"New Chances for Accommodation: Has Québécois Separatism Run its Course?"
Abstract
The 1995 Quebec referendum almost resulted in Quebec’s secession from Canada. This paper makes the case that since then the chances for the accommodation of Québécois nationalism in Canada have significantly increased – more than that: today, cooperative arrangements between Québécois and Canadian nationalism have reached an unprecedented stability. We make this argument on a conceptual and an empirical basis. We contend that both Anglo-Canadian and Québécois conceptions of nationalism have experienced a shift from an ethnic to a civic orientation over the course of the 20th century. We argue that today, Canadian nationalism is widely understood as purely civic whereas Quebec is a case of what Michael Seymour has described as a socio-political nation. From this perspective, the accommodation of Québécois nationalism has become more likely under the current political and economic conjuncture for three major reasons: a new emphasis on citizenship in Québécois nationalism, the integration of immigrants, and the dominance of neoliberal globalisation centred on individual autonomy and flexibility.