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GROWING TOGETHER OR APARI? MINORITIES IN QUEBEC DOCUMENTARY ON IMMIGRATION AND SCHOOL —t1o> DERVILA COOKE! ABSTRACT This paper focuses on Claude Godbout’s 2008 documentary about immigrant schoolchildren in Québec, La Génération 101 and some comparable films (Aloisio’s Les Enfants de la Loi 101, 2007; Groulx’s La Classe de Madame Lise, 2006; Bertucelli’s La Cour de Babel, 2014). Godbout’s film showcases current and former high school students in Québec of immigrant status or extraction who attend or attended multicultural schools (with few if any Québécois classmates). I argue that the film both highlights and questions the notion of integration of immigrants. Solidarity with Québec is shown by some students of immigrant extraction who have become socially engaged (and perfectly Francophone) adults, having come to understand Québec’s marginal position in North America because of their own transition through cultural and linguistic marginality. Other, more recent, students are vocal about their wish to understand Québec too, yet others have a more ambivalent or instrumentalist attitude to French and “integration” into Québécois culture. I look at the dynamic Godbout sets up between solidarity with the Québecois and the more distanced attitude described above, while also analyzing differing perceptions of Québec “values”. INTRODUCTION This article focuses on Claude Godbout’s 2008 documentary about immigrant schoolchildren in Québec, La Génération 101 and some other comparable films (mainly Anita Aloisio’s Les Enfants de la Loi 101, 2007, with reference also to Sylvie Groulx’s La Classe de Madame Lise, 2006, and the French director Julie Bertucelli’s La Cour de Babel, 2014).” Godbout’s film looks 1 Dublin City University. ? Anita Aloisio, Les Enfants de la Loi 101, Montreal, Virage, 2007; Julie Bertucelli, La Cour de Babel, Paris, Les Films du poisson, 2017; Claude Godbout, La Génération 101, Montreal, Les Films du 3 mars, 2008; Sylvie Groulx, La Classe de Madame Lise, Montreal, Les Films du 3 mars, 2005. + 171 +
