Class and ethnic differences in Canadians' attitudes to native people's rights and immigration

Research Note/Note de recherche

Class and ethnic differences in Canadians’ attitudes to native people’s rights and immigration G L E N F I L S O N “

A l‘aide de donn6es tir6es d’entrevues traitant des attitudes envers l’immigration et des droits des aborigenes dans le cadre de 1’6tude sur la qualit6 de la vie (1977), cette note essaye d’expliquer certains aspects de la dialectique de la classe sociale et de l’ethnicite’ au Canada. On constate ensuite la mesure dans laquelle ces attitudes diffgrent, selon la classe et l’ethnicit6, dans la direction de 1’Cducation. Les rbsultats, tels que l’opposition considkrable de la classe ouvriere B l’immigration et le sCrieux antagonisme ethnique i I’intCrieur de certain groupes ethniques de mOme que de certaines classes, sont d6voilCs B travers des rCalit6s telles que la division du march6 du travail du point de vue ethnique, le r81e des entremetteurs ethniques et la promotion de la conscience ethnique pour Ctouffer la conscience de classe.

Employing interview data regarding attitudes to immigration and native people’s rights from the Quality of Life Survey (i977), I attempt to illuminate aspects of the dialectic of social class and ethnicity in Canada. The proportion of variance in these attitudes explicable by class and ethnicity, controlling for education, are then ascertained. Find- ings such as the substantial working class opposition to immigration and serious ethnic

The first version of this paper was presented to the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, 4 June, 1979. This data was made available from the Social Change in Canada project supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council of Canada. The project is situated in the Institute for Behavioural Research at York University and is under the direction of Tom Atkinson, Bernard Blishen, Michael Ornstein and Michael Stevenson. The approach taken here is similar to that of William Johnston and Michael Ornstein, ’Social Class and Political Ideology in Canada,’ Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 16 (I). William Johnston and Michael Ornstein have been of considerable help in the production of this paper; they bear no responsibility for its conclusions.

This paper was received in July 1979, revised, and accepted in May, 1982.

Rev. canad. SOC. & Anth./Canad. Rev. SOC. & Anth. zo(4) 1983

455 D I F F E R I N G C A N A D I A N A T T I T U D E S T O N A T I V E R I G H T S

antagonism within some ethnic groups and classes are understood in the light of such things as the ethnically split labour market, the functions of ethnic middlemen and the promotion of ethnic consciousness to drown class consciousness.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Marxists have tended to consider ethnicity as a mere epiphenomenon of social class (Breton, 1979: 178). For example, Colin Leys argues that ethnic ideology can only be integrated into class ideologies in a voluntaristic way. The things that constitute individuals as subjects are not, for Leys, ethnic; they are all, in some way, ’class forms of consciousness‘ (1980:81). Similarly, for Cassin and Griffith, the problem of ethnicity

is not a definitional one but rather a methodological one which locates the actual process of the production of ethnic difference in the socially organized practices of individuals as they are organized and determined by the capitalist social formation (1980: 7).

Some Marxists, however, are beginning to recognize that ethnic differences must be understood in order to promote ’class consciousness’ in a multi-ethnic working class. Arrighi insists that an individual’s ethnic background affects his or her class ideology and that

the division of the world into national states, ethnic groups, races etc. with unequal power is not a purely superstructural phenomenon, but is something that strongly in- fluences class interests and must therefore be taken into account in the very process of defining classes (1976: 32)

In the same vein, Laclau says that

the ideological subject ‘German working class,’ or ‘Italian,’ ‘English’ etc., has then, an irreducible specificity because it is the condensation of a multiplicity of interpellations which cannot be reduced abstractly to Marxism-Leninism (1977: 109).

Saul also feels that ethnicity helps to constitute individuals as subjects and, therefore, ways should be found to articulate the ‘fact’ of ethnicity within working-class ideology. Although he admits that, for the bourgeoisie, ‘ethnicity does become the pawn, under many circumstances, of a particular sort of maipulative politics,’ he sees ways in which the ’progressive potential’ of ethnic discourse might be extracted and developed politically (Leys et al. 1980: 76).

Though the process of identifying distinctive ethnic features is hazardous, such mutually distinct ethnic phenomena as language, culture, folklore, ethnic self- consciousness, and a sense of common origin do, nevertheless, exist. These features maintain considerable stability not just across several social classes but from one mode of production to another (Bromley, 1974: 39). However, the prevalence of intra-ethnic conflict and the variability of ethnic relations and descent rules used to assign an ethnic identity to people of mixed ancestry make it possible to reject ethnicity as a biologically based concept (Bonacich, 1980: 11).

456 G L E N F I L S O N

R E S E A R C H O B J E C T I V E

The aim of this research is to develop a clearer understanding of the dialectic of social class and ethnicity in Canada. Based on Johnston and Ornstein’s attempt to map the Canadian class structure, it relates that structure to ethnicity and the Canadian attitude to native rights and immigration. It is not possible to reduce all of these attitudes to a particular class or ethnic base; instead the study will separate respondents’ educational level from class and ethnicity in so far as level of educational attainment is more fundamentally related to specific attitudes.

O V E R V I E W O F T H I S P A P E R

This paper analyzes the results of that part of York University’s Quality of Life Survey which dealt with immigration and native people’s rights. A representative sample of Canadians were interviewed prior to isolating the disaggregated class and ethnic effects in relation to the answers in order to test hypotheses about class and ethnic differences. Explanations for the results were sought in the varying histories of each class and ethnic group and the differential nature of their present class and ethnic locations and interests.

G E N E R A L H Y P O T H E S E S

Breton argues that when two social classes are in conflict, and one is fairly ethnically homogenous and the other is ethnically varied, ethnicity will be an asset for the former and a liability for the latter. Thus ethnicity should be an asset for Canada’s mainly anglophone bourgeoisie and a liability for the multi- ethnic working class, for whom it weakens class solidarity ’and thus acts against the fundamental interests of those involved’ (Breton: 1979, 289). This condition promotes super-exploitation (the depression of wages below subsistence require- ments) because by fostering ethnic consciousness the bourgeoisie divides the working class between those of British origin (at or above subsistence) and those of other ethnic groups (at or below subsistence). The privileged working class polices the super-exploitation of the non-British (particularly non-white) working-class group for the bourgeoisie (Bonacich, 1980: 13).

When the labour market is ethnically split the bourgeoisie does not even have to foster ethnicity for racism to occur. In other words, the basis for the super- exploitation of immigrants, according to Bonacich, is not necessarily the individual prejudices of capitalists. When there is a large discrepancy in the price of labour for similiar occupations resulting from the different levels of power, resources and motivation of different ethnic groups ’a three-way conflict between business and the two labour groups is produced, with business seeking to displace higher paid by cheaper labour’ (Bonacich, 1972: 547). Since the better paid (domestic) labour wishes to avoid undercutting by cheaper immigrant labour, it opposes immigration. As Hill points out, this is the weakest part of the Bonacich model because it tends to de-emphasize the benefits which ethnocentric and racist super-exploitation bestow on that sector of the bourgeoisie that employs cheap


immigrant labour 'as well as the role played by discrimination in reproducing the capitalist system as a whole' (Hill, 1980: 47).

The bourgeoisie may foster the development of class positions for minority ethnic group members to provide themselves with a buffer against hostility from the working class sector which is ethnically similar to the bourgeoisie. Blalock (1967) describes this as a 'middleman minority' situation because these ethnic enclaves often exist between the bosses and the bossed. The ethnicity of this group (South Asians, for example) may even be promoted by the elite within the minority group in order to mobilize ethnic resources (cheap labour, for instance) as well as to control labour more effectively by drowning class consciousness in a pool of ethnic loyalty. 'The racist reactions of dominant group members in part derive from fears of competition' (Bonacich, 1980: 15).

It seems, therefore, in the interest of the mainly anglophone Canadian bourgeoisie to promote both immigration (as a source of cheap labour) and ethnicity (so that anglophone workers identify with English-Canadian capitalists). Mi- nority ethnic-group middlemen provide a buffer against workers' hostility, which in part is channelled into ethnocentric opposition to these middlemen and toward the ethnic minority immigrants brought in to undercut them. One would expect workers in general to oppose immigration through fear of competition and undercutting. One would also expect the ethnocentric and racist reactions of foremen, the petty bourgeoisie, and workers to intensify as jobs become scarcer.

A substantial body of research exists connecting the rise of racism during the 1930s with the Depression (Dutt,' 1971; Guerin, 1973). Many Canadian re- searchers have also linked the rise of racism to an economic downturn (Penner, 1975; Betcherman, 1975). Ward (1978) disputes the contention that anti-Ori- entalism in Western Canada was exacerbated by economic recessions, but his data often suggest that economic decline was in fact a crucial source for the growth and mobilization of anti-Asian sentiment (1978: 30, 53-6).

During the mid-seventies, when the Canadian economy experienced a downturn, immigration was reduced by more than half and non-white immigrants came under increasing attack (Symons et al., 1977; Pitman, 1977; Ubale, 1977; Henry, 1978). The data from this study were acquired after the 1975 slump during a period of relative stagnation (1977) and climbing bankruptcies, so we may expect the petite bourgeoisie's fear of immigrant competition to be as strong as worker insecurity. In 1977 official unemployment was about 8 per cent (higher among young people and women and in the Maritimes, lower in the metropolitan areas of central and Western Canada where immigrants concentrate). More than 850,000 people were unemployed (officially) while the annual rate of immigrants entering the labour force was only 30,000 (Richmond, 1981: 19). With unemployment rising by one-third, the recession deepened in 1980 and 1982, so that the attitude of Canadians today might be expected to exhibit exacerbated feelings of ethnic and racial antagonism. Although 1983 has seen a mild upturn in in- dustrial production, unemployment still far exceeds its 1977 level.

458 G , L E N F I L S O N

M E T H O D O F A N A L Y S I S

I employed Erik Olin Wright’s Marxist social class categories which locate in- terviewees in particular classes based on criteria developed out of Canadian production relations. The ethnicity of respondents was determined through ethnic self-identification. These class and ethnic categories became my two main independent variables against which the respondents’ answers to mostly immigration-related questions could be compared. Using a national sample of 3288 Canadians interviewed in 1977 as part of the Quality of Life Survey- a sample representative of 95 per cent of Canadians 18 or older - people’ of different social classes and ethnic groups were asked I/ how much effort should be made to protect the rights of native people, 2/ whether immigrants work as hard as people born in Canada, 3/ whether Canada needs more immigrants, and 4/ whether Canada has admitted too many, about the right number, or not enough immigrants from Britain, the U.S., India and Pakistan, the West Indies, and Italy.

In Wright’s schema of social classes3, the criteria of control over investment and resources, the means of production and labour power are used to define a person’s class position. There are three main classes: the bourgeoisie, the proletariat or working class and the petite bourgeoisie. Capitalists (or the bourgeoisie) control investment, resources, the means of production, and labour power, and they include only the highest management level, comprising less than 2 per cent of the economically active population (Johnston and Ornstein, 1979: 34).

The class that is dialectically opposed to the bourgeoisie is the working class, which lacks control of any of the above three areas; its agents control only the sale of their labour power. So defined, the working class, therefore, includes many public as well as private sector workers, both productive labour (producing surplus value mainly in the form of profits for capitalists) and unproductive labour. For Canada, the working class is about 55 per cent of the economically active population.

Although the petite bourgeoisie controls investments, resources, the physical means of production, and legal ownership of property, it does not employ or control the labour power of others to any significant extent, though it may buy some labour power from time to time. According to Livingstone the petite bourgeoisie therefore includes 5 to 8 per cent of Ontario’s economically active population (1978)4. However, in this Quality of Life Survey, small employers were included within the petite bourgeoisie, and since Ontario has more capitalist, less simple commodity production than the whole of Canada, we found that 14 per cent of the economically active population were petit bourgeois.

Wright identifies what he calls contradictory class locations between capitalists and workers: managers , technocrats, supervisors, and f o remen . These people are in an ambiguous class position in that they have either partial or only minimal powers within the three areas of control. He locates another Contradictory class between the proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie: semi-autonomous workers control their own labour but do not control investment or the means of production (this includes professors, scientists, high school teachers, and some technicians). The management-technocrats are about 6-7 per cent of the economically active


population, the supervisors-foremen are about 11 per cent, and the semi-autonomous workers about 14 per cent.

Wright’s schema of social class was determined through the use of the following questions on the Quality of Life survey: What is your main occupation, that is, what sort of work do you do? What sort of business/industry do you work in? Do you work for yourself or are you employed by someone else? The economically active group, defined as those who worked 20 hours per week or more at the time of their interviews during the early summer of 1977, comprised slightly more than half of the respondents, and those ethnic groups, each with more than 50 respondents, accounted for about 85 per cent of the 3288 people interviewed. The 20-hour minimum labour market work requirement reduced the proportion of women in the social class sample and narrowed the age range somewhat.

For ethnic determination, we used the Canadian census method of self-identification. Respondents’ ethnic origins were determined by the following question: ‘To what ethnic or cultural group did you or your ancestor (on the male side) belong on coming to this continent?’ (The interviewer noted the response as one of the 27 Canadian Census ethnic categories (see Appendix II).)

It may be better in future to replace the male descent rule with mother tongue (language first spoken and still understood): 40 per cent were of British origin; more than 25 per cent were French Canadian; 5.5 per cent were German Cana- dian; 3 per cent Ukrainian Canadian, 2.6 per cent were Dutch and Italian Cana- dian, 2 per cent Scandinavian and Polish Canadian; 1.5 per cent Russian Canadian; the others constituted about 16 per cent of the sample.

I did not locate the ethnic groups in particular social classes, in part because the 14 ethnic groups (all white) which were large enough to arrive at statistically significant generalizations comprised a much higher percentage of the total sample than did those people who could be slotted into social classes.

The method of analysis involved computing the average responses with respect to the protection of native rights and the immigration-related questions for the various social classes and ethnic groups. The proportion of variance explained by social class and ethnicity was then determined (as it was for occupational groups and educational level, as well). The cross tabulations of percentage distributions of respondents’ attitudes to these questions appear in Tables I-X. The mean scores for each class are also included in Tables I-IX.

The eta statistic (the measure of association between social class or ethnicity and the answers to the questions) for continuous dependent variables was calculated to determine the strength of association in each case. The eta squared was also calculated (see Table XIII) to ascertain the strength of the relationships for social class on each of the questionnaire items.

A multiple classification analysis (MCA) was undertaken to separate the impact of education on attitudes towards the protection of native rights and aspects of immigration from that of social class and ethnic group (to see if the class and ethnic effects were merely artifacts of the effects due to respondents’ level of education: see Table XII). On occasion, the strength of the education effect made it impossible to disentangle the class effect from the effect of respondents’ educational level (Table xna, c, e, h, i, j ) .


Similarly, the impact of ethnicity was separated from the impact of social class, through an MCA, to find out whether the class effects were artifacts of respondents’ ethnic background. Class and ethnicity proved to be independent of each other for all of the dependent variables (Table XI).

It would have been useful to include length of stay in Canada as an independent variable but the questionnaire did not request this information from respondents. Consequently even though we might expect most immigratnts from the Ukraine, for example, whose parents migrated to Canada before the Russian Revolution, to be more responsive to the concerns of immigrants than would the often more conservative Ukrainians who came to Canada later to escape from communism - this kind of distinction was not possible.

Berry et al. (1980: 266) found small or non-existent sex differences in attitudes toward immigration so, with respect to the issues at hand, I chose to ignore gender differences. Clearly, however, there were fewer women in the social class sample than men and there are differences between the attitudes of women hidden in the household and others more actively engaged in the labour market. Some of these differences have been analyzed by Henry (1978) and Luxton (1980).

As Richmond (1974)~ Henry (1978), and Berry et al. (1980) indicate, we might expect age to be an important factor affecting the answers to these questions. However, with the recent rise in unemployment hurting young people most, we may have found, along with Li, that there has been a ‘closing of the attitudinal gap among the old and the young as well as the educated and the less educated’ (1979: 75) in relation to ethnic antagonism.

Clearly, the number of cases for the bourgeoisie and many of the ethnic groups was often too small to permit confident generalizations concerning Canada’s entire population. In referring to samples of 20 to 50 respondents in the ensuing discussion an asterisk will be used to remind the reader of the small sample size.

It is important to note that individuals within each social class and ethnic group may not represent the average response for the category as a whole. The more assimilated a person is to the dominant culture and the more mixed a person’s ancestry, the less likely it is that his or her attitudes will resemble the average response of their non-anglophone ancestors. Thus it is difficult to distinguish assimilated Canadians of mixed ancestry from one another attitudinally merely on the basis of predominant ethnic heritage and social class location. The reader should also remember that this study focussed on class and ethnic attitudinal differences, not on the similarities which also exist among groups.

Appendix I contains the wording of the questionnaire items.

R E S U L T S

The working class and semi-autonomous workers are prepared to put the most effort into protecting native people’s rights (56.1 per cent and 54.3 per cent in favour); technocrats are somewhat less interested; foremen-supervisors and the petite bourgeoisie are the least interested (43.4 per cent and 42.0 per cent).

Of the major ethnic groups the Jews* (62.8 per cent) and Italians (56.7 per cent) were the most prepared to protect native people’s rights. Slovaks,+ on the


TABLE I DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSES TO THE QUESTION CONCERNING EFFORT PLACED ON PROTECTING NATIVE PEOPLES RIGHTS (YO) (QUESTION 1, APPENDIX r ) t

About Number More the Less of effort same effort cases

Social classes Bourgeoisie 47.5 38.8 13.7 20 Technocrats 50.0 34.7 15.3 105 Petty Bourgeoisie 42.0 40.7 17.3 233 Foremen-supervisors 43.4 41.9 14.7 190 Semi-Autonomous Workers 54.3 36.0 9.7 251 Workmg-Class 56.1 34.6 9.4 880 * Eta-0.11837 (significant) (1679) Ethnic groups French 54.5 34.7 10.8 836 British Isles 54.9 34.9 10.2 1320 Scandinavian 50.1 35.7 14.1 63 Netherlands 37.9 56.6 5.5 79 German 50.9 42.7 6.4 172 Italian 56.7 33.8 9.6 76 Hungarian 51.4 33.3 15.4 20 Polish 39.7 49.0 11.3 57 Slovak 30.6 33.8 34.5 20 Ukrainian 43.3 39.4 17.3 95 Jewish 62.8 30.3 6.8 27 Russian 38.5 39.5 20.9 40 ‘Eta-0.12881 (significant) (2805)

~~

‘Eta is the measure of association between social class and ethnicity (the independent variables) and the answers to the questions (the dependent variables).

tThe following groups usually had fewer than 20 cases and were therefore excluded from Tables I- VIII: Native Indians, Finnish, Austrians, Portuguese-Spanish, Greek, Czech, Other European, Arab, Chinese, Japanese, West Indian, Negro (Black would have been preferable but even this is not an ethnic category), South and Central American, and Others.

NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses

other hand, had the highest percentage of respondents less prepared to protect native people’s rights (34.5 per cent).

When respondents were asked whether they agreed with the view that ’people who come to live in Canada should try harder to be more like other Candians,’ the working class expressed the strongest agreement (71.8 per cent); semi-autonomous workers were the least likely to agree with this (49.2 per cent). Ed- ucation turned out to be the key factor determining these responses (see Table XIV) . 5

For the ethnic groups, those most anxious for newcomers to be more like Canadians included the Hungarians (88.0 per cent), the French (81.8 per cent)


TABLE I1 DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSES TO THE QUESTION CONCERNING CANADIAN ATnTUDE TO IMMIGRANTS BECOMING MORE LIKE OTHER CANADIANS (%)

Neither agree Number

Agree disagree Disagree cases Means nor of

Social classes Bourgeoisie Technocrats-Managers Petty Bourgeoisie Foremen-Supervisors Semi-Autonomous Workers Working Class

‘Eta-0.165 (significant)

Ethnic groups French British Isles Scandinavian Netherlands German Italian Hungarian Polish Slovak Ukrainian Jewish Russian

* Eta-0.24895 (significant)

68.7 0 57.8 23.4 69.5 12.9 68.5 10.9 49.2 21.3 71.8 15.1

81.8 11.2 61.9 17.0 64.2 12.1 70.6 10.0 61.8 14.6 61.3 18.1 88.0 3.3 76.0 14.1 71.5 16.0 71.5 15.1 39.0 34.1 61.3 12.3

31.2 18.8 17.7 20.8 29.5 13.1

7.0 21.2 23.6 19.4 23.6 20.5 8.7 9.9 12.6 13.4 26.9 26.4

19 109 241 182 253 919

(1723)

868 1315 65 85 176 93 23 59 22 96 28 42

(2972)

2.3000 2.3878 2.3417 2.3817 2.6909 2.2233 [2.3447 ]

*See Table I NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses; average means in brackets

and the Poles (76.0 per cent). Jews* were the least anxious for Canadianization of immigrants.

Most of Canada’s technocrat-managers think that immigrants are treated fairly before the law. When respondents were asked if they thought that immigrants experienced discrimination due to the failure of police and courts to take a strong stand against discrimination, 64.6 per cent of the technocrats disagreed. Although slightly more foremen-supervisors (43.1 per cent) agree with the statement than working-class respondents (42.7 per cent), there is a lower mean of responses for the working class (2.90 compared with 2.96), so both the working class and foremen-supervisors are prone to doubt the impartiality of the police and the courts in dealing with immigrants. Table XII shows that this finding is relatively independent of respondents’ level of education.

The Ukrainians (49.3 per cent), the Dutch (45.1 per cent) and British (38.8 per cent) are the most confident of the impartiality of our law enforcement


TABLE I11 DISTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL CLASS AND ETHNIC ATTITUDE TO DISCRIMINATION DUE TO POLICE AND COURT APATHY (%)




'Eta-0.1305 (significant)

Ethnic groups French British Isles Scandinavian Netherlands German Italian Polish Ukrainian Jewish Russian

*Eta-0.15538 (significant)

40.3 23.1 32.1 43.1 38.3 42.7

42.2 38.7 41.0 40.0 35.6 52.4 45.8 32.5 52.6 63.1

2.6 12.3 28.6 18.4 23.5 22.2

27.3 22.6 34.1 14.8 25.8 18.2 23.7 18.1 25.6 11.5

57.1 64.6 39.2 38.5 38.2 35.0

30.4 38.8 24.9 45.1 38.5 29.3 30.5 49.3 21.8 25.3

19 3.0500 102 3.3085 220 3.0659 183 2.9607 233 2.9380 841 2.9022

(1598) [2.9622]

747 1208

60 79

158 79 54 81 27 33

(2526)

'See Table I NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses; average number of means in brackets

agencies and the legal system vis-6-vis immigrants. The Italians (52.4 per cent) are the most likely to agree that immigrants are often discriminated against in our legal system. Though their sample sizes are small, many Jews" and Russians+ also doubt the impartiality of our legal system in its treatment of immigrants.

While most Canadians believe that immigrants are prepared to work as hard as other Canadians, the class effects observed in the responses to this question could not be disentangled from the more powerful effect of education (Tables XII and X I V ) . ~ This does not mean that those with higher educational levels are necessarily more tolerant. In fact, support for the protection of native people's rights actually declines among people with higher educational levels !

The French are distinguished by the highest percentage of respondents in agreement with the view that immigrants are not prepared to work as hard native-born Canadians, yet with only 22.1 per cent in agreement. They are followed by the Poles, with just 17.5 per cent and the Ukrainians, 17.1 per cent. Disagreeing most strongly with the view that immigrants are not prepared to work as hard as people born in Canada are the Slovaks" (93.1 per cent) and the Italians (84.4 per cent).

Most people think immigrants have worked hard to help Canada. Nevertheless,


TABLE IV

DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSES TO THE STATEMENT CONCERNING IMMIGRANT ABILITY TO WORK (%)


Agree disagree Disagree cases Means nor O f

Social classes Bourgeoisie Technocrats-Managers Petty Bourgeoisie Foremen-Supervisors Semi-Autonomous Workers Working Class ‘Eta-0.14543 (significant) Ethnic groups French British Isles Scandinavian Netherlands German Italian Greek Hung aria n Polish Slovak Ukrainian Jewish Russian ‘Eta-0.22237 (significant)

2.4 11.4 4.8 9.1

18.5 6.1 10.7 7.3 6.5 5.8

15.4 11.8

22.1 15.7 9.7 8.2 7.0 10.3 9.2 9.5

11.4 6.3 10.3 5.3 7.4 14.1

11.8 12.5 17.5 3.4 4.9 2.0

17.1 10.4 10.9 5.3 9.4 10.6

86.2 86.1 75.4 82.1 87.7 72.8

62.3 82.0 82.8 80.4 82.3 84.4 78.6 75.6 79.2 93.1 72.6 83.7 80.0

20 4.0000 109 4.1010 230 3.8125 190 3.8503 252 4.0361 915 3.7230

(1503) [3.8280]

812 1315

63 83

180 94 21 22 59 22 95 28 44

(2838)

‘See Table I NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses; average means for entire population in brackets

the working class stands out as significantly less convinced that immigrants have helped Canada (only 70.5 per cent compared with well over 80 per cent of the other classes). According to the means of the responses for each class, the bourgeoisie, technocrat-managers, and the petty bourgeoisie, in that order, are most likely to agree that the hard work of immigrants has helped this country. The working class, foremen-supervisors, and semi-autonomous workers are usually least likely to agree with this view.’

Greeks*, Jews*, and Poles (all over 95 per cent) agree most strongly with the view that immigrants’ hard work has helped Canada, while only 57.5 per cent of French Canadians agree.

There is no significant difference among the classes concerning whether immigrants often bring discrimination on themselves by their own personal habits and attitudes. The ethnic groups most likely to agree with this statement are the Scandinavians, Russians, Slovaks*, and Ukrainians (all over 77 per cent). Jews*


TABLE V

DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSES TO THE STATEMENT CONCERNING IMMIGRANTS HELPING THIS COUNTRY ( y o )

Neither agree N u m b e r



*Eta-O.17775 (significant)

Ethnic groups French British Isles Scandinavian Netherlands German Italian Greek Polish Slovak Ukrainian Jewish Russian

*Eta-0.30828 (significant)

97.6 85.8 83.8 84.5 84.4 70.5

57.5 81.9 83.4 85.9 83.7 89.9 97.6 95.3 78.4 89.1 96.5 83.7

2.4 9.3 11.8 8.8 10.1 16.1

22.2 10.7 7.6 13.1 10.4 2.3 0 3.4 0 8.2 3.5 14.3

0 5.0 4.4 6.7 5.5 13.4

20.3 7.4 9.0 1.0 5.9 7.9 2.5 1.3 13.8 2.7 0 2.0

20 1.6667 107 1.8980 232 1.9583 183 2.0220 249 1.9964 907 2.2686

(1698) [2.2686]

793 1310 65 86 173 94 21 61 23 98 29 44

(2797)

‘See Table I NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses; average means of entire population in brackets

were the only ethnic group in substantial disagreement with the view that immigrants bring discrimination on themselves (only 26 in the sample, however).

While 64.6 per cent of the bourgeoisie* want to see more immigration, only 25.3 per cent of the working class do (followed closely by 25.8 per cent of the foremen-supervisors and 31.3 per cent of the petite bourgeoisie). The bourgeoisie, semi-autonomous workers, and managers-technocrats have the most favourable attitudes toward more immigration, in that order. The working class is obviously the class most opposed to immigration.

Ukrainians (80.7 per cent) and Hungarians, (80.1 per cent) are the most likely to feel that there are too many Indians and Pakistanis in Canada. Of the groups most likely to think that we have too few Indians and Pakistanis, only 11.8 per cent of the Italians and 9.2 per cent of the Scandinavians feel this way.

The variation in preference for Italian immigration between different classes and ethnic groups is statistically significant. There are also no two-way interactions between class and ethnicity exaggerating the significance of either of these independent variables. However, while the main variation between the classes


TABLE VI DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSES TO THE STATEMENT CONCERNING IMMIGRANTS BRINGING DISCRIMINATION ON THEMSELVES BY PERSONAL HABITS AND ATTITUDES ( y o )



Social classes Bourgeoisie Technocrats-Managers Petty Bourgeoisie Foremen-Supervisors Semi-Autonomous Workers Working Class *Eta-0.165 (significant) Ethnic groups French British Isles Scandinavian Netherlands German Italian Hungarian Polish Slovak Ukrainian Jewish Russian *Eta-0.17650 (significant)

76.7 66.6 70.2 76.2 66.3 69.5

65.6 73.3 81.9 56.1 67.9 59.9 69.2 71.0 77.6 77.2 36.6 78.8

11.2 15.5 14.0 12.0 19.2 15.1

19.6 15.3 14.9 20.2 16.0 15.0 12.4 18.1

6.7 10.9 12.3 10.3

12.1 17.9 15.8 11.0 14.6 15.4

11.6 25.0 11.4 11.6 23.7 15.2 12.6 18.6 23.4 15.7 51.1 10.9

20 2.1905 108 2.3402 233 2.4145 189 2.2674 246 2.3978 891 2.3687

(1686) [2.3632]

800 1290

61 79

173 89 22 56 20 91 26 40

(2747)

*See Table r NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses; average means for entire population in brackets

regarding their levels of preference for Italian immigration is independent of respondents’ ethnicity, the variation from one ethnic group to another cannot be distinguished entirely from the different levels of preference found for the various social classes (see Table XI (j)). The important finding concerning social class is that while 40.3 per cent of the working class think that we have too many Italians here already, only 22.4 per cent of the semi-autonomous workers feel this way.

Table XI shows that while none of the effects of class or ethnicity cloud either independent variable’s effects (the two way interactions are not significant) the class distinctions in preference for immigration are only significant for Italy.

A reduction in the strength of the association between class and some dependent variables occurs when the MCA is undertaken (Table XI) to control for respondents’ educational levels. It is usual for those most highly educated to be least assim- ilationist, and most likely to acknowledge the hard work of immigrants. The


~ ~~~

TABLE VII

DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSES TO THE QUESTION ABOUT BENEFIT TO CANADA OF FURTHER IMMIGRATION

(”/.I Neither agree Number

Agree disagree Disagree cases Means nor O f

Social classes Bourgeoisie Technocrats-Managers Petty Bourgeoisie Foremen-Supervisors Semi-Autonomous Workers Worlung Class

* Eta-0,20982 (significant)

Ethnic groups French British Isles Scandinavian Netherlands German Italian Hungarian Polish Slovak Ukrainian Jewish Russian

*Eta-O.19399 (significant)

64.6 44.9 31.3 25.8 47.8 25.3

19.5 30.9 36.2 32.9 27.2 38.4 19.3 35.4 52.0 25.8 65.4 34.3

32.7 49.4 63.3 69.5 47.7 63.5

67.8 59.5 57.9 62.6 66.6 53.9 76.5 57.3 32.3 69.7 34.6 63.9

2.8 5.7 4.6 4.6 4.5 11.2

12.6 9.6 5.9 4.5 6.2 7.7 4.2 7.3 15.6 4.5 0 1.8

20 2.0952 111 2.5051 239 2.6327 188 2.7097 247 2.5226 910 2.7974

(1716) [2.6948]

851 1304 60 86 179 87 23 56 22 96 27 40

(2831)

‘See Table I NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses; average means of entire population in brackets

more ‘educated’ person is also usually less likely to believe that an immigrant’s habits and attitudes cause the discrimination experienced and that person is less likely to oppose immigration from particular countries than less well ’educated’ people.

There are obviously regional differences in the concentration of social classes and ethnic groups which data of this type glosses over. Berry et al. found, however, that with respect to ethnic attitudes in Canada there is a ’remarkable similarity among residents from Ontario to British Columbia. Quebec, being populated primarily by French Canadians, showed a profile essentially similar to that of French Canadians’ (1980: 263) While urban Canada still contains an urban petite bourgeoisie, most economically active city folks are absorbed in more centralized forms of capitalist production. The petit bourgeois family farm is still the most common form of production in rural Canada even though it is fast disappearing in the face of competition from capitalist agri-business. When I


TABLE VIII DISTRIBUTIONS OF CANADIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS ADMISSION OF IMMIGRANTS FROM INDIA AND PAKISTAN

( O/O 1 Number O f

Too few About right Too many cases Means


* Eta-0.11193 (significant)

Ethnic groups French British Isles Scandinavian Netherlands German Italian Hungarian Polish Ukrainian Jewish Russian

‘Eta-0.20572 [significant)

3.8 2.2 4.5 6.0 6.3 3.8

6.1 2.8 9.2 0.3 3.8

11.8 0 6.1 1.5 6.1 4.0

51.5 41.9 36.3 31.0 51.1 36.2

46.6 35.3 21.7 40.7 31.9 32.4 19.9 26.2 17.4 61.4 28.8

44.8 55.9 59.2 61.9 42.5 60.0

46.9 60.8 69.1 59.0 63.8 55.2 80.1 67.6 80.7 30.6 67.3

19 2.3500 97 2.4250

178 2.5306 170 2.5641 209 2.3443 750 2.5399

(1424) [2.5000]

5 74 1154

53 67

151 70 21 51 77 21 30

(2269)

‘See Table I NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses; average means in brackets

used occupation as an independent variable, farmers and farm hands had the most negative attitudes toward immigrants and the protection of native people’s rights (see Table xv).’ This is consistent with Berry et al.’s discovery that rural people’s ethnic attitudes are more negative than those of urbanites (1980: 265).

C O N C L U S I O N S

This study confirms what John Saul calls the ‘fact’ of ethnicity because statistically significant differences in Canadians’ attitudes toward immigration issues and the protection of native people’s rights were registered for different ethnic groups. Moreover, the existence of an ethnically split labour market in Canada (Darroch, 1981: 97). and the potential for exploitation of immigrants which it offers the bourgeoisie, is probably responsible for the high percentage of the bourgeoisie* - as opposed to other classes - who favour increased immigration.

The Canadian state has recently implemented policies aimed at alleviating the


TABLE IX DISTRIBUTIONS OF CANADIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS ADMISSION OF IMMIGRANTS FROM ITALY ( y o )

Number of

Too f e w About right Too many cases Means

Social classes Bourgeoisie Technocrats-Managers Petty Bourgeoisie Foremen-Supervisors Semi-Autonomous Workers Workmg Class 'Eta-0.12639 (significant) Ethnic groups See the last line of Table vm;

12.5 72.3 15.2 18 2.1579 4.3 64.3 31.4 100 2.2273 7.4 54.2 38.3 187 2.2968 2.9 64.1 33.0 170 2.3896 5.3 72.3 22.4 202 2.1689 3.7 56.0 40.3 782 2.3955

(1459) [2.3321]

because the ethnic effect is clouded by the class effect it is not included

'See Table I

NOTE: total number of cases in parentheses; average means in brackets

TABLE X DISTRIBUTIONS FOR SOCIAL CLASSES FOR THOSE THINKING THAT CANADA HAS ADMITTED TOO MANY IMMIGRANTS FROM VARIOUS PARTS OF THE WORLD (%)

Semi- Technocrats- Petite Foremen- autonomous Working

Bourgeoisie Managers Bourgeoisie Supervisors workers Class

Britain 2.8 15.3 15.1 11.3 11.9 13.5 U . S . 5.8 9.9 17.0 11.9 11.5 19.5 India and Pakistan 44.8 55.9 59.2 61.9 42.5 60.0 West Indies 35.2 39.1 47.2 44.5 25.9 42.2 Italy 15.2 31.4 38.3 33.0 22.4 40.3

ethnic antagonisms that pose a threat to social stability (e.g. Multicultural Policy) while simultaneously fostering and controlling ethnic organizations (Stasiulis: 1980). But it still complies with capitalists who exploit immigrants. To see how this occurs, first consider the relationship between the state and the bourgeoisie.

The state has served both as an important recruiting ground for many members of the corporate elite, and in return many appointed positions within the state that are investigatory, regulatory, advisory, and policy-setting have a very high proportion of members from the Canadian corporate elite, the most powerful fraction of the capitalist class (Clement, 1977: 245).


TABLE XI SOURCE OF VARIATION OF EIGHT ITEMS W I T H T W O INDEPENDENT VARIABLES: SOCIAL CLASS A N D ETHNICI’IY (MULTIPLE CLASSIFICATION ANALYSIS TO CONTROL FOR EACH VARIABLE)

TWO- Way Significance of F: Main Effects Class Ethnicity Interactions

a Immigrants Should Try Harder To Be Like

b Discrimination, Police, Courts

c Immigrants Aren’t Prepared to Work as

d Immigrants - Hard Work Has Done

e Immigrants’ Personal Habits, Attitudes f Immigrants Admitted from Britain g Immigrants Admitted from the U.S. h Immigrants Admitted from India and

i Immigrants Admitted from the West

j Immigrants Admitted from Italy

Other Canadians

Hard as Native Born

A Lot to Help Canada

Pakistan

Indies

0.000

0.000

0.000

0.000

0.001 0.002 0.245

0.000

0.007 0.000

0.000

0.003

0.000

0.000

0.189 0.465 0.130

0.111

0.179 0.000

0.000

0.001

0.000

0.000

0.001 0.001

0.353

0.000

0.014

0.015

0.070

0.173

0.879

0.993 0.184

0.490 0.370

0.429

0.602 0.447

But how does the state supervise the exploitation of immigrants for the bourgeoisie? The Government’s Seasonal Worker Program permits the employment of West Indian, Mexican, and other Third World immigrants in such jobs as fruit picking and tobacco harvesting at extremely low wages and terrible working conditions (The Law Union of Ontario, 1978: 20) The 1978 Immigration Act also ensures that a steady supply of domestic workers (often West Indian women) are brought up to labour for the wealthy (Epstein, 1980: 30). Even higher unemployment and exploitation in their own countries - the legacies of colonialism and imperialism - guarantee this labour supply for the bourgeoisie. The unequal power of certain groups in the international division of labour redounds to an ethnically split labour market in Canada.

Rick Salutin’s 1977 NFB film, Maria, poignantly depicts the difficulties of trying to organize a union for largely female immigrant workers in a Jewish-Canadian Toronto garment factory run by heavy-handed minority foremen. Maria‘s story illustrates why the profit motive may be partly responsible for the bourgeoisie’s support for immigration and belief in the value of immigrants’ hard work.

Stasiulis shows how the state has attempted to buy off leftist ethnic organizations through the provision of grants geared to the domestication of their goals and activities (1980). The state’s relation to Ukrainian organizations illustrates how ‘approved’ organizational structures have been commonly fostered for Cana- dian ethnic groups. The Federal Government formed the Ukrainian Canadian


TABLE XI1 MULTIPLE CLASSIFICATION ANALYSIS OF EIGHT ITEMS WITH FOUR INDEPENDENT VARIABLES: SOCIAL CLASS AND EDUCATION/SOCIAL CLASS AND ETHNICITY

Social class Education Social class Ethnicity

Eta Beta‘ Eta Beta Eta Beta Eta Beta

a Immigrants Should Try Harder to be

b Discrimination, Police, Courts c Immigrants Aren’t Prepared to Work

d Immigrants - Hard Work Has Done

e Immigrants’ Personal Habits,

f Immigrants Admitted from Britain g Immigrants Admitted from the United

h Immigrants Admitted from India and

i Immigrants Admitted from the West

1 Immigrants Admitted from Italy

Like Other Canadians

as Hard as Canadian born

a Lot to Help

Attitudes

States

Palustan

Indies

0.16 0.06 0.26 0.24 0.16 0.15 0.11 o.io 0.10 0.10 0.11 0.11

0.14 0.06 0.19 0.16 0.14 0.14

0.19 0.15 0.18 0.15 0.19 0.20

0.07 0.13 0.15 0.21 0.07 0.07 0.07 0.06 0.09 0.09 0.06 0.07

0.08 0.06 0.08 0.06 0.09 0.09

0.10 0.05 0.13 0.12 0.11 0.09

0.09 0.04 0.15 0.14 0.09 0.09 0.14 0.09 0.16 0.12 0.15 0.15

0.30 0.30 0.20 0.20

0.23 0.24

0.30 0.30

0.20 0.20 0.22 0.22

0.16 0.16

0.27 0.26

0.20 0.20 0.20 0.20

*Beta measures the degree of association between social class and the dependent variables (a. to j . ) after adjustments for education, in the first case, and then ethnicity, in the second case.

TABLE XI11 PROPORTION OF VARIANCE (ETA’) BETWEEN ATTITUDES TOWARD THE PROTECTION OF NATIVE PEOPLE‘S RIGHTS AND ASPECTS OF IMMIGRATION BY SOCIAL CLASS

Native People’s Rights 0.0121 Immigrants Should Try Harder To be Like Other Canadians 0.0276 Discrimination, Police, Courts 0.0106 Immigrants Aren’t Prepared to Work as Hard as People Born in Canada 0.0197 Immigrants - Hard Work Has Done a Lot to Help 0.0327 Immigrants’ Personal Habits, Attitudes 0.0024 Immigrants Admitted from Britain 0.0349 Immigrants Admitted from the U.S. 0.0036 Immigrants Admitted from India and Pakistan 0.0059 Immigrants Admitted from the West indies 0.0160 Immigrants Admitted from Italy 0.0249

Committee as an umbrella organization through which government grants are funnelled to twenty-nine non-communist Ukrainian organizations like the Na- tional Federation, the Ukrainian Professional and Businessman’s Association, etc. Contemporary n o n - u . c. c . leftist Ukrainian organizations like the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and the Workers’ Benevolent Association are too radical to receive any state funding even though these organizations actively promote Ukrainian culture (Szczesny, 1978: 55).9

The confidence with which the bourgeoisie, technocrats, and English and Dutch


~ ~

TABLE XIV

CANADA SHOULD TRY HARDER TO BE MORE LIKE OTHER CANADIANS (yo) THE EXTENT TO WHICH EDUCATION AFFECTS PEOPLE’S PERCEPTION OF WHETHER PEOPLE WHO COME TO

Neither Agree Number nor of

Agree disagree Disagree cases

No High School 84.2 9.0 6.7 647 Some High School 74.2 12.9 13.1 778 High School Graduate 70.0 16.2 13.8 676 High School Graduate +

Technical School Graduate 63.7 12.8 23.4 281 Some University 55.5 21.1 23.5 464 University Graduate 43.0 21.3 35.7 314 * Eta-0.25553 (significant) (3161)

*See Table I NOTE: Total number of cases in parentheses

TABLE XV THE EXTENT TO WHICH PEOPLE IN VARIOUS OCCUPATIONS ARE PREPARED TO PUT EFFORT INTO PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF NATIVE PEOPLE (yo)

Number of

More effort About same Less effort cases ~~ ~

Self Employed Professionals Employed Professionals Hi-level Managers Semi-Professionals Technicians Middle Managers Supervisors Formen Slulled Clerical Skilled Craftspeople Farmers Semi-Skilled Clerical Semi-Skilled Craftspeople Unskilled Clerical Unskilled Labour Farm Labourer Not Applicable *Eta = 0 11789

53.0 50.5 52.6 59.6 59.4 51.7 44.2 45.4 56.1 52.9 31.7 57.4 54.7 57.2 54.1 33.6 51.5

18.1 36.9 32.2 34.7 35.4 36.6 47.5 40.6 37.7 38.1 47.6 33.1 34.5 32.9 33.6 49.1 39.2

28.8 12.7 15.3 5.7 5.2 6.3 8.3

14.0 6.3 9.0

20.8 8.5

10.7 10.0 12.4 17.3 9.3

26 246 80

107 52 91

146 124 212 371 165 274 263 124 338 33

418 (3071)

NOTE: Number of non-workers are given spouse’s occupation

Canadians view what they consider to be the impartiality of our legal system with respect to immigrants is not surprising given the degree to which the courts and police protect the former groups’ property and do not discriminate against the English or Dutch. The attitudes of manager-technocrats are similar to the


bourgeoisie’s. Technocrats are the most strongly committed to the belief that immigrants’ hard work has helped Canada, and they usually favour more immigration.

Foremen-supervisors do not particularly favour the protection of native rights, and they tend to agree that immigrants are discriminated against because the police and the courts do not take a strong stand against discrimination, and also usually affirm that the hard work of immigrants has helped Canada. On the other hand, foremen-supervisors are among the least likely to think Canada would be improved by more immigrants, and they are the most opposed to Indian and Pakistani immigration.

Relative to other classes, substantial percentages of the working class favour greater protection of native rights, want newcomers to try harder to be more like other Canadians, doubt the impartiality of the police and the courts in their treatment of immigrants, and vehemently oppose more immigration. Working- class opposition to immigration is undoubtedly based on the fear of competition and undercutting by immigrants. For example, the working class is twice as opposed to Italian immigration as are semi-autonomous workers. The degree to which Italians often occupy an ethnic, lower working-class enclave and do not compete with semi-autonomous workers, indicates that working class opposition to Italian immigration is probably based on the fear of being undercut by Italians.

Significant numbers of native people have become relatively surplus to capital’s needs, rarely even making it into the labour market, as a result of their segregation into settlements and reservations, and more recently, into poor urban sectors. (There are obvious exceptions.) And when their relatively small total population is considered, not very many native people compete with workers for scarce jobs, housing or recreation. The somewhat higher relative working-class support for the protection of native people‘s rights may also arise from the realization that native people control little but their labour power, like other workers, and that native peoples have legitimate land claims against the state and the bourgeoisie notwithstanding recent constitutional attempts to abrogate those rights by most provincial governments and a willing federal government.

Most Italo-Canadians are working class and therefore likely to favour the protection of native people’s rights, for the same*reasons as other working people. Yet, more than most of the working class, Italians are tolerant of newcomers’ differences and are more likely to think that newcomers work as hard as other Canadians. Many Italians are recent immigrants themselves and their common segretation into low-status jobs (Reitz, 1980: i55), may incline them to identify more with recent immigrants and native people.

The petite bourgeoisie is relatively opposed to greater protection of native people’s rights, and they often insist that newcomers try harder to be more like other Canadians. They often recognize that immigrants are discriminated against because the police and the courts do not take a strong enough stand against discrimination, are relatively opposed to more immigration, and not only do they strongly oppose Indian and Pakistani immigration, but are quite opposed to Italian immigration. The past eight years of relative stagnation have wiped out whole sections of the petite bourgeoisie, making those who are still able to limp along very sensitive to new competition from petit bourgeois immigrants. The intense


opposition of petit bourgeois farmers to the protection of native people’s rights undoubtedly comprises a significant proportion of this class’s opposition to native people’s rights. Native claims often directly conflict with farmers interests but this cannot account completely for the high degree of ethnic antagonism within the petite bourgeoisie. According to Johnson (1972 : 151) the petite bourgeoisie was as large numerically as the working class until World War 11. Now that it has fallen to a quarter of the size of the working class and the speed of its decimation has increased during this recession, we can see how threatened its remaining members must be.

What this study does not do is differentiate between the attitudes of the relative surplus population who work fewer than 20 hours per week, and the attitudes of the other social classes. The evidence for Toronto from Pitman’s study indicated that many racial assailants were unemployed. While unemployment is a radi- calizing experience for some, Hider recruited his storm troopers from this strata and England‘s skinheads are a similar group. Canadian unemployment has almost doubled since this data was collected and this strata requires close scrutiny for ethnically and racially antagonistic attitudes and behaviour.

French-Canadian hostility toward immigrants arises mainly out of the fact that immigration has indirectly threatened Quebec and francophone culture. Immigrants have typically assimilated to the economically dominant English culture.

The disproportionately high anti-South Asian feelings of many Ukrainians and Hungarian, the low estimation of the value of immigrants’ work by many Poles and Ukrainians, the high degree of Slovakian“ and Ukrainian animosity toward greater protection of native people’s rights, and the widespread desire among Hungarians and Polish Canadians for newcomers to become more like other Canadians are probably functions of their own rapid vertical mobility since World War 11 and the degree to which these groups are located in the petite bourgeoisie and foremen-supervisor stata and are thereby subject to similar au- thoritarian and competitive pressures. There were several waves of Eastern Eu- ropean immigration (from 1901 to 1914, 1923 to 1929 and post-World War 11), each bringing immigrants of different social classes. While the first wave brought many peasant Ukrainians, Finns, Poles, Hungarians, Roumanians, Lithuanians, and Russians, whose Canadian organizations like the Finnish Organization of Canada often became the mainstay of the Communist Party, the second and third waves brought many kulak and professional Eastern Europeans who were fleeing from communist revolutions (R.C.B.B., Book rv, 1970: 21). Many of this latter group have joined vehemently anti-communist, right-wing groups like the Hun- garian Freedom Fighters, the Polish Combattants’ Association and the League for the Liberation of the Ukraine.

The especially grave situation faced by Indian and Pakistani immigrants, towards whom there has been a dramatic increase in violence and every form of discrimination (Ubale, 1977: 173), is discussed by Stasiulis.

Highly skilled and educated South Asians, coming to Toronto after the liberalization of Canada’s immigration laws, were compelled to take employment well below their levels of qualification, thus generating intense dissatisfaction among them (1980: 160).


An observation by Berry et al. that Canadians are more likely to discriminate against higher status immigrants and less likely to seek their services (1980 provides part of the explanation for the hostility these immigrants experience. Their visibility suggests that the magnitude of opposition to their presence also contains a strong racist component.

Canadians are generally more hostile to Indian and Pakistani immigration than to West Indian immigration, more hostile to West Indian than Italian immigration, more hostile to Italian than American or British (Table x). Stasiulis observes that this set of preferences conforms to the historical ’ethnic pecking order’ established in Canada’s immigration policy (interview).

Kalbach has recently shown that the supposedly objective point system of immigration has reinforced ethnic stratification through the concentration of immigrants from some countries into prestige occupations, such as Americans in management, and immigrants from elsewhere in lower echelon positions, such as Jamaicans in clerical, transport equipment, and material handling (1979 :31).

Hence, until the working class gains a clearer understanding of the ethnic splits in the labour market and how capitalists exploit these splits to align at times with dominant ethnic group workers and ethnic ’middlemen’ little progress will be made in moving the working class from its predominantly economistic consciousness1o toward class consciousness. (Johnston and Ornstein 1979: 32). Capitalists import immigrants in order to undercut the wages of dominant ethnic group workers in whose economic interests it is to oppose immigration. Mul- ticultural policies provide the veil to hide this reality by implying that everyone’s culture is being given equal treatment, at least before the law. Meanwhile the superexploitation of immigrants and the division of workers along ethnic lines continues. ’Bilingualism and biculturalism’ was supposed to satisfy French Cana- dians; ’multiculturalism’ was meant to do the same for the other ethnic groups. These liberal balancing mechanisms sought to legitimize the existing ethnic com- position of the unequal capitalist class structure.

Consequently, so as to minimize ethnic and racial antagonism while promoting working-class interests and unity, semi-autonomous workers (including sociol- ogists and anthropologists) should be encouraged to form alliances” with other workers to construct internationalist united fronts against the Canadian bourgeois and foreign monopoly capitalist interest in resurrecting falling rates of profit through the exploitation of immigrants and the abrogation of native people’s rights and legitimate land claims. Semi-autonomous workers are uniquely suited to play this catalyst role because they usually favour the protection of native people’s rights, are more tolerant of newcomers’ idiosyncrasies, recognize discrimination against immigrants by police and courts, and tend not to believe that this and other forms of discrimination are an apt response to immigrants’ own behaviour.

N O T E S

*- An asterisk following ethnic type indicates fewer than 50 respondents. 1 Dutt argues that fascism is the logical culmination of monopoly capitalism decaying

in the age of imperialism. To prevent economic collapse and political defeat, capital-


ists are forced to fall back on domestic totalitarianism and foreign war. As forces for revolution develop locally and anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist wars develop abroad, monopoly capitalists seek to resurrect their falling rates of profit through intensified exploitation of the working class and especially the multi-ethnic sub- proletariat while mobilizing for total war. They proceed by surreptitiously fostering conservative, nationalist movements which often mouth anti-capitalist slogans. Sohn-Rethel explains that when the essential part of production costs are fixed, curtailing production is more expensive (plant with low capacity must be completely written off) than keeping production going even though weak demand does not justify the continued production. Steel production, for example, becomes rational- ized into excess capacity so the state must coerce the public to pay for continued non-reproductive production: military spending, space exploration, etc. But Laclau feels that the relative autonomy of the fascist state should not be underestimated, that fascist ideology has no necessary class base and, in any case, often tends to be most appealing to the class most threatened by the crisis, the petite bourgeoisie, even though the racism, militarism and nationalism which characterizes fascist ideology ultimately serve the interests of monopoly capital most directly.

2 Those excluded from the sample lived in the ’Yukon and Northwest Territories, residents of the far northern regions of Canada, public and private institutions and Indian reservations’ (Johnston and Ornstein, 1982: 199-200).

three contemporary Marxist understandings of classes in advanced capitalist socie- ties: those of Poulantzas (1975) Carchedi (1975) and Wright (1978). Lindsey then dismisses all of them, in part, as a result of accepting an Althusserian distinction which mystifies the understanding of social relations of production. Althusser dis- tinguishes between what he calls the abstract level of analysis, that of modes of production, and the concrete level of the social formation within which dominant and residual modes of production are articulated. By failing to see that modes of production, though in complicated articulation with one another, are indeed real and concrete, Lindsey concludes that the above three Marxists have missed a second level of theoretical analysis, ’the political and ideological superstructures necessary to maintain and reproduce these relations of production, sometimes called the economic formation of society, yielding the two further classes, the white collar and ideological classes’ (1981: 316). Armed with this level of analysis heretofore missed by the above Marxists, Lindsey concludes that the above authors ’end up placing the residual groups into a new middle class (Carchedi) or new petty bourgeoisie (Poulantzas), or finding contradictory class positions (Wright), instead of incorpo- rating them into the theory of the capitalist mode of production’ (1981: 316). While all three Marxists do indeed present elaborate theories of contemporary monopoly capitalist society, Wright’s semi-autonomous workers and manager-technocrats seem to describe real locations within the social relations of production as well as the political and ideological superstructure of modern capitalist society. Substantial economic and ideological differences exist between Poulantzas’s ’new’ (e.g. teachers) and ‘old’ petty bourgeoisie (e.g. farmers). For one thing teachers help to reproduce mostly the monopoly capitalist relations of production, and farmers are largely part of simple commodity production, a separate mode articulated with monopoly capitalist production, though nevertheless on the wane. Secondly, both Poulantzas

3 In a recent issue of CSRA (1981: 316) Lindsey acknowledged the prominence of


and Carchedi include middle and upper level managers in the bourgeoisie even though this strata simply manages production relations for the owners, the capitalists. Carchedi’s new middle class, like Poulantzas’s new petty bourgeoisie, contains many white-collar workers who sell their labour for a wage. Wright considers these people, more plausibly I think, part of the working class because they do not own or control what they produce or how they produce it, but instead, merely receive a wage for selling their labour. Johnston and Ornstein’s preference for Car- chedi is based in part on the fact that Wright’s semi-autonomous workers, like other workers, ’neither own nor control their means of production nor control capital investment’ even though, unlike other workers, semi-autonomous workers do control their own labour process. Using Carchedi’s schema and the Quality of Life data they arrive at a class structure comprised of a ’bourgeoisie 7.7 per cent; petty bourgeoisie 13.8 cent; middle class 19.6 per cent; and working class 59.9 per cent’ (1982: 201). John Myles, Wallace Clement, Dennis Forcese and Hugh McRoberts admit that the empirical significance of using Wright’s categories has already been shown by 1979-80 federal election studies and York’s Quality of Life Survey but they argue that ’both sets of national surveys have perforce used a very restricted set of items’ (1981: 5).

Corporate Capitalists are i per cent of the economically active population, Small Employers 6-7 per cent, Rentier Capitalists 1-2 per cent, Petty Bourgeoisie 7-9 per cent, Managers 8-10 per cent, Supervisors 14-18 per cent, Professional Employees II- 13 per cent, Non-Productive Proletariat 23-25 per cent and Productive Proletariat 22-25 per cent.

5 For social class (Table XII) the eta of 0.16 drops to a beta of 0.06 when education is controlled for. Table XIV indicates how much less concerned people with higher levels of education are that newcomers try harder to be like other Canadians.

6 Controlling for education, we see that although there is no interaction between the two independent variables and the main effects of the relationship are significant (Table XI), most of the effect is due to education not social class. The eta for the unadjusted deviation in education only drops from 0.19 to a beta of 0.16. There was a clear relationship between the more education respondents had and the degree to which they disagreed with the view that immigrants to this country are not prepared to work as hard as people born in Canada.

7 The eta for social class of 0.19 drops to 0.15 (beta) when adjusted for the effect of education. The unadjusted eta for education of 0.18 drops to 0.15 (beta) when adjusted for the effect of social class but since the F statistic at the 0.01 level of significance is not quite significant for education, no clear relationship emerges between educational level and the perception about the value of immigrants’ work.

8 Table xv which uses occupation as the independent variable, indicates that farmers and farm labourers are the least willing to protect the rights of native people overall although 28.8 per cent of self-employed professionals are also not prepared to put as much effort as is currently being put into protecting their ri,ghts. Still more than half (53.0 per cent) of this latter group would like to put in more effort. Semi- skilled clerical, unskilled clerical and skilled clerical people (all workers) are most prepared to protect the rights of native people. The petite bourgeoisie is obviously polarized on this issue.

4 According to Livingstone, (1983: 62) still using Wright’s categories for Ontario,


As the differences between the attitudes of non-participants in the labour force versus participants appear to be significant (Henry, 1978: 5 ) we did not include housewives within the class structure unless they worked 20 hours per week or more in the labour force. On the other hand, Wright considers the housewives of workers to be working class, arguing that they both have a fundamental interest in socialism.

lated with production relations, then it is clear that the class location of the housewife is not defined via her husband but via the family unit of which they both are a part. It is, indeed a reflection of the sexism of capitalist society that the division of labour within such a family unit often sends the man out to work and leaves the woman in the home. But it is not sexist to identify the class location of the women in terms of the way in which the family is inserted into capitalist relations of production (1978: 92).

9 Though Ukrainians are among the most polarized of Canadian ethnic groups there are obviously some who fall in the middle. The paragraph referred to in this footnote is also based on interviews I conducted in 1979 with leaders of the u.c.c., St. Vladimir’s Institute, the A . U . U . C . w . B . A . , the Canadian League for the Ukraine’s Liberation, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian National Professional and Businessman’s Club, the Ukrainian Self-Reliance League, the Ukrainian Na- tional Federation and the World Congress of Free Ukrainians.

decidedly on the left, corresponds most ‘closely to Lenin’s (1967: 122, 130) concep- tion of trade union consciousness’ and is engaged mainly in protecting its immedi- ate, economic interests.

11 An indication of the pivotal role in class struggle which semi-autonomous workers can play was illustrated in early 1983 by Quebec teachers. As a contradictory class location, the semi-autonomous workers’ consciousness is often bifurcated between petit bourgeois and working-class consciousness. While in Ontario teachers have traditionally espoused a so-called ’professional’ consciousness, in Quebec they have seen themselves as workers and have aligned with the QFL and the CSN against the increasingly bourgeois PQ Government (see Harp and Betcherman, 1980).

If we treat the family as the essential unit of analysis, and ask: how is the family articu-

10 Johnston and Ornstein argue that the working class’s consciousness, though

A P P E N D I X I

This study is based on the answers to the following questions: d W e would like to know how much effort you think government should put into a number of activities. Please choose the answer on this card which comes closest to your opinion about the effort necessary in each area. Remember that putting more effort into one of these areas would require a shift of money from other areas or an increase in taxes, e.g.: how much effort should be put into protecting the rights of native people? 2/We have some questions about immigration. First, could you tell me what you think of a series of statements, using the answers on the card: a/People who come to live in Canada should try harder to be more like other Canadians. b/Immigrants are often discriminated against because the police and the courts are not prepared to take a strong


stand against discrimination. c/Immigrants to this country aren’t prepared to work as hard as people born in Canada. d/The hard work of immigrants has done a lot to help this country. e/Immigrants often bring discrimination on themselves by their own personal habits and attitudes. 3/Some people think that at the present time Canada would be better off if a lot more people came to live here, while others think there are enough new Canadians now. What would you say: does Canada need a lot more immigrants, a few more, or are there enough here now? 4/We would like to know whether you think that Canada has admitted too many immigrants, about the right number of immigrants, or too few immigrants from Britain in the last few years. a/Britain, b/United States, c/India and Pakistan dlwest Indies e/Italy.

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Class and ethnic differences in Canadians' attitudes to native people's rights and immigration

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