9   The Inadequacies of Multiculturalism

Reflections on Immigrant Settlement, Identity Negotiation, and Community in a Small City

Mónica J. Sánchez-Flores

Multiculturalism is a controversial topic in the world today. In Canada, it has supporters who credit it with single-handedly reducing racism and discrimination, and detractors who blame it for Canada’s lack of a clear-cut sense of national identity—or see it as a reinvention of white supremacy. Debates surrounding multiculturalism are, of course, inevitably bound up with the topic of immigration, which is the principal source of Canada’s “visible minority” population. In recent decades, interest in multiculturalism has been spurred by increased population movements around the world, often cited as one of the defining features of globalization. As is well recognized (see, for example, Giménez 2005; Knox 2000), globalization is primarily an urban phenomenon, managed both economically and politically by a network of “global cities” that exert a powerful pull on migrant populations, as is evident in the influx of immigrants into Canada’s major metropolitan centres (Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver) over the past several decades. At the same time, both the federal and provincial governments have sought ways to encourage newcomers to settle in smaller cities, partly to allow for a more even distribution of population and partly to improve the country’s capacity to absorb immigrants (Drolet et al. 2008, 22). Since 2000, an increase has indeed been observed in the number of newcomers settling in cities on the Prairies and, to a lesser extent, in other areas of the country (see Bonikowska, Hou, and Picot 2015, table 1). Yet scholars are only beginning to explore the immigrant experience in smaller cities.

To date, research on immigration in Canada has primarily focused on the big gateway cities to which immigrants have traditionally settled. A major objective of this chapter is thus to point towards the many areas of interest that small cities present for research into the immigrant experience. In what follows, I draw on my own experience as a racialized immigrant to Canada, one who finally settled in the small city of Kamloops, BC, with a view to critiquing the concept of multiculturalism. I briefly discuss the main criticisms directed towards multiculturalism theory and policy and consider whether these criticisms are also relevant in the context of small cities. I also explore the idea that small cities can be even more supportive of immigrant integration than large ones, as the former have enough immigrants to create a vibrant and socially diverse environment but not enough to allow for the fragmentation of immigrant populations into ethnic enclaves. The visible concentration of immigrants in ethnic neighbourhoods and business centres, so often observed in large cities, tends to encourage the perception that ethnicity is the prime (or even the sole) source of identity for immigrants. But, of course, ethnicity represents only one thread in the complex tapestry of human identity. For individual people (racialized or not), identity is never clearly defined. Rather, it is a constant inner negotiation and is entwined between self and others in intricate ways that include collective and ascribed features, as well as individual choices and characteristics. As I will argue, however, the concept of multiculturalism cannot cope with the complexities of identity.

The Challenge of Diversity

At the time that the 2011 National Household Survey was conducted, one in every five people in Canada was foreign-born (Statistics Canada 2013, 6), with new residents arriving from countries throughout the world (8). More than two hundred ethnic backgrounds were represented (13), and 19.1 percent of Canadians identified themselves as members of a visible minority (14). Canada’s policy of multiculturalism is framed within a postcolonial world order that supports supremacist cultural inertias embedded in the balance of power of the world. This capitalist global order continues to privilege the global north as the seat of civilized life. The enduring legacy of colonialism and its racist ideologies remain responsible for the discrimination and exploitation to which immigrant populations are subject. Racism lies at the root of the commonplace assumption that racialized immigrants’ identities are based solely on their traditional cultures, which are stereotypically seen as backward and thus as holding values and beliefs that are incompatible with the Canadian liberal and progressive ones. This perception generates problems that do not solely affect the marginalized immigrants—even when they suffer the most palpable material consequences: it does serious harm to everyone. It enables the privileged to feel superior—a kind of “moral damage,” in that no benefit can accrue from “grounding one’s existence on injustices” (Smith 2007, 378)—and it produces a society infested by anger, fear, and lack of trust (Sánchez-Flores 2010).

The federal blanket policy of multiculturalism is typically framed in lofty rhetoric about acceptance and the appreciation of diversity. This rhetoric is not without its purpose, but such pronouncements should be complemented by specific measures that take into account the particular circumstances in which immigrants find themselves when settling in Canada. Such measures cannot be designed and made to work for immigrants without clear knowledge of those circumstances, such as the size and social composition of immigrant-receiving communities. In the absence of an understanding of concrete realities, multiculturalism amounts to a collection of preconceptions founded on stereotypical ideas about ethnic identity, as reflected in and reinforced by the reductionist self-definitions on which census forms and other such surveys rely. Multiculturalism may be based on ideals of social inclusion, rights, and celebration of diversity, but it fails to address, much less to dislodge, the postcolonial habits and attitudes that are deeply embedded in Canadian society and that continue to feed othering and discrimination against racialized immigrants.

As mentioned above, contemporary immigration is eminently an urban phenomenon in the sense that immigrants tend to settle in cities, and immigrants to Canada prefer to settle in relatively large cities rather than in rural areas. In 1996, 73.4 percent of recent immigrants (those who had arrived in the past five years) settled in Toronto, Montréal, or Vancouver, but by 2006, the figure had dropped to 68.9 percent (Chui, Tran, and Maheux 2007, 20). Of the immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2006 and 2011, only 62.5 percent chose to live in one of those three large cities (Statistics Canada 2013, 11), and the census of 2016 revealed a further decline, to only 56.0 percent (Statistics Canada 2017, 3). This trend has been accompanied by a significant increase in the number of new immigrants bound for somewhat smaller cities, notably on the Prairies (Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg), with the proportion of immigrants settling in the Prairie provinces more than doubling from 2001 to 2016 (Statistics Canada 2017, 2 and table 1). Clearly, the experiences and concrete circumstances of immigrants vary depending on whether they settle in major metropolitan areas, in smaller urban centres, or in rural communities. However, from the standpoint of the immigrant experience, the familiar dichotomy of urban versus rural is not useful in that, even as it continues to reinforce entrenched stereotypes, it masks the diversity of urban settings.

Although studies on immigration to Canada have historically focused on the country’s three largest cities, some work has been done on immigration to second- and third-tier Canadian cities (see, for example, Anucha, Lovell, and Jeyapal 2010; Di Biase and Bauder 2005; Lusis and Bauder 2008), and the 2006 issue of Our Diverse Cities was dedicated to the topic.1 Yet very few studies have focused on immigration to Canadian urban centres with a population of under one hundred thousand (see Drolet et al. 2008; Drolet, Robertson, and Robinson 2010; Drolet and Robertson 2011; Sethi 2010; Teixeira 2011). As is clear from the introduction to this volume, small cities cannot be adequately defined on the basis of population alone: their smallness is as much a matter of character as size. Generally speaking, however, small cities present all the advantages of urban life that immigrants seek, but at a lower cost, while allowing them to escape the alienating anonymity of big urban centres. Indeed, small cities preserve a sense of community that I argue may be conducive to immigrant integration. Despite the dearth of research pertaining to them, smaller cities thus offer an exciting context in which to explore settlement conditions, the complexities of identity, and how patterns of inequality play out for immigrants.

As noted above, immigration and multiculturalism are intimately related to each other, but what is in people’s minds when they speak about multiculturalism? In Canada, this concept refers to at least five interrelated phenomena: the existence of ethnic and racial diversity in the same society or community, a state policy complete with educational and public avowal strategies, a liberal political theory, an ideology that supports the status quo, and an emblem of the Canadian identity. Ethnic and racial diversity is evident in Canadian cities, both big and small, but it is especially apparent in its three major urban centres. According to the 2011 National Household Survey, foreign-born individuals accounted for 46.0 percent of Toronto’s total population, 40.0 percent of Vancouver’s, and 22.6 percent Montreal’s (Statistics Canada 2013, 10). As a state policy, multiculturalism was formalized in legislation in the wake of Pierre E. Trudeau’s announcement in 1971: this legislation includes the Immigration Act of 1976, which created a system of points that was intended to rule out decisions based on racist preferences, and the Multiculturalism Act, adopted by Parliament in 1988. As a political theory, multiculturalism draws on the egalitarian spirit of liberalism, with its emphasis on individual rights. It is further enshrined in section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which specifies that the rights and freedoms laid out in the Charter “shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.” But multiculturalism is also an ideology—a set of ideas designed to encourage the acceptance of social diversity and make it seem the natural and right order of things. Politicians routinely rely on the public embrace of multiculturalism to attract new immigrant voters and also as a source of political legitimation. Finally, multiculturalism as the celebration of diversity has become an integral part of what it means to be Canadian. As Will Kymlicka (2010, 7) points out, “Canadians view immigrants and demographic diversity as key parts of their own Canadian identity.” Kymlicka adds that, according to polling surveys, Canadians are more likely than citizens of any other liberal democracy from the global north to support multiculturalism and view it with pride (7). All of these different manifestations of multiculturalism are interrelated in complex ways that interact and overlap with structures of inequality and culturally embedded racism inherited from the colonial past.

Multiculturalism: Three Critiques

The criticisms that have been raised against multiculturalism can be grouped into three categories. The most familiar one argues that policies of multiculturalism undermine social cohesion and threaten national unity and a sense of national identity. In this view, multiculturalism is seen as supporting immigrants in preserving their traditional cultures and in Balkanizing their host societies. A second critique relates to the tendency to conceive of cultures as discrete, self-contained, identifiable “things,” which is the way cultures have been mistakenly represented in the past. As Anne Phillips (2009, 8) tells us, writings on multiculturalism “have exaggerated not only the unity and solidity of cultures but the intractability of value conflict as well.” In this reified vision, cultures inculcate distinct sets of norms, values, and preferences that shape people’s identity and behaviour in consistent and hence predictable ways. The second objection, then, contends that, in subscribing to a view of cultures as internally coherent, multiculturalism fails to capture the complexity of individual identities, reducing them to stereotypes. The third objection builds on the second one: these stereotypical images of traditional cultures of immigrants inform public perceptions of newcomers, encouraging the view that immigrants hold traditional attitudes and beliefs that are backward and contrary to the liberal values of modern societies. In their application, then, policies of multiculturalism effectively reproduce the standard colonial dichotomy between superior (nationals of the developed world) and inferior (racialized immigrants).

So we have three criticisms, according to which multiculturalism: (1) weakens national identity in modern liberal nation-states and thus ghettoizes cities and Balkanizes populations; (2) holds a simplistic conception of human identity, one in which ethnic cultures are seen as stereotypes and as the sole source of immigrant identity; and (3) preserves colonial supremacist attitudes and even a rearticulated form of racism. How do these critiques relate to the lives of immigrants in big versus small cities?

With respect to the first objection, visibly segregated ethnic groups in the neighbourhoods and business centres of larger cities have been closely associated to the perception that multiculturalism ghettoizes urban life and undermines to national unity (see Bibby 1990; Bissoondath 1994; Gwyn 1995). As the 2006 census revealed, the reason that immigrants most often gave for choosing to settle in one of Canada’s three largest cities was to join an existing social network of family and friends (Chui, Tran, and Maheux 2007, 20). The concept of social networks refers to “bonds of family relationships, friendships, mutual acquaintances, and shared regional origin” (Pandit and Holloway 2005, iv). A rich body of work now exists in North America on the way that these networks influence and support the settlement of newcomers (see, for example, Portes and Sensenbrenner 1993). The operation of these networks is closely linked to the development of territorially concentrated groupings of businesses and housing—clusters that have been called “ethnic enclaves” and that appear to exist not only in the big metropolises but also in second- and third-tier Canadian cities (Razin and Langlois 1996; Fong and Wilkes 2003). Even though ethnic communities organize themselves in associations and groups to pursue their common interests, visible ethnic enclaves in the form of neighbourhood or business areas are not evident in smaller urban centres.

In a study of immigrants to Montréal, Raymond Breton (1964) came up with the concept of the “institutional completeness” of an ethnic community, which he defined as existing “whenever the ethnic community could perform all the services required by its members” (194). This comprehensive provision of services requires that the group be formally organized and that its structure include “organizations of various sorts: religious, educational, political, recreational, national, and even professional” (194). In Montréal, Breton observed that this level of formal organization could be sustained as long as the ethnic community had a large number of members; when that number dwindled, organizations disappeared.

Subsequent studies on ethnic communities have, however, challenged the notion of spatial concentration as a condition for the identification of such communities, focusing instead on the relational dimension of networks in the construction and preservation of ethnic identity (see Goldenberg and Haines 1992). These studies examine the strategies that immigrants use to cultivate their ethnic identity and to foster a sense of an ethnic community in an era in which connectivity is sustained by advanced communication technologies, but they do not explore diversified sources of identity for immigrants who are spatially separated from one another and who therefore have little choice but to interact with the host local community.

In big cities, the spatial and organizational elements of institutional completeness, supported by a sufficiently large community of immigrants, have the effect of creating a highly cohesive interpersonal local network of members who have no need to develop ties with the host community to satisfy their needs. For example, it is common knowledge that in Richmond, BC (located within the Vancouver metropolitan area), a Chinese immigrant does not need to speak English to work, live, and fulfill basic daily needs. As Peter Blau (1977) noted in exploring the role of heterogeneity in social integration, large groups of immigrants, such as those found in major metropolitan areas, are more cohesive and tend to maintain relationships exclusively within the group, whereas members of smaller groups must look for relationships beyond the group. Although evidence indicates that ethnic social networks do exist in small cities and that immigrants seek them out and make extensive use of them (Drolet, Robertson, and Robinson 2010), ethnic groups in these cities typically lack the numbers needed to produce institutional completeness. In small urban centres, immigrants are therefore forced to interact with the surrounding community, which, in accordance with Blau’s model, should mean that small cities are more conducive than large ones to social integration. More research is needed, however, into precisely how ethnic social networks operate in small cities, but a perception of social segregation in ethnic enclaves due to immigration is not evident in them.

The second objection to multiculturalism is that the concept is based on a simplistic view of human identity. Much has been written about how multiculturalism and its policies essentialize culture and fail to grasp its complexities, a phenomenon that has ramifications for the understanding of identity. Embedded both in policies of multiculturalism and in the first critique of such policies is a conception of human identity as fundamentally an expression of one’s culture of origin—a conceptualization that is at odds with current knowledge about identity as complex, diversified, and constantly negotiated, the construction of which taps into a multiplicity of sources, ethnicity being but one. In this view of identity, newcomers have a choice between retaining their ethnic identity (that is, remaining “other”) or becoming more “like us,” although the latter can only be a matter of degree for certain ethnic minorities, given that racial markers remain in place (as signalled by the Canadian term “visible minority”).2

One of the problems with the representation of identity as mainly stemming from ethnicity is that it characterizes people as either autonomous, rational, and individualistic or attached to an ethnic group that swallows and cancels such individuality. This conception of identity in general and of ethnic identity in particular is simplistic because it construes people as “culture peons,” or slaves to their own culture, which supposedly determines immigrants’ values, beliefs, and behaviour. This is also related to the politicization of cultures as coherent wholes that can be claimed as sources of rights. But this notion of cultures paints an unrealistic picture of how people live and experience their identity (ethnic or not). Today, identity in the sense of lived experience is more readily seen as fluid and constantly changing, yet a construction of ethnic identity as something solid, clear, and distinct prevails in simplistic representations and misrepresentations of immigrants (often in the form of stereotypes) in the life of cities both big and small.

My own experience as a racialized immigrant to a small city in Canada may illustrate the point that human identity is complex and diversified, rather than emanating solely from ethnicity. I am a Mexican woman of indigenous descent who now lives in the small city of Kamloops, BC. I arrived in Canada in 2005, as a family-class immigrant, having left my academic job in Mexico City to marry a Canadian man of Scottish ancestry, and first landed in the rural community of Lillooet, BC, two hours away from Kamloops by road. As a racialized woman in Canada, where I am regarded as a visible minority, I have become more aware of my indigenous heritage; in Mexico, my sense of self was shaped by a much stronger emotional attachment to the modern mestizo Mexican national imaginary, which is fundamentally syncretistic.3 I grew up in the Mexican middle class, which emerged during the 1960s and 1970s (that is, during my parents’ generation) largely as a result of free higher education in public institutions. I completed my BA at El Colegio de México, in Mexico City, but, with funding from scholarships, went on to earn an MSc and PhD at the University of Edinburgh. In Mexico, I have relatives or extended kin in both the working class and the middle-to-upper classes, and my education allowed me entry into political networks and into the Mexican upper classes.

I am a mother and wife in a cross-cultural family, a world traveller, a regular practitioner of yoga, a lover of international food, an avid reader of mystic writings, as well as of fiction, and a speaker of Spanish, English, and French. I am also a faculty member at Thompson Rivers University who specializes in sociology and political theory, an active participant in the faculty association and the co-chair of its equity committee, and a distance education instructor. In Kamloops, I have strong ties to a group of Latin American friends, based in part on commonalities: we share a nostalgia for our homelands and their traditional foods and a taste for various forms of Latin American music (salsa, son, rumba, merengue, reggaeton) with Spanish lyrics (although when I lived in Mexico, I rarely listened to such music). I also have strong ties of friendship to people in the diverse cosmopolitan community of Kamloops, which includes people from all over the world as well as Canadians of all colours and backgrounds. The cultural sources of my identity have an objective, external dimension, in that they are to some extent grounded in the cultural affiliations and practices characteristic of my Mexican heritage as well as the various groups to which I am now related. But they also have a subjective dimension, which derives from my personal choices about how to position myself in relationship to these groups—my own sense of who I am and my individual agency. I expand here on my own background in order to illustrate the multiplicity of identity sources possible in a single racialized immigrant. While some are based in group identifications, many more reflect individual life experience and personal attitudes, preferences, and choices.

The problem of representing human identity in simplistic terms links to the third and most recent critical objection to multiculturalism. The assumption that culture or ethnicity defines immigrants’ identity and behaviour does more than simply deny them their capacity to make choices based on individual judgment and preferences: it also allows mainstream Canadians to exalt themselves as progressive—as more enlightened and “civilized”—when they are confronted with practices and customs of racialized minorities that are unfamiliar to them or that they simply do not fully understand. Thunera Thobani (2007) argues, for example, that the policy of multiculturalism supresses both knowledge about the complexities of a diverse society such as Canada and knowledge about the complexities of identity facing people who come from diverse backgrounds. Cultural sources and identity formation interact in complex ways, but this interaction is also tied to structures of inequality created by prejudice and public perception, and, to this day, the media handle difference through the use of stereotypes.

Another example is the common perception, also reinforced by the popular media, that traditional cultures are oppressive to women and children. This perception is founded on “the idea, as Leti Volpp (2001, 1198) puts it, “that ‘other’ women are subjected to extreme patriarchy,” whereas women in the global north are presumed to be “secular, liberated, and in total control of their lives.” This simplistic dichotomy rests on the self-aggrandizing claim that gender subordination survives only in traditional cultures, as if North America were already free from patriarchal and oppressive cultural practices, but it also illustrates how racialized women’s behaviour is assumed to be motivated by culture and not by personal choice. The tension between modern/traditional, individualist/collectivist, and secular/religious views of the world merely updates the colonial racist order by redefining the terms of inferiority and identifying racialized immigrant minorities as holding the inferior side of the dichotomies (traditional-collectivist-religious).

Intersecting Stereotypes in the Small City

In smaller cities and towns, the tensions generated by the stereotypical juxtaposition of the affluent, modern, liberal world to the poor, traditional, collectivist world are framed within another familiar dichotomy, that of urban/large and rural/small—two realms assumed to embody opposing world views. It is assumed, for instance, that because smaller populations tend to be more homogeneous, people in these smaller communities have a less tolerant attitude towards difference. The Citizenship and Immigration Canada report on the evaluation of the Welcoming Communities Initiative assumes that racism and discrimination are more prevalent in “rural areas and small cities, which have traditionally been comprised of fairly homogeneous populations” (Canada, CIC 2010, 17). In the United Kingdom, the national imagination construes rural life as homogeneous, formed by white middle-class British people with an idealized conflict-free life in contrast to urban life in big cities, which are rife with problems, some of which come from their diverse population, and this popular representation sustains racism against minorities in rural communities (see, for example, Garland and Chakraborti 2007; see also Day, this volume).

In a study of Kelowna, a small city in southern British Columbia, Aguiar, Tomic, and Trumper (2005) characterize the city as a hinterland that sells itself to other Canadians from bigger cities as a “white space” for outdoor fun, an ideal retirement location, and a safe haven for business. The authors claim that embedded in this vision is a type of racism that need not rely on official legal sanctions for its “powerful exclusionary practices because it is woven into the customs, norms and representations of the every day” (131). And yet they fail to clarify how this racism operates in concrete situations and has clear structural consequences. Such representations of smaller population centres as more racist and prejudiced rests on urban/rural dichotomy that may obtain at the far ends of the spectrum but that ignores the grey areas in between—the space in which small cities exist. I argue that small cities do not exhibit the same dynamics of demographic composition as the small rural areas with which they are so often grouped.

An incident that occurred in Kamloops several years ago clearly illustrates the use of stereotypes in the perception of culturally marked minorities in this small city. The incident sparked much public discussion of socially constructed cultural dichotomies, including the clash not only between an oppressive-traditional culture of racialized people and the liberation of women in white societies but also between a rural mentality comfortable with sameness and a more open urban-cosmopolitan one that can accept difference. In March 2013, a woman in a local supermarket took it upon herself to tell another woman, who wore full head and face coverings and was accompanied by her husband, that she did not have to wear such garb in Canada and that she should get a better man (Youds 2013). Her comment was, of course, based on ignorance about the meaning of veils for Muslim women, but it also cancelled out the agency of the woman herself—as if her decision to wear this garment had nothing to do with her personal capacity for decision making. As Volpp (2001, 1192) says, “Because the Western definition of what makes one human depends on the notion of agency and the ability to make rational choices, to thrust some communities into a world where their actions are determined only by culture is deeply dehumanizing.”

The Kamloops Daily News ran a story about the incident, highlighting the fact that the article happened to appear on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and representing the episode as a “racist incident” and a “racist confrontation” that provided an example of how not to behave in the presence of difference (Youds 2013). Two days later, an editorial in the same paper lamented the homogeneous whiteness of the Kamloops population, commenting that it was not surprising to find racist outbursts “in the depths of the white north” because “ignorance flourishes in small places” (Koopmans 2013). The editorial constructed Kamloops as a primarily white rural backwater in need of a more open outlook on difference. This provoked a letter of rebuttal from a reader who claimed that the incident had not been “racist” because “Muslim is not a race, it is a religion” and that it could be explained (although not justified, because it was rude) as an understandable reaction against “an affront to women’s rights.” The reader further argued that the “Islamist prejudice against women” was not acceptable in “our culture” because “we have matured beyond this” (Cruickshank 2013). And so the letter to the editor, which assumes that in North America women have been fully liberated, brings us back to the tug-of-war between the purportedly inferior values and beliefs of racialized minorities and the higher moral ground of liberal values.

My contention is that the stereotypical dichotomy between the xenophobic mentality of rural areas and small towns and the more tolerant one of larger cities needs to be further examined in the light of the specific demographic dynamics that may exist in small urban centres. In the end, the event in the Kamloops supermarket ended up with two writers on different sides of the issue each claiming a moral high ground, with the letter writer using a cultural stereotype and the editorial writer using a rural stereotype. This illustrates the need for more research on how racist exclusionary mechanisms contribute to the social construction of space, especially in smaller cities, and what the consequences are. Clearly, the experience of diversity in small cities cannot be accurately characterized by the use of stereotypes. Although the following reflections on Kamloops may not be representative of the ways in which racism and discrimination are experienced in other small cities in Canada, they seek to problematize the taken-for-granted assumption that small cities are eo ipso places where racism and discriminatory practices are experienced more often than in larger centres.

Kamloops as an Immigrant Destination

As noted above, immigrants are starting to find destinations such as Kamloops, a small city and local hub, attractive for settlement. With a municipal population of just over 90,000, Kamloops—located “at the junction of four major highways, two major railways and the North and South Thompson rivers” (Drolet et al. 2008, 23)—is a centre for services and transportation in the Thompson-Okanagan region. It is home to a university that serves a total of about 27,000 students, roughly 12.5 percent of whom are international students (TRU 2017). With 1,092 employees, Thompson Rivers University is the fourth-largest employer in Kamloops, after the Royal Inland Hospital, the local school district, and the Highland Valley Copper Mine (Venture Kamloops 2018). Kamloops has an emerging industry in agri-food products and services, high-tech manufacturing, and nonmetallic mineral products, and a lively economy that includes its role as a transportation and service centre, its proximity to ski resorts, and its function as host for dozens of regional, provincial, and national tournaments. The city’s diverse economy creates opportunities for employment in the service sector, in the construction industry, and in local shops and businesses. The services available in Kamloops cater not only to the local population but also to residents of surrounding smaller communities and towns that cannot sustain the infrastructure of a city.

Research on settler experiences in Kamloops reveals that reasons for choosing this city include the opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship, and education; the existence of family and friends in the city; the ethnic and religious communities; language services; access to medical services; housing; and “a welcoming host population” (Drolet, Robertson, and Robinson 2010, 220). While ethnic and religious communities do exist in Kamloops, the city lacks spatial ethnic enclaves and its ethnic communities present a low level of institutional completeness.4 As this research also noted, immigrant residents identified the need for greater collaboration between the nonprofit Kamloops Immigrant Society, which delivers services and programs to immigrants, and other relevant organizations, such as ethnic organizations and community initiatives (220). Although groups of immigrants in this city are large enough to organize themselves and to raise funds for their cultural activities, their numbers are not sufficient to create recognizable ethnic business areas or neighbourhoods.

The existence of work opportunities is one of the most important reasons for immigrants to choose a city to settle; research on second-tier and smaller cities proposes that access to services, education, and appropriate housing is necessarily linked to access to employment and income (Anucha, Lovell, and Jeyapal 2010; Drolet, Robertson, and Robinson 2010; Sakamoto, Chin, and Young 2010). As an immigrant myself, I ended up settling in Kamloops primarily for reasons of employment. Only six months after I arrived in Canada, I was fortunate to get a job as a sessional instructor at the branch of Thompson Rivers University located in Lillooet, where my husband and I lived for two years. This led to an opportunity to teach at the main Kamloops campus, and, for most of 2006, I commuted between Lillooet and Kamloops, before we finally moved there in January 2007.

I have been able to find work in Canada because my credentials are British, which sets me apart from most immigrants to Canada. As many researchers have noted, the lack of recognition for foreign credentials and experience is a major obstacle for immigrants seeking work in their field, without which they cannot prosper in Canada (see Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002; Drolet, Robertson, and Robinson 2010; Sakamoto, Chin, and Young 2010; Sethi 2010; Teixeira 2011). This may be the most significant reason for inequality associated with immigration. The lack of recognition for foreign credentials and experience—even the absence of any system for evaluating relative quality and acceptability—is associated with two factors: the fact that professions in Canada are self-regulating and the sweeping assumption that standards are inferior at educational and service-providing agencies in the global south, where most immigrants to Canada now originate. An important structural aspect of immigration in Canada is the points system, established to determine who qualifies as a “skilled worker” (a professional seeking permanent residence and work). Immigrants receive points according to level of education, language proficiency in English or French, work experience, age, and an “adaptability” criterion that includes the language skills of the applicant’s spouse, whether the applicant and/or spouse have previously studied or worked in Canada, and whether the applicant has relatives who reside in Canada. To qualify, an applicant must receive a “passing” mark of 67 points (out of a possible total of 100).5 However, the federal government has been looking into reforming this system, realizing that it has not achieved its initial goal of selecting immigrants with broad transferable skills that would secure for them economic success in the long run (McMahon 2013, 41).

The points system guarantees that immigrants who have successfully applied to come to Canada (other than those claiming refugee status) are well-educated people from middle- to upper-class backgrounds in their countries of origin. Newcomers, however, frequently face a drop in their socioeconomic status: because their credentials and experience are not recognized, they are obliged to turn to unskilled jobs to earn an income and start their life in Canada. “These days, university educated newcomers earn an average of 67 per cent of their Canadian-born, university-educated counterparts” and nearly half of immigrants who live in poverty came to Canada as skilled workers (McMahon 2013, 42). In my own research on immigration, and also in socializing with immigrants, I have observed that the lack of recognition of foreign credentials generally comes as a surprise to those who have gained permanent resident status in the category of skilled workers: since their acceptability is measured in terms of education and professional experience, the assumption is that their credentials will be recognized, at least partially. Well-educated immigrants arriving in Canada from countries in the global south are frustrated at having to volunteer to gain some Canadian work experience that will eventually yield them only menial jobs or at having to train all over again to earn Canadian credentials—which is not necessarily possible in their chosen field, since it involves a major investment of time and money. Immigrants to smaller cities are not immune to this problem. However, in spite of this, immigrants to smaller destinations seem to face fewer challenges in finding work, and their average income is higher than those who go to the main gateway cities (Frideres 2006, 6).

Research on immigrants in Kamloops reveals that newcomers identify several advantages to settling in a smaller city: a lower cost of living; greater physical security and less crime; and a more manageable scale, with everything close at hand and easy to find. In addition, immigrants encountered a welcoming host population: as one put it, “Kamloops is friendly” (quoted in Drolet, Robertson, and Robinson 2010, 220). Settling in a small city after living for many years in the huge metropolis of Mexico City, I have had a chance to experience these advantages. To be sure, racism and prejudice against immigrants do exist in smaller communities (see Sethi 2010) as well as in bigger ones, but it is not clear that the stereotypical representation of small cities as small-minded is accurate. However, in view of the standard representation of small cities as xenophobic, what stands out here is the “friendly face” that Kamloops presents to immigrants.

With this in mind, I would like to raise the possibility that a smaller city such as Kamloops could provide an environment in which social diversity, combined with the Canadian multicultural ideology of acceptance, might foster a cosmopolitan openness to human difference that has not yet been explored. Here, I define cosmopolitanism as the attitude that regards people of all colours and origins as deserving of the same level of dignity and respect; this attitude perceives cultural and racial difference as an opportunity for enjoyment and celebration of diversity (see Sánchez-Flores 2010). Kamloops is small enough to be considered a community, in the sense of a place where social organization is founded on personal ties, yet it is big enough to support the lifestyle and infrastructure of an urban centre.

As we have seen, in such communities, the number of immigrants from any one ethnic group is too small to produce institutional completeness, with the result that immigrants must have recourse to the institutions of the host society for services, education, entertainment, and so on—settings in which residents of all origins mingle and interact. This pattern is evident in Kamloops, which enhances its cosmopolitan quality. Even groups of friends who find each other on the basis of ethnicity may adopt an inclusive outlook, welcoming members whose ethnicity differs from that of the majority in the group. For example, I have a circle of friends in Kamloops, which includes people not only from Mexico but also from Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, as well as a couple of non-Spanish-speaking Canadians. The local university, which enrols an increasing number of international students and attracts a culturally diverse group of students and staff, has also helped the city to acquire a cosmopolitan hue. However, more research is needed to test the theory that smaller cities promote a cosmopolitan response to human diversity, as well as to investigate the specific social dynamics that may allow for such cosmopolitan possibilities.

Conclusion

Small cities are the latest addition to the social contexts in which the impact of globalization has been felt, and they represent a new, diversified, and exciting field of inquiry into the immigrant experience in Canada. Early immigrants to Canada arrived to populate the country’s vast expanse of territory, but “today’s immigrants are mostly urban dwellers. In fact, they are much more likely to live in a metropolitan area than the Canadian-born population” (Chui, Tran, and Maheux 2007, 18). Small cities are a potentially attractive destination for immigrants, as they offer a space where housing is less expensive and the cost of living lower and where employment opportunities may be better. Despite the received wisdom about smaller cities—namely, that their residents tend to be intolerant of difference—how far this remains true is an open question. And yet smaller cities may present challenges that need to be investigated more carefully to find out whether the size of the population and lack of diversity has anything to do with intolerant behaviour. As I have suggested, in such settings, retreat into ethnic enclaves is generally not possible, leaving immigrants little choice but to mingle with the host population. This intermingling may serve to break down barriers created by culturally based assumptions about identity, encourage people to get to know each other as individuals, and foster a cosmopolitan outlook.

Multiculturalism and its policies fail to address the complex experience of settling in communities that are not big enough to cater to specific ethnic groups yet are sufficiently large and diversified to constitute cosmopolitan urban centres where immigrants and host communities mingle and interact. Many questions about immigration to small cities remain: How does settlement occur in these specific social and political environments? To what extent are residents of smaller cities open to diversity, and to what extent do they view immigration as a threat to the Canadian majority? Exploring questions such as these requires finer theoretical tools than the liberal theory of multiculturalism can provide. Multiculturalism preserves a simplistic approach to human identity that is inadequate to understanding the complexity of immigration and settlement. The divisive concept of multiculturalism should be replaced by one of inclusive cosmopolitanism, combined with reflection on the issues of inequality associated with immigration and with the racialization of immigrants as “visible minorities.” Acknowledging that small cities are the recipients of racialized immigrants is only a beginning. More research is needed on immigration to small cities to examine their role in fostering in immigrants a sense of belonging, in providing them a welcoming environment, and thus in capturing and retaining newcomers.

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1 James Frideres was the guest editor of this issue of Our Diverse Cities, which is available at http://canada.metropolis.net/publications/Diversity/our_diverse_cities_vol2_en.pdf. In his opening essay, Frideres (2006) defines second- and third-tier cities in terms of population: 500,000 to a million and 100,000 to 500,000, respectively. By this definition, both Calgary and Edmonton are now first-tier cities, as their metropolitan populations now exceed a million. Yet, in terms of reputation and influence, neither city is truly comparable to Toronto, Montréal, or Vancouver, which tends to underscore the inadequacy of purely quantitative definitions.

2 According to section 3 of Canada’s Employment Equity Act (Canada 1995), visible minorities are “persons, other than aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.”

3 The term mestizo refers to the mixture of blood between the Catholic Spanish colonizers and the native peoples, which is supposed to have produced the “race of bronze.” This mestizo identity was the ethnic basis on which the modern Mexican nation-state was formed.

4 Kamloops does, however, have a good number of ethnic and religious organizations. The Kamloops Multicultural Society (KMS) alone has twenty-seven such organizations as members. See “Members,” Kamloops Multicultural Society, n.d., http://www.kmsociety.ca/members.htm.

5 “Six Selection Factors: Federal Skilled Workers,” Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2017, http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/apply-factors.asp.