Project: Cité Inclusive (Inclusive City) – concerted project

How can we live diversity by fostering harmonious relations between cultures and how can we facilitate the integration of immigrants?

Cultural minorities have contributed to Quebec’s economic, social and identity vitality, particularly through their entrepreneurial spirit. There are few sectors where they have not left their mark. Quebec universities and hospitals, for example, have benefited from their contribution. The presence of artists identified with these minorities in all fields has had an essential impact on the development of Quebec culture. There is also the development of professional and amateur sports. Quebec’s collective work in the area of justice and human rights has been the product of sustained collaboration between the majority and minorities. In Quebec, society has benefited from its diversity, which is undoubtedly one of its fundamental characteristics.

The goals of this project:

• To improve the knowledge and understanding of each other’s customs and habits among immigrants and members of cultural communities as well as members of the host society in order to maintain peaceful intercultural relations and harmonious;
• Develop training workshops for organizations in general and for community organizations in particular that assist immigrants;
• Make public, parastatals and community organizations aware of the reality of immigration;
• Develop expertise in intercultural relations capable of providing timely support and immediate assistance in crisis situations;
• Promote better social integration among immigrants and members of cultural communities;
• Raise awareness about cultural differences through awareness-raising sessions offered to public and community service users;
• Organize cross-cultural awareness activities.

Our Partners

Le LABRRI
Created in 2010, LABRRI brings together researchers, social workers and students interested in the dynamics of social relations in an intercultural context. Our work programme, which aims to bring basic and applied research together, uses knowledge of the social sciences and humanities research field, as well as community and institutional expertise and learnings (for a detailed description of research areas: http://labrri.net/recherche/axes-de-recherche/). In all our activities, we want to understand empirically the historical and political issues of plural reality that characterize contemporary societies, but also the epistemological presuppositions of any discipline that has contributed to intercultural research (anthropology, philosophy, psychology, political science, communication, sociology, etc.).

Canada Research Chairs
Intercultural communication and management technologies in a pluralistic context
The Chair’s work focuses on identifying and understanding the different linkages between population management technologies (i.e., the tendency to control and monitor through various means) and intercultural communication. Jorge Frozzini, professor at UQAC and chair holder, invites you to explore the website (https://intercultureltechnologies.ca/) and the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/CRC.CITG/) and subscribe to the newsletter to follow the work and receive the latest news.

Achievements – Workshops on intercultural situations

Organization of several workshops for community workers: initiation to intercultural and intercultural situations workshops, led by the LABRRI team. The workshop’s reflection seeks to provide answers to the following three questions: – What intercultural problem situations do we see on the ground? – What tools are available to us to respond to these situations? – What analytical frameworks do we use to guide our actions? At the end of this workshop, participants were able to: 1. Give a definition of the intercultural approach and situate themselves in relation to this approach 2. Identify and describe a number of situations in an intercultural context 3. Apply tools that allow them to go towards concrete solutions. The workshops were free of charge and lasted 3 hours.

May 12m 2022, Symposium – An inclusive city

On May 12, La Maisonnée organized a symposium on the theme: An inclusive city. This activity of reflection and knowledge mobilization around the issue of inclusion, was attended by more than 90 people from different community organizations in Montreal, researchers from the Laboratoire de Recherche en Relations Interculturelles (LABRRI) and the Canada Research Chair, in addition to employees from the City of Montreal and La Maisonnée.
The objective of this symposium was to share the reflection that La Maisonnée has been conducting for several years on this issue, particularly in the context of the collaboration with LABRRI. The day was marked by an opening conference by the Commissioner of the Bureau de lutte contre le racisme et les discriminations systémiques de Montréal, Bochra Manai, who spoke about the city’s experience with inclusion. This was followed by presentations on the collaboration between LABRRI and La Maisonnée, the inclusiometer experience and other inclusion tools developed by the Canada Research Chair. These presentations had a strong interaction of the public, which did not fail to feed the contents of the speakers with plural testimonies of inclusive practices and some issues that present situations of exclusion.
Screening of two video clips produced by La Maisonnée on the themes “An inclusive city” and “Where do you come from?”, shed light on other blind spots in the reflection on the forms of discrimination that cross Montreal’s public space. These capsules were disseminated following the symposium to make visible these views captured by La Maisonnée.

In this first video, we will discover the community social workers’ perception about inclusion in Montreal.
See the Youtube video

This second video addresses one aspect of our daily interactions in Montreal through the question: where do you come from? This questioning leads the interlocutors to reactivate certain aspects of their identity, which is likely to open the debate either on an inclusive exchange or on an interaction that could exclude.
See the Youtube video