Antoine Bilodeau

Immigrants’ Voice through Protest Politics in Canada and Australia: Assessing the Impact of Pre-Migration Political Repression

This paper examines immigrant participation in protest politics in Canada and Australia. It focuses on the related impact of immigrants’ pre-migration experience of political repression. Three main findings emerge. First, immigrants from repressive regimes abstain more from protest politics than those from non-repressive regimes. Second, the higher the degree of repression in the country of origin, the more likely immigrants are to abstain from protest politics. Third, even after living for 30 years in the host country, some groups of immigrants continue to abstain from protest politics to a greater degree than the local population. This article contributes, therefore, to two understudied aspects of immigrants’ political adaptation: immigrant participation in protest activities and the impact of their pre-migration experiences.

Adaptation to Democracy among Immigrants in Australia

This article examines adaptation to democracy among immigrants who leave authoritarian regimes to settle in Australia. Two questions are addressed. First, do immigrants from authoritarian regimes successfully adapt to democracy, in terms of both supporting democracy and participating in the electoral process? And second, does the pre-migration socialization in authoritarian regimes influence immigrants’ democratic transition? Using the 2004 Australian Election Study and the Australian section of the 2005 World Values Survey, the findings indicate that if immigrants from authoritarian regimes lag behind the rest of the population in terms of support for democracy, they tend to participate at least as much as the rest of the population in electoral activities. Overall, the study highlights both the persistence of and the change in immigrants’ pre-migration political orientations.

Is democracy the only game in town? Tension between immigrants' democratic desires and authoritarian imprints

This article borrows from the literature on transitional democracies to examine levels of support for democracy and non-democratic alternatives among immigrants travelling from partly and non-democratic countries to Canada. It evaluates how immigrants who grew up under authoritarian rule come to adapt to democracy. The findings indicate that immigrants from partly and non-democratic countries experience tensions in their adaptation to democracy, expressing strong democratic desires but also manifesting what could be interpreted as lasting imprints of their socialization under authoritarian rule. Immigrants from partly and non-democratic countries exhibit strong support for democracy (they almost all believe it is a good form of government, the best one, and understand democracy in broadly similar terms as the rest of the population). Yet, if democracy is the main game in town for the immigrants, it is not the only one; immigrants from partly and non-democratic countries are significantly more likely than people socialized in a democratic political system to support other forms of governments that are non-democratic. The article thus argues for the lasting impact of authoritarianism on peoples democratic outlooks despite the presence of strong democratic desires.

Residential Segregation and the Electoral Participation of Immigrants in Australia

This paper investigates whether immigrants in Australia residing in situations of residential segregation (federal constituencies with high concentrations of immigrants) participate more in electoral politics than other immigrants. The results indicate that immigrants participate more when living in federal constituencies with high concentrations of immigrants and also exhibit greater homogeneity in their partisan preferences. The analysis also indicates that the impact of residential segregation is primarily observed among immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. Immigrants from visible minority background, such as those from South East Asia as well as those from Southern and South Eastern Europe, tend to be more strongly affected by the ethnic composition of their constituencies than other immigrants such as those from the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Value Diversity and Support for Electoral Reform in Canada

Political representatives in Canada have traditionally been selected using a first-past-the-post electoral system. The major problem with this process of determining “who governs” is that larger parties are often rewarded the majority of seats in legislatures without winning a majority of popular support. Recently, the debate on electoral reform in Canada has begun to gain steam, as several provinces have started to look more seriously at alternatives (Milner 2004 ). Declining voter turnout may explain why even governments that benefit from the current electoral system are finding it increasingly difficult to simply sideline this issue. But what accounts for the Canadian publics more recent frustration with their traditional electoral system? We would like to thank Nicki Doyle for her research assistance and Concordia University for its financial support.

Trust among recent immigrants in Canada: levels, roots and implications for immigrant integration

ABSTRACT Generalised trust promotes social interactions and may well be a crucial component of immigrant integration. Recent immigrants in particular are likely to be viewed by themselves and others as ‘outsiders’ who are unfamiliar with the expectations and norms that structure day-to-day social interactions in the host country. This study relies on a unique combination of three sources of data all derived from World Values Surveys to examine levels of trust, and its sources, among newcomers in one country with a large immigrant population, Canada. The evidence indicates that recent immigrants to Canada make a clear distinction between trust in other people in general, and trust in Canadians in particular: the former is grounded in pre-migration cultural influences, while the latter is grounded in immigrants’ experiences in the new host country. Moreover, the evidence suggests trust in Canadians is a crucial component of immigrant integration.

The Changing Ideological Landscape in North America: Evidence from the World Values Surveys (1981–2000)

There is a longstanding tradition of identifying the differences and similarities of the political cultures of Canada and the United States, and comparisons of their respective ideological landscapes have been a prominent part of that larger discourse. These comparisons have been approached from a variety of vantage points. Some rely on historical evidence arguing that contemporary similarities and differences are the product of “founding circumstances” and the present day variations are a product of these “historical residues” (Lower 1953; Hartz 1964; Horowitz 1966). Others argue that variations in the ideologies of Canada and the United States can be inferred from differences in the social structural and institutional characteristics of the two countries (Brady 1947; Lipset 1968, 1990). And yet others draw inferences about the comparative ideological climates of the two countries by fixing on the electoral successes and policy programmes of political parties associated with “the lefts” and “the rights” (Lipson 1959; LeDuc 1985; Hibbs 1987). Another alternative approach might be to sift through the elements of popular culture on both sides of the border and to interpret shifts, reversals, and new trajectories in terms of their “ideological content.” Each approach has different strengths and limitations, and each has yielded different kinds of insights.

Migrating Gender Inequalities? Immigrant Women's Participation in Political Survey Research†

This study examines the participation of immigrant women in political surveys in Canada as a form of political participation. Investigating immigrant womens participation in the various components of the Canadian Election Studies, this study highlights the structuring impact of pre-migration experiences with gender inequalities from two different perspectives. The larger the gender inequalities in immigrant womens country of origin, the lower their retention rate to the post-election surveys, and the greater their propensity to provide non-responses to political survey-items. This study contributes to a better understanding of immigrant political integration and the related impact of pre-migration experiences.