In the 90s, a mass influx of Maghrebi immigrants landed in a neighborhood in Montreal, on a street called Jean-Talon between Saint-Michel and Pie-IX, where many Italians lived. Tunisians, Algerians and Moroccans now concentrate this place. Maghrebi shops have since turned Jean-Talon into the streets of Oran, Casablanca and Tunis.
Nearly 4,000 immigrants from Algeria and Morocco have settled in Saint-Michel.
Maghrebi Bourgeoise
Behind the walls, the neighborhood is not just a caricature of itself, because unlike the other “ethnic” neighborhoods, like Little Italy and Chinatown, the Little Maghreb is actually not the main place of residence of Maghrebis.
Maghrebi immigration to Quebec is fairly educated and bourgeois. The Maghrebi people are generally seen to not want to be associated with the “ghetto” and live all over Montreal. One begins to see this in the United States, a dislocation of places frequented by ethnic communities according to functions: residential, commercial, entertainment.
Theories of Identity
Whether it is the theory of globalization, post-colonial discourse or avant-garde aesthetic experiments, the question of identity loudly and obstinately imposes itself on the social, political and poetic agenda of our era. The problem must not, however, be approached in a uniform and homogeneous way, but rather put in context and combined with the human, social, cultural, political and economic variables that define its contours and determine their weight. It should also be pointed out that our analysis, based on the identity of the diaspora, starts from theoretical positions that privilege the contextual dimension and the geo-anthropological perspective of the local cultural and communication sphere. We thus have to deal with a universe which demands a particular methodological rigor in order to grasp the true meaning of relations with otherness, immigration and diasporas.
A careful reading of the debate around the burqa (hijab or scarf) and the terrorist threat in Quebec, for example, leaves no doubt as to the weight of the semantic filter hexagonal in formation and formulation from the point of view of the intelligentsia and the Quebec media on their own environment.
The main grievances of members of this community (or designated as such), according to the associations concerned, are not religious or ethnic but rather related to political equality, full citizenship, common destiny and acceptance of their “québécitude” based on being francophone (traditional in the Maghreb countries) and not on biological origin. The question that arises, therefore, is epistemological: a dispute over the notions, concepts and methods that must be adopted to decipher reality.
If the researcher has to be wary of all theories, he must redouble his caution when they are hegemonic, consensual or naturalized. In the particular case that interests us, in addition to defining the whole of a community, diverse and heteroclite (both ethnically and socially, if we consider the existence of Arabs and Berbers, anti-theists and believers), the very fact of embracing the “minority/majority” dichotomy poses a fundamental challenge to the ideological choice of some of its segments (those who identify with a specific Islamic perspective).
We are not unaware, of course, of the figurative meaning of the notion and its philosophical bearing on the deprivation of autonomy and the right to speech or physical coercion, as we do not dispute its ideological effectiveness in socio-cultural contexts and specific policies. It is difficult for us, however, to resist the materialistic temptation to grasp the term in its historical and statistical concreteness and objectivity, instead of bending obediently to the post-structuralist metaphor. Our reservation is even stronger in relation to the multiculturalist principle, which is established as the supreme law for understanding and for the social and territorial management of difference and otherness.
