Original scientific paper
Ethnic Politics in a Multi-Ethnic State: Canadian Immigrant Communities and Political Process
Sergei Souglobin
; Institute of Sociology,Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Kiev, Ukraine
Abstract
The paper examines the contents and peculiarities in the Canadian case of the interrelationship between ethnicity and politics in a contemporary multi-ethnic federative state. The author argues that, analytically, ethnic politics may be viewed as being both group-based and state-based. This distinction made, the emphasis on group politics, i.e. “ethnopolitics from within” rather than “ethnopolitics from above” thus encourages one to analyse each component in what might be termed, tentatively, the political functioning of ethnic communities. In this paper focus is placed on the political representation and organization of Canadian ethnic structures specifically chosen to address the main point in the discussion, that is defining the contextual scope of potential models of distinctively ethnic political behaviour. As diverse empirical data indicates, ethnic patterns in political participation are increasingly indistinguishable and vague and, certainly, no longer clearly defined. This is an indisputable reflection of a more rapid and efficient ethnic mobility and integration, peculiar to Canada today. In terms of political organization, the general drive towards integration rather than particularism, let alone non-integration, has also been responsible for the lack of structural scope available for ethnic institutions, aside from traditionally sporadic and highly selective interest-group politics from ethnic organizations as such. In the end, this rather low profile of “ethnopolitics from within” appears to be well balanced by the highly promoted but depolitisized ethnic pluralism in the Canadian “ethnopolitics from above”.
Keywords
ethnic politics; ethnicity; ethnic structure; multi-ethnic state; Canada
Hrčak ID:
127447
URI
Publication date:
31.5.1991.
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