Francophone Minority Communities Research Articles

Reach, Adoption, and Implementation Strategies of a Telehealth Fall Prevention Program: Perspectives From Francophone Communities Across Canada.

Introduction. A fall may impact a person's physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. Fall prevention programs are being implemented to reduce these negative outcomes. However, linguistic barriers in health services may reduce access to such prevention programs. A telehealth fall prevention program was designed to increase access to such programs in French for Francophone minority communities in Canada. This capacity-building project aimed to support community partners to deliver this telehealth program and document strategies used to reach, adopt, and implement the program within various Francophone and Acadian Minority Communities. Methods. A sequential explanatory mixed methodology was used to document reach, adoption, and implementation strategies and describe the lived experiences of program facilitators and organization representatives. Reach, adoption, and implementation were documented and analyzed descriptively, while lived experiences were analyzed using content analysis following the Consortium Framework for Implementation Research. Results. Twelve organization representatives or program facilitators from eight organizations operating in four different provinces participated in the study. Three themes emerged from the qualitative data on reach and adoption: external context, internal context, and capacity building. Four themes were identified as barriers and facilitators to implementation: level of preparation and time management, interpersonal relations and telepresence, exercise facilitation and safety, and technological problem-solving. Conclusion. Using tailored reach and adoption strategies such as prioritizing provinces with higher proportions of needs and training local community program facilitators may lead to the successful implementation of a new telehealth fall prevention program. Results from this study could potentially inform other primary prevention programs or telehealth program implementation.

Needs assessment for pharmacy program creation designed to serve minority Francophone populations in Canada

ObjectivesCurrent literature provides little insight into the need for French language pharmaceutical-services in Francophone minority settings in Canada. This study aims to understand the pharmaceutical care and services offered in French in Canada. It also aims to conduct a needs assessment in the context of curriculum development, by validating whether pharmaceutical needs are being met in Francophone minority settings in Canada. MethodsAn online survey was sent to community members and healthcare professionals. Respondents were asked to identify the perceived importance of pharmaceutical needs, and the degree to which they perceive these to be fulfilled in French and in English in their communities. Results113 community members and 109 healthcare professionals completed the survey. Most respondents were from Ontario (64.84%), Quebec (10.50%) or Atlantic provinces (10.05%). >95% of survey respondents identified that pharmaceutical needs assessed were of very high importance. The rate of pharmaceutical need fulfillment was lower in French than English across all pharmaceutical needs assessed. The greatest difference in rate of pharmaceutical need fulfillment was seen with "Having safe access to required medication". The perception of pharmaceutical needs being met was congruent between community members and healthcare professionals. ConclusionThese results confirm a lack of pharmaceutical needs being met in French in Canadian Francophone minority communities. There is a lack of French language services that limits the ability to receive care in one's own language. Pharmacy education in French may be an effective approach to improve pharmaceutical care services received in French in francophone minority communities.

Prioritising Community Cohesion to Promote Immigrant Retention: the Politics of Belonging in Canadian Francophone Minority Communities

Prioritising Community Cohesion to Promote Immigrant Retention: the Politics of Belonging in Canadian Francophone Minority Communities

La Théorie Critique De La Race, Un Outil De Lecture Des Relations Ambiguës Entre Les Communautés Francophones En Situation Minoritaire Et Leurs Immigrants Noirs Francophones

In becoming host communities for Francophone immigrants in the early 2000s, Canada's Francophone minority communities (FMCs) are facing the test of moving away from a predominant ethnic nationalism to an inclusive civic nationalism. The reception and integration of Black and Francophone immigrants is therefore a relevant indicator of the success of this test. Drawing on critical race theory and bricolage methodology, we reconstruct the ambiguous relationship between FMCs and their Black francophone immigrants who are both invited into French society and discriminated against.

The ‘in-between’ role of linguistic minority sites in immigrants’ integration: the Francophone community as third space in Metro Vancouver

ABSTRACT Learning the dominant language of the receiving society is arguably key to ensuring immigrant integration. While this is important for immigrants who are not fluent in the receiving countries’ official language(s), in this article, we examine the significance of using an official, but minority language (French) in Canada’s Anglophone provinces. We focus on the Francophone minority community (FMC) in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, as a ‘third space’ for French-speaking immigrants’ integration. While the government considers FMCs as primary spaces of French-speaking immigrants’ integration, we interrogate their actual role in their everyday experiences in the multicultural context of Metro Vancouver. This article presents findings from a critical ethnography about French-speaking immigrants’ participation in Francophone community sites. Methods included observations in Francophone community sites as well as interviews with twenty French-speaking immigrants and six representatives of Francophone community sites. Findings suggest that the FMC constitutes a ‘third space’ that supports immigrants’ integration by playing an ‘in-between’ role in relation to the mainstream Anglophone society and participants’ ethnocultural communities. Furthermore, we argue that FMCs – as official, but minority language communities – constitute a unique hybrid mix of dominant and subaltern positions that offer possibilities for refining conceptualizations of ‘third space’.

Comparing Ambiguities: Municipalities, Francophone Minority Communities and Immigration in Canada

AbstractThis article analyzes the implication of municipal governments and civil society actors in immigration through multilevel and collaborative governance arrangements. It argues that studying the roles of ambiguities is critical to understanding the activism of political entities with ill-defined status and mandates, such as municipalities and francophone minority communities (FMCs). This research adds to the literature on the “local turn” by highlighting that ambiguities are both a condition—that is, a driver that makes collaborative and multilevel arrangements work—and an outcome of collaboration practices, characterized by ambiguities regarding the balance of power, the aims of collaboration in a competitive sector and conflicting forms of accountabilities. The article identifies three approaches that actors use to deal with these ambiguities in a context where resources are not equitably distributed and where the role of the federal government is critical. In this configuration, municipalities and FMCs develop adaptive, rather than transformative, approaches to ambiguities.

New Brunswick’s Acadia and Francophone Immigrants: A Model of Economic Integration in the Margins

In the early 2000s, New Brunswick’s Acadia, a Canadian Francophone minority community, became a host community for French-speaking immigrants through activism and the law. The discourse of some of its elites and community organisations is very positive about immigration. However, faced with a multi-dimensional institutional incompleteness in the area of immigration, Acadia erects borders in core sectors of its labour market, namely French-language education and health services. Francophone immigrants are thus pushed to the margins of its labour market, and more precisely to circumstantial and structural employment niches. They realise that they have been selected to take part in French-speaking life and to strengthen the vitality of their host community, but they cannot be part of the French-speaking society as a result of identity issues leading to discriminatory social relationships that prevent them from being fully included in their new host community. A segmented and juxtaposed local Francophonie is thus beginning to emerge due to the lack of integration of immigrants in the Francophone labour market.

Strategies to Improve French Language Health and Social Service Continuity for Seniors in Ontario and Manitoba

Access to health and social services in one’s official language of choice is an important component of quality and safety of care for seniors. Access can be fragmented, even in the context of legislation guaranteeing the right to receive such services, and in areas with a higher proportion of bilingual providers. Using a community-based participatory approach, we identified mechanisms promoting or impeding the clinical integration of health and social French language services intended for seniors living in two Canadian Francophone minority communities. Thirteen recommendations highlight the possibility for new initiatives to promote a continuum of French language health and social services in a minority context, involving collaboration among a variety of actors at all levels of our analytical framework: service trajectory (providers); francophone communities; organizational; political and regulatory; and symbolic (values) structures.

Occupation's Role in Producing Inclusive Spaces: Immigrants' Experiences in Linguistic Minority Communities.

While the "situatedness" of occupation in the context of migration has been explored using various approaches, there remains a need for a holistic and dynamic understanding of the concept of space and the spatiality of occupation. Adopting Lefebvre's theory of the production of space and taking a transactional approach to occupation, we examined the role of immigrants' occupational engagement in the production of Francophone minority community spaces in Metro Vancouver, Canada. We completed a critical ethnography and focus on findings from participant observations and in-depth and go-along interviews with French-speaking immigrants. Findings shed light on the influence of immigrants' occupational engagement on the production of minority spaces. To study the spatiality of occupation comprehensively, we need to move beyond an examination of the immediate environment to address other components of the production of space as well as the interrelation of spaces through occupation.

A self-assessment tool for healthcare and social service provision in French: What use for managers?

Language is an important determinant of health, and lack of access to quality, linguistically adapted healthcare and social services negatively impacts users. Besides the lack of bilingual resources, our previous research on Francophone minority community seniors' trajectories through these services shed light on important and nonobvious challenges currently faced by organizations offering healthcare and social services to this population. Current service provision appeared limited due to organizations working in silos with suboptimally used resources for integrating active offer of French language services throughout the continuum of care. This situation led our team to create the Organizational and Community Resources Self-Assessment Tool for Active Offer and Continuity of French Language Healthcare and Social Services, which is intended to help managers and service providers promote and facilitate the integration of active offer throughout the continuum of service provision. This article describes the Tool's creation, content validation, and pilot-testing.

INCREASING THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CONTENT ON FRANCOPHONE MINORITY SCHOOL BOARDS’ WEBSITES IN CANADA: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY (2008-2016) IN SUPPORT OF NON-FRENCHSPEAKING PARENTS AND GUARDIANS

This paper focuses on the results of a longitudinal study examining the English-language content of Francophone minority school boards’ websites throughout Canada, mindful of the changing profile of the boards’ parental population. A document analysis research approach was used to analyse how the content destined for a non-French-speaking audience has evolved, enabling the audience to have access to new and pertinent information. It was observed that the majority of boards in Western Canada and Ontario have increased the presence of English on their websites. Atlantic Canada (with the exception of New Brunswick) has followed this trend. It is worth noting that other languages and content areas have shown up on the web sites, confirming the changing demographics of Francophone minority communities in Canada.

Community versus Commodity in Francophone Canada: A Multilevel Approach to the Neoliberalization of Immigration

AbstractSince the 1990s, Canada's francophone minority communities (FMCs) have become increasingly involved in francophone immigration governance, and this trend has coincided with the wider neoliberalization of immigration in Canada. This article analyzes the implications of the growing influence of a neoliberal immigration policy and the narrative of an ideal immigrant on Canada's FMCs by focussing on the francophone Acadian community in New Brunswick, Canada's only constitutionally bilingual province. Making use of three types of sources—semistructured interviews, debates in the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick, and official and archival documents—the article argues that francophone and Acadian organizations have adopted the federal, neoliberal perspective on immigration, placing greater emphasis on economic integration and the creation of a bilingual workforce. Changes in the type of immigrant selected and role of the community in the lives of francophone immigrants create new challenges for minority language communities that define and identify themselves through language use and belonging.

Francophone Minorities in Canada: Trapped between the New/Old Minority Categories

Authors in various disciplines have adopted a dichotomous typology of “old and new minorities”. For many scholars and policy makers, this dual conception, which was notably introduced by Will Kymlicka, has further evolved into a three-pronged typology, where Indigenous peoples constitute a distinct category. This classification has had a significant influence on both theoretical and functional accommodation of minorities. It has provided a set of criteria for determining which fundamental rights, accommodation measures, and self-government mechanisms can legitimately be claimed by each category. In this article, the author argues that the dominant three-pronged classification of minorities—“national minorities”, “aboriginal peoples” and “ethnic minorities”—fails to capture the specificity and complexity of the French-speaking communities who do not enjoy territorial autonomy in Canada. The result is that Francophone minority communities outside of Quebec (which amount to one million French-speakers) effectively find themselves in a normative penumbra, as their fluid identity floats between an “ethnic minority” and a “national minority”. The dichotomous distinction between old and new minorities has rendered these communities largely invisible, and the discussion on their political autonomy, almost inexistent. The author suggests three tentative answers to what could be called “Kymlicka’s blind spot”. The first replaces the rigid categories with a spectrum, the second builds continuum inside the current categories and the third proposes to add another category to the existing typology. Any exploration of alternative conceptual schemes requires notably a clarification of the claims of autonomy made—or which could be made—by these linguistic minorities, including claims of territorial or non-territorial political autonomy. While political autonomy has not been recognized for francophone minority communities in Canada, the author discusses the legitimacy and potential forms of this possibility, often overlooked in favour of non-State efforts. Ultimately, this piece calls to rethink Kymlicka’s typology through a more nuanced and contextualized lens, in light of the Canadian experience.

Study of the implantation of an experiential approach to science teachers’ training in Francophone minority communities: results from the second phase of a three phases design research

To remedy the problems of science teaching in francophone minority communities in Canada, we propose an “experiential” approach to train future science teachers. In this regard, our research aims to conceive and identify the conditions for implementing such experiential training, as well as evaluate its effect on the development of science teaching skills, as part of a collaboration between a university education faculty and two high schools in a French minority environment. The experiential approach had been implemented in one physics education course in a teacher training program taught in a Canadian university. To assess the achievement of our research objectives, we used qualitative methods, following a design research model. We report here on the results of the second phase of a three phases design research process. As for the implantation in local minority settings, some key findings are reported here from the second phase. Finally, we conclude by stating advantages and limits of our research.

Does the Scale of Funding Matter? Manitoba and British Columbia Before and After the Federal Repatriation of Settlement Services

In the area of immigration, much attention has been paid to the increased participation of civil society organizations in the delivery of public policy. In Canada, since the mid-1990s, numerous studies have researched the impacts of the federal devolution, either to the provinces or to the third sector organizations. However, the effects of the 2012 federal repatriation regarding the management of settlement services have yet to be studied. This article provides such an analysis. It compares the cases of British Columbia and Manitoba and focuses on Francophone minority communities. The results indicate that the scale of funding matters. My conclusion calls for more attention to be paid to the specificities of Francophone service providers when it comes to research, as well as policy-making processes, notably at the evaluation stages.

Co-constructing the field for a critical ethnography of immigrants’ experiences in a Canadian Francophone minority community

When conducting ethnographic research, immersion into the field and participant observation are essential characteristics of the methodology. As more traditional forms of ethnography have evolved over time to include contemporary approaches (institutional ethnography, feminist ethnography), so too have the fields where such research is undertaken. Indeed, the field itself is now recognized as a construction rather than a naturally occurring space. This article discusses the approach taken to co-construct the field for a critical ethnographic study of immigrants’ experiences within a Canadian Francophone minority community. It addresses how the researcher made key decisions shaping who the study population would be, and in collaboration with the participants then decided how and where data generation would occur.

The Fransaskois’ Journey from Survival to Empowerment through Governance

This article considers how governance can transform relationships of power between Francophone minority communities and the state through a case study of the Fransaskois. Using a multi-methods framework that combines historical institutionalism and empowerment theory, this study draws attention to the transformative and constitutive power of governance in shaping relationships between Francophone communities and the state. By examining how the Fransaskois claim power from above and build power from below through governance, the study posits governance as a tool for the collective empowerment of Francophone minority communities in their quest to faire communauté. In so doing, it draws attention to the Fransaskois as active agents in generating gradual change through ongoing struggles within and over institutional arrangements.

Examining the role of minority community spaces for enabling migrants’ performance of intersectional identities through occupation

ABSTRACTIt is well established in the occupation-based literature that people’s engagement in meaningful occupations is reciprocally connected both to their identities and to the environments within which such occupations occur. However, less is known about how access to or exclusion from certain environments may shape the performance of identities by enabling or constraining opportunities for occupational engagement. We examined the role of minority community spaces (e.g. schools, places of worship, community centres) for supporting participation in occupations among French-speaking immigrants and refugees in Canada who settled in two Anglophone dominant cities. Fifty six people from diverse countries participated in eight focus groups (four in each city) conducted as part of a larger, four stage comparative case study. An intersectional lens was adopted for the theoretical analysis of verbatim transcripts. We present findings according to three themes. First we discuss the implications for occupation of living in an Anglophone dominant context as an official linguistic minority. Second, we attend to the paradoxical role of the Francophone minority community in the integration experiences of French-speaking immigrants and refugees. Third we explore the role of minority community spaces for supporting their occupational engagement and performance of intersecting identities. We contend that community spaces can provide important opportunities for linguistic minority community members to engage in meaningful occupations, but these must attend to the heterogeneity of the populations they serve.

LLLlargissement du concept ddobligation fiduciaire au profit des communautts de langue frannaise en situation minoritaire dans leurs relations avec llltat (Broadening the Concept of Fiduciary Duty in Favor of French Language Minority Communities in Their Relation With the State)

This article suggests that the courts can and should recognize the existence of a fiduciary relationship between the State and French-language minority communities. This conclusion is justified by the history of relations between the State and Francophone communities outside of Quebec, dating no less than since 1867. Firstly, this article introduces the concept of fiduciary duty and its origins while examining the relevant jurisprudence. Secondly, this article analyzes the relationship between the State and Francophone minority communities, which can be characterized as a relationship sui generis in terms of its historical, legal and political peculiarities.This fiduciary obligation would provide French language minorities protection against abuse of discretion of the State, remedial action in cases where the State exceeds its powers and a degree of certainty about the safety of acquired rights. *Note: Downloadable document is in French.

The influence of minority sociolinguistic context on home support for seniors in a rural devitalized area: the case of Acadieville New Brunswick

New Brunswick is one of the provinces most affected by the aging of the population. Moreover, aging at home in Francophone minority communities is a major challenge in rural areas. The goal of this paper is to identify the main advantages and disadvantages of aging at home and to expose organizational strategies deployed by seniors and their families in order to promote aging in place. The case study is the method of analysis that we have recommended. Our methodology is based on content analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews with seniors and their children. The results show that family and community support, resourcefulness and resiliency, the practice of leisure activities as well as the living environment are among the principal means used by older adults to promote aging at home.