Les Suisses n'ont jamais été nombreux au Canada, et pourtant ils ont jalonné toute l'histoire du pays. À travers les repères qu'ils ont laissés au cours des quatre derniers siècles, ils se sont montrés de puissants révélateurs de l'imaginaire national canadien. Tour à tour traités en étrangers encombrants ou tolérés, en incroyants assoiffés de gain, en hérétiques qui pervertissent les Canadiens, puis subitement en immigrants appréciés et courtisés, ils ont forcé les métropoles française et britannique à ajuster leur définition de la citoyenneté, ils ont préconisé le cosmopolitisme et accompagné l'ouverture du Canada sur le monde, ils ont galvanisé l'affirmation du sentiment national en agissant soit comme repoussoirs soit comme faire-valoir, et ils ont finalement remis en question la définition même de «nation» au Canada. La présente thèse, par un dépassement voulu des frontières chronologiques et géographiques, envisage sur la longue durée l'expérience de migrants qui tendent à échapper à toute catégorisation sociale. Grâce à une analyse microhistorique, elle procède à un jeu d'échelles et de contrastes qui autorise un examen rapproché des phénomènes révélés par les sources suisses, canadiennes, françaises, britanniques et américaines. Cette réflexion propose une façon originale d'étudier les migrations dans l'optique de la problématique identitaire. Elle fait ressortir à la fois les moments forts de l'émigration suisse et les dates charnières de la modernité canadienne. C'est à l'intersection de ces deux chronologies, au gré du dialogue constant et soutenu entre autorités politiques, religieuses et communautaires, sous l'effet des tensions linguistiques et culturelles, des tensions entre conquérants et conquis, des tensions internes et externes entre tradition et modernité, que s'est constituée et adaptée une conscience collective unique, marquée moins par la continuité que par les tensions, la diversité et les compromis. Les Suisses ouvrent justement une fenêtre sur ces compromis qui donnent lieu à la complexité canadienne.

Basé sur une recherche de type qualitatif, ce mémoire vise à démontrer que l'immigration est vécue comme un rite de passage même si ce n'est pas conscient. Le présent travail est parti de l'objectif qui cherche à comprendre le point de vue de trois immigrants sénégalais par rapport à leur expérience. Pour cette raison, nous nous sommes posé la question : pourquoi le choix d'immigrer, malgré les difficultés auxquelles beaucoup sont confrontés? Ensuite, nous avons formulé deux intuitions : (1) l'immigration est considérée comme un moyen de réussite sociale. La personne qui choisit de partir a donc la chance de bénéficier de meilleures conditions de vie et de se voir accorder un nouveau statut; (2) Les immigrants rencontrent pratiquement les mêmes difficultés pendant leur parcours migratoire. Le sens et les significations qu'ils donnent au vécu dépendent donc de leurs motivations de départ et de leurs expériences individuelles. Notre recherche utilise la démarche phénoménologique qui nous permet de saisir le phénomène de l'immigration comme rite de passage. Dans le cadre théorique, nous avons expliqué, dans un premier temps, le choix de l'approche, son intérêt, ses caractéristiques et sa dimension communicationnelle. Dans un second temps, nous avons défini le rite, sa place et son importance dans la vie sociale et individuelle. Suite à cela, nous avons démontré que les rites de passage sont des étapes qui accompagnent le cycle de la vie humaine. À partir de cette étude, ressortent la valeur et le sens qui entourent ce concept condensé dans des symboles reconnus et acceptés par la communauté. Dans la partie méthodologique, à partir de questions ouvertes, les trois répondants interviewés ont partagé leurs expériences. L'analyse des résultats est basée sur la méthode phénoménologique de Giorgi reprise par Chantal Deschamps qui suit principalement les quatre phases suivantes : tirer le sens général de l'ensemble de la description du phénomène; identifier les « unités de signification » qui émergent de la description; développer le contenu « des unités de signification » en unités de signification approfondie; réaliser une synthèse de l'ensemble des développements des synthèses des « unités de signification ». De cette analyse s'est dégagé le sens donné à l'immigration. Aussi, l'interprétation des résultats montre les similarités et les divergences de points de vue ainsi que la particularité de la trajectoire de chacun des répondants. Au vu de tout cela, nous avons conclu que les motivations de départ demeurent pour l'immigrant une référence et une force pour confronter les difficultés quotidiennes et pour atteindre ses objectifs. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : immigration, vécu, conscience, rite de passage, phénoménologie.

This thesis explores the global traffic in culture and its effects on the urban environment. Two overlapping forces are documented: first the proliferation of Western models and cultural signifiers in China and second the emergence of corresponding patterns resistance. Both these forces are explored on the global and urban scale as they affect the shaping of Shanghai and Toronto. The profusion of Western culture into China has reshaped the country through various periods in its history. Most recently, the whole scale application of Western aesthetics to the built environment has given rise to numerous anomalous places that border on the absurd. This act of cultural erasure has also given rise to a new population, an informal floating population that exists outside of the prevailing system of “progress”. Their forms of habitation and cultural transaction are articulated by informal and non-conforming patterns of development—an underground world. This represents a reaction to marginalization and cultural disenfranchisement. When looking at the formation of Toronto’s own Chinese community, similar patterns of marginalization have promoted the constitution of ethnic enclaves, first in the traditional sense of the urban Chinatown and more recently in the forms of suburban ethnic enclaves. In both cases, the proliferation of these subversive patterns offers a form of reverse colonialism. The thesis parallels the tension of these two forces as they are played out in the formation of the new suburban Chinatown, exploring how this phenomenon is redefining the traditional parameters of Asian Diaspora communities and how these new patterns challenge the traditional model of the suburb. In the last part of the book a speculative proposition is made about the intersection of these two worlds, a world where the thresholds between official and unofficial have been blurred, where they are now coincidental. Throughout the body of research offers a broad sampling of past trajectories and the meeting of current trends. It is an incomplete road map that traces the pathology of cultural exchange in the past and projects their intersection in the future. It offers a way of navigating through the emergent transnational territories engendered by cultural trafficking, documenting anomalies, phenomena and emergent patterns that renegotiate our traditional ideas of the nationality.

The combination of poorly managed mass tourism, rapidly increasing international migration, and a declining economy facilitated a permanent exodus of natives out of the Venetian lagoon. This thesis examines how the community activism group and social network Venessia.com attempts to reclaim a place-­based and place-­manifested Venetian identity (venezianità) through theatrical public protests. While members are sensitive to an ethic of intercultural awareness, the discourse accompanying their concerns reveals nostalgia for the power and grandeur of Venice’s past that is threatened by a perceived invasion by suspicious outsiders. The theoretical framework I employ to illuminate Venessia.com's efforts includes the socio-­cultural and economic implications of mass tourism, theory of space and place, and critiques of modernity and postmodernity.

This thesis explores the global traffic in culture and its effects on the urban environment. Two overlapping forces are documented: first the proliferation of Western models and cultural signifiers in China and second the emergence of corresponding patterns resistance. Both these forces are explored on the global and urban scale as they affect the shaping of Shanghai and Toronto. The profusion of Western culture into China has reshaped the country through various periods in its history. Most recently, the whole scale application of Western aesthetics to the built environment has given rise to numerous anomalous places that border on the absurd. This act of cultural erasure has also given rise to a new population, an informal floating population that exists outside of the prevailing system of “progress”. Their forms of habitation and cultural transaction are articulated by informal and non-conforming patterns of development—an underground world. This represents a reaction to marginalization and cultural disenfranchisement. When looking at the formation of Toronto’s own Chinese community, similar patterns of marginalization have promoted the constitution of ethnic enclaves, first in the traditional sense of the urban Chinatown and more recently in the forms of suburban ethnic enclaves. In both cases, the proliferation of these subversive patterns offers a form of reverse colonialism. The thesis parallels the tension of these two forces as they are played out in the formation of the new suburban Chinatown, exploring how this phenomenon is redefining the traditional parameters of Asian Diaspora communities and how these new patterns challenge the traditional model of the suburb. In the last part of the book a speculative proposition is made about the intersection of these two worlds, a world where the thresholds between official and unofficial have been blurred, where they are now coincidental. Throughout the body of research offers a broad sampling of past trajectories and the meeting of current trends. It is an incomplete road map that traces the pathology of cultural exchange in the past and projects their intersection in the future. It offers a way of navigating through the emergent transnational territories engendered by cultural trafficking, documenting anomalies, phenomena and emergent patterns that renegotiate our traditional ideas of the nationality.

Abstract “Grappling on the Grain Belt: Wrestling in Manitoba to 1931,” explores the history of wrestling in the geographic region now demarcated as Manitoba, from the pre-Confederation period to the Great Depression, with particular emphasis on the period after 1896 when the Canadian West experienced its most remarkable demographic growth. Wrestling was a frequently controversial, often divisive, but ultimately dynamic, popular, and persistent cultural form that proved adaptable to changing social conditions. Far from being ‘merely’ a sport, residents of Manitoba found greater meaning in its practice beyond the simple act of two people struggling for physical advantage on a mat, in a ring, or on a grassy field. This study examines wrestling as a social phenomenon that echoed larger, and fluid, debates over sport’s ‘proper’ purpose, expressions of masculinity, respectable public conduct, and views concerning the position of immigrant and minority communities in a predominantly Anglo-Protestant society. It likewise explores the meanings that various groups in the province, demarcated by such factors as ethnicity and occupation, attached to wrestling in the decades before the Great Depression. In doing so, it illuminates wrestling as a complex and socially-significant cultural activity which, to date, has been virtually unexplored by Canadian historians looking at the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

An improved ability to assess whether individuals have been added through immigration or natality and lost through emigration or mortality could alleviate several problems in population ecology. Fortunately, advances in stable isotope techniques now allow the movements of individuals to be retraced from tissue values and provide an opportunity to link information about the origins of individuals with demographic rates so that questions about the significance of dispersal can be assessed. I used such an approach by combining feather isotope information with demographic rates derived from capture-mark-recapture of individual mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) breeding in the Canadian aspen parklands, at multiple spatiotemporal scales, to answer questions about population persistence, settling patterns by dispersers, and the fitness of immigrant birds relative to residents.<p> Feather isotope (ä34S, äD, ä15N, and ä13C) values from an independent sample of flightless mallard ducklings sampled from across the mid-continent breeding range was used to validate an existing model used for origin assignments. Spatial resolution analysis within the mid-continent mallard breeding range generally showed a loss in prediction when attempting to assign individuals to more narrowly separated geographic origins among boreal, aspen parkland and prairie regions. For feather äD, spatial resolution may be limited by temporal patterns of local climatic events that produce variability in consumer tissue values. Thus, the use of multiple feather isotope signals would provide more reliable information about the origin of individuals for addressing questions about long-distance dispersal in yearling mallards.<p> Demographic rescue in an apparent population sink near Minnedosa, Manitoba, Canada, was due to elevated survival rates from a highly productive group of nesting female mallards using nest tunnels (i.e., an artificial nesting structure) and recruitment of yearling females having natal origins within the aspen parklands. There was little evidence that immigration by yearling females dispersing long-distances was important to annual population growth rates. Consistently high annual survival rates of adult females using nest tunnels lowered the recruitment rates needed for population stability. While tunnel-origin and within-region recruitment of yearling females were nearly equally important to local population growth rate, fine-scale limitations of isotopic origin assignments prevented further assessment of where recruits originated from within the aspen parkland region.<p> Factors related to breeding area settling patterns of yearling females are not well understood despite implications to local population dynamics. The likelihood that immigrant yearling females would settle in a parkland breeding area was positively correlated with local breeding-pair density and the amount of perennial nest cover, but was negatively correlated with the amount of wetlands. Although these relationships were not well estimated, they are most consistent a hypothesis that females were attracted to breeding sites by conspecific cues rather than avoidance. Immigrants comprised an average of 9% (range: 0 39% over 22 sites) of yearling recruits; most had natal origins in the U.S. prairie pothole region but a non-trivial number originated from the boreal forest, indicating a high degree of connectedness among breeding regions resulting from long-distance natal dispersal.<p> One of the most frequent explanations for strong site fidelity in breeding female ducks is that females benefit from site familiarity. However, evidence for differential reproductive success between immigrant and resident yearling females was weak, On sites with favourable wetland conditions and low breeding-pair densities immigrant females were more likely to breed and nest successfully than were residents whereas under opposite wetland and pair conditions, resident females were favoured. Thus, the costs and benefits of a natal dispersal decision seemed to vary with social context and environmental conditions, and further work is needed to clarify these processes.

The literature has reported that immigrants foreign credentials have been undervalued in Canada. However, the extent to which immigrants credentials attained in different world regions have been valued or undervalued is unclear. This study uses data from the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey to assess the worth of immigrants educational credentials in Canada, taking into account different fields of study. The major findings indicate that there were significant gross and net earnings disparities among immigrant men and women with educational credentials attained in different world regions. Foreign credentials from the US and Northern and Western Europe of immigrant men and those from the USA and all parts of Europe of immigrant women had an earnings advantage compared to immigrants whose credentials were from Canada. The results also suggest that immigrant men with foreign credentials in health fields and in commerce, management and business administration had the greatest difficulties to getting their foreign credentials recognized. Similar to immigrant men, foreign education of immigrant women in the fields of commerce, management and business administration as well as in natural, applied sciences and engineering was the most devaluated compared to women with Canadian credentials. In addition, both immigrant men and women with education from the USA and Northern and Western Europe irrespective of the field of study had the best chance to enjoy an earnings premium over their counterparts with Canadian education. The relationship between education and earnings among Canadian immigrants is further explained using a political economy perspective of racialization.

Problem: The creation of the European Union gave people the right of free movement between the membership countries. In theory, the creation of a single market should create many additional employment and earning opportunities for the workers in the member states of the EU (Bauer &amp; Zammermann, 1999 cited at Borjas, 2010). Some natives believe that an increase in immigration will post a threat to them. They believe that their wages will go down and jobs will be taken from them. Is this true or is it just a sign of xenophobia? Purpose of the Research: The purpose of this study was to replicate successfully the study: “Examining the Relationship between Immigration and Unemployment Using National Insurance Number Registration Data” by Lucchino, P., Rosazza – Bondibene, C., and Portes, J. from 2012. Then the same research methods were used in Swedish data analysis. Methods: Data on unemployment and immigration was collected from Sweden and the UK and multiple regressions were run using the STATA11 software. Conclusion: The immigration rate had no significant affect on the unemployment rate both in the UK and Sweden. However, adding a one year lagged immigration rate was found to be significant at a 5% significance level in the Swedish analysis, but was insignificant in the UK analysis. The control variables for labor supply proved to be insignificant in the analysis of both countries.

The United States of American has often been called “a nation of immigrants” due to its long immigration history. In fact, it absorbed large numbers of immigrants during the different epochs from all over the world. The economics issues of immigration are play a very important role which becoming increasingly considering. Therefore, the aim of this paper is analyze the trends of immigration to America and the determinants behind the migration decision in the United States. An analysis of the data shows that the migrants flow into America has increased substantially, and the trend of American immigration is upwards after the mid 1960s. From the literature review it appears that the impact of immigration on natives’ earnings and employment, is weak. However factors like wage differential between the origin and host countries, educational attainment and investment in human capital, language proficiency are important determinants of the extent of immigrants integration and assimilation in the new country.