Edmund A. Aunger

Dispersed minorities and segmental autonomy: French‐language school boards in Canada

An ethnic minority is more likely to gain political autonomy if it is geographically concentrated; such autonomy is rare when the minority is territorially dispersed. This article examines Canadas recent experience in granting segmental autonomy to its dispersed French‐speaking minority. After more than a century of majority rule in the field of education, most Canadian provinces have only now established French‐language school boards responsible for administering minority schools. The adoption of this new policy was unexpected; its implementation was achieved with great difficulty. The province of Alberta, where such school boards were established in 1994, serves as an instructive case study of the implementation, the organization and the structure of segmental autonomy in education.