teachers and the evolving structural context of economic and political attitudes in quebec society

Teachers and the evolving structural context of economic and political attitudes in Quebec society"

R A Y M O N D M U R P H Y University of Ottawa

Le present travail dimontre que les thCories fondCes sur les differences culturelles et les thiories de classe ethnique sont inadCquates pour expliquer les rapports entre francophones et anglophones au QuCbec. Dans ce travail on avance une thCorie structurelle dexclusion destinie a analyser non seulement la stratification de ces deux groupes mais aussi les deux orientations successives dans les attitudes des enseignants dans les 6coles fran- caises. Au fur et 1 mesure que les barrigres dexclusion devenaient des entraves collec- tives pour les enseignants, ceux-ci transformPrent leurs normes: leur Cthique individua- liste du travail visant ii surmonter les barrieres a cCdC sa place ii un dCsir d'Climiner ces barrigres par un effort collectif et politique. Ces deux orientations correspondaient aux deux Ctapes de la 'rivolution tranquille' de la sociCtC quebecoise d6clenchCe par l'interna- tionalisation du capital.

This paper shows that theories based on cultural-value differences and theories of ethnic class are inadequate explanations of French-English relations in Quebec. A structural theory of exclusion is proposed for analyzing not only the stratification of these two groups but also the two successive attitudinal orientations of teachers in French schools, attitudes which correspond to the two stages of the 'quiet revolution' in Quebec society that was provoked by the internationalization of capital. Teachers changed from norms emphasizing the individual's attempt to surmount barriers of exclusion to the collective political desire to eliminate those barriers.

It has often been claimed that the values and attitudes of francophones in Quebec have been responsible for their inferior economic position. Theories based on values and attitudes have been the earliest and, in some quarters, most persistent, ways of linking ethnicity and social class. More recently, and in quite different quarters, a theory of ethnic class has been proposed as an alternative way of relating these two concepts. The present paper seeks to demonstrate that a third approach, which will be called a structural theory of exclusion, provides a superior analysis of the relationship between ethnicity and class. The structural theory of exclusion will be used to gain insight into the economic and political attitudes of francophone teachers in Quebec, a group deeply involved in the changes since the

* I would like to thank Leslie Lauko, Jean Lapointe, Rolande Soucie, and Kawusu Fadiga for their many helpful comments. The original version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the C.S.A.A. in June 1977. The present revised version was accepted for publication in June 1979.

Rev. canad. SOC. & AnthJCanad. Rev. SOC. k Anth. 18(z) 1981

158 R A Y M O N D M U R P H Y

’quiet revolution.’ The reader will realize quickly that this study is not just of teachers but of the recent history of Quebec and Canada, with particular attention to the role of this key group.

This paper will contribute to the ongoing debate concerning the relationship between ethnicity and social class by suggesting a theory of the role of power, interests, language, and attitudes in that relationship. An attempt will be made to specify the articulation of changes in macro-level economic structures, micro-level attitudinal changes, and collective aspirations for changes in large-scale political structures.

A C U L T U R A L D I F F E R E N C E THEORY

Norman Taylor (1964) has given one of the clearest presentations of the argument that a cultural difference between the French and English communities in Quebec accounts for their dissimiliar positions in the stratification system. He contends that the divergent vaiue emphasis of the French and English-Canadian cultures results in different work attitudes among the individual members of these two societies. He found that such differences did exist for the businessmen interviewed in Quebec in the middle of the nineteen-fifties.

The French businessmen were found to attach greater importance to the family, to personal relationships, to security, and they were reluctant to advance in business especially if these priorities were threatened. They had modest aspirations, were not eager to do battle in the marketplace, and had an inferiority complex vis-i-vis English Canadians. Self-made men were rare and were viewed with distrust. The French-Canadian value orientation emphasized tradition, particularism, and ascribed status. Taylor contended that French Canadians were often ill at ease in the federal civil service because such advantages as knowing the right people - highly significant in their own culture - had no meaning in a setting governed by what he and anglophone civil servants saw as universalistic and objective standards.

English Quebec businessmen, on the other hand, were found to stress objective standards such as qualifications and experience as well as impersonal relationships in their work. They valued advancement in their business and were eager to compete; in fact, some said that their business just couldn’t help growing. Universalism and achievement were found to be central to the English value orientation.

The difference in values and attitudes was Taylor’s explanation of the differential success of French and English businessmen and hence of the dissimilar positions of the French and English communities in the stratification system of Quebec. A similar argument has been proposed more recently by Raynauld (1974), and, in a modified form, was used by Porter (1965).‘ Jain also found French- English differences in work attitudes and interpreted them in much the same way as did Taylor. His conclusions were given extensive coverage in the English- Canadian press, appearing on the front page of such newspapers as The Globe and Mail (27 February 1979) and The Ottawa Journal (27 February 1979)’ (Jain, 1979).

Taylor suggested that the value differences also had political consequences in the middle of the nineteenth century: they incited English industrial entrepreneurs in

159 QUEBEC TEACHERS A N D E C O N O M I C A N D POLITICAL ATTITUDES

Lower Canada to push for union with Upper Canada, to drown out the French- value orientation by reducing the French to a minority group within a larger unit. ’It was, in fact, in an attempt to escape the retarding influence of a French- dominated Quebec parliament, whose deliberations and enactments were attuned to what for the English was an earlier age, that the English-speaking commercial interests began to press for the union of the two Canadas, Upper and Lower’ (Taylor, 1964: 293).

Other sociologists (Dofny and Rioux, 1964; Rocher, 1964; Niosi, 1978) have pointed out that Taylor has failed to place these differences in attitudes within the broader political and economic context in which they were formed. Therefore his assertion that cultural differences have provoked attitudinal differences borders on a tautology. They argued that the attitudes of French-Canadian industrialists were at least as much the consequence as the cause of stratification in Quebec.

There are empirical reasons for believing that the differences Taylor found were the last remnants of a situation in the process of changing. Taylor carried out his study in the mid-fifties, precisely the period during which French-Canadian entrepreneurs established the businesses which they subsequently enlarged to the point where Niosi (1978) found a major expansion of the French-Canadian big bourgeoisie. This suggests that many French-Canadian businessmen at that time were becoming very interested in advancing their businesses.

Furthermore, since Taylor claimed that the differences in work attitudes derive from the divergent value emphasis of the French and English-Canadian cultures, his explanation suggests that these attitudinal differences are not restricted to businessmen. It implies that we should expect to find similar differences among other segments of the population, such as students. Belanger and Pedersen (1973) found in their re-analysis of Breton and MacDonald’s (1967) data that francophone secondary school students attached greater importance to work and to a career and were prepared to make more sacrifices for their work than were anglophone students. This was true both in Quebec and in New Brunswick in 1965. Similar French-English differences in attitudes have been found for secondary school students in all of Canada (Nolle and Greenwood, 1973; Breton, 1972) based on the same survey and in Ontario (M. Porter et al., 1973) based on a different survey carried out in 1972. These findings came from samples which were statistically representative of all secondary school students in the French and English collectivities in Quebec, Canada, and Ontario respectively. M. Porter et al. (1973) conclude that their findings contradict the assumption that fewer French- Canadians than English-Canadians were successful in the work world because they were less competitive and less mobility oriented. The results of Nolle and Greenwood’s study led Crysdale and Beattie to conclude cautiously that ’it appears that Francophone students in the sample hold more strongly than Anglophones to values that are conducive to upward mobility’ (1973 : 110).

These findings and conclusions flatly contradict Taylor’s theory. Although the work attitudes of francophones may have changed between the mid-fifties (when Taylor carried out his study) and 1965, Taylor’s conclusions gave no hint of this oncoming change because his theory based on the divergent value emphasis of the French and English-Canadian cultures provided no means of predicting it. Furthermore, Taylor’s theory involves what sociologists in other areas refer to as


blaming the victim. It provides an ideological justification for the dominant position of some ethnic groups and the subordinate position of others. Hence Taylor's theory must be rejected on both theoretical and empirical grounds and a more plausible basis for explaining the relationship between ethnicity and social class must be sought.

THE THEORY OF E T H N I C C L A S S

The theory of ethnic class, as elaborated by Dofny and Rioux (1964), Dofny and Garon-Audy (1969) and Dofny (1978), conceives of ethnic groups as being different social classes. I t claims, for example, that in Quebec the English proletariat and the French bourgeoisie form such small proportions of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie respectively and have such a minor impact on Quebec society that they should be neglected. Thus the bourgeoisie can be conceived of as being English and the proletariat as being French. Conversely, such a theory of ethnic class conceives the English as being bourgeoisie and the French as being proletariat. The under-representation of one ethnic group, the French, in the bourgeoisie and its over-representation in the proletariat together with the opposite representation of the other ethnic group, the English, is advanced as empirical support for the theory of ethnic class

The concept of ethnic class is sociologically unenlightening because it conceals the existence of the French bourgeoisie and the English proletariat. By conceiving the French and the English as different social classes it obscures the class divisions within the French and English collectivities. Although Niosi (1978) found an under-representation of French-Canadians among the Canadian big bourgeoisie in 1975, he discovered a rapidly expanding French-Canadian big bourgeoisie which had very significant relationships with the Liberal governments in Quebec in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. He concludes that his findings directly disprove the theory of ethnic class as far as Quebec and Canada are concerned.

The theory of ethnic class also loses sight of the fact that, whereas there may have been only 34 per cent of the English in the Quebec labour force who were blue-collar workers in 1964, even then 43 per cent of the French were above them in the stratification of the labour force in Quebec society (see Dofny and Garon-Audy, 1969 Table ioA). This leads the English proletariat to perceive French-English inequalities to a lesser extent3 and to be less favourably disposed to francophone demands for the elimination of such inequalities than even the English middle and upper classes, as Lauko (1978) found. The English working class is not favourably inclined towards demands for the elimination of inequalities between linguistic groups because they perceive such inequalities to be minute in comparison with the much greater social class inequalities. The concept of ethnic class is misleading in any analysis of the reaction of the English working class to francophone demands or of working-class solidarity in Quebec.

The notion of ethnic class is an ideologically loaded term which obscures the exploitative behaviour of the French bourgeoisie. By ignoring the difference between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie within ethnic groups, the theory of ethnic cfass even implies that the English working class exploits the French bourgeoisie. Like Taylor's theory which it seeks to replace, the theory of ethnic class also involves blaming the victim.

161 Q U E B E C T E A C H E R S A N D E C O N O M I C A N D P O L I T I C A L A T T I T U D E S

The concept of ethnic class leads to confusion since it mixes together two different phenomena. It is necessary to keep ethnicity and social class conceptually distinct in order to examine the evolving relationship between the two. Under-representation of an ethnic group in the bourgeoisie or proletariat does not make it a distinct social class. A theory must be sought which permits conceiving of most, perhaps all, members of the dominant ethnic group receiving at least some benefits not accorded to the subordinate ethnic group, without conceiving of ethnic groups as being distinct social classes.

A S T R U C T U R A L THEORY OF E X C L U S I O N

The basic elements for a theory which avoids the difficulties inherent in a cultural values theory or a theory of ethnic class have been sketched by Collins (1971), Bourdieu and Passeron (1970)~ and Parkin (i974).4 Collins argues that job requirements in organizations are not technically fixed and technically determined; rather status groups which control jobs impose their cultural standards on the selection process. These cultural standards are arbitrary as far as organizational performance is concerned but they serve the interests of the dominant group and constitute barriers to the advancement of other status groups. Hence they are a form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970). Parkin (1974) views stratification in terms of two related modes of social closure. The first includes practices of exclusion in which one group attempts to maintain its privileges by creating another group of ineligibles beneath it. Group advantages are enhanced by defining a subordinate group as inferior.

A structural theory of exclusion implies that the dominant position of a group in the social structure enables it to impose its linguistic and cultural standards on the advancement process and these tend to exclude members of other groups from advancement. For example, even when English work settings and the market are characterized by formal equality, their linguistic and cultural requirements transform the language and culture of anglophones into important resources in the career contest and in business expansion and constitute barriers to francophones. Not only do these requirements amount to a frontier that interferes with the advancement of francophones (Guindon, 1978), but they are also the means by which anglophones are sponsored.

Exclusion, a5 used here, necessarily involves inclusion, but on the terms set by the dominant group. It involves imposing criteria according to which the dominant group can include members of other groups in a way that leads the latter to be treated as inferior and members of the dominant group as superior. Individual members of the subordinate group are not directly and completely excluded. It is a particular characteristic, such as their language, that is excluded. The principle behind exclusion is that of imposing criteria which are applied equally to all, thereby legitimating inequalities, but which are more suitable to the dominant group, thereby reproducing inequalities. Thus struggles among status groups overtly involve conflict over the criteria of inclusion, such as the language of work, but it is exclusion which underlies these struggles.

A structural theory of exclusion is an important part of the explanation of the under-representation of francophones in the bourgeoisie and in the upper strata of the social structure in Quebec. Here I would like to go further in an effort to come


full circle back to Taylor‘s theory. I will attempt to demonstrate that a structural theory of exclusion can also contribute important elements which help to explain differences in work attitudes between francophones and anglophones as well as the recent desire among many francophones for a collective political change.

A structural theory of exclusion would lead us to believe that the context of economic power, with the mechanisms which facilitated English advancement and constituted barriers to the French, was central in forming different work attitudes among the members of these two linguistic communities. Rocher (1976) argues that the environment contains obstacles which can be so great that, on the one hand, they inhibit or destroy motivation or, on the other hand, are surmountable enough to constitute a challenge which stimulates motivation. Individuals internalize these attitudes either through their own experience with the facilitators or barriers or by being socialized by other members of their linguistic community who have had such experiences.

A structural theory of exclusion also suggests another consequence. Collins (1971) argues that since power, prestige, and wealth are scarce goods, the desire of some individuals for more than their equal share sets in motion the counter- struggle of others to escape subjection, disesteem, and dispossession. This struggle is primarily between rather than within status groups because individual identity is associated with membership in these groups and internal cohesiveness is an important resource in the struggle. The second mode of social closure in Parkin’s (1974) theory, solidarism, is the response of excluded groups to resist the state of dominance by exclusion practices. Solidarism is a form of social closure which implies different standards of distributive justice from those inherent in exclusion practices. It challenges the present stratified order by threatening to reduce the share of resources monopolized by the dominant group.

It should be noted that a structural theory of exclusion is not so much based on the assumption that individual identity is determined by status group membership as it is on the observation that common feelings of identity can be fostered and used to combat practices of exclusion. Corresponding to the two levels suggested by a structural theory of exclusion, this paper will examine attitudes in terms of the individual work ethic and the desire for a counter-struggle by the subordinate ethnic collectivity.

The findings of many studies suggest that a theory of exclusion has been applicable to French-English relations in Quebec and in Canada. Raynauld (1974) documented the subordinate position of francophones with respect to the ownership of companies in the private sector in the 1960s in Quebec. Carlos (1973) and Sales (1977) showed how owners imposed their linguistic and ethnic standards on positions they controlled and how these acted as barriers which excluded members of other groups. Beattie’s (1975) findings suggested that there were similar processes of exclusion which prevented French-Canadians from advancing in their careers in the Canadian public service.5 Cardinal (1978) used the direction of translation as a barometer to reveal the same phenomena in the Quebec private sector and in the federal government. The mobility study of McRoberts et al. (1976) and the income study of Boulet (1979) found that the status attainment process was less open to francophones than to anglophones and that this was particularly true for higher positions and higher income categories.

163 Q U E B E C T E A C H E R S A N D E C O N O M I C A N D POLITICAL A T T I T U D E S

It is also necessary to consider the evolution of the structures of exclusion. According to Sales (1974) and Eccles (i972), the dominant position of the English community in Quebec originated with the British conquest. This cut off French Canadians from their commercial and banking connections with France while permitting English traders to support their economic activity with a network in Great Britain which was much less accessible to French Canadians. Until the early nineteen-fifties French Canadians tended to be structurally excluded from the career contest in the private sector and from expanding the market for their businesses, resulting in their strong under-representation in these areas as reported in Hughes ( ~ 9 4 3 ) ~ Rocher and de Jocas (1957) and Niosi (1978). The environmental obstacles were so great that they most likely inhibited the motivation for individual and collective advancement in these areas. Taylor’s (1964) description of attitudes may have been applicable during this period.

The massive American investment in Canada in the nineteen-fifties (Levitt, 1970) and the subsequent demand for qualified personnel resulted in a profound transformation of the division of labour. A large-scale movement occurred out of the rural and ’unshlled’ working classes and the middle class was broadened enormously (Clark, 1976).7 In Quebec, this resulted in an increase in incomes, an expansion of the local market (Niosi, i978), and a tendency toward convergence in the occupational structures of the French and English communities (Dofny and Garon-Audy, 1969; McRoberts et al., 1976; and Boulet, 1979). What Clark (1976) calls the first stage of the quiet revolution was marked by the development of opportunities for advancement which were not in conflict with the establishment.

I would suggest that the opportunities created by the massive direct foreign investment stimulated aspirations among both the French and the English. In order to seize these opportunities, however, the French had to make a greater investment of effort than the English: for example, they had to learn a second language. This was because the economic sector was dominated by the English who imposed their linguistic and cultural requirements on jobs they controlled. The need for qualified personnel resulted in the inclusion of the French at the middle levels of the private sector, but on the terms dictated by the controlling English group. During this period of expanded opportunity the presence of these surmountable obstacles conditioned the French much more than the Enghsh into norms emphasizing individual striving for occupational success. Francophones internalized such norms as they grew up in this first stage of the quiet revolution. This is why Belanger and Pedersen and others referred to earlier detected a stronger work ethic among French students than English students in 1965. French and English attitudes in 1965 were the result of processes of internalization during the first stage of the quiet revolution based on the structure of obstacles and opportunities faced by the two linguistic groups in the Quebec labour market during that period.8 The ’forced mobility’ (Dofny and Garon-Audy, 1969), resulting from changes in the division of labour and in the opportunity structure subsequent to the massive foreign investment of the nineteen-fifties, stimulated a work ethic among francophones in search of further upward mobility.9

The branch-plant, peripheral, Canadian economy dependent on the American metropolis was, however, incapable of absorbing, especially at higher levels in the labour market, the next generation which had swelled with the high birth rate after


the war. This new generation could be absorbed in the late nineteen-sixties and seventies only if the establishment was pushed out. What Clark (1976) refers to as the second stage of the quiet revolution involved a zero-sum game in which rewards could be acquired by the newcomers only if there were diminished rewards for the establishment. Norms held by francophones which emphasized individual striving and sacrifice in order to surmount barriers of exclusion tended to be replaced in the Quebec of the late sixties and seventies by a desire for a collective political effort to eliminate the barriers and with them the English establishment."

It was precisely the increased opportunities for upward mobility resulting from the need for qualified personnel during the economic expansion provoked by American investment that stimulated the aspiration in the first stage to surmount barriers of exclusion. The limited possibilities for further mobility in an externally dependent economy transformed this aspiration in the second stage into a desire for a collective political effort to eliminate those barriers. This argument suggests that the massive investment in Quebec by an external bourgeoisie triggered changes in the structures of opportunity and exclusion, in orientations at the individual and collective levels, and a potential change of political structures in Canada. This investment expanded opportunities at the middle levels, raising aspirations, but not eliminating barriers of exclusion faced by francophones especially at the upper levels. The result was a collective political reaction in Quebec. This argument specifies the consequences of the internationalization of capital for the internal structure of one dependent society - in this case, Quebec. An externally provoked development inherently limited by the interests of the external centres of decision malung gave rise to an autonomous internal source of development as an emergent property."

By increasing aspirations as well as the demand for qualified personnel, the investment also resulted in the rapid expansion of institutions for training personnel. It resulted, for example, in the widespread desire for a reform of the educational system. These institutions were linguistically segmented and mostly provided positions for persons working with cultural goods, for instance, in teaching. These positions and institutions became important channels of upward mobility and of heightened aspirations.

Fournier (1977) argues that structural changes in the economy of Quebec have created and expanded a new petty bourgeoisie (which includes teachers) who specialize in the production and diffusion of cultural goods. Since their skills can be readily appreciated only in the Quebec market, they have a vested interest in consolidating the national identity. The defense of language and culture cannot be dissociated from the defense of profession and market. He claims that only a change in the political relationship between French and English Canadians can assure the conditions necessary to maintain and improve the social position of those who produce and diffuse knowledge and culture in the French language. The new petty bourgeoisie therefore looks to the state to accomplish this change. Fournier argues that there has been a conversion of cultural nationalism into the political nationalism of the petty bourgeoisie. He contends that this new petty bourgeoisie has supported and worked for the Parti QuPbecois.

One fraction of the new petty bourgeoisie, teachers, acts as principal agents of the socialization of the young, a position of particular importance for the conservation or change of Quebec society. The fact that teachers were collectively


affected by the barriers of exclusion and the indissociability of teachers' defense of their language and culture from the defense of their market was evident in the school enrolment crisis of the early and midnineteen-seventies and the reaction of teachers to it. The English domination of the Quebec economy, especially at the upper levels, and the resulting imposition of English linguistic and cultural requirements on jobs led immigrants and even francophones to choose to send their children to English schools to improve their chances for upward mobility. Hence, until the adoption of Law 101, the drop in the birth rate seriously affected attendance at French schools (and therefore teachers' jobs) but not attendance at English schools which was compensated by the children of immigrants. Teachers in the French school system were collectively affected by the English domination of the Quebec economy. Their collective aspirations and their individual interests are intimately bound together in their desire to make French the language of work at all levels of Quebec society as well as the language of schooling. The converse is true of teachers in the English school system. They have come out strongly against the Charter on the French Language (Morisette, 1 9 7 7 ~ and i977d) and in favour of freedom of choice of schooling for all, including the children of immigrants, in order to conserve the market for their services. Teachers are well aware that, in the absence of legal constraints, parental choice of the school for their children will be determined by language constraints imposed on jobs by those who control the economic sector. Teachers are deeply involved in the struggle between the two linguistic groups in Quebec.

Moreover, the effort by teachers in the French school system to remove the linguistic barriers faced by francophones in Quebec does not bring with it the threat of job loss, as is the case for francophones who work in federal institutions or in English companies (Laporte, 1974: 118). Upward collective mobility does not carry the threat of downward individual mobility.

It was precisely in this linguistically segmented sector dealing with cultural goods, where francophones were collectively rather than individually affected by the barriers of exclusion, that there developed an awareness that collective political efforts to eliminate the barriers were more appropriate than individual effort and sacrifice to surmount the barriers. I would suggest, therefore, that the desire for a collective political response to remove the linguistic and cultural barriers of exclusion is especially strong among the new petty bourgeoisie in general and among teachers in the French secondary school system in particular.

TEACHERS

It is within and with respect to this structural context of exclusion that the economic and political attitudes of teachers in Quebec must be examined and explained. These attitudes will be investigated at the two levels which correspond to those suggested by a structural theory of exclusion - the individual level and the level of a collective counter-struggle."

The individual Level Table I shows that teachers in the French and English school systems in 1965 had different work orientations even after their individual occupational origins were controlled.'3 The first five items show what these two groups sought in

TABL

E I

WO

RK

OR

IEN

TA

TIO

N O

F Q

UE

BE

C S

EC

ON

DA

RY

5C

HO

OL

TE

AC

HE

RS

BY S

CH

OO

L S

YST

EM

WIT

H O

CC

UPA

TIO

NA

L O

RIG

INS

CO

NT

RO

LIE

D, 19

65 (I

N P

ER

CFN

TA

CFS

)

Wor

k or

ient

atio

n O

ccup

atio

nal O

rigi

ns

Blue

Col

lar

Fore

man

and

Whi

te C

olla

r

Item

N

umbe

r It

em

Fren

ch

Engl

ish

Fren

ch

Engl

ish

syst

em

syst

em

d sy

stem

sy

stem

d

Ran

k th

e fiv

e ite

ms b

elow

in te

rms

of th

eir

impo

rtanc

e to

you

In

a jo

b Th

e se

curi

ty of

ste

ady

wor

k

The

oppo

rtun

ity fo

r rap

id p

rom

otio

n Th

e en

joym

ent o

f th

e w

ork

itsel

f

68.0

(103

7)

21 l

(826

) 84

1 (1

003)

51.1

(135

) 9.

2 (1

10)

93.2

(151

) 47

.1 (1

20)

21.4

(121

)

16.9

*'

11.9

**

-9.1

*"

- 16.

1" *

4.2'

*

61.6

(375

) 37

.8 (1

45)

12.1

(311

) 11

.4 (1

33)

73.0

(375

) 96

.1 (1

67)

35.5

(335

) 48

.2 (

147)

31

.7 (3

43)

24.9

(143

)

23.8

'' 0.

7 -2

3.1'

-1

2.7'

* 6

.W

Frie

ndly

peo

ple

to w

ork

with

Goo

d Pa

y

31.0

(836

) 25

.6 (9

32)

The

mos

t im

port

ant t

hing

for a

par

ent t

o do

is to

hel

p hi

s ch

ildre

n ge

t fur

ther

ahe

ad in

the

wor

ld th

an h

e di

d 44

.6 (1

122)

Th

e m

ost i

mpo

rtan

t pur

pose

of

high

sch

ools

is to

pre

pare

pe

ople

for t

heir

occ

upat

iona

l car

eer

39.6

(112

0)

The

job

shou

ld c

ome

firs

t, ev

en if

it m

eans

sacr

ifici

ng ti

me

from

recr

eatio

n 44

.6 (1

126)

Th

e be

st w

ay to

judg

e a

man

is b

y hi

s su

cces

s in

his

8.3

(111

8)

ocuu

patio

n A

re y

ou s

atis

fied

that

the

peop

le of

you

r com

mun

ity g

ive

prop

er r

ecog

nitio

n to

you

r wor

k?

Are

you

satis

fied

that

the

scho

ol au

thor

ities

giv

e pro

per

reco

gniti

on t

o yo

ur w

ork?

A

re y

ou s

atis

fied

that

the

pare

nts o

f yo

ur s

tude

nts g

ive

prop

er re

cogn

ition

to

your

wor

k?

43.0

(114

8)

64.2

(114

7)

41.7

(11

32)

42.1

(392

) 7.

9 (1

68)

34.2

*'

9.8

(153

) 34

.8*'

7

9.7

(152

) 29

.9"

33.6

(390

) 13

.2 (1

69)

20.4

*'

8 38

.6 (3

93)

16.8

(168

) 5.

4 (3

93)

2.3

(170

) 21

.8''

3.1

18.7

(151

) 1.

8 (15

3)

25.9

'*

6.5'

9 1OC

32

.4 (4

00)

28.6

(168

) 25

.2 (1

53)

17.8

**

3.8

11

43.0

(154

) 21

.2**

57

.5 (4

05)

47.1

(169

) 10

.4

12

29.7

(398

) 22

.2 (1

67)

19.9

(151

) 21

.8"'

7.5*

NOTE:

N in

par

enth

eses

a

Item

s 1 to

5: p

er c

ent w

ho ra

nked

that

item

as

the

mos

t or

seco

nd m

ost i

mpo

rtan

t of

the

five

item

s b

Item

s 6

to 9

: per

cen

t who

str

ongl

y ag

reed

c

Item

s 10

to 1

2: p

er c

ent v

ery

we11

sat

isfie

d Th

e re

sults

are

show

n in

this

way

sim

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their work. Teachers in the French system ranked security, advancement, and pay higher than did teachers in the English system. The latter ranked the intrinsic enjoyment of the work and friendly fellow workers at a higher level than did their counterparts in the French system.

The greater importance attached to security by teachers in the French system becomes comprehensible from the perspective of a structural theory of exclusion, which sees the work attitudes of a status group as conditioned by the opportunities or barriers it faces. Teachers in the French system gave higher priority to the security of steady work because members of the French community were subject to more risks in a labour market that placed before them special linguistic and cultural barriers not faced by the English.

One might be tempted to conclude that the higher value teachers in the English system attached to 'the enjoyment of the work itself' indicated that they had a stronger work ethic than their counterparts in the French system. Before yielding to such an interpretation items 6 to 9 in the table need to be examined. They show that teachers in the French system attached more importance to the job and to an occupational career, were more willing to make sacrifices for their job, and viewed the roles of parents and the school more in terms of individual advancement and preparation for an occupational career than teachers in the English system, this being true of those from blue- and white-collar origins. '4 A work ethic in this sense was more characteristic of teachers in the French system than of those in the English system. The surmountable linguistic and cultural obstacles (not faced by anglophones) in the job market during a period of expanded economic opportunity conditioned francophones into such a work ethic ideology, into norms emphasizing the necessity of labourious striving and sacrifice to get ahead, with the role of parents and the school being to provide the means.'5

I would suggest that these attitudinal differences were characteristic not just of teachers but of all upwardly mobile segments of the population and perhaps even of the French and English communities in general during the economic expansion in the first stage of the quiet revolution in Quebec society. BClanger and Pedersen and other investigators referred to previously have shown that similar attitudinal differences held true for the secondary school students. I would submit that francophones growing up during this period learned norms emphasizing a work ethic from other members of their linguistic community (parents, relatives, friends) who had experienced or observed the surmountable linguistic and cultural barriers. For example, the children of a unilingual French father excluded from an English work setting or from advancement therein will internalize the necessity of the work and sacrifice required to learn a second language in order to get ahead during a time of increased economic opportunity. This shows the contextual nature of the effect, in which the work attitudes were the product of the barriers faced by the French collectivity in the overall labour market rather than the product of barriers directly and individually experienced. In fact, I would suggest that during this first stage of the quiet revolution the ideology of a work ethic, after having been internalized early in life, remained particularly strong among francophones sheltered from the direct effects of the barriers, such as those who worked in linguistically segmented institutions (for example, schools) or who had not yet entered the labour market (students).

Items 10 to 12 of Table I show that teachers in the French school system were


more satisfied with the recognition given to their work by their community than were teachers in the English system. This was because the position reached was higher relative to their comparatively low reference group. French teachers were a t a higher place in the stratification system of their linguistic community than were English teachers because there was a stratification of the two linguistic communities. An individual's work attitudes depend not only on his or her place as an individual in the social structure; they also depend on the place of the group with which he or she identifies within that social structure and on the barriers faced by that group.

These differences between the work attitudes of teachers (and of students, according to the results of Bdanger and Pedersen, 1973, and other investigators referred to previously) in the French and English school systems need to be explained in terms of the position of the French and English communities in the social structure of Quebec and the resulting context of exclusion. The dominance of one status group enables it to impose its cultural standards on the selection process in the job market. The conquest of the French by the English enabled the latter to impose their language and culture on economic activity in Quebec. These transformed the language and culture of members of the English community into valued resources for career and business success and constituted barriers to members of the French community whose cultural resources were ignored. These facilitators or obstacles respectively faced by the two status groups led their members to internalize different attitudes. Barriers which, without being insurmountable, decrease the probability of advancement or hiring of members of a status group explain the under-representation of the group at higher levels, the cultivation of a work ethic by its members during periods of economic expansion, and their search for job security.

In Table II it can be seen that by 1972, in the second stage of the quiet revolution in Quebec society, the work attitudes of teachers in the French school system had approached (but were not identical to) those of teachers in the English school system. This was after the upward mobility of the French collectivity had enabled it to approach (but not equal) the English collectivity in the stratification system of Quebec (Dofny and Garon-Audy, 1969; McRoberts et al., 1976; and Boulet, 1979) and after the linguistic and cultural barriers faced by the French community had become proportionately fewer because of expansion in the francophone-dominated public sector and in the local market which francophone businesses could penetrate. The work ethic necessary to surmount the barriers diminished as proportionately fewer positions in the job market contained those linguistic and cultural barriers to francophones.

However, the limit to the rate of expansion of the public sector in general and in particular of the French side of linguistically segmented cultural institutions within a predominantly English private enterprise context was reached in the late sixties. For French teachers, the downturn in the birth rate posed a threat to their jobs in this English-dominated private enterprise context where most immigrants and many French parents chose to send their children to English schools. As the expansion of the public sector slowed down in this second stage of the quiet revolution, the intellectual petty bourgeoisie who work with French cultural goods in linguistically segmented institutions, particularly teachers in the French school system, became collectively affected by the barriers of exclusion in the private


TABLE I1 WORK ORIENTATION OF QUEBEC SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS BY SCHOOL SYSTEM, 1965 AND 1972 (IN PERCENTAGES)

Work Orientation

Item French English Number Item Year system system d

l a The most important thing for parents to do is to help their children get further ahead 1965 44.0 (1513) 8.8 (321) 35.2 than they did 1972 14.3 (1263) 7.4 (364) 6.9

2 The job should come first even if it means 1965 43.0 (1519) 17.7 (319) 25.3 sacrificing time from recreation 1972 16.3 (1260) 10.4 (366) 5.9

3 The best way to judge a man is by his success 1965 7.5 (1511) 2.1 (323) 5.4 in his occupation 1972 6.0 (1268) 2.4 (370) 3.6

4b Percent stating that the most important reason for a student to attend high school is to secure vocational training or to earn a 1965 38.0 (1510) 11.6 (321) 26.4 higher income 1972 26.6 (980) 4.5 (308) 22.1

NOTE: N in parentheses a Items 1 to 3: per cent who strongly agreed in 1965 and in 1972 with identical statements b Item 4: 1972. Corresponding percentages are for those who strongly agreed with a similar (but not identical) item (item 7 in Table I) in 1965.

sector. They therefore turned from an individualistic work ethic to a desire for a collective political struggle to change the English-dominated private enterprise context itself.

The Collective Counter-Struggle A structural theory of exclusion suggests a reaction at the collective level, in the sense of a desire for a solidaristic counter-struggle by the excluded group. Reasons have already been given to support the hypothesis that in the second stage of the quiet revolution this desire is particularly strong among the intellectual petty bourgeoisie in Quebec, which includes teachers, and that it is directed toward a parliamentary struggle. My evidence confirms this line of argument.

Table 111 shows that the proportion who had the intention to vote for the Parti QuCbCcois (the political party which had the strongest program for the removal of linguistic and cultural barriers to francophones) in 1972 was much higher among teachers (41.0 per cent) in the French secondary school system than in the overall population (15 per cent). In 1972 76 per cent of teachers in the French secondary school system who had decided which party to vote for decided in favour of the Parti QuCbCcois. The corresponding percentage in the overall population in 1972 was 28 per cent. Although the latter figure and the last column of Table III are not broken down by linguistic affiliation, they are so different from the voting intentions of teachers in the French school system that one can safely conclude (since the English formed only 18 per cent of the Quebec population) that more teachers in the French school system favoured the Parti QuCbCcois than did members of other occupational groups and social classes within the French community.

170 RAYMOND M U R P H Y

~~~ ~~ ~

TABLE I11 VOTING INTENTIONS, SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS AND THE OVERALL POPULATION OF QUEBEC, 1972 (IN PERCENTAGES)

Secondary School Teachers

l j there were provincial elections today, for French English what party would you vote?' system system Overall Popuhtionb

Liberal Party 10.5 45.6 42 Union Nationale 2.6 1.8 4 Parti Quebecois 41.0 9.7 15 Social Credit 1.5 1.8 8 I would be very undecided 34.2 31.8 31 I would abstain from voting 3.7 5.6 I am not at all interested in politics 6.6 3.8

a Belanger and Rocher (1976: 109). The survey was carried out in the spring of 1972. I have already described the sample on which it was based. b Le Devoir (22 avriIl976: p. 2). This survey based on a random sample of the Quebec population was carried out by the survey institute CROP in October 1972. The results were not broken down by English and French populations.

There are other indications of French teacher support for the Parti QuPbCcois. Shortly after the latter was elected in 1976 the critical socialist ideology of the leaders of the French Quebec teachers union (c. E . Q . ) during the Liberal regime was attacked by its members as having been rendered inappropriate by the results of the election and the union was urged to adopt a 'prejuhce in favour' of the Parti Quebecois because 'it is the party of the members of the c.E.Q.' (Sacy, 1977). A large number (14) of Parti QuPbPcois members elected to the Quebec parliament were elementary or secondary school teachers.

Still another indication of the desire of teachers in the French school system for a collective political effort to dismantle the linguistic barriers faced by the French community was the reaction of their union to the Charter on the French language in Quebec (1977) proposed by the Parti QuPbPcois government. The French teachers' union (c.E. Q . ) completely supported and was generally satisfied with the Charter because they saw in it the reflection of the union's own orientation. As far as the language of schooling was concerned, the union wanted to go further than the proposals of the Parti QuPbecois Government by progressively eliminating English educational institutions within the next decade and by requiring immigrant and French children now in English schools to attend French schools (Morissette, i977a and 1977b). The union later became more flexible with respect to the education of anglophones coming from other provinces but remained firm in regard to other groups (Morissette, 1977e).

Thus in the second stage of the quiet revolution in Quebec society teachers in the French school system, who are one fraction of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie, have become deeply involved in the political counter-struggle to remove the barriers of exclusion faced by the French community. This is indicated by their particularly high frequency of intention to vote for the Parti QuPbicois (the political party which has the strongest program for the removal of the linguistic and cultural barriers to the advancement of francophones) as early as 1972, by their


high rate of participation in the party in 1976, and by the reaction of their union to proposed legislation on the language of work and schooling in Quebec. Teachers in the French school system are seeking to impose their language, values, and cultural standards on the selection process in organizations within their territorial base, thereby extending the institutional completeness (Breton, 1964) of their status group. The separation of their workplace along linguistic lines is the model they propose for the parts which presently form the Canadian nation.

The support among teachers in the French system for a party whose goal is political independence marks a change from the past. Bklanger and Juneau (1975) found that in 1960 their sample of teachers in the French system showed them as optimistic or conciliatory with respect to Canadian unity. At that time the teachers felt that the diversity of religions, languages, educational systems, laws, customs, and traditions was compatible with the realization of Canadian unity.

The change, I suggest, is due to the upward mobility in an absolute sense and the resulting heightened aspirations of the French community together with its continuing inferior position in a relative sense and the existence of barriers at the upper levels which have a collective effect on the intellectual petty bourgeoisie in general and on teachers in particular. This has promoted the development of a consciousness among these subgroups that the solution to the barriers faced by members of the French collectivity is less that of individual striving and sacrifice to surmount the barriers and more that of a collective political response to eliminate them. These two different attitudinal orientations correspond to the two stages in the quiet revolution in Quebec society triggered by the massive American investment in the nineteen-fifties.

The work ethic of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie may have declined but it has not disappeared (as Table 11 shows). Fournier (1977) has observed that the political ethics and public image of the Parti QuCbCcois during the 1976 election campaign were principally inspired by a petty bourgeois morality, emphasizing individual responsibility, a high value attached to work and workmanship, and a serious outlook. The work ethic discussed in my paper has been projected by the intellectual petty bourgeoisie from the individual to the collective level.

The Parti Quibicois government is merely the most recent and militant agent of the collective political reaction. Even prior to the victory of that party in 1976, francophones turned more and more to the political state apparatus to increase their representation in the bourgeoisie (Niosi, 1978) and to remove the barriers in the private sector. The overall result has been a transformation of those barriers even at the upper levels. Formerly the English language and culture were imposed at the upper levels of the private sector and the French language and culture were ignored. Now it is bilingualism that is imposed at the upper levels of the private sector in Quebec.I6 Furthermore, there is reason to believe that many highly paid unilingual anglophones have left Quebec and that their jobs have gone with them.'' That is the 'last resort' practice by which francophones are excluded from top positions in English companies.

The existence of barriers which tend to exclude francophones in the private sector of the market economy has provoked in the second stage of the quiet revolution a collective political effort for their elimination by francophones in the French side of linguistically segmented cultural institutions. The existence of these barriers of exclusion also has promoted a radical questioning of the capitalist market


economy by the leaders of unions (c .E.Q. and c.s .N.) representing francophones in linguistically segmented institutions. Such barriers of exclusion also stimulated from an earlier date a collective search for alternative organizational forms, best exemplified by the cooperative movement which has been much stronger among Quebec francophones than among anglophones in North America. It remains to be seen whether this radical questioning and these alternative forms of organization will wax or wane as the barriers of exclusion which gave rise to them are progressively dismantled and as francophones establish and expand their own capitalist enterprises.

C O N C L U S I O N

This paper has shown that the relationship between the position of the English and French communities in the stratification system of Quebec and the presence or absence of a work ethic among their members is more complicated than Taylor's one-to-one correspondence led us to believe and which his critics seem to have accepted. Not only has Taylor confused cause and effect, but also his cultural values theory obscures the presence of a work ethic among members of the subordinate group, obscures changes in work attitudes which occur as a result of changing social structures, and is of little help in explaining the collective political response of subordinate groups. The theory of ethnic class is no better, being too laden with theoretical, empirical, and ideological difficulties to be of use as an alternative theory. It is necessary to turn to a structural theory of exclusion to gain insight into these phenomena. Such an approach focuses on the power of status groups to impose their cultural standards on positions and institutions they control. It also focuses on barriers to the advancement of members of other status groups embodied in those in order to explain the existence of a vertical mosaic - the over or under-representation of status groups in the various strata of the stratification system. These standards and barriers are the structural points of articulation between the inequality of collectivities per se and the inequality of opportunity for individuals who make up those different collectivities.

A structural theory of exclusion sees the barriers as having an important formative influence on the orientation of the members of these groups. It looks to changes in the structures of opportunity and exclusion as an important source of change in orientation, including the priority given to resignation, to individual striving to surmount the barriers, or to collective struggle to eliminate them." This paper's empirical investigation of teachers, a key group which has been deeply involved with the transformation of Quebec society, shows that their economic and political attitudes can best be understood in terms of the evolving structural context of exclusion in Quebec society.

The changes in the structures of opportunity and exclusion in Quebec were themselves products of an externally provoked development inherently limited by the interests of the external centres of decision making. The resulting change in economic and political orientation within Quebec has produced an autonomous internal source of development as an emergent property. Thus this structural theory of exclusion specifies the consequences of the internationalization of capital for the internal structure of Quebec as a dependent society. It suggests the


connection between changes in macro-level economic structures, micro-level attitudinal changes and collective aspirations for changes in large-scale political structures, and it specifies the respective roles of power, interests, cultural and linguistic requirements for work positions, and attitudes in the relationship between ethnicity and social class.

A P P E N D I X : A D O C U M E N T A T I O N OF E X C L U S I O N

Carlos (1973 : 201-6) found that in the early nineteen-seventies the labour market in Quebec was structured such that the French language dominated at the bottom of the career hierarchy, bilingualism in the middle, and English at the top. He concluded that in order to receive identical benefits in terms of promotion in the work hierarchy francophones had to make a greater investment than anglophones in becoming competent in a second language. The additional cost of equal benefits was an obstacle to the career advancement of francophones. Furthermore, Carlos (1973: 71) found that the financial control of a sector of production strongly influenced the language of work imposed on that sector.

Sales’ (1977) data show that not only language but also ethnicity is used as a criterion of exclusion from directorates of manufacturing companies in Quebec. Only 28.4 per cent and 0.0 per cent of top directors in companies owned by Anglo-Saxon and Jewish Canadians respectively are French Canadian. Within the same language group only 3.5 per cent of Anglo-Saxon Canadian companies have Jewish directors and only 2.2 per cent of Jewish-Canadian companies have Anglo-Saxon directors. Owners impose their linguistic and ethnic standards on the selection of the companies’ top directors and these standards act as barriers to linguistic and ethnic groups in a subordinate economic position. French Canadians are affected by exclusion practices based on both language and ethnicity.

Furthermore, Raynauld (1974) has documented the subordinate position of the French community with respect to the ownership of companies in the private sector in Quebec in the 1960s. Although the French constituted 76 per cent of the labour force in his sample, he found that only 47.3 per cent of the labour force worked in French-Canadian companies whereas 37.7 per cent and 15 per cent worked in English-Canadian and foreign companies respectively. He discovered that the under-representation was even more pronounced when he restricted his analysis to manufacturing industries and when he used control over industrial output (value added) instead of control over the labour force as his indicator of economic domination. Only 21.7 per cent of the workers in Quebec manufacturing were employed by French-Canadian companies and only 15.4 per cent of the value added in that sector in Quebec was controlled by French-Canadian companies. In both cases the remainder was evenly divided between English-Canadian and foreign companies. In a more recent study, Sales (1977) showed that in 1974 only 28.8 per cent of manufacturing companies with more than 50 employees in Quebec were owned by French Canadians and only 37.3 per cent of the top directors were French Canadians. The structure of ownership of companies in the private sector of Quebec and the resulting imposition of the linguistic and cultural standards of the owners act as barriers which have tended to exclude French Quebecers from advancement.


The results of Beattie’s (1975) study of the Canadian public service in 1965 also confirmed the existence of linguistic and cultural barriers to the career success of French Canadians. He found that, whereas persons of French descent constituted 28 per cent of the Canadian labour force, they held only 18 per cent of middle-level positions in the public service of their country and only 11.5 per cent of the upper-Ievel positions (salaries of $17,000 or more per year in 1965). He then disproved stereotyped myths which permit ‘English Canadians to avoid explaining the absence of the French from positions of power in terms of English resistance or even discrimination, and to shift the blame to French Canadians themselves’ (Beattie, 1975 : 52). His regression analysis showed that differences in education could not account for the under-representation of francophones in high income categories within the Canadian public service. In fact, anglophones with bachelor’s degrees had higher salaries than francophones with post-graduate degrees. The Quebec educational system may not have stressed science and engineering, but Beattie found that graduates in these subjects were not as highly rewarded in the federal administration as were graduates in arts and social science. Although the difficulty of recruiting and holding francophones from Quebec may have partially accounted for their under-representation, it did not explain why those who were attracted and remained did not advance like their anglophone colleagues.

He found that the barriers were largely linguistic and cultural. The closer one was to being pure English, the higher one’s salary; the more one was contaminated by French, the more one‘s salary suffered in this setting. Thus when Beattie controlled age, years of service, education, and career type, he found that salaries increased going from unilingual francophones to bilingual francophones, bilingual anglophones, and unilingual Anglophones, with the progressive increments between these categories being $497, $337, and $60 per year respectively. He argued that in a setting reflecting the language and the values of the anglophone majority, difficulties in symbol manipulation and the absence of cultural affinities prevented francophones from entering into informal networks with superiors and gaming the sponsorshp whch is crucial for advancement in complex organizations. He concluded that ’career discrimination appears to be the primary factor account- ing for the salary inequality and slower career mobility of minority men’ (Beattie, 1975 :169). Beattie’s results are quite different from Taylor’s conjectures about the federal public service that were referred to earlier.

Cardinal (1978) argued that translation is a mirror institution and a barometer which reveals the relationship between linguistic groups. He estimated that in 1977 90 per cent of translation was from English to French in the private sector of Quebec’s economy and in the federal government, thereby indicating that the written language of work was 90 per cent EngIish. He concluded that translation gives francophones the illusion of official participation and enables anglophones to conserve their disproportionate role.

The mobility study by McRoberts et al. (1976) in the early nineteen-seventies found that education brought more payoffs in terms of the status of one‘s first job for anglophones than for francophones, that anglophones advanced more rapidly in their careers, and that education brought more returns during their careers for anglophones than for francophones. They concluded that the status attainment process was less open at each of its stages to francophones than to anglophones.


In the most recent study of male workers in the Montreal metropolitan zone, Boulet (1979) found that the average earnings of anglophones were greater than the average earnings of francophones in 1961, 1971, and 1977 (the changes he found are discussed below). Differences in age, number of weeks worked, level of education, occupation, citizenship status, marital status, and type of employment only explained about 20 per cent of the anglophone-francophone income differences in 1961 and less than 16 per cent in 1971. He discovered that the average earnings of francophones were less than the average earnings of anglophones overall because within the top quarter of earners francophones had lower average earnings than anglophones and especially because francophones were under-represented in the top quarter income group. Francophones had more difficulty penetrating the top group, and when they did, they earned less than anglophones. Boulet also found that within the top quarter category of earners, the higher the income subcategory, the greater the income advantage of anglophones over francophones for each of these three points in time.

It is also necessary to consider the evolution of the structural context of exclusion. The massive direct foreign investment since the nineteen-fifties has brought about changes in the division of labour, manpower needs, and therefore in the career paths and opportunity structure in Quebec. Dofny and Garon-Audy (1969) and McRoberts et al. (1976) found a tendency toward convergence in the occupational structures of the French and English communities. Boulet (1979) found a similar convergence in the earnings of male workers in the Montreal metropolitan area, with the average earnings of anglophones being 51 per cent greater than the average earnings of francophones in 1961,32 per cent greater in 1971, and 15 per cent greater by 1977. Bernard and Renaud (1979) contended that Boulet has exaggerated the convergence by omitting women and the labour force outside Montreal. Their data on the whole Quebec labour force, nonetheless, also showed a convergence, although not as strong. Dofny and Garon-Audy (1969) argued that the evolution of the division of labour which eliminated many agricultural and blue-collar positions and created white-collar ones provoked the ‘forced upward mobility of francophones and led them to bypass many of the barriers to the middle levels. Dofny and Garon-Audy suggested that this evolution of the economic infrastructure of mobility may have modified the attitudes of French Quebecers and created a new set of expectations for equality of opportunity without sacrificing community values. This would require social and linguistic changes at the political level. The authors argued that since these expectations have been created primarily in the middle class, they are channelled toward a parliamentary struggle.

Although McRoberts et al. (1976) concluded from a cohort analysis of data gathered in 1973 that there has been a convergence of francophone-anglophone mobility patterns, and despite their suggestion that the traditional pattern of Canadian linguistic stratification may be disappearing, their results showed that the degree of francophone under-representation in the higher strata remained almost identical from the oldest to the most recent cohort. Thus until 1973 the convergence only occurred at the lower and middle levels. Boulet (1979) found that by 1977 differences in earnings between francophone and anglophone males in Montreal were decreasing even at higher income levels, as was francophone


under-representation at these levels. Nonetheless, he found for 1977 as he did for 1961 and 1971 that i t was especially a t the upper levels where francophones were under-represented and where they earned less when they did gain entry. Furthermore, Bernard and Renaud’s (1979) data show that the convergence at higher income levels was much less when the whole Quebec labour force was considered. The upper levels of the Quebec job market were less open to francophones than to anglophones even in 1977.

N O T E S

I Porter argued that the value orientation of French Qu6bCcois, inseparably based on ethnicity and religion, led to the establishment of an elitist educational system cen- tered around classical colleges which failed to teach the skiils necessary for an industrial society. This prevented the French from being upwardly mobile and was ’an outstanding example of institutional failure’ (Porter, 1965 : 92). Although there may be some truth in that argument, it fails to shed light on the recent changes in the educational system itself, on the attitudes of French Quebecers that will be shown in this paper to have existed and the direction of change of those attitudes, and on the desire for a collective political change.

I Jain’s conclusions touched off an enormous controversy. A lead editorial by Lise Bis- sonnette in Le Devoir (I March 1979: 4) angrily denounced them as the statistical fantasies of an obscure author and William Johnson in The Globe and Mail (March I, 1979: 8) claimed that Jain‘s results were statistically significant but not socially significant. The inadequacy of these reactions is shown by the fact that other studies have also found French-English differences in work attitudes, as we will see, and by the fact that such reactions direct us away from, instead of towards, investigating the structures which underlie the attitudinal differences. The fallacy of Jain’s conclusions does not result from his data, but from the fact that he ignored the structural context in which attitudes were formed when he interpreted his data. For example, Jain was reported to have gathered part of his data in Ottawa, where a second controversy raged at the time his conclusions were being debated. This second controversy concerned the fact that all of the fourteen directors of service in the municipal bureaucracy were unilingual anglophones and that the language of work was almost exclusively English, despite the adoption of an official policy of bilingualism in 1970, nine years earlier. The attitudinal differences between anglophones and francophones which have resulted from the fact that anglophones have historically dominated the labour market and have imposed their linguistic and cultural requirements on jobs even in the capital of an officially bilingual country is a subject that needs to be analyzed, not avoided.

structured such that whereas anglophones in high positions and francophones in low positions were permitted to remain unilingual, not only francophones at the middle and higher levels but also many anglophones at the lowest levels were required to become bilingual (see the data from Carlos, 1973, and Laczko, 1978). Not only francophones but also many lower class anglophones had to make a greater linguistic investment to gain equal benefits. Thus there are both benefits and disadvantages to being a member of the dominant ethnic group if one is lower class. Such member-

3 For example, the labour market in Quebec in the early nineteen-seventies was


ship tends to reduce barriers to upward mobility. But it also requires those who are not upwardly mobile to function in the language of the subordinate ethnic group because the language of the latter dominates at lower levels. Furthermore, membership in the dominant ethnic group leads to greater dissatisfaction among the lower class because they suffer more relative deprivation since their position is lower with reference to other members of their ethnic group.

4 The threefold division of theoretical approaches given in this paper toward explaining the subordinate position of francophones in Quebec is similar to that in the litera- ture on the sociology of national development. Portes (1976) distinguishes three different approaches in the sociology of national development: the ’social differentia- tion’ approach; the ’enactment of values’ approach; and the ‘liberation from dependency’ approach. The first two are very similar to one another, both being based on value orientations. The third, dependency theory, has several versions. The economic imperialism version claims that dependency is ’the conditioning structure’ of poverty and implies that a higher standard of living for the masses in Third World countries will automatically come about with the elimination of economic imperialism. Portes (1976: 79) argues that ’we must look elsewhere for studies of development- oriented elites, conditions under which they come to control the state, and circum- stances which permit them to mobilize the masses into a national development effort.’ Thus the theoretical approach based on value orientations, the economic imperialism version of dependency theory (one nation seen as a more or less homoge- neous entity exploited by another), and Portes’ less rhetorical, less crude version of dependency theory parallel the three-fold division of approaches to the subordinate position of francophones in Quebec suggested in my paper.

5 There is an interesting parallel between the barriers to the career advancement of francophones and of women in workplaces dominated by anglophones and by men respectively. Archibald (1973) has described structures established to explain the best use of the male labour force which constitute barriers to the career advancement of women in the Canadian public service. Thus she advocates an active inter- vention to eliminate the barriers women face.

6 Since these studies are widely dispersed and since many have been published only in French, a more complete description of their results is given in the Appendix.

7 Although investment by American companies in Quebec began before the nineteen- fifties and was but one source of the overall processes of industrialization and modernization, it reached such important proportions at that time that it became the key source of the structural and attitudinal changes which followed.

8 Differences in work attitudes can also be influenced by differences in the structure of barriers between regions and between particular organizations. Thus one can expect some variation in attitudes from one locality to another and from one organization to another. However, today‘s workers are not serfs. They are not completely restricted to one locality or to one organization. I am suggesting a theory at the level of the overall Quebec labour market because it is the most appropriate level for analyzing the attitudes of francophones in Quebec.

9 According to a French proverb quoted by Quebec Prime Minister Levesque during a visit to Washington, ‘it is in eating that one acquires the appetite to eat more.’

10 I would suggest that the recent decreased interest among French Quebec students in learning English is one indication of the shift in emphasis from advancement as an


individual effort to surmount the barriers to advancement as a collective effort to eliminate such barriers.

11 There are undoubtedly both parallel processes and structural differences to be found by comparing Quebec with other societies. See Lauko (1978) for an interesting suggestion along these lines. It would be a fascinating theoretical challenge to explain why the penetration of the economies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand by foreign-owned multinational corporations and accompanying dependency resulted in a higher per capita income in these countries whereas it resulted in massive misery in most economically dependent Third World countries. Although the answer to such a question lies well beyond the scope of this article, I would suggest that a structural theory of exclusion could contribute important elements to the explanation.

12 The data for 1965 analyzed in this study were taken from the Quebec portion of Breton’s (1972) survey of Canadian secondary schools. His data were based on a probability sample of secondary schools. His survey included 106 (5.4 per cent), secondary schools in Quebec. All teachers within the schools selected were asked to complete the questionnaire. Thus the sample included 1930 secondary school teachers (1922 when weighted): 1594 in the French educational system and 328 in the English systems. I have combined English Protestant and English Catholic schools to form what I refer to as the English system. The data for 1972 were taken from BClanger and Rocher’s (1976) survey (ASOPE) of Quebec secondary schools. Schools were first sampled as in Breton’s study, but in contrast to the latter teachers were then sampled within the schools selected. 133 secondary schools were chosen and of the 2296 teachers selected in these schools, 1685 (73 per cent) completed the questionnaire. This included 1309 teachers in the French secondary school system and 376 in the English system, where French and English refer to the language of instruction in the school. The similarity of the populations investigated and the data gathering procedures used in the two surveys justifies the comparison of their findings. More detailed information on the sampling and on the data gathering procedures used has already been published by Breton (1972) and BClanger and Rocher (1976) and will not be repeated here.

generational mobility are also controlled in Table I.

indicate the same underlying dimension.

teachers in the French and English systems were the result of differences in their immediate work settings. Controlling the social origins of teachers in Table I indirectly controls work setting variables which are associated with differences in recruitment. More direct evidence is provided by the fact that when school size was controlled the attitudinal differences between teachers in the French and English systems remained. This important work setting variable cannot explain such differences.

16 Boulet (1979) found among males in Montreal that, whereas unilingual and bilingual anglophones were the two top income earning groups in 1961 and 1971, by 1977 bilingual anglophones, bilingual francophones, and bilingual allophones (those having other mother tongues) were the top income earners in that order. Unilingual anglophones have dropped to the fourth rank by 1977. Unilingual francophones remained in the sixth rank, their position being unchanged from 1961 through 1977.

13 Since they are members of the same profession, their present occupation and inter-

14 These four items were found to be strongly interrelated, thereby showing that they

15 My evidence does not support the idea that the differences in the work attitudes of

179 Q U E B E C T E A C H E R S A N D E C O N O M I C A N D POLITICAL ATTITUDES

The anglophone community has quickly adjusted to the bilingualism barrier. Boulet (1979) found that 74 per cent of anglophones and 64 per cent of allophones were bilingual at the beginning of 1978 compared to 48 per cent of each in 1971. A higher proportion of anglophones than francophones (69 per cent) in the male Montreal labour force are now bilingual. This is a striking change from the past, for example, when as late as 1971 62 per cent of francophones as opposed to 48 per cent of anglophones were bilingual. The bilingualism requirement itself demonstrates the power which remains in the hands of the English in the Quebec private sector in that it is imposed in a province where eight of every ten individuals are of French origin and only one of ten is of English origin.

17 This is suggested by the following data (Boulet, 1979): the proportion of unilingual anglophones in the Montreal male labour force fell from 13 per cent in 1961 to 5 per cent in 1978; the proportion of bilingual anglophones grew more slowly - from 10 per cent in 1961 to 13 per cent in 1978; the relative earnings of the category 'unilingual anglophones' decreased significantly during this period; and the proportion of the total mass of earnings monopolized by the 15 per cent most highly paid decreased from 36% in 1961 to 30 per cent in 1978.

18 This paper has been limited to the analysis of the French and English in Quebec. If other status groups were to be analyzed additional factors would have to be taken into consideration. Barriers of exclusion have differential effects on different status groups. These effects depend on the relative distance between the cultural requirements imposed on work positions by the status group controlling those positions and the cultural capital of the remaining status groups. Moreover, the latter groups have different resources. For example, francophones in Quebec can control a provincial government apparatus and use it to increase the power of their group even in the private sector, a possibility which does not exist for other status groups, such as Italians or Inuits in Canada or francophones outside of Quebec. Therefore the priority given to resignation, to individual striving to surmount barriers, or to a collective effort to eliminate them and the form that such a collective effort takes vary among subordinate status groups.

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