen Habsburger Monarchie. Auch er nahm eine Welt wahr, die in sich keinerlei Stimmigkeit hatte. Das hatten die allmächtigen Bürokraten aber noch nicht gemerkt. Französische Schulbürokraten zwangen ihre ideologisierten Texte später auch den Schülern und Schülerinnen in den Kolonien auf. Aim¦e C¦saire, Leopold Senghor und viele andere SchülerInnen in den von Frankreich beherrschten karibischen, nord- und westafrikanischen Gesellschaften wurden im Zeichen der hohlen Phrase „nos ancÞtres, les Gaulois“ – die selbst im metropolitanen Frankreich falsch war – sozialisiert.9 In Österreich müssen noch zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts zugewanderte Menschen, die die Staatsbürgerschaft annehmen wollen, Kenntnisse der gesamtösterreichischen Geschichte und der des Bundeslandes, in dem sie leben, nachweisen. Praktische Kenntnisse 7 Vgl. Penny Petrone, Breaking the Mould. A Memoir (1995). 8 Vgl. Colin Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871 – 1971 (1988); Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707 – 1837 (1992); Robin Cohen, „Fuzzy Frontiers of Identity : the British Case“ (1995). 9 Die identitätsstiftende Gallier-Mythologie ist ironisch und überzeugend hinterfragt worden in der Ausstellung „Gaulois, une expo renversante“ der Cit¦ des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Paris, Okt. 2011 – Sept. 2012), und dem Begleitband von FranÅois Malrain and Matthieu Poux (2011).

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– wie nutze ich die Arbeitsämter? wie funktioniert das Schulsystem? wie gründe ich einen Selbsthilfeverein? – sind nicht gefragt. Der Rahmen macht den ZuwanderInnen die Akkulturation an die jeweilige neue Gesellschaft schwer. Und dann können die selbstbezogenen nationalen Kräfte ihnen fehlende Integrationsbereitschaft vorwerfen.

Lebenserfahrungen zugewanderter Männer und Frauen10 In den 1970er Jahren kam Meera Shastri aus Südasien nach British Columbia. Sie und ihre Familie hatte Kanada bewusst als Ziel gewählt, wollten Brücken bilden zwischen Kulturen. Für viele KanadierInnen war dies noch neu. Der abschließende Bericht der Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism mit dem immer wieder zitierten Band 4, „The Cultural Contribution of the Other Ethnic Groups“ war erst 1970 erschienen. Ein Jahr später hatte Premierminister Trudeau die Politik des Multikulturalismus verkündet. Der kanadischen Presse schien dies bereits so selbstverständlich, dass sie kaum darüber berichtete; eine gesetzliche Verankerung folgte erst 1988. Nur für manche Alteingesessene – vieille souche in Quebec und my mental castle is my home in Ontario – erforderte die Selbstverständlichkeit noch Lernprozesse. Für Meera Shastri wurde der Brückenbau schwierig. Ihr akademischer Abschluss wurde nicht anerkannt und man legte ihr nahe, doch das Bindi zu beseitigen, den roten Punkt an der Stirn, der im Hinduismus das obligatorische Zeichen einer verheirateten Frau ist. Ein Job-Interview für eine Stelle unterhalb ihrer Qualifikation wurde von einem früher zugewanderten Indian-Australian11 geführt, der glaubte, deutlich machen zu müssen, dass in einer weißen Kultur sozialisierte Männer indischen kulturellen Hintergrundes den – wie Meera – in Indien geborenen Frauen weit überlegen sind. Als sie schließlich eine Stelle fand, wusste sie: „you are hired because of your weakness“ (Shastri 289). Auch die Frage der Hautfarbe war noch akut: in Schule wurde ihr Sohn gefragt, weshalb er braun und nicht weiß aussähe. 10 Dieser Teil beruht auf der Auswertung von etwa 300 Lebenszeugnissen (life writings) von Zuwanderern und Zuwanderinnen nach Kanada, dazu vgl. Hoerder, Creating Societies: Immigrant Lives in Canada (1999). Zur Entwicklung der kanadischen Gesellschaftswissenschaften und der Einbeziehung von MigrantInnen, vgl. Hoerder, To Know Our Many Selves: From the Study of Canada to Canadian Studies (1st ed. 2005; 2010). Für Frankreich stützt sich der Argumentationsgang besonders auf Interviews mit Studierenden der Universität Paris 8 – St. Denis-Vincennes, die ich 2004 während der Wahrnehmung einer Gastprofessur durchgeführt habe. Rund 95 % meiner Studierenden waren MigrantInnen oder Kinder von zugewanderten Eltern. Vgl. Hoerder, „Cultural Transfer or Cultural Creation: A Case Study of Students ,issues de l’immigration‘ in Paris“ (2005/2006). 11 Die deutsche Sprache in deutscher und österreichischer Variante kennt diese Ausdrucksform von Bikulturalität nicht. Für „Bindestrich“-Kulturen gibt es kein Wort.

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Der wenig später als Flüchtlinge aus Uganda kommenden Bhindi-Familie wurde der Weg in die kanadische Gesellschaft bereits leichter gemacht. Auf dem Flug gab es vegetarisches Essen für Menschen hinduistischen Glaubens; es gab Hilfestellung bei der Suche nach Arbeit und einen ungesicherten Kredit für benötigtes Werkzeug. Sie hätten sagen können „we were hired because of our skills and because Canadians trusted us.“ Ein anderer Zuwanderer, in einer der Städte der Prärieprovinzen kommentiert, er sei zufrieden, „because Canada lets me do what I want“ – in einem Rahmen, der offener war als der seiner Herkunftsgesellschaft, und für alle festgelegt wurde in der Charter of Rights. Je besser die Möglichkeiten, sich an die neue Gesellschaft zu akkulturieren, desto williger die Mehrzahl der Migranten – fundamentalistisch gesinnte Menschen gleich welcher Religion ausgenommen – sich an die Empfängerkultur anzunähern, desto geringer die individuellen und sozialen Kosten des Prozesses, desto leichter Humankapital einzubringen und, zum Vorteil der ganzen Gesellschaft, das Potential der MigrantInnen zu nutzen.12 In Frankreich war und ist der Rahmen anders. Individuelle, für alle gleiche staatsbürgerliche Rechte wie auch die Trennung von Religion und Staat sind im Gesetz verankert, werden aber – anders als dies hinsichtlich der Charter of Rights praktiziert wird – extrem einseitig ideologisiert. Da alle gleich sind, dürfen keine Daten über Differenz, also auch über ethno-kulturelle Gruppen, erhoben werden. Damit fehlt differenzierter soziologischer Forschung die Datenbasis für Analysen von Ungleichheit, Akkulturation, Diskriminierung. Was Religion betrifft, werden von staatlichen Institutionen in der Praxis christliche Traditionen betont, muslimische diskriminiert (z. B. hijab-Verbot für Mädchen in den Schulen). Zuwanderer sind sich des Widerspruchs zwischen republikanischer Rhetorik und de-facto-Diskriminierung bewusst. Studierende der Universität Paris 8-St. Denis-Vincennes, die allein oder mit ihren Eltern aus der Francophonie zugewandert sind und meist die französische Staatsbürgerschaft besitzen, sehen sich nicht zwischen Kulturen eingezwängt. Die Gegenüberstellung von z. B. algerischer und französischer Kultur erscheint ihnen sinnlos. Sie sind nicht Teil der beur-Kultur, d. h. sie gehörten nicht zu den Jugendlichen, deren Eltern als ArbeiterInnen kamen oder „importiert“ wurden. Sie sind vielmehr Teil einer gebildeten Mittelschicht, die in den Vororten von Paris (und anderen Städten) wohnt. Allerdings erkennen potentielle Arbeitgeber an den Postleitzahlen den kulturellen Hintergrund und beantworten Bewerbungen oft nicht. Diese Studierenden sehen sich in einem kulturellen Kontinuum: Sie wählen bewusst, integrieren sich bewusst. Viele betonten die Bedeutung der islamischen 12 Vgl. Hoerder, Creating Societies, Kap. 20 & 21; vgl. ebenso Hoerder, „Transnational – transregional – translocal: transcultural“ (2012).

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Religion für ihr Leben – aber dies scheint mir eine Hervorhebung zu sein, die sich erst als Reaktion auf die anti-islamischen Debatten und Hasskampagnen entwickelt hat. Sie „handeln Kulturen aus“ – negotiating cultures – zwischen denen der Eltern, der Empfängergesellschaft, der Schule oder Universität, der Vielfalt ihrer FreundInnen. „Ich integriere, ohne die eine oder andere Kultur zu verneinen“ – war eine Stellungnahme. Eine Studentin fand es unsinnig, gefragt zu werden, ob sie sich mehr als Algerierin oder Französin fühle. Das sei, als ob man sie frage, ob sie ihre Mutter oder ihren Vater lieber habe. Nationale Ideologen, meist Männer, hätten von diesen Studierenden viel lernen können – wenn sie denn lernfähig wären. Einige der Studierenden betonten, dass sie bestimmte Aspekte der Herkunfts- oder Empfängerkultur ablehnten; mehrere betonten die Schwierigkeiten, die ihnen die Vorurteile eines Teils der französischen Gesellschaft bereiteten. Größere Mühen bei der Akkulturation konstatieren nur Flüchtlingskinder, deren Eltern ihre Ausgangskultur nicht verlassen wollten und entsprechend unvorbereitet und oft ablehnend der aufgezwungenen Situation und damit der neuen Umwelt gegenüber standen. Eine Studentin überlegte, ob man die Forderung des Front National, Zuwanderung zu beschränken, ernst nehmen müsse: Wenn die vieille souche-Gruppe überhaupt nicht mit den anderen Kulturen klar käme, müsse man ihnen vielleicht Zeit geben, zu lernen. Viele der Studierenden suchten sich bewusst eine vielkulturelle FreundInnengruppe – je mehr kultureller Input, desto interessanter. In diesem Punkt waren sich junge kanadische und junge französische Menschen ähnlich. Diejenigen, die in Frankreich lebten, erschienen als eine große und ständig wachsende Enklave in einer Gesellschaft, welche in der Praxis, be- und gefangen in der Republikanischen Ideologie, Differenz und Diversität ablehnte. Diese Studierenden konnten ihre Ausgangskulturen ebenso wie die französische Empfängerkultur kritisch reflektieren. Überzeichnete positive Bilder ihrer Herkunftswelt, wie sie in der Reaktion auf Diskriminierung in Frankreich entstanden waren, konnten sie abändern. Andererseits betonten sie positive Aspekte von mitgebrachten Sozialformen, die von der französischen Umwelt kritisch gesehen wurden. Die angeblich Eingliederung verhindernde Ingroup-Funktion von Großfamilien hatte in ihrer Erfahrung durchaus positive Seiten. Die Vielzahl der Erwachsenen in der Familie lieferte ihnen unterschiedliche Rollenvorbilder. Offen denkende ältere Verwandte waren Ansprechpartner für Akkulturationsschritte und Fragen adoleszenter Identität. Ähnlich positiv wurden einzelne engagierte LehrerInnen und TeambetreuerInnen in Sportvereinen oder Nachbarschaftszentren dargestellt – nie hingegen das Schulsystem insgesamt. Im Vergleich zum kanadischen Multikulturalismus – die Befragung fand im Rahmen einer Kanadistik-Lehrveranstaltung statt – waren sich die Studierenden

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sehr bewusst, dass Frankreichs Institutionen und Diskurse sehr viel monokultureller verliefen.13

Gesellschaftliche Vielfalt im öffentlichen Diskurs und in der Politik In den 1960er und 1970er Jahren entwickelten sich neue Einstellungen und veränderte Gesetzgebungen: zügig in Kanada, zögerlich in Frankreich, kaum in Österreich. Global veränderte sich das Verhältnis zwischen Kolonialmächten und kolonisierten Gesellschaften. Mit der Versklavung von afrikanischen und amerikanischen Menschen durch Europäer seit dem Beginn der Neuzeit hatte sich die Hautfarben-Hierarchisierung in Sprachgebrauch und Denkschemata eingeschlichen bis sie selbst-verständlich, also „natürlich“ zu sein schien. Sprache stellt „Weiße“ und „Farbige“ einander gegenüber. Dass „weiß“ ein Farbe ist, verschwand aus der Vorstellungswelt; dass es viele Farben gibt, ebenfalls; dass „weiß“ vielleicht blässlich ist – palefaced – oder dass die Missionare in Quebec alle schwarze Einheitskleidung trugen – palefaced blackrobes – wurde in europäischer Diktion nicht wahrgenommen. „Weiß“ wurde die Norm, „farbig“ das abweichende. Diese sprachlichen Ausdrucksformen entzogen empirische Daten der kritischen Analyse. Die ungeheure Brutalität, mit der Hernando Cortez Völkermord betrieb oder Vasco da Gama indische Gläubige und Kaufleute terrorisierte, wurde bewusst und systematisch verschwiegen. Erst während der Dekaden nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, in dem sich Europa selbst zerstörte, begannen die kolonisierten Gesellschaften (geraume Zeit nach den von der habsburgischen Herrschaft abhängigen) ihre Selbstbefreiungskämpfe. Die Dekolonisierung erreichte ihren Höhepunkt in den 1960er Jahren – zum gleichen Zeitpunkt begannen sich auch in den westlichen Gesellschaften, in Kanada und ganz besonders in Quebec, junge Menschen gegen die Traditionalismen in den Strukturen und den Mentalitäten der älteren Generationen zu wehren. Die sogenannte Studentenrevolte, die auch und ganz besonders eine Studentinnenrevolte war und die feministische Wissenschaft hervorbrachte, forderte offenere Gesellschaften, die neue Lebensentwürfe akzeptieren würden. In Kanada wurden diese neuen Konstellationen in Bezug auf Migration und Multikulturalität früh aufgenommen: 1962/63 wurden die Einwanderungsbestimmungen so geändert, dass andere Hautfarben als die weiße und andere 13 Hoerder, „Cultural Transfer or Cultural Creation: A Case Study of Students ,issues de l’immigration‘ in Paris,“ dort Details, Beschreibung der Erhebung der Daten und weitere Literatur. Als Beispiel für ein Lebenszeugnis, vgl. Fatou Diome, Le Ventre de L’Atlantique (2003), dt: Der Bauch des Ozeans (2004), und Dalila Kerchouche, Mon pÀre, ce harki (2003), sowie viele andere, darunter argumentativ kritische Auseinandersetzungen mit Frankreich und einige eher affirmative Erfolgsgeschichten.

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Kulturen als die europäischen keine Ausschlusskriterien mehr waren.14 In Frankreich, wo eine zahlenmäßig kleine afrikanische Zuwanderung in den 1930er Jahren begonnen hatte,15 gab die Massenrückwanderung aus Algerien und die Zuwanderung dringend benötigter Arbeitskräfte aus Nord- und Westafrika einen Anstoß. Kanada betrieb vorausschauende Politik – die oft nicht weit genug schaute und immer wieder geändert und erweitert werden musste; Frankreich betrieb reaktives kurzsichtiges Verwaltungshandeln ohne grundsätzlichen Neuanfang. Österreich tat gar nichts – dabei hätten die frühere Verbindung zur Adria, die vielfältigen Kontakte zum Donauraum, die kulturellen Impulse der Zeit vor 1914 (die sogenannte Wiener Küche, die kroatische Krawatte, die Kärntner slowenisch-deutschsprachige Bikulturalität) Ansätze geboten, die leicht hätten aufgenommen werden können. Stattdessen folgte die Mehrheit der Gesellschaft einem Slogan, der Deutschland auch schon ins Verderben geführt hatte: „Deutsch-Österreich über alles.“ Abschottung und Enklavenbildung in einer sich öffnenden Welt bedeuten, den Anschluss zu verlieren. Dies ganz besonders in der gegenwärtigen Phase der seit etwa 1500 stattfindenden Globalisierung. In Kanada wurde das alltagsweltlich praktizierte multikulturelle Leben und die Politik multikulturellen Zusammenlebens umgesetzt in neue schulische Lehrpläne. Damit war der monokulturelle Eintopf, der Serafina Petrone zur Verzweiflung gebracht hatte, abgeschafft.16 Transkulturelle Bildung und – für Erwachsene, welche die Schule früher abgeschlossen haben – transkulturelle Einstellungen bedeuten: (1) Akzeptanz und Respekt für kulturelle Vielfalt, gleichgültig ob diese sich aus ethnischen Kulturen, Hautfarbe, Geschlecht oder Religion ergibt. Entscheidend ist dabei, dass dies nicht mehr aus einer Distanz zwischen Norm und Fremdheit geschehen kann, sondern in interaktiven gesellschaftlichen Praktiken. Der kanadische Multikulturalismus sollte nicht Vielfalt in separierten Enklaven ermöglichen sondern einen Austausch zwischen kulturellen Gruppen, sharing of cultures.

14 In den USA geschah dies einige Jahre später mit dem Einwanderungsgesetz von 1965. Beide Staaten hatten in den 1940er Jahren – China war alliierter Staat – das Einwanderungsverbot für Menschen aus China aufgehoben. 15 Im vorrevolutionären Frankreich hatte es immer eine afrikanische Präsenz gegeben; vgl. Pascal Blanchard, Eric Deroo, und Gilles Manceron, Le Paris Noir (2001). Vgl. für andere Länder, Philipp Blom und Wolfgang Kos, Angelo Soliman. Ein Afrikaner in Wien (2011) und Walter Sauer, Von Soliman zu Omofuma. Afrikanische Diaspora in Österreich 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert (2007); vgl. ebenso Folarin Olawale Shyllon, Black People in Britain, 1555 – 1833 (1977), u.v.m. 16 Vgl. Hoerder, „Education: Intergenerational Transfer and Transcultural Embeddedness“ in Hoerder, „To Know Our Many Selves“ (2005/2010).

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(2) Vielkulturelle Erziehung und Schulbildung, aus denen sich Fähigkeiten zu Vermittlung und Übersetzung ergeben. (3) Einen gemeinsam akzeptierten Rahmen, der nicht durch Konstrukte nationaler Kultur gesetzt wird, sondern durch gleiche Menschenrechte für alle, wie in der kanadischen Charter of Rights zusammengefasst. Damit haben alle Menschen das gleiche Recht auf eigene materielle, geistige, emotionale und spirituelle Praktiken, solange nicht die Rechte anderer beeinträchtigt werden. Keine kulturelle Praxis darf andere dominieren oder einschränken. Die gilt zwischen spezifischen Kulturen ebenso wie zwischen Geschlechtern und Generationen.

Ändern müssen sich in Österreich und Frankreich, wie sie sich in Kanada geändert haben, nicht nur die Diskurse in der Öffentlichkeit und der gesamtstaatlichen Politik. Ändern müssen sich besonders auch Institutionen-spezifische Diskurse: in den Parteien, im Parlament, in den Einwanderungsbürokratien, in den Presseorganen, die durch Verbreitung von Ausländerhass glauben, Geld verdienen zu können. Es würde, dies sei eingefügt, der ganze österreichische Zeitungsvertrieb zusammenbrechen, wenn es nicht die zugewanderten Kolporteure gäbe und der Tourismussektor könnte auch die Pforten schließen, wenn nicht zugewanderte Frauen und Männer die notwendigen Dienstleistungen erbringen würden. Österreich ohne Einwanderung wäre ökonomisch ein zurückgebliebenes Land.

Migration und Transkulturalismus in der Wissenschaft im atlantischen Raum Zurückbleiben kann auch Wissenschaft, wenn sie nicht kritisch analysiert und globale Vielfalt aufnimmt. Dieser Rückstand war für die sogenannten Geisteswissenschaften, aber auch viele Gesellschaftswissenschaften in der weißen atlantischen Welt kennzeichnend, trotz ihrer selbst proklamierten Überlegenheit. Europäische – wie amerikanische – Überlegenheitsphantasien verstellten den Blick auf das Andere, auf Vielfalt. Notwendig sei eine Europe d¦senclav¦e, hatten schon in den 1970er Jahren Globalhistoriker konstatiert.17 Über die eurozentrische Perspektive oder das Selbstbewusstsein des „weißen“ nordatlantischen Raumes hinaus müsse es zu der Provinzialisierung Europas als einer von vielen Makroregionen kommen, forderte Dipesh Chakrabarty.18 All dies wurde im 17 Vgl. Bartolom¦ Bennassar und Pierre Chaunu, L’ouverture du monde, XIVe – XVIe siÀcles (1977). 18 Vgl. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Europa als Provinz. Perspektiven postkolonialer Geschichts-

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öffentlichen Diskurs Österreichs, die Politik eingeschlossen, nicht wahrgenommen. Eine Ausnahme bildete besonders die Arbeitsgruppe für Globalgeschichte an der Universität Wien.19 Während Chakrabarty aus der neuen Perspektive der Dekolonialisierung und der Subaltern Studies schrieb, kamen in Frankreich Bennassar und Chaunu aus der französischen Tradition, und zwar aus der Schule der Annalisten, die wirtschaftsräumlich und mit Langzeitperspektive forschte und den Mittelmeerraum einbezog. Auch sie wurde durch die Dekolonialisierung beeinflusst. Die österreichische Forschergruppe ging aus von der Perspektive vielkultureller Großregionen und wechselte zu einem globalen Ansatz. Aus all diesen Regionen und vielen anderen kommen MigrantInnen nach Europa, nach Kanada, in die USA und anderswohin. Sie bringen ihre historischen Erinnerungen mit an den britischen Kolonialismus, die französische Herrschaft, sowie habsburgische und deutsch-österreichische Interessen. Kroatische, vietnamesische, indische Migrantenkinder haben autobiographische Erfahrungen und historisch sozialisierte Einstellungen, die die Schulsysteme und die Wissenschaftsproduktion der Zuwandererländer einbeziehen müssen. Die Forderung nach einer vielkulturellen Geschichtsschreibung und nach Transkulturellen Gesellschaftsstudien ist nur deshalb neu, weil die weiße Wissenschaft des nordatlantischen Raumes – des White Atlantic im Gegensatz zum Black Atlantic – Forschungen in anderen Sprachen und von Wissenschaftlern anderer Hautfarbe oder anderen Glaubens oder Geschlechtes lange nicht aufgenommen hatte. Viel zu lange war der Ansatz der Chicago Men’s School of Sociology,20 die von disorganization of immigrants sprach, und Harvards Oscar Handlins Schlagwort von uprooted immigrants21 bestimmend für wissenschaftliche Annahmen. Wie der so genannte scientific racism war diese Art von Ethnizitätsforschung den öffentlichen negativen Diskursen über Migranten und Anderssein verhaftet und im Grunde nicht mehr als Pseudowissenschaft.22 Seit langem gibt es – an den Rändern der hegemonialen Wissensproduktion der atlantischen Welten – Ansätze und Theoretisierungen, die der Vielfalt aller Gesellschaft gerecht wurden und werden. In Lateinamerika arbeiteten parallel in den

19 20 21 22

schreibung (2010); Original: Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000). Vgl. Peter Feldbauer et. al, Globalgeschichte: Die Welt 1000 – 2000 (2012). Patricia Madoo Lengermann und Jill Niebrugge-Brantley, The Women Founders: Socio-logy and Social Theory (1998/2008). Robert E. Park, „Human Migration and the Marginal Man“ (1928), und Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Control (1922). Vgl. ebenso Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (1951/rev. ed. 1973). Vgl. Hoerder, „,A Genuine Respect for the People‘: The Columbia University Scholars’ Transcultural Approach to Migrants,“ erscheint voraussichtlich 2013 in Journal of American Ethnic History.

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1930er und 40er Jahren Gilberto Freyre und Fernando Ortiz, in Kanada Everett Hughes und Helen MacGill Hughes. Freyre untersuchte, wie die Gesellschaft der BrasilianerInnen aus der portugiesischen und afrikanischen Einwanderung vieler ethno-kultureller Gruppen entstand, also aus selbstbestimmter, aber auch erzwungener Wanderung. Im Rahmen der durch Sklaverei auferlegten Einschränkungen gelang es den Zwangsmigranten eine lebendige afrikanisch-brasilianische Kultur zu entwickeln. Manche der AfrikanerInnen hatten deutlich höhere Bildung als ihre portugiesischen BesitzerInnen.23 Im bikulturellen Kanada zeigten die in Montreal arbeitenden Soziologen Everett Hughes und Helen MacGill Hughes, dass die Gesellschaft Migranten kein monokulturelles Modell zur Assimilation bot. Nach Region, nach gender, nach Generation und nach urbanem und ländlichem Umfeld differenzierte trajectories waren empirisch nachzuweisen. Die Autoren hielten fest, dass keine Gesellschaft monokulturell sei und nirgendwo „Assimilation“ auf einer Einbahnstraße erfolge.24 Der differenzierteste Beitrag kam aus Kuba. Auf der Basis der vier Kulturen – ursprüngliche Bewohner, zugewanderte Europäer, zwangsmigrierte Afrikaner und importierte Chinesen – betonte Fernando Ortiz prozessuale Aspekte, transculturaciûn, von Gesellschaft und Migranten,25 die sich ihrerseits kontinuierlich weiterentwickeln, sowohl in Bezug auf materielle Kultur ebenso wie im Hinblick auf Normen und Diskurse. In Bewegung sind alle Menschen in ihren unterschiedlich hierarchisch umgrenzten Positionen, welche über ihre Lebenswege oder -projekte entscheiden und in deren Rahmen sie Widerstand gegen inakzeptable Lebensbedingungen leisten. Diese Analysen stammen aus sich selbst als vielfältig verstehenden Gesellschaften – in auffälligem Gegensatz zur Unfähigkeit von monokulturell sozialisierten Wissenschaftlern, Vielfalt aufzunehmen.26 Die Werke von Freyre und Ortiz waren bereits Ende der 1940er Jahre ins Englische übersetzt in den USA erhältlich. Mit der französischen rassistischen Literatur, die sich in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts als eine wissenschaftliche ausgab, besonders mit Joseph Arthur de Gobineaus in viele Sprachen 23 Vgl. Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves. A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization (1946; Portugies. Orig. 1935). 24 Vgl. E.C. Hughes, „The Study of Ethnic Relations“ (1948) und E.C. Hughes und H. MacGill Hughes, Where Peoples Meet: Racial and Ethnic Frontiers (1952). Helen MacGill Hughes hatte ihre Ausbildung unter Robert E. Park erhalten, der an der Pazifikküste Nordamerikas in einem vorurteilsbeladenen Projekt postulierte, „Orientals“ – gemeint sind Menschen aus Asien – seien zu Akkulturation nicht fähig. Er erfand einen „race relations cycle.“ Helen MacGill Hughes befreite sich von dieser „Ausbildung“. 25 Vgl. Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azfflcar.(1940). In Mexico konstruierte Jos¦ Vasconcelos polemisch eine mexikanische „cosmic race“ als Mix aus allen Rassen im Gegensatz zur angeblich „reinen Rasse“ der Yankees. 26 Neue globale Ansätze bieten Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounter (1993), Hoerder, Cultures in Contact (2002). Vgl. ebenso Christiane Harzig, Dirk Hoerder und Donna Gabaccia, What is Migration History? (2009).

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übersetzten Schriften, hatte sich schon 1885 der haitianische Anthropologe und Politiker (schwarzer Hautfarbe) Ant¦nor Firmin in De l’Êgalit¦ des Races Humaines auseinandergesetzt und sie auf der Basis empirischer Daten zurückgewiesen. Europäisch-nordamerikanische Wissenschaftler weißer Hautfarbe verschwiegen diese Forschungen im karibisch-lateinamerikanischen Kulturraum oder nahmen sie gar nicht erst zur Kenntnis. Gesellschaften sind transkulturell, und MigrantInnen haben dies immer gelebt, leben müssen und leben wollen. Ihre autobiographischen Zeugnisse stellen weit komplexere Lebenserfahrungen und Gesellschaften vor als die weiße, meist männliche mainstream-Wissenschaft dies bis in die 1970er Jahre erkannte. In Kanada gab es frühe Ansätze, auch über die Hughes’ hinaus, die eigene Gesellschaft komplex zu sehen. In Frankreich waren Forschungen zu Gesellschaften, besonders die der Êcole des Annales differenziert, setzten sich aber kaum mit Migration auseinander. In den USA gab es durchaus komplexe Ansätze an der Columbia University, in Minnesota und an der Westküste, aber diese Arbeiten waren gegenüber Parks und Handlins Klischees nicht „mehrheitsfähig.“27 Im Habsburger Reich, im Gegensatz zum nachfolgenden national engen Österreich, war Vielfalt die Regel, es war auch ein Bewusstsein für Menschen anderer Hautfarbe und Hierarchien vorhanden: Das Allgemeine Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch von 1811 verbot Sklaverei, knapp hundert Jahre später äußerte sich der Sozialdemokrat Otto Bauer zur „Nationalitätenfrage.“ Trotz vielfältiger Arbeiten moderner österreichischer WissenschaftlerInnen hat die Mehrheit der Gesellschaft noch viel zu lernen. Kanada kann beispielhaft wirken, Frankreich nicht. Transkulturelles Leben ist Kennzeichen aller Gesellschaften weltweit und nicht erst seit einer angeblich neuen Globalisierung.

Bibliographie Bennassar, Bartolom¦, und Pierre Chaunu, eds. L’ouverture du monde, XIVe – XVIe siÀcles. Paris: Colin, 1977. Bentley, Jerry H. Old World Encounters. Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in PreModern Times. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Blanchard, Pascal, Eric Deroo, und Gilles Manceron. Le Paris Noir. Paris: Êd. Hazan, 2001. Blom, Philipp, und Wolfgang Kos, eds. Angelo Soliman. Ein Afrikaner in Wien. Wien: Wien Museum und Brandstätter Verlag, 2011. Burnet, Jean, Danielle Juteau, Enoch Padolsky, Anthony Rasporich, und Antoine Sirois, eds. Migration and the Transformation of Cultures. A Project of the Unesco World Decade for Cultural Development. Toronto: MHSO, 1992. 27 Vgl. Hoerder et al., „Uprooted or Acculturating: A Revisionist Assessment of the Transcultural Beginnings of U.S. Migration History“ (Winter 2013).

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Burnet, Jean. „Myths and Multiculturalism.“ Canadian Journal of Education 4.4 (1979): 43 – 58. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Europa als Provinz. Perspektiven postkolonialer Geschichtsschreibung. Übers. Robin Cackett. Frankfurt: Campus, 2010. Cohen, Robin. „Fuzzy Frontiers of Identity : the British Case.“ Social Identities 1 (1995): 35 – 62. Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707 – 1837. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. Diome, Fatou. Le Ventre de L’Atlantique. Paris: Êd. CarriÀre, 2003. Der Bauch des Ozeans. Übers. Brigitte Große. Zürich: Diogenes, 2004. Fassmann, Heinz. „A Survey of Patterns and Structures of Migration in Austria, 1850 – 1900.“ Labor Migration in the Atlantic Economies. The European and North American Working Classes During the Period of Industrialization. Ed. Dirk Hoerder. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985. 69 – 93. ––, und Rainer Münz. Einwanderungsland Österreich? Historische Migrationsmuster, aktuelle Trends und politische Maßnahmen. Wien: Wissenschaft, Jugend und Volk, 1995. Feldbauer, Peter, Bernd Hausberger, und Jean-Paul Lehners, eds. Globalgeschichte: Die Welt 1000 – 2000. 8 Bde. Verein zur Förderung von Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte. Wien: Mandelbaum, 2012. Freyre, Gilberto. The Masters and the Slaves. A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. 1935. Übers. Samuel Putnam. New York: Knopf, 1946. Rev. ed. Berkeley : Univ. of California P, 1986. Handlin, Oscar. The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1951. Rev. ed. 1973. Harzig, Christiane, Dirk Hoerder und Donna Gabaccia. What is Migration History? Cambridge: Polity, 2009. Hoerder, Dirk. „,A Genuine Respect for the People‘: The Columbia University Scholars’ Transcultural Approach to Migrants.“ Forthcoming 2014/15. ––. Creating Societies: Immigrant Lives in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1999. ––. „Cultural Transfer or Cultural Creation: A Case Study of Students ,issues de l’immigration‘ in Paris.“ Negotiating Transcultural Lives: Belongings and Social Capital among Youth in Comparative Perspective – Transkulturelle Perspektiven 2. Ed. Dirk Hoerder, Yvonne H¦bert und Irina Schmitt. Göttingen: V& R Unipress, 2005. 147 – 63. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2006. 147 – 63. ––. Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002. ––. „Education for a Life-World or for an Imperial Construct? Schooling in the British Imperial Sphere, 1830s to 1960s, in Comparative Perspective.“ European Social Science History Conference. Amsterdam: 22 – 26 March, 2006. Unpublished paper. ––. „Education: Intergenerational Transfer and Transcultural Embeddedness.” To Know Our Many Selves 387 – 90. ––. „Ethnic Cultures under Multiculturalism: Retention or Change.“ Multiculturalism in North America and Europe: Social Practices – Literary Visions. Ed. Hans Braun und Wolfgang Kloss. Trier : WVT, 1994. 82 – 102.

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––. To Know Our Many Selves: From the Study of Canada to Canadian Studies. 2005. Edmonton: Athabasca UP, 2010. ––. „Transnational – transregional – translocal: transcultural.“ Handbook of Research Methods in Migration. Ed. Carlos Vargas-Silva. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2012. 69 – 91. ––, Donna Gabaccia, Henry Yu, und Claudia Rösch. „Uprooted or Acculturating: A Revisionist Assessment of the Transcultural Beginnings of U.S. Migration History.“ Themenheft des Journal of American Ethnic History. i.E. Winter 2013. Holmes, Colin. John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871 – 1971. London: Macmillan, 1988. Hughes, E.C. „The Study of Ethnic Relations.“ Dalhousie Review 27 (1948): 477 – 82. ––, und Helen MacGill Hughes. Where Peoples Meet: Racial and Ethnic Frontiers. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952. Isajiw, Wsevolod W. Understanding Diversity. Ethnicity and Race in the Canadian Context. Toronto: Thompson, 1999. John, Michael, und Oto Luthar, eds. Un-Verständnis der Kulturen. Multikulturalismus in Mitteleuropa in historischer Perspektive. Klagenfurt: Hermagoras, 1997. Kerchouche, Dalila. Mon pÀre, ce harki. Paris: Êd. de Seuil, 2003. Lengermann, Patricia Madoo, und Jill Niebrugge-Brantley. The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998. Rev. ed. 2008. Lequin, Yves, ed. La mosaque France: histoire des ¦trangers et de l’immigration. Paris: Larousse, 1988. Loewen, James. Lies my teacher told me. New York: The New Press, 1995. Malrain, FranÅois, und Matthieu Poux, eds. Qui ¦taient les Gaulois? Paris: Êd. de la MartiniÀre, 2011. Manning, Lee M., und Leroy G. Baruth. Multicultural Education of Children and Adolescents. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1991. Noiriel, G¦rard. Le Creuset franÅais. Histoire de l’immigration XIXe – XXe siÀcles. Paris: Seuil, 1988. Ortiz, Fernando. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azfflcar. 1940. Übers. Harriet de On†s. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. New York: Knopf, 1947. Rev. ed. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. Park, Robert E. „Human Migration and the Marginal Man.“ American Journal of Sociology 33.6 (1928): 881 – 93. ––. The Immigrant Press and Its Control. New York: Harper, 1922. Patel, Kiran Klaus. Nach der Nationalfixiertheit. Perspektiven einer transnationalen Geschichte. Berlin: HU Berlin, 2004. Petrone, Penny. Breaking the Mould. A Memoir. Toronto: Guernica, 1995. Sauer, Walter, ed. Von Soliman zu Omofuma. Afrikanische Diaspora in Österreich 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2007. Shastri, Meera. „Canadian Experience.“ Between Two Worlds. The Canadian Immigrant Experience. 1983. Ed. Milly Charon. Rev. ed. Montreal: Nu-Age Editions, 1988. 283 – 93. Shyllon, Folarin Olawale. Black People in Britain, 1555 – 1833. London: Oxford UP, 1977. Toute la France. Histoire de l’immigration en France au XXe siÀcle. Sous la direction de Laurent Gervereau, Pierre Milza, und Emile Temime. Paris: BibliothÀque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine und Somogy Êditions d’Art, 1998.

Fritz Peter Kirsch

Immigration und Integration in Quebec: Ein österreichischer Kommentar zum Taylor-Bouchard-Bericht

Im Auftrag der Regierung von Qu¦bec haben zwei an Universitäten des Landes wirkende Lehrer und Forscher im Jahre 2008 einen Bericht über die Probleme von Migration und Integration erstellt. Der primär frankophone Historiker und Soziologe G¦rard Bouchard und der primär anglophone Philosoph Charles Taylor taten dies als Vorsitzende einer 2007 gegründeten Kommission mit dem Titel „Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reli¦es aux diff¦rences culturelles“ und dem Untertitel „Fonder l’avenir. Le temps de la conciliation.“ Auf der Basis vieler EnquÞten, Diskussionsrunden, Interviews etc. wurde in diesem Bericht von 267 Seiten1 eine Analyse der aktuellen Situation angeboten. Zugleich arbeiteten die Autoren Empfehlungen an die Adresse der politischen Entscheidungsträger Qu¦becs aus. Mehrfach ist in diesem Text von falschen Wahrnehmungen und Informationsmängeln der qu¦becer Bevölkerung die Rede, so dass von einer generell aufklärerischen Absicht des Berichtes ausgegangen werden kann. Die Autoren wollten durch fundierte Analysen einen Beitrag zum Abbau von Konflikten leisten, welche die Beziehungen zwischen den „angestammten Qu¦becern“ und den ImmigrantInnen belasteten, besonders in den Jahren 2006 – 2008. Wer sich aus österreichischer Sicht mit Migrations- und Integrationsproblemen in Qu¦bec befasst, wird zunächst festhalten, dass es im eigenen Land schon geraume Zeit vor 2008 eine Fülle von Berichten und Kommentaren zum gleichen Thema gab.2 Gleichzeitig macht der Text von Taylor/Bouchard bewusst, dass die Verhältnisse in Qu¦bec sowohl Ähnlichkeiten zu jenen in Österreich aufweisen als auch signifikante Unterschiede, so dass eine Konfrontation interessante Ergebnisse verspricht, dies umso mehr als die frankophone Provinz 1 Eine gleichzeitig veröffentlichte Zusammenfassung umfasst etwa die Hälfte der angegebenen Seiten. 2 Vgl. als Beispiele unter anderen: Fassmann et. al. (1999), Fassmann und Stacher (2003), und Fassmann (2007).

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Kanadas keineswegs mit der Einwanderungspolitik Kanadas bzw. der USA in allen Dingen konform geht. Im Bemühen um Verständnis wird der österreichische Beobachter gut daran tun, zunächst die bewegte und widerspruchsreiche Genesis der belle province präsent zu halten. Nach der Niederlage Frankreichs im Siebenjährigen Krieg (Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts) hat sich die an den Ufern des Sankt Lorenz-Stromes verbliebene frankophone Bevölkerung diversen Assimilationsversuchen durch die siegreiche Kolonialmacht England widersetzt – letztlich mit Erfolg. Das Ergebnis des historischen Prozesses, in dessen Verlauf die beiden „Gründernationen“ Kanadas ihr Zusammenleben regelten, ist im Falle Qu¦becs ein eigentümlicher Zwiespalt. Die mehrheitlich französischsprachige Provinz spielt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und letztlich bis heute eine Doppelrolle: Einerseits hat sie das Gepräge einer kulturellen wie auch politischen Bastion der Frankophonie auf dem nordamerikanischen Kontinent. Andererseits ist sie eine unter neun Provinzen innerhalb des kanadischen Staatsgebiets, das den Stempel der historisch gewachsenen Vorherrschaft des britisch-anglophonen Erbes trägt. Diese zwiespältige Situation hat kollektive Erfahrungen und Identitätskonstruktionen hervorgebracht, durch die sich Qu¦bec von dem Bundesstaat Kanada wie auch von allen anderen Provinzen unterscheidet. Auf der Suche nach den geschichtlichen Wurzeln der Qu¦becer treffen wir auf Entdecker und Kolonisatoren, die sich im Rahmen der Begegnung mit der „Neuen Welt“ seit dem Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts nach und nach von ihren französischen Wurzeln lösten und sich als Canadiens betrachteten. Nach dem Sieg der englischen Armee und der Eingliederung von „Neufrankreich“ in das britische Imperium wurde dieser Bevölkerung nach und nach ihre marginale Position im nordöstlichen Winkel eines von anderen beherrschten Kontinents bewusst. Diese Bewusstwerdung förderte nach 1840, im Gefolge einer weiteren militärischen Katastrophe und zeitweilig schärferer Repression durch die englische Regierung, die Entwicklung einer kollektiven Selbstdeutung – zunächst auf der Ebene der soziokulturellen Eliten, aber in weiterer Folge auch weitere Bereiche der Bevölkerung prägend – die als ein Nationalismus in der Defensive bezeichnet werden könnte. Eine gewisse Vorrangstellung der katholischen Kirche als politische Vermittlerin zwischen den Frankophonen und der anglokanadischen Kolonialmacht begünstigte die Entwicklung, welche auf der Basis eines Zusammenwirkens von klerikalen und bürgerlichen Elementen ein relativ kohärentes System von Normen und Werten defensiven Charakters hervorbrachte.3 Den Kernbereich dieses Systems bildet das starke Bewusstsein einer hohen 3 Die in Qu¦bec übliche Bezeichnung für dieses System ist „survivance“, also sozusagen Überlebenstechnik.

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kulturellen Sendung verbunden mit der schmerzlichen Zur Kenntnisnahme der eigenen Unterlegenheit angesichts übermächtiger Gegner. Das Ideal der Treue zur Heimaterde, zum Erbstück der französischen Sprache, zum katholischen Glauben und zur Familie verband sich sowohl mit „heroischem“ Behauptungswillen als auch mit einer von resignativen Tendenzen gemilderten Abwehrhaltung gegenüber allem Fremden. Wesentlich für das Verständnis dieses Kultursystems ist, dass es stets seinen Widerspruch in sich trug und auch in den Jahrzehnten seiner scheinbar unangefochtenen Geltung vor der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts gewisse Schwächen und Brüche in sich trug. Schon durch die Einbindung der Frankophonen in das System des britischen Parlamentarismus waren antitraditionalistische Kräfte wirksam. Dazu kam ab 1880 die von den USA ausgehende Industrialisierung des Kontinents, deren verändernde Wirkung auch vor den Toren des heimatfrommen Qu¦bec nicht Halt machte und den traditionalistischen Abwehrreflex verstärkte, umso mehr als die anwachsende Emigration arbeitssuchender Frankophoner in das südliche Nachbarland an der Widerstandskraft der bodenständigen Bevölkerung zu zehren schien. Der genannte Widerspruch lässt sich in der Geschichte der älteren qu¦becer Literatur gut verfolgen.4 Seine nachhaltig prägende Kraft wird deutlich, wenn in rezenten Analysen des kulturpolitischen Klimas in der Provinz von einer bis heute nachwirkenden Dualität des „melancholischen Nationalismus“ und des „liberalen Antinationalismus“ die Rede ist.5 Von diesen neben- und gegeneinander wirkenden Tendenzen gewinnt vom 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert, gemäß den Veränderungen der soziopolitischen Umwelt, bald die eine und bald die andere die Oberhand. Im Rahmen der sogenannten stillen Revolution nach der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts wurde der defensiv-konservative Nationalismus auf radikale Weise in Frage gestellt und, wie es schien, von liberalen Tendenzen abgelöst. Tatsächlich fehlt es aber nicht an Indizien, besonders im Bereich der qu¦becer Literatur der Jahrhundertmitte, die nicht für einen revolutionär-triumphalen Aufbruch in die Moderne sprechen, sondern für einen lang andauernden und an Widersprüchen reichen Prozess.6 Gewiss, nach Umbrüchen sieht alles anders aus, aber die Aufarbeitung der Hinterlassenschaften des Ancien R¦gime geht oft weniger rasch und reibungslos vonstatten als es zunächst den Anschein hat, in Qu¦bec wie auch in Zentraleuropa. Starke Kräfte in der qu¦becer Gesellschaft strebten nach der R¦volution tranquille im Sinne eines Konzepts der „Eigenstaatlichkeit im Verbund“ (souverainet¦-association) die Loslösung vom kanadischen Gesamtstaat an. Das 4 Vgl. Kirsch (2008). 5 Vgl. Dumont (1996) und Maclure (2011), besonders 86 ff. 6 Die neueste qu¦becer Literaturgeschichte verweist in diesem Zusammenhang auf ein „sentiment de pr¦carit¦ qui se retrouve — plusieurs niveaux de la litt¦rature qu¦b¦coise“ (Biron et.al. 628).

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Projekt einer Verhandlung mit Kanada, in der es sowohl um Trennung wie auch um Assoziierung gehen sollte, wurde in zwei Referenda von der Mehrheit der Bevölkerung Qu¦becs mit immer knapperem Stimmenverhältnis abgelehnt. Andererseits ist der Spielraum, den die kanadische Bundesregierung den weiterhin bestehenden Eigenständigkeitsbestrebungen der frankophonen Provinz gewährte, im Lauf der Zeit größer geworden. Dieses Hin und Her hatte zur Folge, dass der alte Zwiespalt zwischen Selbstbewusstsein und Defensivhaltung auch unter geänderten Verhältnissen weiterhin wirksam blieb. Zwischen Qu¦bec, das sich weiterhin als soci¦t¦ distincte betrachtete, und der kanadischen Regierung etablierte sich eine Spannungsrelation, gekennzeichnet durch ein zögerliches Spiel von Abwendung und Entgegenkommen auf beiden Seiten. Eine Schattenseite dieser Entwicklung kann man in der Marginalisierung der frankophonen Minderheiten in den anderen Provinzen sehen. Diese kleineren Gruppen haben dem Assimilationsdruck, der von der anglophon dominierten Mehrheit ausgeht, relativ wenig entgegenzusetzen und fühlen sich nicht selten von dem sich allmählich emanzipierenden Qu¦bec aufgegeben. Als Nation wird Qu¦bec heute von Gesamtkanada anerkannt,7 aber ohne dass diese Anerkennung verfassungsrechtliche Konsequenzen mit sich brächte. Die Abgeordneten Qu¦becs tagen nicht in einer Assembl¦e provinciale sondern in einer Assembl¦e nationale. Nach innen und zum Teil nach außen präsentiert sich Qu¦bec heute als Êtat qu¦b¦cois (im Deutschen wird häufig der Terminus Regionalstaat gebraucht, analog zu Schottland oder Katalonien), praktiziert eine quasi eigenständige Politik auf verschiedenen Gebieten, hat quasi eigene Botschaften in diversen Ländern, betrachtet seit der Verabschiedung der Loi 101 (1977) durch das Provinzparlament das Französische als alleinige Amts- und Schulsprache, aber eben auch „quasi“, verbunden mit allerlei Einschränkungen. Der Kampf der Provinz Qu¦bec gegen eine ursprünglich rein anglophon orientierte Integration der Einwanderung, die auf längere Sicht die Mehrheitsverhältnisse in der Großstadt Montr¦al zuungunsten der Frankophonen umzukehren drohte, führte zur Durchsetzung einer quasi eigenen Immigrationspolitik des Regionalstaates Qu¦bec. Seit der R¦volution tranquille fühlen sich die qu¦becer Behörden in steigenden Maße nicht nur für die Qu¦b¦cois französischer Abstammung zuständig.8 Im Laufe der der letzten Jahrzehnte zeichnet sich in der frankophonen Provinz eine Tendenz zur Entwicklung einer plurikulturellen Gesellschaft ab, mit der Verkehrssprache Französisch als verbindender Klammer. Die frankophone Mehrheit hat es in diesem Rahmen mit drei Gruppen von Minderheiten zu tun: den in Qu¦bec ansässigen Anglophonen, den Urein7 Vgl. die Qu¦b¦cois Nation Motion, eingebracht von Premierminister Stephen Harper, angenommen vom House of Commons am 27. November 2006. 8 Seit 1968 gibt es in Qu¦bec ein eigenes Einwanderungsministerium.

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wohnern (Am¦rindiens und Inuit) und den Einwanderern. Der Bericht von Taylor und Bouchard klammert die ersten beiden Gruppen bewusst aus. Die Abkehr von der Defensivhaltung früherer Zeiten mit ihrer Tendenz zur Abwehr alles Fremden scheint bei flüchtiger Betrachtung im 21. Jahrhundert vollzogen zu sein. Aber auch in diesem Fall gilt das quasi, da das alte Krisenbewusstsein der frankophonen Qu¦becer in Anbetracht ihrer Situation als Minderheit in Nordamerika und Mehrheit innerhalb der Provinz bestehen blieb und sich sogar angesichts der von den Immigranten aufgeworfenen Probleme mit Vehemenz zurückmeldete. Die Urängste angesichts scheinbar drohender Überfremdung, wie sie sich in Europa manifestieren (Kärnten ist ja nur ein Beispiel unter anderen), sind der frankophonen Mehrheit Qu¦becs als permanente Herausforderung für die Bevölkerung wie auch für die Regierenden mitgegeben. Daher verläuft die Diskussion rund um Immigration und Integration, anders als in Gesamtkanada, lebhaft und nicht selten kontroversiell. Zunächst rief der Bericht Taylor/Bouchard sehr kritische Reaktionen hervor, besonders bei der Mehrheitsbevölkerung,9 während die Rezeption bei den MigrantInnen eher positiv war.10 Heute wird er bereits aus einer gewissen zeitlichen Distanz und mit größerer Gelassenheit gesehen. Hier einige in dem Bericht behandelte Punkte, die aus mitteleuropäischer bzw. österreichischer Perspektive von Interesse sein können: Im Titel findet sich der Terminus accommodement. Accommodement raisonnable (mögliche Übersetzung ins Deutsche: „angemessenes Entgegenkommen“) ist zunächst ein Begriff aus dem Arbeitsrecht. Es geht um Anpassungen an Verschiedenheiten der Arbeitnehmer (Geschlecht, Behinderung, Religion, Alter etc.), die vermeiden sollen, dass allgemein gültige Prinzipien, die auf eine zu starre Weise durchgesetzt werden, de facto das Gleichheitsrecht verletzen. Im weiteren Sinne, so betont der Bericht, verweist der Gebrauch von accommodement auf das Desiderat, Ungleichbehandlungen zwischen angestammten Frankophonen und ImmigrantInnen mit ausgeprägter kultureller Andersartigkeit zu überwinden. Die neuen Minderheiten stellen Forderungen nach Berücksichtigung ihrer Besonderheiten, der Staat kommt diesen Wünschen entgegen, kann aber dabei das auslösen, was bei der Mehrheit als contrainte excessive (ungebührlicher Zwang) gilt. Der Bericht regt an, kulturell motivierte Gegensätze weniger durch behördliche Vorschreibungen und eher durch Verhandlungen zwischen direkt Betroffenen von Fall zu Fall zu überwinden. Regelungen „von oben“, wenn sie nicht zu vermeiden sind, sollen den Minderheiten gegenüber großzügig sein und doch auch gewisse Standards setzen. Gegen das Tragen von religiösen Zeichen in 9 Vgl. Legault, „Bouchard-Taylor report is a mix of apple pie and analysis“ (2008); vgl. Robitaille, „Bouchard-Taylor – Le d¦bat ,prend une tournure inqui¦tante‘“ (2008). 10 Vgl. Radio-Canada, Un accueil plutút favorable (2008).

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der Öffentlichkeit (z. B. Kopftuch) haben die Autoren keinen Einwand, wollen es aber untersagen, wenn die TrägerInnen für die Gesamtgesellschaft wichtige Ämter innehaben. Der Bericht kann als Versuch gelten, einen Beitrag zu dem als unumgänglich erachteten Lernprozess bei Mehrheit und Minderheiten beizutragen, wobei das Bestreben spürbar ist, ein gewisses Gleichgewicht in den sich den beiden Seiten stellenden Anforderungen zu halten. Ein Kernstück der Argumentation stellt dar, was die Autoren als „Qu¦becer Interkulturalismus“ bezeichnen, ein Ideal mit geschichtlichen Wurzeln und zugleich Perspektivierungen für die Zukunft. Deutlich wird der Unterschied dieses Prinzips zum multiculturalisme canadien herausgearbeitet. Derselbe gilt seit 1971 (Regierungserklärung) und besonders seit 1988 (Gesetz) als offizielle Doktrin Kanadas, während es für den qu¦becer Interkulturalismus trotz Sympathien bei der Bevölkerung wie auch den Behörden keine offizielle Festlegung gibt. Der oben angesprochene Unterschied gründet sich vor allem auf die Tatsache, dass im anglophonen Kanada die für Qu¦bec charakteristische Unsicherheit der Mehrheit hinsichtlich ihrer kulturellen Überlebenschancen fehlt. Zugleich ist Kanada weniger vom Einfluss einer stark majoritären „Gründernation“ bestimmt (in Qu¦bec sind 77 % französischer Abstammung, während die Britisch-Stämmigen in Gesamtkanada nur mehr 34 % ausmachen). Der Multikulturalismus vermeidet Akkulturation als Verletzung der Integrität des Individuums, verbannt andererseits die Ausübung von Kultur und Religion in den privaten Bereich. Veränderungen in der Praxis des kanadischen Gesamtstaates auf dem Gebiet des Umganges mit der kulturellen Vielfalt haben im letzten Jahrzehnt den Eindruck einer Annäherung von Multi- und Interkulturalismus, verbunden mit zunehmender Unschärfe der beiden Konzepte, entstehen lassen.11 Drei Jahre nach dem Bericht von 2008 hat G¦rard Bouchard in einem ausführlichen Essay versucht, den qu¦becer Interkulturalismus noch einmal zu definieren und abzugrenzen.12 Im Gegensatz zur Doktrin des Multikulturalismus sieht das Konzept des qu¦becer Interkulturalismus ein Sich-miteinander-Beschäftigen und wechselseitiges Kennenlernen der Mehrheit und der Minderheiten vor, wobei die französische Sprache die verbindende Basis bilden soll. An die Stelle des dem Multikulturalismus zugeschriebenen Prinzips der passiven Toleranz,13 tritt 11 Vgl. Afef Benessaieh und Patrick Imbert, „Bouchard-Taylor — l’UNESCO“, 393 – 414. 12 Vgl. Bouchard (2011). 13 Zwischen diesem Toleranzprinzip und gesamtstaatlichen Vereinheitlichungstendenzen besteht aus qu¦becer Sicht kein Widerspruch. Der Multikulturalismus in Kanada ist nach Alain-G. Gagnon und Raffaele Iacovino das „politische Instrument, das der Zentralstaat einsetzt, um dem Bürger ein Zugehörigkeitsgefühl für Kanada zu vermitteln und ihm eine einheitliche politische Gemeinschaft zu suggerieren“ („Interkulturalismus in Qu¦bec“ 164). Daher ist, so die Autoren in Übereinstimmung mit vielen anderen qu¦becer Analysen, die

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gemäß der dynamischen Konzeption des Interkulturalismus, der kulturelle Gemeinschaften nicht als Mosaik sehen will sondern als mit einander verflochtene Gefüge, das Prinzip der Konvergenz auf der Basis einer von allen akzeptierten Partizipation („moralischer Vertrag“). Der Interkulturalismus soll die Förderung der durch die Immigration geschaffenen Diversität mit der von der gesamten qu¦becer Gesellschaft als notwendig anerkannten Aufrechterhaltung der „Kultur des frankophonen Kerns“ (noyau francophone) zu einem funktionierenden Gemeinwesen (pr¦servation du lien social) verbinden. Die diversen Gruppen mit ihren eigenständigen Kulturen befinden sich in einem permanenten Dialog, der das vielfältige Erbe der Beteiligten mit dem Ziel eines gesellschaftlichen Konsenses bearbeitet. Dabei wird von den Autoren des Berichts in Kauf genommen, dass sich Qu¦becs Kultur weiter entwickelt – immer unter Beibehaltung der Vorrangstellung des Französischen in der Öffentlichkeit. Den Behörden gegenüber wird die weitgehende Absenz von MigrantInnen auf der Ebene des öffentlichen Dienstes kritisch vermerkt. Für die nahe Zukunft fordert der Bericht die Verabschiedung eines offiziellen Textes zum Interkulturalismus. Dadurch soll eine Politik des Miteinander festgeschrieben werden: Zu vermeiden ist alles was die Minderheit in ein Ghetto abdrängt. Kompromisse erscheinen wichtiger als starre Regeln. Ein Kapitel des Berichts ist dem Vergleich zwischen der Integrationsproblematik in Qu¦bec und in den Ländern Westeuropas gewidmet (angeführt werden Deutschland, die Niederlande, England und Frankreich). Hier wird eine günstige Ausgangsposition Qu¦becs hervorgehoben, speziell durch die Möglichkeit der strengen Auswahl der ImmigrantInnen nach Kriterien der sprachlichen und beruflichen Qualifikation. Das Ergebnis dieser Politik ist ein höheres Bildungsniveau bei vielen Einwanderern im Vergleich zu der bodenständigen Bevölkerung. Nichtsdestoweniger besteht bei den „Qu¦b¦cois de souche“ (angestammten Qu¦becern) ein starker Trend zur Marginalisierung und sogar Exklusion der ImmigrantInnen, was zu einer von den Autoren des Berichts als sehr problematisch empfundenen Divergenz zwischen der beruflichen Qualifikation der „Neuqu¦becer“ und ihren Chancen auf angemessene Wohnmöglichkeiten und Jobs führt. Dieses Insistieren auf sozioökonomischen Zusammenhängen bewirkt, dass die manchmal geäußerte Kritik an der Integrationsdebatte von heute, der zu Folge kulturelle Gegensätze zwischen MigrantInnen und Angestammten oft überschätzt und zur Verschleierung von gesellschaftlicher Benachteiligung missbraucht werden,14 die Autoren des Berichtes nicht trifft. Distanz zum früher vorherrschenden und auch heute noch spürbaren Melting-Pot-Assimilationismus der USA weniger groß als es zunächst scheinen mag. 14 Vgl. Bachinger und Schenk (2012).

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Andererseits ist wohl der in dem Bericht mit fühlbarer Genugtuung vorgebrachte Hinweis auf das Fehlen von rechtsextremen Parteien in Qu¦bec zu relativieren. Rassismus und Chauvinismus haben im Rahmen der bestehenden Gegensätze ein gewisses Aktionsfeld gefunden, nicht zuletzt auf der Basis der alten „Urangst“ und des alten Sendungsbewusstseins. Dies lässt sich im Anhang des Berichts, wo die häufigsten Stellungnahmen aus der Bevölkerung im Rahmen der Kommissionsarbeit aufgelistet und kommentiert werden, deutlich erkennen. Im Hinblick auf die österreichischen Verhältnisse können aus der Lektüre des Taylor-Bouchard-Berichts mehrere Anregungen und Möglichkeiten der Nutzanwendung erwachsen. Von Interesse wäre sicherlich eine systematische Durchleuchtung der Integrationspolitik in beiden Ländern, die aber im Zusammenhang dieses Beitrages nicht zu leisten ist. So viel kann allerdings gesagt werden, dass eine solche in alle Details gehende Studie sich nicht mit Aufrechnungen von da und dort ergriffenen Regelungen und Maßnahmen begnügen dürfte, sondern jeweils weitgespannte geschichtliche Zusammenhänge im Blick behalten müsste, um oberflächliche Fragestellungen und Wertungen – vom Typ „welche Migrationspolitik ist fortschrittlicher?“ – zu vermeiden.15 Insbesondere der Umstand, dass sowohl Qu¦bec als auch Österreich in die Rolle des Einwanderungslandes hineinwachsen mussten und müssen verdient Beachtung. In Gesamtkanada wie auch in den USA ist die Integration sozusagen mit der kollektiven Selbstdeutung auf nationaler Ebene verknüpft, was weder in Qu¦bec noch in Österreich der Fall ist, freilich aus sehr verschiedenen Gründen. Wie Qu¦bec ist auch Österreich geprägt von diversen aus der Geschichte erklärbaren Traumata, Unsicherheiten und Selbstzweifeln. Das Erbe der Vielheit und Weltoffenheit entspringt dieser Geschichte, aber auch das Erbe der „Urängste“ bis hin zu Xenophobie und nationalistischer Borniertheit. Die Schwierigkeit besteht nun nicht darin, dieses Erbe im Rahmen kultureller Diskurse auf den diversen Gebieten von Wissenschaft und Kunst aufzuarbeiten. Dies geschieht in Österreich seit langem und auf hohem oder höchstem Niveau. Was in unserem Land fehlt, so meint der Autor dieser Zeilen, das ist die speziell auf die Migrationsproblematik von heute bezogene Aktualisierung dieses Erbes. In Qu¦bec ist 15 Die Verleihung der Staatsbürgerschaft verläuft in Kanada rascher und problemloser. Anhaltelager für Asylanten wie auch bürokratische Behandlung ihrer Anträge verbunden mit problematischer Abschiebepraxis machen jenseits des Atlantiks keine Schlagzeilen. Dennoch ist Qu¦bec kein Einwanderungsparadies, ebensowenig wie Kanada. Kommentatoren aus den Reihen der Immigranten in Qu¦bec betrachten das Prinzip des Interkulturalismus mitunter recht distanziert und bezeichnen es einerseits als „die am weitesten entwickelte Form des Pluralismus“, andererseits als „Integrationsnationalismus“ und „nicht viel mehr als eine Vision von Intellektuellen am Rande der demokratischen Debatte“ (vgl. Dimitrios Karmis, „Pluralismus und nationale Identität(en) im gegenwärtigen Qu¦bec“ 140).

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diese Aktualisierung angesichts der besonderen politischen Lage des Landes unvermeidlich, eine permanente Herausforderung, wenn man will eine Frage von Sein oder Nichtsein.16 Für Österreich ist es eher möglich, die Geschichte zu verdrängen und so zu tun als könne man angesichts der „Fremden“ die Konflikte auf das Klischeeniveau herunterdrücken und das Nachwirken der Vergangenheit, vom Vielvölkerstaat zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, von den sozialdemokratischen Visionen Bauers oder Renners bis zu den Volksgruppengesetzen der 2. Republik außer Acht lassen. Immerhin gibt es im Österreich von heute kräftige Signale, die in die Richtung eines gelebten Interkulturalismus weisen. Dies zeigen jene Fälle, in denen sich kleinere Ortschaften mit „ihren“ Einwanderern identifizieren und sich gegen behördliche Abschiebepläne stellen, so wie die Solidarisierung von Teilen der Bevölkerung mit der Protestbewegung der aus dem Lager Traiskirchen „ausgebrochenen“ Migranten. Auf der Ebene der Behörden fällt die Schaffung eines Staatssekretariats für Migrationsfragen wie auch die auf vielen EnquÞten aufbauende Wiener Charta „Zukunft gemeinsam leben“ (2012) ins Gewicht. Wertvolle Arbeit leisten auch Arbeitsgruppen wie die Kommission für Migrations- und Integrationsforschung der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, die Forschungsplattform Migration and Integration Research an der Universität Wien oder das Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation (VIDC). Aber derzeit haben solche Initiativen eher punktuellen und lokalen Charakter, wären vermutlich wirksamer im Lichte einer landesweiten, interkulturellen und interdisziplinären EnquÞte über Österreich in seiner Entwicklung zum Einwanderungsland und seiner Position in der Welt von heute. Für die Universitäten wäre ein solches Unternehmen eine große Chance mehr, aus dem Elfenbeinturm von Forschung und Lehre herauszutreten. Ein Anknüpfungspunkt unter anderen wäre der Versuch des Jahres 1988, einen Bericht im Hinblick auf die angestammten Sprachminderheiten zu erstellen. Der von der Konferenz der österreichischen Rektoren angeregte und durch ein Team von Universitätsangehörigen erarbeitete Bericht über die „Volksgruppen“17 steht dem Bericht von Taylor und Bouchard an wissenschaftlicher Genauigkeit keineswegs nach und nimmt nicht nur die österreichischen Sprachminderheiten ins Visier, sondern auch das Selbstverständnis der Mehrheit. Auf Seite 55 lesen wir zu diesem Thema: Die Identität des modernen Österreich leitet sich von einer Geschichte her, die nicht nationalstaatlich geprägt war, sondern den Versuch darstellte, das Zusammenleben vieler Nationalitäten in einem Staat zu organisieren. Österreichs geschichtliches Erbe besteht u. a. in dem Auftrag, mit besseren, d. h. demokratischen Mitteln jenes Problem zu lösen, an dem – neben andern – die Habsburgermonarchie gescheitert ist. 16 Vgl. Harmony (2010). 17 Österreichische Rektorenkonferenz (1989).

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Ein ähnliches, in den Diskussionen der Öffentlichkeit besser verortetes Unternehmen im Zusammenhang mit den „neuen Minderheiten“ wäre wünschenswert. Seitdem die zweite Republik zur Kenntnis nehmen musste, dass die Regelungen für Gastarbeiter, von denen man eine letztendliche Rückkehr in ihre Heimat erwartete, angesichts der Entwicklung Österreichs zum Einwanderungsland obsolet waren, stellte sich das Problem des Umganges mit „neuen Minderheiten“ mit wachsender Dringlichkeit. Das wäre für die Universitäten wie auch die Ministerien eine Chance, sich konsequenter als bisher um eine breite Auseinandersetzung zu bemühen und zugleich die immer wieder vernachlässigte Frage nach den ererbten Widersprüchen der Mehrheit zu stellen. Denn dieses Erbe ist ein Doppeltes, sozusagen mit zwei Köpfen wie das Wappentier von früher. Die Möglichkeit, dass nicht nur die „Fremden“ im Rahmen ihrer Integration einen Prozess der Anpassung durchlaufen müssen, sondern auch mit einer Veränderung der österreichischen Kultur zu rechnen ist, wird immer noch gerne verdrängt. Ein großangelegter Bericht über Österreich in seiner Entwicklung zum Einwanderungsland, auf wissenschaftlicher Basis und mit Einbeziehung der Medien, könnte neuartige Weichenstellungen bringen.

Bibliografie Bachinger, Eva Maria, und Martin Schenk. Die Integrationslüge. Antworten in einer hysterisch geführten Auseinandersetzung. Wien: Deuticke, 2012. Benessaieh, Afef, und Patrick Imbert. „Bouchard-Taylor — l’UNESCO: ambivalences interculturelles et clarifications transculturelles.” Ertler Canadian Studies 393 – 414. Biron, Michel, FranÅois Dumont, und Elisabeth Nardout-Lafarge. Histoire de la litt¦rature qu¦b¦coise. Montr¦al: Bor¦al, 2007. Bouchard, G¦rard. „Qu’est-ce que l’interculturalisme?“ McGill Law Journal/Revue de Droit de McGill 56.2 (2011): 395 – 433. ––, und Charles Taylor. Commission de Consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reli¦es aux differences culturelles. Fonder l’avenir. Le temps de la conciliation. Montr¦al: Gouvernement du Qu¦bec, 2008. 22. März 2013. . Dumont, Fernand. La GenÀse de la soci¦t¦ qu¦b¦coise. Montr¦al: Bor¦al, 1996. Ertler, Klaus-Dieter, und Martin Löschnigg, eds. Canada in the Sign of Migration and Trans-Culturalism/Le Canada sous le signe de la migration et du transculturalisme. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004. ––, et. al., eds. Canadian Studies: The State of the Art/Êtudes canadiennes: Questions de recherch¦. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. Fassmann, Heinz, Helga Matuschek, und Elisabeth Menasse, eds. abgrenzen – ausgrenzen – aufnehmen. Empirische Befunde zur Fremdenfeindlichkeit und Integration. Klagenfurt: Drava, 1999.

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––, und Irene Stacher, eds. Österreichischer Migrations- und Integrationsbericht. WienKlagenfurt: Drava, 2003. ––, ed. 2. Österreichischer Migrations- und Integrationsbericht. Klagenfurt: Drava, 2007. Gagnon, Alain-G., ed. Qu¦bec: Staat und Gesellschaft. Ed. Ingo Kolboom und Boris Vormann. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2011. ––, und Raffaele Iacovino. „Interkulturalismus in Qu¦bec: Identitäten im Fluss.“ Gagnon Qu¦bec 145 – 66. Harmony, Victor. Leben in Qu¦bec. Soziokulturelle Betrachtungen eines Zugewanderten. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2010. Hengsbach, Eva-Maria. Migrations- und Integrationspolitik im interkulturellen Vergleich Deutschland – Kanada/Qu¦bec. München: GRIN, 2011. Karmis, Dimitrios. „Pluralismus und nationale Identität(en) im gegenwärtigen Qu¦bec.“ Gagnon Qu¦bec 111 – 44. Kirsch, Fritz Peter. „French Canadian Literature from National Solidarity to the Êcole litt¦raire de Montr¦al.“ History of Literature in Canada. English-Canadian and French Canadian. Ed. Reingard M. Nischik. New York: Camden House, 2008. 127 – 48. Legault, Jos¦e. „Bouchard-Taylor report is a mix of apple pie and analysis.” The Gazette (Montreal). 23. Mai 2008 . Maclure, Jocelyn. „Nationalgeschichte und narrative Gegen-Entwürfe der Identität in Qu¦bec.“ Gagnon Qu¦bec 85 – 107. „Lage und Perspektiven der Volksgruppen in Österreich mit einem statistischen Ergänzungsheft.“ Bericht der Arbeitsgruppe. Österreichische Rektorenkonferenz. Wien: Böhlau, 1989. Perchinig, Bernhard. „Migration, Integration und Staatsbürgerschaft – was taugen die Begriffe noch?“ Integration in Österreich. Sozialwissenschaftliche Befunde. Ed. Herbert Langthaler. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2010. 13 – 33. Radio-Canada avec la Presse Canadienne. „Un accueil plutút favorable.“ 23. Mai 2008. 20. Nov. 2013. . Robitaille, Antoine. „Le d¦bat, prend une tournure inqui¦tante.“ Le Devoir: A7. 10. Juni 2008. Taylor, Charles. Multikulturalismus und die Politik der Anerkennung. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1992. Ulram, Peter A. Integration in Österreich. Einstellungen, Orientierungen, Erfahrungen. Studie der GfK Austria GmbH, Bundesministerium für Inneres, 2009.

List of Contributors

Carmen Birkle is Professor of American Studies at the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. She has taught at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and as a guest-professor at the University of Vienna and at Columbia University, New York City. Her publications, research, and teaching focus on ethnic and gender studies, inter- and transculturality, literature and medicine, and popular culture. She is the author of Women’s Stories of the Looking Glass (1996) and Migration – Miscegenation – Transculturation (2004), editor of Literature and Medicine: Women in the Medical Profession (Part I and II) [gender forum (Sept. and Dec. 2009)], and co-editor of (Trans)Formations of Cultural Identity in the English-Speaking World (1998), Frauen auf der Spur (2001), Sites of Ethnicity (2004), Asian American Studies in Europe (2006), “The Sea Is History”: Exploring the Atlantic (2009), Living American Studies (2010), and Emanzipation und feministische Politiken (2012). Her current book project focuses on the intersection of literature, gender, and medicine in 19th-century America. Dirk Hoerder taught at Arizona State University, formerly at Universität Bremen (1977 – 2008), and as visiting professor at York University, Toronto, Duke University, Universit¦ de Paris 8 – Saint Denis, and the University of Toronto. His areas of interest are U.S. and Canadian social history and historiography, Atlantic economies, global migrations, borderland issues, and sociology of migrant acculturation. His publications include Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (2002), which has received the Social Science History Association’s Sharlin Prize, as well as the co-edited The Historical Practice of Diversity: Transcultural Interactions from the Early Modern Mediterranean to the Postcolonial World (2003), and What is Migration History? (2009), an introduction to Migration Studies, together with Christiane Harzig and Donna Gabaccia.

166

List of Contributors

Univ. Prof. i.R. Dr. Fritz Peter Kirsch (1941) praktiziert in Lehre und Forschung eine romanistische Literaturwissenschaft interkultureller Orientierung im Spannungsfeld von Hermeneutik, Soziokritik und Geschichte. Schwerpunktsetzungen bestehen im Bereich der Literaturgeschichten Frankreichs (französische und okzitanische Literatur) und anderer Frankophonien (Maghreb, Qu¦bec), der Italianistik, der Katalanistik, der Rätoromanistik und der Rumänistik. Letzte Buchpublikation: Interkulturelle Literaturwissenschaft. Ein romanistischer Zugang (Hamburg: Dr. Kovac, 2011). Martin Löschnigg is Associate Professor of English at the University of Graz, Austria, where he is also chair of the English Department’s section on postcolonial literatures, and deputy director of the Centre for Canadian Studies. His main fields of research are narrative theory, autobiography, the English novel, the literature of war, and Canadian literature. Book publications include Der Erste Weltkrieg in deutscher und englischer Dichtung (Heidelberg, 1994), Die englische fiktionale Autobiographie (Trier, 2006), Kurze Geschichte der kanadischen Literatur (co-author, with Maria Löschnigg; Stuttgart and Leipzig, 2001) and Migration and Fiction: Narratives of Migration in Contemporary Canadian Literature (co-ed. with Maria Löschnigg; Heidelberg, 2009). Ursula Moser ist Professorin für Französische und Hispanistische Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Innsbruck. Sie leitet seit 1985 das Innsbrucker Archiv “Textmusik in der Romania” und seit 1997 das Zentrum für Kanadastudien (Universität Innsbruck). Von 2005 bis 2012 fungierte sie als wissenschaftliche Leiterin des Forschungsschwerpunkts “Kulturen in Kontakt”. Sie verfolgt inbesondere folgende Forschungsschwerpunkte: französische und frankophone Literaturen (19. und 20. Jahrhundert), Transkulturalität, Migrationsliteraturen (Frankreich, Qu¦bec, Karibik), sowie Intermedialität und “Text and Music Studies.” Ihre Veröffentlichungen umfassen, unter anderem, Dany LaferriÀre: La d¦rive am¦ricaine (2003), Autriche-Canada: Le transfert culturel et scientifique (1990 – 2000) (Hg.; 2003), Nouveaux regards sur la litt¦rature qu¦b¦coise (Hg. et al.; 2004), La litt¦rature ‘franÅaise’ contemporaine. Contact de cultures et cr¦ativit¦ (Hg. et al.; 2007), Acadians and Cajuns. The Politics and Culture of French Minorities in North America (Hg. et al.; 2009), Responsibility to Protect. Peacekeeping, Diplomacy, Media, and Literature Responding to Humanitarian Challenges (Hg.; 2012) und Passages et ancrages en France. Dictionnaire des ¦crivains migrants de langue franÅaise (1981 – 2011) (Hg. et al.; 2012).

List of Contributors

167

David Staines is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. He received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. A scholar of medieval literature and culture, he published Tennyson’s Camelot: The Idylls of the King and Its Medieval Sources (1983) and translated The Complete Romances of Chr¦tien de Troyes (1990). A scholar of Canadian literature and culture, he has edited many books, including The Canadian Imagination: Dimensions of a Literary Culture (1977) and Margaret Laurence: Critical Perspectives (2001). He is the editor of the Journal of Canadian Poetry and general editor of the New Canadian Library. Andrea Strutz is senior researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History of Society and Culture and lecturer at the Institute of History at the University of Graz, Austria, where she studied History, Philosophy and Media and received her PhD. Her research interests include transatlantic migration movements (esp. Canada and the United States), questions of Jewish displacement, memory and migration, National Socialism and restitution matters, biographical studies, and methodological questions of oral and video history. One of her recent publications analyzes Jewish migrations in the Americas in the 19th and 20th century : “Nach Amerika nämlich!”: Jüdische Migrationen in die Amerikas im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012; co-ed. with Ulla Kriebernegg, Gerald Lamprecht, and Roberta Maierhofer). Waldemar Zacharasiewicz is Emeritus Professor of American Studies at the University of Vienna, where he is also the Director of the Canadian Studies Centre. He chairs the committee The North Atlantic Triangle at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His main research interests have been the literatures of the American South and Canada, travel literature and imagology. His most recent publications include Images of Germany in American Literature (U of Iowa P, 2007) and Imagology Revisited (Rodopi, 2010). He has edited or co-edited numerous collections of essays in his main fields of interest, among them Transatlantic Exchanges: The American South in Europe – Europe in the American South (ed. with Richard Gray, ÖAW, 2007), Social and Cultural Interaction and Literary Landscapes in the Canadian West (ed. with Fritz Peter Kirsch, Facultas Vienna, 2010) and Riding/Writing Across Borders (ÖAW, 2011).