North African Jewish identities in Québec

Blog post by Övgü Ülgen, University of Montreal, Canada
 
Identities are multiple, fragmented, fluid, and – generationally speaking – often quite complex. My Identities article, ‘Generations and difference: language, religion, and North African Jewish identification in Québec’, examines the generational dynamics of North African Jewish belonging in this francophone province through the interplay of language and religion.
 
Drawing on 18 life-story interviews with North African Jewish immigrants in Québec, my article examines the coexistence of non-convergent identities across generations. Participants included first-generation immigrants, primarily baby boomers (born 1946–1964) with a few from the silent generation (born 1937–1945); 1.5-generation individuals from Generation X (born 1965–1979) who immigrated before the age of 18; and second-generation participants born and raised in Québec, including both Generation Xers and millennials (born 1980–mid-1990s). The first wave of North African Jewish immigrants to Québec – mostly francophone – settled in the 1950s, though emigration, particularly from Morocco, continued over the following decades. 

The first-generation participants in my study, who primarily speak French in their daily lives, expressed a strong sense of belonging to Québec society through this shared language. However, two of them recounted experiences of antisemitism, complicating any straightforward reading of their broader encounters with the majority culture as discriminatory in ways that warranted explicit recognition or denunciation. Younger participants, by contrast, navigated multiple layers of difference – including accent, religion and skin colour – which produced more complex, fragmented experiences of belonging. These overlapping identities made their narratives more difficult to interpret or translate within dominant frameworks.
 
In my research, some younger participants reported being called ‘Frenchy’ when they spoke French with members of the majority culture. I argue that, while this label associated them with a European identity, it also subjected them to discrimination – both because of their accent, which differed from that of Québécois speakers, and because of their religious difference. The changing nature of ethnic boundaries over generations showed that the lines originally drawn by immigrants can evolve depending on how they engage with the majority group.
 
While all generations showed distinct ingroup affiliations, younger participants experienced more nonconvergent identity markers. These markers often conflict, placing them between multiple social categories and contributing to a heightened sense of exclusion. In contrast, first-generation participants exhibited fewer and less conflicting identity overlaps. Despite shared complexity, younger generations faced additional layers of tension due to the intersection of multiple identity categories.
 
These layered negotiations of identity are visible not only in interview transcripts but also in today’s public sphere. In Montreal, recent protests centred on international human rights issues have brought together students from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. For Jewish immigrants of North African origin, especially among the second generation, participation in such movements can be particularly complex: they may feel solidarity with broader calls for justice, while also grappling with anxieties about how their Jewishness is perceived in relation to debates on the Palestinian cause.

These examples remind us that questions of belonging are never settled once and for all. They shift with each generation and take on new dimensions in response to public debates, global events, and everyday encounters. Paying attention to such lived experiences shows how integration is about negotiating, balancing, and sometimes contesting multiple identities. This ongoing process reveals not only the frictions of living in diverse societies, but also the creative possibilities that emerge when people find ways to inhabit more than one world at once.

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Image credit: StockCake.

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Read the Identities article:
Ülgen, Ö. (2025). Generations and difference: language, religion, and North African Jewish identification in Québec. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: ​10.1080/1070289X.2025.2543655

Read further in Identities:

“Race places”: Changing locations of Jewish identities

Bio-logics of Jewishness: media constructions of the nuances of race and ethnicity

​Becoming ‘true’ Muslims in Canada: experiences of Uyghur immigrants