Chinese-Canadian community organizing and the pursuit of multiculturalism, unity, and diversity

My project examines the case of official multiculturalism in Canada as a point of entry for considering the role of state policy in promoting particular visions of national and ethnic identity. By analyzing how the context of the multiculturalism policy affects the civic and political organizing and participation of Chinese Canadians in Toronto, Ontario, and how the meanings of multiculturalism are negotiated in the course of local community work and mobilization, I shed light on the gap between policy as conceived and policy as lived experience. I argue that although the rhetoric of unity-in-diversity has permeated Canadian society and become a cornerstone of contemporary Canadian identity, the difficulties that Chinese Canadians encounter in the course of their civic and political organizing highlight the conceptual and pragmatic contradictions inherent in the national imaginaries mapped out by the multiculturalism policy and its attendant bureaucracy.;Multiculturalism is by definition paradoxical in that it is an ideology of simultaneous oneness and difference. Beyond this fundamental conceptual conundrum, there is also the issue of how the notions of culture in circulation within this paradigm are often essentialized and reified. Chinese-Canadian community activists are engaged in an ongoing process of negotiating the tensions between having to cooperate and love each other, and needing to compete for space and recognition. In an institutional landscape that pushes immigrant and minority communities towards fixity, fragmentation, and ill-will, they struggle to resolve the pressures to join together as a larger aggregate to stake bigger claims or to separate into smaller entities to stake more targeted claims.;My conclusions are based on one year of participant-observation research, conducted in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin Chinese, and on in-depth semi-structured interviews with over 50 Chinese-Canadian community leaders and activists in Toronto. By analyzing three key arenas of community contestation and negotiation -- (1) heritage and representation; (2) social services; and (3) relations in the Chinese Diaspora -- I show how individuals and groups work to position themselves vis-a-vis the multicultural ideology promulgated by the state and simultaneously try to re-envision the possibilities for national unity and diversity.