This book is an ethnography of labor mobility and its challenges to the idea of the nation. Using the example of francophone Canada, it examines how social difference-race, ethnicity, language, gender-has been used to sort out who must (or can) be mobile and who must (or can) remain in place in the organization of global circulation of human and natural resources. It argues that "francophone Canada" can best be understood as an ethnoclass category that has embedded francophones into specific forms of labor mobility since the beginnings of European colonization, even as their social difference has been constructed as national in the interests of gaining political power. The result has been an erasure both of francophone mobilities and of their contribution to the rooted community that lies at the heart of the idea of the nation, and of francophone capacity to resist economic marginalization and exploitation. By following French Canadian workers back and forth between eastern and central Canada and the frontiers of the Canadian northwest, Sustaining the Nation explores how contemporary forms of labor mobility make it increasingly difficult for national structures and discourses to produce the francophone nation. By following the ideological tensions between language as a skill and language as a marker of belonging, the authors present grounded evidence of how the globalized new economy challenges the nation-state, and how mobilities and immobilities are co-constructed.

Climatic conditions, economic development strategies, health and education concerns, social relationships, and shifting political agendas all contribute to a sense of ongoing change in Arctic societies. This volume presents twenty-two chapters that address various forms and issues of (in)security in the Arctic. The work shows that the outcomes of resource scarcity or abundance are equally important to consider, that disparities in income as much as opportunities deserve our attention, and that the movement of populations to and from the Arctic is meaningful for those who leave as well as for those who stay.

This book is an ethnography of labor mobility and its challenges to the idea of the nation. Using the example of francophone Canada, it examines how social difference-race, ethnicity, language, gender-has been used to sort out who must (or can) be mobile and who must (or can) remain in place in the organization of global circulation of human and natural resources. It argues that "francophone Canada" can best be understood as an ethnoclass category that has embedded francophones into specific forms of labor mobility since the beginnings of European colonization, even as their social difference has been constructed as national in the interests of gaining political power. The result has been an erasure both of francophone mobilities and of their contribution to the rooted community that lies at the heart of the idea of the nation, and of francophone capacity to resist economic marginalization and exploitation. By following French Canadian workers back and forth between eastern and central Canada and the frontiers of the Canadian northwest, Sustaining the Nation explores how contemporary forms of labor mobility make it increasingly difficult for national structures and discourses to produce the francophone nation. By following the ideological tensions between language as a skill and language as a marker of belonging, the authors present grounded evidence of how the globalized new economy challenges the nation-state, and how mobilities and immobilities are co-constructed.

Stuck in the ice-pack during the winter of 1924-25, the Jean Revillon needed repair and a crew to make it back to its hauling location at Shelburne, Nova Scotia. And so, in 1925, Lionel Angotegoar, Athanasie Angutitaq, Louis Tapatai, and Savikataaq from the central Canadian Arctic manned the ship from Qamani'tuaq (Baker Lake), in contemporary Nunavut, to southern Canada. Having brought the ship to safe harbour, they spent the winter in the South and returned home the next spring. In relating their experience on their return they provided first-hand accounts of life in the South. Various points-of-view contribute to the broadest possible understanding of the journey, since the Inuit sailors, the Revillon family and the people associated with the shipbuilding industry or the fur trade were involved in the trip per se to various degrees.