Re-thinking ethnic boundaries: The negotiation of German-Canadian ethnic identities in Ottawa, 1945-1975.

Abstract

Using "ethnic identity" and "community" as socially constructed elements of historical experience, this thesis looks at how these concepts evolved among German immigrants in post-World War II Ottawa. This study adopts a different approach to immigrant communities by examining three immigrant socio-cultural institutions as sites of negotiation rather than as boundaries between immigrants and the host society. As such, these institutions are treated as areas of public/social space and themselves historical agents, which existed not in isolation from Canadian society but at its centre. This approach employs sources produced within the community's institutions and by institutions external to the community. Census records and English-language newspapers are used along with institutional financial and membership records, their founding charters, German-language newspapers, and first-person narratives. The end result is a history which shows "community" and "ethnic identities" as having consistently evolved while engaging social, economic, political, and cultural landscapes which confronted them. The most significant conclusion of this thesis, however, is that everyday immigrant experiences in the post-1945 era have been central to the larger Canadian historical movement, and not simply the product of "limited identities." (Abstract shortened by UMI.)