10. Relative Deprivation and Perceived Discrimination Among Quebec’s English-Speaking Minority Communities: ‘Second-Class Citizens’ in a Multi-national Context?

Stated differently, this represents an increase in the relative weight of the official language minority in Quebec, from 13.5% in 2011 to 13.7% in 2016.

Such a sociolinguistic context can be described as asymmetrical, a term that is also applicable to the institutional architecture of the Canadian federation, where different language regimes co-exist at the federal and provincial levels (Cardinal and Sonntag 2015; Cardinal and Normand 2011). For a detailed account of ‘language regime’, including its conceptual foundations and a portrait of the Canadian language regimes, see Cardinal and Sonntag (2015).

Calculations made by the author using the Montreal ‘census metropolitan area’ and ‘first official language spoken’ variables.

If we depart from purely quantitative considerations and delve into the more qualitative notions of power relations and status (e.g. Vandycke 1994).

Indeed, despite the fact that English-as-a-first-language speakers constitute the third largest linguistic group in the world behind Mandarin and Spanish speakers, English remains the language spoken in the highest number of countries, with 65 countries across five continents (Leclerc 2017).

A quick search in media archives reveals that this nomenclature dates back to the 1980s; in the Canadian Newsstream database, for example, the Montreal Gazette’s publications are archived back to 1985 and testify to that observation.

Author’s translation.

While it is difficult to verify the authenticity of the participants, the fact that several thousand individuals would take action to protest the existence of one of the core language policy instruments of the province can be taken as an indicator of dissatisfaction.

Others have concluded that the theory should be rejected altogether or that it has failed to meet any scientific consensus (e.g. Gurney and Tierney 1982; Brush 1996).

A similar study has been conducted on nationalism among the francophone majority (Guimond and Dubé-Simard 1983), which constitutes further indication of the relevance of RD theory in the context of Canadian and Quebec politics.

To be clear, the data pertaining to the Franco-Ontarian side of the study are neither used nor discussed in this article.

Unfortunately, the survey questionnaire only comprised two questions operationalisable as indictors for the egoistic relative deprivation hypothesis. This is likely to result in a weaker model, but the article will nonetheless present results.

The rationale behind such an operationalisation stems naturally from theory. The notion of relative deprivation indeed implies a dichotomous state; either a group is in a state of relative deprivation or it is not, hence the relevance of a dummy variable.

Traditionally, coefficients and odds ratios represented in regression tables are interpreted as indicating a change in Y for each change of one unit in X. In the present case, the dependent variables (X) are all dummy variables operationalised as to distinguish between ‘relatively deprived’ (value of 1) or ‘not relatively deprived’ (value of 0) respondents. Hence the interpretation uses more expressive wording for the sake of clarity.

For the sake of space, this ideal type will not be described. The reader can infer its description using the indicators configured in Table 10.5 and the survey response categories provided in the Appendix A.

Too few observations in the ‘never’ and ‘rarely’ categories did not allow for the logistic regression to be computed; hence the need to regroup response categories.

An explanatory path to be further explored lies in the parameters of the research design. Indeed, the variable on the basis of which organisational activism was conceptualised here constitutes only a post hoc measurement of the transition between the demand-side and the supply-side of mobilisation. In plain language, this could mean that a state of relative deprivation might have led Anglo-Quebecer respondents to get involved in organisational activities before they could fill out the online survey questionnaire, and that, from then on, levels of relative deprivation may have decreased. The effect of relative deprivation might have been more salient if the analyst had collected data that captured the transitional period in the life of a politicised individual who makes the decision to take a step further in their engagement and get directly involved in organisational activism. A mechanism that might then decrease relative deprivation is that of self and group efficacy. Anglo-Quebecer organisational activists, for instance, may revise their opinions about the current state of their ingroup’s condition after some time, to the extent that their direct political engagement is empowering them. This provides an interesting direction for future research.

Closer inspection of the data revealed, however, that the effect is not linear. Hence the study conducted here highlights the need to take into account the multidimensionality of constructs. More specifically, (1) the logistic regression analysis conducted in this chapter and the models developed from the literature show the multidimensionality of abstract concepts such as ‘relative deprivation’, thus stressing the need to use multiple indicators in statistical hypothesis testing, and (2) the present application of Long and Freese’s (2014) ideal types approach using predicted probabilities, such as in Table 10.5, shows that within-concept, single indicators, sometimes do not conform to assumptions of linearity implied in many dichotomous concepts of political science.

Empirical indicators used, however, differ from those used by Bilodeau (2017).