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- Presenter: Evangelia Tastsoglou, Professor
- Principal Researchers: Evangelia Tastsoglou
- and Michele Byers
- Department of Sociology and Criminology,
- Saint Mary’s University
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- The realities of immigration to Atlantic Canada are quite different from
the rest of the country and present unique challenges for identity
maintenance. Low numbers of immigrants and immigrant concentrations
- Immigrant share of Halifax population: 7% (2001). By contrast that of
Canada was 18% (2001 Census)
- Greek Community: established in 1934, most parents of youth investigated
migrated before 1986, when Greece was among the 10 leading
source-countries of immigration
- Jewish Community: origins go back to 1700s, only 30% consider themselves
immigrants
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- We expected to find an increased pressure on young people from
non-majority groups to look like everyone else, to speak English only,
and to organize their leisure time around activities outside their
ethno-cultural and/or religious community, compared to what would be
found in larger Canadian metropolitan centres.
- The Greek and Jewish immigrant communities of Halifax are among the
oldest in the area and continue to have a strong presence although there
is little current immigration. Prominent families may still send their
daughters to Greece, Israel or Canadian urban centres in search of a
proper match. Greek and Hebrew schools are well maintained as a result
of strong volunteer commitment.
- In an era of increased transnational travel and the internet, close
contact with the countries/communities of origin as well as with larger
diasporic communities is maintained and even increased.
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- 1) to explore the experiences of Canadian youth of Greek and Jewish
origins in Halifax with respect to ethno-cultural identity issues
(e.g. intergenerational
communication and conflict; self-identification; community
participation)
- 2) to identify their strategies in dealing with challenges and
opportunities arising from ethno-cultural identification;
- 3) to compare and contrast the experiences of Greek and Jewish – origin
youth;
- 4) to assess the impact of ethno-cultural identification on the Canadian
identity of youth;
- 5) to identify the everyday ways of negotiating parental, family and
social expectations with individual desires and goals.
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- A typical Greek male youth is expected to be serious, respectful,
educated, married, and a good provider for his family:
- “Get married young, have a good job, have kids, um. Pretty much just
follow your father how he was when he was young, your age, follow them
exactly. Take care of your parents when you get a little older, um.
That's pretty much it. Just very very family oriented I find, and some
kids don't feel- a lot of kids feel pressured to feel that way even if
they don't want to” (male participant).
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- A typical Greek female youth is expected to be proper, to cook and
clean, be educated, and to be married by mid-twenties and to have
children as soon as possible.
- “Um, well I think that they expect that, you know, you finish your
school, I don't even know what they consider finished and educated, it's
either finishing high school or maybe a bachelor degree in university
and finding a husband, basically. Well I think for the older generations
it would be, yeah, to find a Greek husband, and most preferably find a
Greek husband. Yeah. Get married,
start a family, not as quickly as possible, but, yeah, and raise
good Greek kids” (female).
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- “Um, yes only for my sister because she's a girl, I uh expect
different things for her,
anything she does to match me is totally fine, but I uh expect things
from her that are slightly different. For example, within the house I expect her to help my
mother a lot more and my brother and
myself to help out my father a lot more. Of course if she's there
for my father that's fine, and we're there for mom it's fine, it's a
good thing, however in general I think that's a little more expected, a
little bit of a gender role.
Also, she's more than willing and supported to get as high a level of
education as is possible, however if she chooses not too and if she
chooses to marry a gentleman, a Greek gentleman who is, oh who could be a good provider and could be
a good supporter and she chooses to stop her education, that too I would
support, I would be fine. However, if my brother chose to stop his
education to marry some well off supportive, providing wife, I would
tell him "Costas, it's not a good idea, I suggest continuing
your education".
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- Many participants also discussed the expectations surrounding
relationships between youth in the community.
- “Cause people talk far too much, because it's not like two friends
in high school who can go out,
hang out, whatever, and just have a good time, cause once two Greeks do
it, they're expected that it's got to go farther or something of the
sort, like if it breaks up, then, you know, he was beating her, or
something foolish like that. I mean you can't even start because there
are too many assumptions already made about how it's going to work out,
like it's so difficult for itself to play out naturally because there
are so many expectations, so many prying eyes it's absolutely
ridiculous” (male respondent)
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- Family pressure was seen to be exerted primarily in terms of finding
someone Jewish to marry:
- “I do notice though that when it comes to dating a Jewish girl,my
parents are a lot more accepting, sure stay out late, here take the car,
here's some extra cash, take the Jewish girl out, where as if it's a
normal girl it's like have a good time, get out of here, don't do
anything stupid, and come home alive.”
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- Not surprisingly, the participants also emphasize marriage in their own
sense of Jewish expectations. One participant emphasizes how this
relates to being from a minority culture:
- I want him to … the experiences that I have had, that have to do with
being Jewish… I don't even want the… to really take the opportunity to
celebrate Christian holidays because in a world where every one,
…where Judaism is a minority and Christianity is a majority, they're
obviously going to go with the majority, it's easier. ...and if I
marry someone who is Christian, even if they convert, their parents
are still going to want to celebrate the holidays with my kids and
then my kids are going to have experienced it and I don't want that.
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- The majority of participants stated that living in Halifax means that
you get the best of both worlds: living in “one of the best countries”
in the world and sharing a heritage “with one of the greatest cultures
in the world”.
- Yet a few participants responded that for them it is a minus to live in
a city where everyone knows everyone else: “the negatives are the
gossip, and all, being so involved in your life and you don’t even know
these people, you know what I mean” (female respondent).
- The Canadian official multicultural philosophy and policy is well liked
and adopted as a world view, by contrast to U.S. practices.
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- Most participants noted that one had to “work at” being a Jew/Jewish in
a small community/city like Halifax. They noted positive and negative
aspects of this, such as the closeness of the community and proximity to
other groups (as opposed to the more enclaval quality of larger cities)
versus the relative lack of knowledge about Jewishness from others in
the region. They also identified the greater risk of “losing” one’s
Jewish identity because of the small number of Jews and Jewish
events/activities.
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- A shared sense of pride and uniqueness in their communities, especially
in light of their small numbers in the city and region
- A sense of connection to their own culture but also to the broader
national culture in terms of how they defined their identities –
Significance of “space”
- Similar experiences of learning about identity and culture
- Similar feelings of Otherness, including the experience of racism, and
how this emphasized the need to maintain community and traditions
- Similar sense of importance of community participation in a city like
Halifax with small immigrant / ethnic populations, though also
recognition of diminished visibility
- Similar experiences of close-knit families, connection to peers from the
same ethnic group
- Similar experience of difference between themselves and youth in Greece
and Israel
- Similar ambivalences about settling in the region
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- Both groups acknowledged the challenges and risks (e.g. loss of
identity, assimilation) of living in the Atlantic region, as well as the
positive things associated with it.
- A major difference exists in the experience of religiosity of the two
groups, although there was some similarity in terms of the experience of
being seen as less observant than might be expected in a larger centre.
- Gender differences were less marked in the Jewish cohort, although both
groups made discussions of marriage and expectations around marriage
central to their discussions of identity.
- The conversion experience, which is quite common in the Halifax
community, is less familiar among Greek youth
- Little diversity within communities in a smaller town: community means
mostly the religious community
- *** It should be noted that most of the Jewish youth are 3rd or even
4th, rather than 2nd, generation Canadians (or North Americans)
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- Decline of ethnic identity?
- Need to focus on ethnic identity performance of specific ethnic groups
and not lump all immigrants together (and their second generation)
- What is most clearly pointed to by our work is the need for more, as
well as bigger, studies that look at the experience of minority young
people outside of the major urban centres of Canada and the United
States. The complexity with which the young people in our study
expressed their experience of pride and marginality needs to be given
further expression in order for us to be able to draw a much fuller
picture of the experience of social difference and Canadian identities
in Canada as a whole, not just in Canada as Toronto, Vancouver, and
Montreal. The experiences of minority young people living outside major
diasporic communities has a lot to teach us about what it means to be
Canadian and may enlighten regional leaders, community-based and
policy-makers, about how to make
their cities and towns into places where minority youth feel welcome
today and want to stay tomorrow.
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Notes
