Political Behaviour/Sociology

F01 - Nationalism and Identity

Date: Jun 12 | Time: 08:30am to 10:00am | Location: UQAM, Pavillon Hubert-Aquin, 400 Ste-Catherine E., classroom/local A-5020

Chair/Président/Présidente : Fred Guillaume Dufour (UQAM)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Fred Guillaume Dufour (UQAM)

Language or racial identity? The saliency of linguistic issues among Black Quebecers: Nadjim Fréchet (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: The study of the cross-cutting effect of linguistic and racial identity is highly relevant since the issues related to Black Canadians have been particularly salient in both the English and French-speaking parts of Canada in recent years. Indeed, George Floyd's assassination in the United States has sparked important debates on the treatment of Black Canadians by the police or on economic disparities between them and the rest of the population. Nonetheless, linguistic issues have also been salient in recent years, especially in Quebec, because of the important decline of French as Quebecers' first spoken language in the province. With a two-step survey experiment, this article evaluates how salient linguistic issues are compared to racial issues for Black Quebecers. In the first step of the experiment, we ask all respondents to choose between two candidates, one specifying it wants to reduce systemic racism and another who wants to reinforce language laws to evaluate the most salient issue for them. In the second step of the experiment, we request respondents to choose between a candidate who wants to tackle both issues and one who wants to tackle only one of the two issues. With this experiment, we can assess how cross-pressured French-speaking Black voters are when both linguistic and racial issues are primed. The result of this study will also bring a better understanding of how issue politics work with voters having cross-cutting identities in Canada.

Collective Efficacy: why assessments of national competence matter: Ailsa Henderson (Edinburgh)
Abstract: Efforts to understand why the UK voted for Brexit have drawn on a number of competing or mutually reinforcing explanations, including hostility to migrants, a sense of being ‘left behind’ by globalisation, anti-elite populism and nationalism. Underpinning each of these is an understanding of the state’s trajectory and the position of the demos within it. Drawing on data from the 2019 Future of England Survey this paper discusses the role of collective efficacy as it applies to politics, outlines its various dimensions and introduces a new index to measure it. It then uses this measure to account for attitudes to the state’s external relationships, using Brexit as a case study. The analysis examines the inter-relationships among individual-level efficacy, national identity and collective efficacy, demonstrating that collective efficacy helps to explain both attitudes and behaviour toward the EU.