The Way Forward: African Francophone Immigrants Negotiate Their Multiple Minority Identities

This article explores multiple affiliations that first-generation Francophone sub-Saharan African immigrants in Alberta build with their communities of origin, the Francophone community in general, and the broader Canadian society. This article posits that dominant racial and ethnic ideologies generate feelings of exclusion from multiple communities. It also sheds light on major challenges faced by this population in the process of integration and illustrates how these barriers are related to racism and linguistic discrimination. At the same time, we observe that African Francophone immigrants reinterpret their social identities in inclusive ways that draw our attention to alternative means of approaching identities. In addition to immigrants’ identity strategies, some initiatives have been implemented within the mainstream of the Francophonie and the broader Alberta society that allow us to identify ways of avoiding identity exclusion and increasing equity.