Marilyn Steinbach

Eux Autres versus Nous Autres: Adolescent Students' Views on the Integration of Newcomers.

Focus group interviews with secondary school students in Quebec reveal assimilationist discourses concerning the integration of newcomers. The first part of the study involved interviews with immigrant students. In the second part of the study, reported here, host society youth describe fears of losing their cultural identity. Interview data indicate influences of exclusionist discourses from the media and society at large in an era of cultural protectionism in Quebec, a society struggling with the delicate balance between increasing cultural diversity and protecting French language and culture. This study indicates a need to implement intercultural education and promote intercultural communication to bring together the two separate worlds of immigrant and host society adolescents. Des entrevues de type groupe de discussion avec des élèves du secondaire au Québec mettent en évidence des discours assimilationnistes concernant l’intégration des élèves néo‐canadiens. La première partie de l’étude est constituée d’entrevues réalisées auprès d’élèves immigrants. Le présent article constitue la seconde partie de l’étude où les jeunes de la société d’accueil décrivent leurs peurs de perdre leur identité culturelle. Les données indiquent l’influence des discours exclusionnistes de la société et des médias dans une époque d’équilibre fragile entre l’augmentation de la diversité culturelle et la protection de la langue et de la culture distincte au Québec. Cette étude démontre le besoin d’implanter l’éducation interculturelle et de promouvoir la communication interculturelle.

Voices of Children and Parents from Elsewhere: A Glance at Integration in Italian Primary Schools.

ABSTRACT This study involves 35 research participants: 20 immigrant parents (primarily mothers from South America, North Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East) and 15 primary school children, aged 10–11. These children were born outside Italy and primary school was their first encounter with the Italian educational system. We observed their processes of integration through their stories and those of their parents. Our investigation aims to identify factors that support or inhibit their school integration. We adopt an ecological research paradigm, proposing a vision of knowledge as rooted in natural life contexts, focusing on subjectivity. Analysis of the data led to identification of core categories concerning these families’ experiences and their childrens encounters with Italian schools. This paper focuses on the childrens perspectives of their experiences with school.

Competing discourses in the ongoing identity construction of adult immigrants

Based on interviews with eight adult immigrants to Montreal, this article explores how discourses from their cultures of origin interact with discourses in the host culture to influence the process of identity construction during their acculturation to the host society. Drawing on sociocultural theory and psychological concepts of identity development, the roles of the often conflicting discourses from two different societies are analyzed in terms of their influences on the identity construction of these adult immigrants. The most prevalent recurring theme from the interview data concerned what participants referred to as shyness. The meanings of this theme and its political, economic, and sociocultural implications are discussed. Interview data from this study indicate the importance of sociocultural, political, and economic elements of the discourses of ones society of origin which could be taken into consideration in order to create a more inclusive host society.

Square-Headed Frogs and World Citizens: Attitudes and Identities of ESL Teacher Candidates in Québec.

This study explores the attitudes and identities of future ESL teachers in a 4-year teacher education program in a regional university in Québec, Canada. We describe the sociopolitical context of learning English in Québec and explain studies describing the position of nonnative-speakers who teach English in various political and geographical contexts, drawing on Kachru’s work on the 3 concentric circles from a World Englishes perspective. Fifty-four future teachers responded to an online survey designed to understand their attitudes toward native speaker proficiency and their linguistic and cultural identities as future ESL teachers. Respondents had contradictory attitudes toward their own linguistic proficiency and accents, the native-speaker model, and conflicting desires of retaining their assumed identities and adopting native-speaker identities. Our conclusions indicate the importance of political discourses in their society and international discourses, such as the native-speaker fallacy, which have complex, conflicting influences on these future teachers.