Tag Archives: Montreal

City Spotlight: Montréal

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In our summer issues, the CUSS newsletter team solicits a short piece that introduces CUSS members to the location of the ASA annual meeting. This year, Jan Doering (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, jan.doering@utoronto.ca) generously agreed to write this year’s city spotlight. Thank you, Jan, for your introduction to Montréal! 

Montréal, a contradictory city

Montréal is unlike any other North American city, and I am not working up to the tired observation that Montréal is “so European.” What makes Montréal unique is its contradictory status as a multilingual and diverse city in Québec, a province that proudly insists on the dominance of the French language and Québécois identity. This contradictory status frequently pits Montréal against its province but also produces social conflict within the city, inflecting how debates unfold and how local issues are addressed (see also Carpentier 2022).

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Montreal as a Gateway-City: Value chains and municipal democracy

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Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CentrevilleMontreal%C3%A9t%C3%A9.jpg

Dorval Brunelle
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
CUSS Newsletter, Summer 2017, Vol. 29, No 3.

This contribution should be read as a historical and sociological introduction to the city of Montreal for our American and Canadian guests attending the 112th ASA meeting here in August. But at the same time, the background here provided will be used to contextualize a research project comparing Montreal with three other Canadian cities (Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver) on their respective policies, programs and actions as gateway-cities. Among the questions raised, we want to know what is the role of the municipal government in this regard, the content of its policies and programs, which stakeholders are involved, and how these policies, programs and actions make their way through the filters of municipal democracy. Although a comparative study, only the Montreal segment will be presented.

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