Colloque

“Loyal but French”: The Negotiation of Identity by French-Canadian Descendants in the United States

Mark Richard

Membre a labase

Mark Richard

Résumé de la communication

Studies of French Canadians in the United States have centered on their migration, settlement, and formation of ethnic enclaves. Using Lewiston, Maine, as a community study, this paper will examine how individuals of French-Canadian descent negotiated their entry into U.S. society from 1860 to the present. It will challenge our understanding of what we call “assimilation.” It will suggest that acculturation rather than assimilation better describes the process by which ethnic populations join the host society. Historians tend to oversimplify ethnic preservation and acculturation by depicting them as binary opposites. This study argues that, rather than struggling between ethnic retention and acculturation, French-Canadian migrants and their Franco-American descendants in Lewiston pursued them as intertwined goals from the 1870s to the 1950s. It also contends that their Americanization was anything but linear. Lewiston's francophones challenged, rejected, or redefined some of the norms of the host society, as they renegotiated their identity in the United States. Yet, modeling good citizenship was integral to their interconnected identity as ethnic Americans. The experiences of Lewiston's French-Canadian descendants challenge contemporary assumptions about the incompatibility of ethnic retention and Americanization.

Résumé du colloque

Jack Jedwab et Bruno Ramirez, deux historiens réputés, spécialistes des migrations canado-américaines, seront réunis dans un même panel traitant de l'évolution récente de ces migrations.