Settlers from migrants: Rosalinda Furlan, Second Generation Euro-Canadians: Resisting or Embracing a White Settler Identity?, PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Settlers from migrants: Rosalinda Furlan, Second Generation Euro-Canadians: Resisting or Embracing a White Settler Identity?, PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2026

24Aug26

Abstract: Migration has played a key role in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the founding, consolidation, and maintenance of the settler nation state of Canada. Immigrant acculturation and a history of the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples continue to shape Canadian society, yet researchers only rarely consider these processes together (Bohaker & Iacovetta, 2009; Chatterjee, 2019; Perzyna & Bauer, 2022). To investigate the complexity of second-generation immigrant acculturation and how individuals might consider histories of immigration in connection with Indigeneity, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 second-generation Canadians of European descent. Would acculturation reproduce White settler identities or would their culturally hybridized identities contest categorization as White settlers? A theoretical framework drawing from settler colonialism (Snelgrove et al., 2014; Veracini, 2010, 2024; Wolfe, 2006), a robust model of acculturation (Berry, 2005, 2006), whiteness as structure (Ignatiev, 2005; Owen, 2007; Nayak, 2007; Satzewich, 2000) and theories of temporality (Blackstock et al., 2020; Povinelli, 2010; Ricœur 1980; 2004) addressed the complexity implied by these questions. Using comparative data analysis of constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2007, 2014), my findings reveal how temporality, difference, and place produce complex identities of integrated multidimensionality. Temporality and associated communicative memories were significant factors in identity formation. Participants, raised in the diasporic past/present and the settler present, navigated lifeworlds that existed in different temporal frames. Social mobility was attainable through education, but deficient social capital in professional settings challenged meritocratic beliefs (Aslam & Lehmann, 2021). Educated in colonial time, participants perceived Indigenous peoples as distant in time and place. They subordinated their racialized identities to their ethnic origins, contested their blame for Canadian history, and disputed notions of privilege because culture, language, social capital, and proximate histories determined their social locations, relations to others, and perceptions of themselves as White. I identify this social location as settler colonial subordinate whiteness. These findings imply a distinction between a settler and an immigrant identity determined by history, collective memory, and sovereign entitlement. These distinctions indicate how political identities might be reconfigured (Mamdani, 2020), a necessary step toward transforming Canadian society.

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