Canadian multicultural citizenship: constraints on immigrants’ leisure pursuits

Abstract

The proliferation of empirical research on immigrants’ leisure constraints as restrictive and negative, which is implicitly based on discourses that present particular leisure forms and practices as positive and desirable, has provided scholars with a limited understanding of constraints. In contrast, Foucault's understanding of constraints as necessary for any social practice suggests that power acts as a constraint on action in a way that is never wholly inhibiting. Indeed, from a Foucauldian perspective, constraints make many leisure actions and experiences possible. Thus constraints must be seen as both inhibiting and enabling individuals’ actions. This paper offers a critical Foucauldian review of constraints research to demonstrate how multicultural citizenship discourses in Canada both inhibit and enable immigrants’ leisure pursuits.