On 13 October at 11:00 a.m., CER-Migracions hosted Prof. Antoine Bilodeau, Full Professor of Political Science at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and Director of the Immigration Research Initiative, who gave the seminar “National Identity and Immigration in Contemporary Quebec”. His visit was made possible by an invitation from Mireia Pont Soler, following her research stay at Concordia University earlier this year.

The seminar examined how the way national identity is defined in Quebec, a minority nation within a multinational state, shapes the host society’s attitudes towards immigration and ethnocultural diversity. Drawing on his research, Professor Bilodeau presented empirical evidence, mainly from surveys and public opinion experiments. This evidence covered the markers that draw the “imagined boundaries” of the Québécois nation (language, values, origin or ancestry) and how these criteria of belonging relate to preferences about immigrants’ origins and to expectations of acculturation. He also discussed the role of public debates on secularism and religious symbols in the sense of belonging of racialised immigrants, as well as territorial and generational variations in perceptions of immigration. Finally, he placed the Quebec case in comparative perspective with other minority nations, such as Scotland and Catalonia. In this regard, he told us that he is currently working on research along these lines.

The seminar took place in the Boardroom of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the UAB. It was aimed at researchers, undergraduate and master’s students, and public administration staff working in migration-related fields.