This dissertation demonstrates that notions of language and identity are not entirely about personal characteristics (what a person is born with, what is "in his blood"), nor are they entirely about agency (how a person chooses to present herself). Instead, they are largely about markets and about the multiple positionings of social actors within markets that are structured by ideologies of the nation state, immigration and the globalized new economy. This critical perspective challenges the normalized view that immigrant (diasporic) communities are simply natural social groupings or depoliticized transplantations of distinct ethnolinguistic units from their "homeland". They are, like language and identity, carefully constructed and managed social projects that are shaped by forces from within and from without. In Canada, the conditions for the institutionalization and (re)production of ethnolinguistic differences, which also make and mark class relations, are strengthened by the state’s multiculturalist policy. The Portuguese-Canadian community is one such ethnolinguistic market and the goal of this research is to examine which forms of portugueseness dominate the market, why and with what consequences for whom. Building from an ethnographic and critical sociolinguistic approach (Bourdieu 1977, Heller 2002), the qualitative data behind this research was produced through a two-year ethnography, participant observations and semi-structured interviews drawing primarily from six second-generation Portuguese-Canadians and members of their social networks. The findings suggest that the kind of portugueseness that dominates the Portuguese-Canadian market is one from Mainland Portugal; one that is folklorized, patriarchal, and that promotes (Mainland) Portuguese monolingualism and false cultural homogeneity. A consequence of this sociolinguistic structuration is a division between Azoreans and Mainlanders who make up two parts of the same Portuguese market; partners in conflict over the legitimacy and value of their linguistic and social capital. Furthermore, the inheritors of this market, the second and subsequent generations, navigate discursive spaces filled with contradictions that often marginalize them. Their experiences highlight strategic mobilizations of Portuguese language and identity, as well as the consequences of having delegitimized cultural and linguistic capital. In short, this dissertation highlights the productive tensions between structure and agency, between uniformity and variability, and between exclusion and inclusion.

This thesis draws from ten semi-structured interviews with multiracial men in Toronto, Canada. It is an exploratory study that examines how participants experience race, masculinities and identities. Multiracial identities challenge popular notions of racial categories and expose social processes of racialization and the shifting nature of social identities. I explore how gender impacts participants’ experiences of multiple, fluid or shifting racial identities, and the importance of context in determining how they identify themselves. Participants also discussed the impact of multiculturalism and their understandings of racism in Canada. There were differences in the experiences of Black multiracial men and non-Black multiracial men in terms of how gender and race impact their lives. These differences imply that the colour line in Canada is shifting and that categories like ‘whiteness’ are being redefined. Analyses of these topics are taken up from an anti-racist and critical mixed race studies perspective.

This thesis examines the role(s) of pluralism and the multiculturalism/monoculturalism binary within Islamophobia in the United States and the nations of Western Europe. It analyzes the history of Muslims in Western Europe in order to better understand the relationship between native Europeans and Muslims immigrants, then comparing this relationship to Americans and the Muslim immigrants to the United States.

Performances of poetry constitute significant cultural and literary events that challenge the representational limits and possibilities of transposing written words into live and recorded media. However, there has not been a comprehensive study of Canadian poetry that focuses specifically on performance. This dissertation undertakes a theorizing of performance that foregrounds mediation, audience, and presence (both readerly and writerly). The complex methodology combines theoretical approaches to reading (Linda Hutcheon on adaptation, Wolfgang Iser on the reader, and Roland Barthes on the materiality of writing) with poetics as theorized by Canadian poets (namely bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, Jan Zwicky, Robert Bringhurst) in order to argue that performances of poetry are responsive exchanges between performers and audiences. Importantly, the dissertation argues that performances of poetry call for a re-evaluation of reading as listening, thereby altering the interaction between audience and performance from passive to participatory. Arranged in four chapters, the dissertation examines a range of Canadian poets and performances: The Four Horsemen (Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, Steve McCaffery, and bpNichol), dance adaptations of Michael Ondaatje’s poems, George Elliott Clarke’s poetic libretti, and Robert Bringhurst’s polyphonic poetry. Following the Introduction’s outlining of the term performance, Chapter One examines processes of recording and adapting avant-garde sound poetry, specifically in the sound and written poetry of Nichol and McCaffery. Chapter Two theorizes adaptation as a responsive reading practice in the context of dance adaptations of Ondaatje’s writing (Bruce McDonald’s Elimination Dance and Veronica Tennant’s Shadow Pleasures). In Chapter Three, Clarke’s jazz opera Québécité, with libretto by Clarke and music composed by D.D. Jackson, foregrounds a central argument of this dissertation: that multi-vocal poetics can, in fact, reconfigure multicultural politics. Chapter Four turns to polyphony as a textual representation of multi-vocality in the poetry of Robert Bringhurst. Through a close-listening to a musical poem by Jan Zwicky, the Conclusion points towards new critical directions in listening to Canadian poetry. Only in understanding how cultural and political performances are recorded, enacted and received both on and off the page can we listen, critically and actively, to our multi-voiced Canadian soundscapes.

This dissertation demonstrates that notions of language and identity are not entirely about personal characteristics (what a person is born with, what is "in his blood"), nor are they entirely about agency (how a person chooses to present herself). Instead, they are largely about markets and about the multiple positionings of social actors within markets that are structured by ideologies of the nation state, immigration and the globalized new economy. This critical perspective challenges the normalized view that immigrant (diasporic) communities are simply natural social groupings or depoliticized transplantations of distinct ethnolinguistic units from their "homeland". They are, like language and identity, carefully constructed and managed social projects that are shaped by forces from within and from without. In Canada, the conditions for the institutionalization and (re)production of ethnolinguistic differences, which also make and mark class relations, are strengthened by the state’s multiculturalist policy. The Portuguese-Canadian community is one such ethnolinguistic market and the goal of this research is to examine which forms of portugueseness dominate the market, why and with what consequences for whom. Building from an ethnographic and critical sociolinguistic approach (Bourdieu 1977, Heller 2002), the qualitative data behind this research was produced through a two-year ethnography, participant observations and semi-structured interviews drawing primarily from six second-generation Portuguese-Canadians and members of their social networks. The findings suggest that the kind of portugueseness that dominates the Portuguese-Canadian market is one from Mainland Portugal; one that is folklorized, patriarchal, and that promotes (Mainland) Portuguese monolingualism and false cultural homogeneity. A consequence of this sociolinguistic structuration is a division between Azoreans and Mainlanders who make up two parts of the same Portuguese market; partners in conflict over the legitimacy and value of their linguistic and social capital. Furthermore, the inheritors of this market, the second and subsequent generations, navigate discursive spaces filled with contradictions that often marginalize them. Their experiences highlight strategic mobilizations of Portuguese language and identity, as well as the consequences of having delegitimized cultural and linguistic capital. In short, this dissertation highlights the productive tensions between structure and agency, between uniformity and variability, and between exclusion and inclusion.

The thesis explores the ways in which Serbian ethnic media in Canada represent their own group and “Others”, specifically Croats, Slovenians and Catholics, Bosniaks, Albanians and Muslims, Montenegrins and the West. The research investigates the convergence of these representations with Canadian multiculturalism. The thesis epistemologically feeds from Jean Jacques Rousseau’s 18th century theories of recognition and patriotism, Stuart Hall’s (1997) theory of representation and identity and Edward Said’s (1978) theory of Orientalism, and is further guided by the theoretical frameworks of Charles Taylor’s (1994) politics of recognition, Benedict Anderson’s (1992) long-distance nationalism and Maria Todorova’s (1994) Balkanism. Qualitative content analysis through purposive and sequential sampling of Serbian ethnic broadcasting is conducted to gauge the programs’ representations of the “Self” and “Others”. Ethnic media provide a method to promote a minority group’s heritage, but also to facilitate communication between various cultural, ethnic, religious and racial groups. In the age of an increased critique of multiculturalism, the role of ethnic media rises in importance. The findings of the thesis show that Serbian ethnic media employ Canadian multiculturalism to promote Serbian heritage, but also to stereotype other groups. Applying the theoretical juxtaposition of multiculturalism, nationalism and “Othering”, this research argues that through negative identification of “Others”, Serbian ethnic media deviate from Canadian multiculturalism that calls for a positive recognition of all Canadian groups.

Studien är uppdelad i tre delar och belyser den invandrade individens syn på sina möjligheter till utveckling i det nya landet. Första delen heter det ofrivilliga arvet, barn till invandrare och belyser unga invandrares syn på framtiden. Andra delen heter Det sociala skyddsnätet och belyser en rad olika skyddsnät och hur de hjälper den invandrade att komma på fötter i det nya landet. Tredje delen heter Akademisk relevans och belyser relevansen i utbildning för en individs integration samt hur Sverige som land tar vara på invandrares kompetens och erfarenheter från hemlandet. I samtliga delar berättar informanterna om med eller motgångar som de känt när de kommit till det nya landet. / The study is divided into three parts and will focus on the individual immigrant’s view of their potential for development in the new country. The first part is called the unintended legacy, children of immigrants and highlights the young ones view of the future. The second part is called social safety nets and will explore other range of safety nets and how they help the informants rise on their feet in the new country. The third part is called Academic relevance, which will deal with the education of the individual and its relevance to integration. Also how Sweden, as a country, profits from immigrants competence and experience from their homeland. In all of the parts the informants reveal the setbacks and progresses they have had since arriving at new country.

In writing this thesis, I plotted where the streams of whiteness theory, life-writing theory and practice, and Daphne Marlatts novel <i>Ana Historic</i> converge. In the introduction, I outline the development of my own subjectivity, focusing on my identification with multiple ethnic communities, and on my racial and working class identity. My second chapter surveys current whiteness theories, accepting some and rejecting others, and drawing significantly upon theory that is accessible and personal, a decision that undoubtedly resulted because of my working class practicality. In this chapter, I conclude that whiteness and white solipsism (theoretically comparable to Simone de Beauvoirs challenge that masculinity as the neutral and positive gender renders femininity and other gendered constructions negative), actually envelope multiple identities, but argue that the way in which whiteness is experienced by those on its margins is often monolithic. In the third chapter, I investigate Marlatts biography and her life writing theory, arguing that her experience as a once immigrant foregrounds many issues relevant to the Canadian white identity, and that because her theory is so conscious of how identity is constructed, relying on fact and fiction, <i>Ana Historic</i> provides a portrait of white Canadian identity and the context in which that identity has been constructed. In Chapters 4 and 5, I apply the theories of life writing and whiteness to the characters of Ana, Ina, and Annie, challenging that their identities as colonizer, emigrant, and immigrant, respectively, illustrate the evolution resulting in the current white Canadian identity. Further, because Marlatt chooses these characters who occupy different positions in history, she shows her reader that contemporary Canadian white identity has grown out of colonial times, creating a continuum. The history out of which each of these women emerges is never contained because aspects of their identity carry forward into subsequent generations.

Although Canada is internationally known for its multicultural practices, the work life experiences of visible minority female school principals are unheard and absent from educational leadership research in Canada. In light of the fact that the student population in Canadian schools is increasingly diversifying, it is important to examine the experiences of visible minority female school principals from their own perspectives in order to gain a better understanding of their work life in the education system across Canada.<p> This research is a qualitative case study of the administrative work life experiences of five visible minority female school principals in five selected Western Canadian public schools. The purpose of the research was to examine and describe the administrative work life experiences of the selected visible minority female principals, with a particular focus on the path they took to become principals, the challenges they faced, and the strategies they used to foster inclusive schools. In-depth interviews were the main research method used in this study, supplemented by document and record analyses and the researchers reflective journal. Each of the five participants was interviewed three times in order to provide an in-depth analysis of their work experiences. The data were analyzed by using narrative and inductive analysis to let the participants tell their stories first and analyze the research questions inductively second. The results of this study revealed that the path to the principalship for visible minority female principals is influenced by multi-factors, personal abilities and strengths, challenges, supports, and preparatory and training programs. Each of the participants went through different processes to achieve their goal based on their own unique situations. This study also revealed the participants in their principal positions faced personal, professional, and organizational challenges related to gender, race, and accent. However, the participants regarded these challenges as opportunities for them to learn and to grow.<p> The strategies used to build inclusive schools by the five participants stemmed from the participants personal attributes, skills, support systems, and the contribution of their minority status. In their leadership positions, individuals set a clear mission, varied leadership styles, used reciprocal empowerment, demonstrated an ethic of care, acted as mentors, pursued networking, and mastered necessary positional knowledge.<p> This study provides recommendations for other visible minority female principals and visible minority female teachers who aspire to principal positions by identifying steps needed to prepare for the principalship; recommendations for Boards of Education on policy making and action as well as recommendations for professional development. Implications for future research are also set out. This study, while confirming the findings of the research done by other scholars, also has its own unique findings, and the five participants work life experiences provided five pictures of successful visible minority female school principals in Western Canadian public schools

Connecting, living and working with people coming from different horizons across the globe has never been as intese as nowadays. This bordless world increases the amount of competitors that companies have to deal with in their business environment. The importance of establishing strategies and policies, that enable to blend diversity of cultures and brains, has been noticed by many. Moreover, the increasing necessity of creating a system which is able to struggle against the shortage of talents was and is still rendering even more complicated the task and the duties of leaders and managers of today. We see in the beauty of football not only a passion for the game but also and rather an effective way to face and to cope with the aformentioned two issues. The purpose of this thesis is to spell out and to stress some aspects that emerge from football and that could be suggested as new practices to compete in the 21st century for global companies.