Abstract

In 2018, when the CAQ was elected to form the new government of Quebec, it won on a platform that contained numerous measures to restrict immigration. Some of these measures were criticized and described as marking a radical shift in the province’s historical approach to immigration. In order to gain a more precise understanding of the implications of the CAQ’s position for Quebec politics, this thesis asks the question: How different is the CAQ’s position on immigration from that of the province’s main other political parties? To answer this question, this thesis looks at electoral platforms and parliamentary debates, using manual coding (NVivo) and computer-aided dictionary analysis (RStudio). By looking at the CAQ, the PLQ and the PQ’s stance, salience and discourse on immigration, it finds that although the CAQ proposed measures that are more restrictive towards immigration, it did so by mobilizing long-standing and well-established discursive logics. This in turn leads us to question our understanding of Quebec as a “pro-immigration” space, as well as the relevance of “pro” and “anti” immigration labels, and invites further research into a more systemized and helpful classification of parties and their positions on immigration.