Alexandra Dobrowolsky

Rhetoric versus Reality: The Figure of the Child and New Labour’s Strategic “Social Investment State”

By the end of New Labours first term in office (1997- 2001), children and youth had begun to figure prominently in its words and deeds. In fact, child-centred discourse continues well into the partys second mandate as still more child-related policies are advanced. While references to children can merely reflect rhetorical flourish, such child-based appeals have also led to action. The Labour government has launched a succession of policy initiatives, created institutions and committed funds to a range of concerns relating to children and youth.

The politics of pragmatism : women, representation, and constitutionalism in Canada

1: Revisiong and Revisioning Representation 2: Positioning the Womens Movement 3: Earthquakes and Aftershocks: The Tremors of Early 1980s Equality Struggles 4: A Case of Sink or Swim: Feminist Mobilization Against the Meech Lake Accord 5: The Nature and Effects of PMS: Post-Meech Struggles 6: Analysing Feminist Organizing in the Canada Round: Capabilities, Connections, and Conundrums 7: Looking Back and Looking Forward Appendix 1: Methodology and List of Interviewees Appendix 2: Aide Memoire.

Agency, actors and change in a child-focused future: ‘Path dependency’ problematised

This article calls into question the assumptions of leading welfare state theorists who rely on path dependency approaches and ‘permanent austerity’ theses to inform their analyses. In contrast, drawing on public policy approaches that acknowledge paradigm shifts, and feminist state and social movement theorisation, we examine the state/civil society interrelations that have helped to bring about changes in state forms in Canada and Britain. We argue that state/civil society interaction explains the novel patterns that are taking shape in Canada and Britain with the materialisation of a ‘social investment perspective’ and child welfare reform strategy. We examine not only new institutions and new policies, but also new meanings and new roles for different groups.

Interrogating ‘invisibilization’ and ‘instrumentalization’: women and current citizenship trends in Canada

This paper examines current citizenship discourses and practices in Canada, focusing on the implications not only of marketization, but also of growing securitization vis-à-vis citizenship, and the gendered ramifications of such developments. The repercussions of marketization and securitization and their interrelations, for women in general, as well as racialized and immigrant women in particular, are outlined and assessed. In this way, we see how women are at the receiving end of highly contradictory processes in that they are both ‘invisibilized’, in other words, rendered invisible, by the Canadian state, but are also are increasingly ‘instrumentalized’, in other words, used in strategic ways. Yet, women also challenge these trends and tactics, thereby interrogating these processes that serve to limit the terms and scope of citizenship in Canada.

(In)Security and Citizenship: Security, Im/migration and Shrinking Citizenship Regimes

This Article points to a widening gap between citizenship theories and practices. Although discourses of citizenship resonate widely and are used extensively by scholars and policy makers, the author argues that the social, economic, political and even psychological processes of citizenship are shrinking in a contemporary context of global insecurity where im/migration and ever more restrictive national security concerns have become enmeshed in law, as well as in the public consciousness. As a result, this Article explores new trends of securitization and related processes of marketization, racialization and the invisibilization and/or instrumentalization of women and evaluates their impact on citizenship in Canada and Britain. A citizenship regime framework structures the analysis and highlights the contraction of citizenship in both countries. In the end, despite their purported concern with citizenship, social exclusion and social cohesion, British and Canadian state’s responses serve to perpetuate feelings of insecurity on the part of both citizens and non-citizens.

Introduction: Women, New Politics and Constitutional Change

At the end of the twentieth century, nations both north and south engaged in making or remaking their constitutional agreements. This burst of constitutional activity generated a ferment of debate about governance, human rights and the recognition of diversity. Since many of these deliberative processes remain in flux, and discussions about the nature and forms of democracy continue, constitutional politics have become and will remain a feature of the political sphere in the twenty-first century.

Bad versus Big Canada: state imaginaries of immigration and citizenship

Abstract An illusory binary has emerged around Canadian immigration and citizenship. “Bad Canada” encapsulates a sinister, Harper Conservative state whereas “Big Canada’s” “sunny” discourses and imagery are linked to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. Here, the latter’s rhetoric is counterposed by the reality/materiality of the continued prominence of capital and human capital with their classed, racialized, and gendered consequences. Prevailing econocentrism was accelerated by the Harper Conservatives, and it persists now, despite narratives to the contrary.

Why Networks Matter and How They Work? The Role of Social Networks in Attracting and Retaining Immigrants in Small Cities

Drawing from over 50 semi-structured interviews performed in three small cities (Charlottetown, Moncton, and St. John’s) and one larger comparator city (Halifax) of the Atlantic Provinces, this chapter addresses social networks from multidisciplinary angles. We see that immigrants hold complex understandings of the meanings of multiculturalism. However, variations emerge relative to perceptions of ‘community’, its value and purpose. While some participants report having strong and positive relationships with kin and other immigrants from their ethno cultural associations, others spoke positively about broader ‘Canadian’ social networks. For younger participants, the idea of maintaining ‘traditions’, for example, through marriage to someone with a common ethno cultural heritage, is a matter of some ambivalence. But variations occur relative to the size of the city and its immigrant populations, as confirmed also by comparisons with a similar sample of respondents from Halifax. However, broadly speaking, universal principles such as honesty and respect are seen as the basis for positive social relations, more so than shared culturally based values. Not surprisingly, the data from this project also reveal notable variation in the types of networks used and, often, how they are deployed based on gender with women’s culturally assigned roles in terms of social reproduction having an impact and, for example, tending to produce ‘broader’ rather than ‘denser’ networks.

Finding Feminism(s) in Canadian Political Science Scholarship: Diversity and Resistance in an Era of Global Uncertainty

It is with great pleasure that we present this special issue showcasing contemporary feminist political research, theories and practices in Canada. In an era characterized by global movements and numerous transformations that range from the economic to the environmental, the political to the cultural, from macro- through to micro-scales, including complex debates about the fluidity of gender, and where “backlash” against the symbols and agents of past feminist activism is rife, this special issue queries where do we find feminism(s) today? The responses to this question, as well as to the interrogation of the place of gender in the discipline of political science more generally, are undoubtedly diverse and contested. The collective efforts contained in this special issue feature a mere taste of the rich range of thought-provoking recent scholarship on feminisms. And even with this necessarily condensed portrayal (the articles in this issue are shorter than is normally the case to allow for more work to be featured), the special issue is ground-breaking in that it marks the first time the Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique has dedicated an entire issue to topics of gender and feminisms.

Gender versus Culture Debates and Débâcles: Feminisms, Interculturalism and the Quebec Charter of Values

Quebecs Bill 60 (or Charter of Values), legislation prohibiting public officials from wearing religious symbols and garb, provides a complicated case of a minority nation grappling with culture and gender, while also illustrating the more contingent condition of Canadian multiculturalism, equality and feminisms. Quebec has adopted interculturalism versus multiculturalism ; moreover, its multilayered womens movement remains a legitimate force, unlike in the rest of Canada. Despite the intricacies of these distinctive developments, this article reveals how Charter of Values justifications asserted the Quebec nations distinctiveness and alleged egalitarian pre-eminence over others, not only homogenizing and instrumentalizing multiple cultures, but also various feminisms. Yet, when culture, gender equality and feminisms become reified and essentialized through a strategic depiction of certain minority womens rights, Canadas already well-worn claims to diversity and equality are further frayed both subnationally and nationally.