Mobility, the necessary condition of French Canada
The image we have of French Canada is one of calm and settled communities that are well established and entrenched in a well-defined territory. This notion, carried over from a romantic type of nationalism, ignores almost entirely the status of Francophone workers as a mobile labour reserve in the formerly colonial and now capitalist employment market. However, this overlooked mobility has nevertheless been critical for upholding the traditional strongholds of French Canada. In this paper, we explore the historical and contemporary interdependence of mobility and immobility in the construction of Canadian Frenchness, starting from the results of an ethnographic study linking Acadia to northwestern Canada. We show that erasing the existence of the mobile workforce from our national imaginary creates inequalities within French Canada, yet that current conditions make this erasure increasingly difficult.