La classification des Autochtones au Canada : une étude des mouvements catégoriels entre le recensement et l’enquête auprès des peuples autochtones de 2006
In Canada, the representativeness of the official categories of indigenous existence is rarely publicly discussed. They presently circulate as designations of common sense and from time to time they are endorsed and claimed by indigenous persons and social formations. However, the analysis of their respective inception shows that they all have a history that goes back to the North American colonial project. In this master thesis, we will question their commonsensical status with the analysis of a phenomenon that shaken’s it. Indeed, we will compare the answers given by same respondents as they are similarly questioned on their indigenous affiliations in two major national surveys, that is, the 2006 Census and Aboriginal People Survey. This comparison will show, for example, that a little more than half of respondents changed their answers from one survey to the next. With such results, it is imperative to question the apparent validity of those categories. To do this, we will procced in three steps. We will start by a socio-historical analysis itemizing the career of each category in order to demonstrate that they were initially imposed and ambiguously used. This incursion will bring us to the analysis of processes such stereotyping, problematization and racialization. We will proceed next with a literature review of a similar phenomenon to the one we observe, that is ethnic mobility among indigenous. This phenomenon will both serve as an empirical basis and as an example of interpretation pitfall. Expanding on the empirical relations and the historical ambiguities, we will analyse the data from the surveys using a hierarchical classification method to isolate stable and moving profiles and multinomial regression models to associate certain characteristics to these profiles. In the end, this analytical scheme will enable us to interpret our data and results in a novel way.
classification raciale Racial classification Colonialism Census Aboriginal people survey