This is a study of a Latin American community centre in Montreal based on two years of participant observation. The Centre is one of many locales where immigrants spend their time and come to understand a new city, its history, people, and institutional systems. As such, it is a place where social identity is actively negotiated and frequently reinvented, highlighting the constructed and dynamic qualities of ethnicity in contemporary Western society. The study dialectically considers small- and large-scale influences on the Centre and its members. While structural limits often foster social marginalization which must be recognized and addressed, cultural production and the negotiation of identity occur primarily through the subtle and minute lifeworld experiences that are found in the everyday lives at the Centre.

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