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This paper presents a comparison between the two ways of managing immigration and diversity existing in Canada: multiculturalism (Canada-wide) and interculturalism (Quebec). While some authors (see Juteau, McAndrew and Pietrantonio 1998) argue that the two policies are more similar than different, others, like Gérard Bouchard (2011), argue that interculturalism is a rather unique model of managing diversity in Quebec. In this paper we aim to make a contribution to the debate by providing an analysis of the way both models understand immigrants' participation in their new society. Indeed, both models seem to consider participation as having a central role in the process of integrating newcomers. However, we will show that the reasons put forward by inter-culturalism and by multiculturalism to explain their interest in participation are very different. On the one hand, multiculturalism recognizes the importance of participation as a way of protecting individual identities, in line with the spirit of liberalism. On the other hand, for interculturalism, the issue of participation seems to be more fundamental: not only is participation one of the founding pillars of the policy, but it is also consistent with the political, legal and historical characteristics of the province of Quebec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussions on the need to integrate minority groups, and particularly the debates on recognizing special rights, are often tinged with ideological and philosophical considerations that discredit some demands to recognize specific group rights. That attitude is not simply a denial of difference: it actually causes major and dangerous theoretical confusion that distinguishes or opposes cosmopolitan multiculturalism and pluralist multiculturalism. We are developing the idea that this debate reveals a fundamental problem with the main political undercurrents which seem unable to look at political and social integration from a perspective other than that of homogeneity (cultural, ethnic, linguistic, etc.). Another perspective, fur example, may proceed from an intersubjective view of sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dealing with the difficult issues of racism, discrimination, and tensions between ethnic communities in France, this article examines the conflictual connection between public education and immigration-based communities. Drawing from a vast scientific literature, the author studies the issue of academic failure and school segregation in an institutional framework adverse to social and cultural change, one which uses the principles of socialization and integration in a differential way. The author questions the teachers' perception schemes ("they are hopeless"). Free from dualism, she analyses their defensive attitudes as much as those of the youth, "those who have had nothing but the experience of violence." A teaching method based on differentiation and a demeaning process would thus govern social relations; yet some initiatives, though isolated, demonstrate that when it is taken into account, another institutional experience can be transformed into a teaching tool, and above all prove to be very fulfilling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]