Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: An Overview

The central text in the recognition-redistribution debate is critical theorist Nancy Fraser's 1995 article, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Postsocialist’ Age.” Fraser identifies an epochal shift in the focus of progressive politics, which she describes in the following, somewhat apocalyptic terms: “[G]roup identity supplants class interest as the chief medium of political mobilization. Cultural domination supplants exploitation as the fundamental injustice. And cultural recognition displaces socioeconomic redistribution as the remedy for injustice and the goal of political struggle” (1995: 68).

Many left-wing critics of identity politics cite the emphasis on recognition as a major culprit in the diminished contemporary fortunes of redistributive politics. To use Fraser's terms, they fear that campaigns targeting “cultural or symbolic … injustice … rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation and communication” are impeding struggles against “socioeconomic injustice … rooted in the political-economic structure of society” (1995: 71, 70). For sociologist Todd Gitlin, “[a] Left that was serious about … reducing the inequality of wealth and income would stop lambasting all white men, and would take it as elementary to reduce frictions among white men, blacks, white women and Hispanics” (1995: 234, 237). And according to political theorist Brian Barry, “[c]laims for special treatment are advanced by groups of all kinds while material inequality grows and the postwar welfare state shows increasing signs of strain” (2001: 3).

For her part, Fraser stresses that her recognition-redistribution distinction is ideal-typical and that real-world injustices, as well as the various campaigns against them, will inevitably traverse both domains. In her words: “Culture and political economy are always imbricated with each other, and virtually every struggle against injustice, when properly understood, implies demands for both redistribution and recognition” (70; also see Tully, 2000). Nevertheless, Fraser worries that the balance has been tilting toward recognition, to the detriment of redistribution.

Her concern is not unanimously shared on the left. Unimpressed by Fraser's acknowledgment that culture and political economy are interimbricated, left-wing defenders of identity politics charge Fraser with underestimating this interimbrication—in a way that subordinates the former to the latter. With the cultural theorist Judith Butler, they reject the recognition-redistribution heuristic as merely the latest gloss on orthodox Marxism's tendency to identify “the new social movements with the merely cultural, and the cultural with the derivative and secondary” (1998: 36; also see Young, 1997). Fraser responds by insisting that recognition and redistribution are distinct spheres of justice that are equally important. The left's task, she argues, is to devise an approach to recognition that can be combined more harmoniously with efforts focused on redistribution (Fraser, 2000; 2001).

Provoked by the abstract way in which it tends to be made, Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka have attempted to test the contention that recognition is undermining redistribution (2004). To this end, Banting and Kymlicka employ a battery of measures comparing the fortunes of welfare states that have adopted relatively vigorous formal multiculturalism policies with those that have not. They conclude that countries with formal multiculturalism have fared no worse in sustaining redistributive social policies, and in some respects may have done better than ones opting for a difference-blind approach. However, as the authors themselves are quick to point out, testing the impact of formal multiculturalism policies on formal social welfare policies does not settle the wider recognition-versus-redistribution debate. When it comes to charting the impact of recognition politics, not as a specific bundle of concrete public policies but as a more diffuse set of discourses and practices, understanding proves more elusive. And with all the worries about misplaced identitarian obsessions at a time of neoliberal assault, it would seem that discourses and practices are core concerns for recognition's left-wing critics.

Fraser emphasizes these concerns when she identifies two features of recognition politics that may be undermining redistribution. The first is a pervasive “culturalism” which, by ignoring political economy in favour of an exclusive focus on discourses and representations, contributes to what Ellen Meiksins Wood calls the “retreat from class” (1998; Fraser, 2000: 109–112). Fraser calls this the problem of displacement. Fraser's second target is an overly rigid view of the nature of group identity, which she detects in many contemporary instances of recognition politics. This view, she fears, fuels separatist impulses that fragment left-wing forces (2000: 112–113). Fraser calls this the problem of reification. It bears repeating that Fraser focuses on displacement and reification not to denounce recognition politics without further elaboration, but rather to advocate a politics of recognition that will complement rather than conflict with the politics of redistribution. Yet the question remains of whether and if so, how, recognition is undermining redistribution.

Although charting the overall impact of recognition politics as a vast and diffuse ensemble of discourses and practices is an unmanageable task, it may prove helpful to scrutinize the discourses and practices of particular recognition campaigns for their potential interplay with political economy concerns. This focus can complement the comparative study of public policies undertaken by Banting and Kymlicka, the conceptual and prescriptive approach developed by Fraser, and the more sweepingly impressionistic treatments offered by critics like Barry and Gitlin.

Reparations campaigns may be particularly appropriate candidates for such an approach, not least because their discourses and practices seem to exemplify the emphasis on recognition with which many scholars and activists are concerned. Philosopher Janna Thompson, to name one important scholar in the field, identifies the emphasis on recognition as a crucial distinguishing characteristic of reparations demands. To better understand their moral specificity, Thompson differentiates calls for reparative justice from both justice-as-equity, which compensates individuals for unfair disadvantage, and from restorative justice, which aims to return victims to their pre-injustice state. While noting that reparative claims often contain egalitarian and restorative elements, Thompson argues that their stress on reparative acknowledgment for histories of disrespect makes them distinct (2002: xiv, 10).

Catherine Lu's analysis of reparative processes as potential processes of “moral regeneration” is also useful in highlighting this emphasis. Although Lu doubts whether actual monetary payments will necessarily help in achieving this goal, she sees reparative claims as bids to establish “a new moral order of political, legal and social relationships that affirms certain moral truths denied by a previous order”—a view that brings the question of recognition to the fore (2003: 5; 2002). Representing constituencies that know the stigma of what Charles Taylor calls “misrecognition” (1994: 25), redress movements see formal recognition of past injustice as a crucial recognition of present dignity and worth (James, 1999: 253–260).

Redress campaigns are also relevant to the recognition-versus-redistribution debate because they seem to exhibit some of the key social movement tendencies that critics see as threats to redistribution. For instance, concerns about displacement inform sociologist John Torpey's criticism that movements seeking redress for what are in many cases long-past injustices tend to be “commemorative” rather than “anti-systemic” in nature (2001: 337). The commemorative focus looks backwards rather than forward, and it privileges emotions and feelings in determining movement strategies. In Torpey's words, it shifts “from the labour movement's traditional rallying cry of ‘don't mourn, organize’ to a sensibility that insists we must ‘organize to mourn’ ” (2003: 1). The commemorative emphasis in redress politics may thus contribute to the displacement of redistribution in the same sense conveyed by historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's complaint that “The Personal is Not Political Enough” (1980).

Concerns about reification inform a second general criticism of redress politics. This criticism notes that reparative claims tend to target deliberate acts of state malfeasance committed against specific ethnocultural groups. To be sure, the focus is not pernicious in its own right. But it may be more troubling when viewed in light of a wider shift in the moral contours of contemporary citizenship. As Xiaobei Chen's analysis of “The Birth of the Child-Victim Citizen” suggests, our increased sensitivity to the plight of innocents suffering at the hands of identifiable perpetrators seems to be paralleled by a mounting indifference towards suffering that either lacks the requisite “innocent” quality or appears to have been caused by market or other structural forces (2003). To use Fraser's terms, therefore, a process of reification may be reshaping our sense of repairable injustice. Turning away from a postwar, “no-fault” vision of social citizenship which blurred inter-group distinctions and located injustice in social processes (Brodie, 2002), our reparative sensibilities may be shrinking to encompass only discrete, deliberate acts committed against groups defined categorically as victims. What light can a closer look at an actual redress campaign shed on these apprehensions?

Historical Injustices in Canada: The “Chinese Head Tax”

The main claimants in Canadian reparations politics are citizens of Aboriginal, Acadian, African, Chinese, Italian and Ukrainian ancestry. Their campaigns focus on cultural assault in the residential schools (Aboriginal peoples), deportation under British rule (Acadians), histories of slavery and racism (African Canadians), internment during the Second and First World Wars (Italian and Ukrainian Canadians, respectively) and the impact of racist immigration policies (Chinese Canadians). Although clearly important in its own right, a more specific reason for studying the Chinese-Canadian case is that its relatively lengthy duration—the head-tax redress campaign began in the early 1980s and continues to this day—makes it easier to treat the movement in the broader context of the changing moral contours of contemporary Canadian citizenship than might otherwise be the case.

The 1885 Chinese Immigration Act responded to racist criticisms that Chinese labourers were driving down wages and taking jobs away from Anglo-Saxon workers in British Columbia. Its avowed purpose was to discourage Chinese immigration; the act imposed a head tax of $50 on any Chinese person entering Canada, which was raised to $100 in 1900 and then to $500 in 1903 (Bolaria and Li, 1988: 107). After 1924, the head tax was replaced with a near-total ban on Chinese immigration, known commonly as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which remained in place until 1947. This legislation reflected a wider pattern of anti-Asian public policy in Canada. For example, because the federal franchise was based on provincial voters' lists, and because most Chinese Canadians lived on the West Coast, a British Columbia law preventing persons of Chinese descent from voting or standing for office in provincial elections effectively disfranchised most Chinese Canadians until the passage of the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 (Canada, 1997: 47, 63–64, 80–89). Other racist policies included a Saskatchewan law that barred Chinese employers from hiring ‘white’ women, and various British Columbia laws that prevented persons of Asian descent from working in the liberal professions or on Crown lands (Bolaria and Li, 1988: 107–109).

These policies have had a severe impact. As Yasmeen Abu-Laban points out, while federal policy was bringing female domestic workers from Europe to boost “white” birth rates, it was also deliberately preventing the formation of Chinese-Canadian families (2001: 265–266). The prohibitive cost of the tax, which at $500 was equivalent to two years' wages, created a population of ‘married bachelors,’ with virtually no second Chinese-Canadian generation until the late 1970s (Bolaria and Li, 1988: 114–116). Thus, the head-tax legislation deprived early Chinese migrants of family support, created psychological scars, delayed the formation of a viable Chinese-Canadian community and exposed those Chinese women who did manage to immigrate to an unusually harsh environment of sexual and reproductive pressure.¹

Also important as a source of lasting bitterness is the stigma that Canada's racist immigration regime imposed on Chinese Canadians. By singling out Chinese migrants for unique, state-sanctioned discrimination, the legislation stamped the Chinese as official ‘undesirables.’ And by preventing the formation of a viable Chinese-Canadian community while impeding the fair integration of those who were here, it created a lasting stereotype of Chinese Canadians as lacking indigenous contributions or roots. As the Chinese Canadian National Council has complained, “the bitter legacy of the Canadian government's 62 years of legislated racism is a Chinese-Canadian community that is still seen as a new immigrant community” (Bolan, 1995: B3).

The Head-Tax Redress Campaign

The head-tax redress campaign began in 1983 when an elderly man presented his $500 head-tax receipt to the office of then Vancouver East New Democratic party MP Margaret Mitchell. After reading the equality-rights provisions of the new Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Dak Leon Mark had decided to seek his MP's assistance in claiming reimbursement. With Mitchell's help, the Chinese Canadian National Council soon collected over 1,000 head-tax receipts and an official redress campaign was underway (Chinese Canadian National Council, 1988: 12). Its initial phase focused on lobbying federal politicians, holding rallies and distributing pamphlets. The movement has gone on to seek an official apology from the federal government, financial compensation for individual head-tax payers and their immediate descendants, and new federal expenditures on anti-racism projects (“Unfinished business,” 2001: A14; Roman, 2001: D1).

During the mid-1980s, groups such as Japanese, Ukrainian and Italian Canadians were also organizing to demand redress for past wrongs. In September 1988, the federal government and the National Association of Japanese Canadians signed the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement (Kobayashi, 1992; Weiner, 1988). The agreement extended an official apology for the World War Two internment, provided $23,000 individual cash payments to survivors and pledged to create the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. Soon after passing the agreement the governing Conservatives established a process of collective redress negotiations between the relevant organizations and the federal multiculturalism ministry. But these negotiations ended in 1993 when the organizations rejected federal Multiculturalism Minister Gerry Weiner's final offer. Weiner had proposed to issue certificates of apology to the directly affected individuals and to hold official ceremonies to commemorate the relevant injustices, but ruled out offering financial compensation (Norris, 1993: A6).

Although it set up a $10 million trust fund in March 1996 for the Pond Inlet and Grise Fiord Inuit, who had been relocated coercively to the High Arctic during the 1950s, and provided an official apology and a $350 million healing fund in January 1998 for former inmates of the residential schools, the subsequent Liberal government took a remarkably hard line with the groups that had been negotiating with the multiculturalism ministry (James, 1999: 251). On December 14, 1994, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Sheila Finestone sent a letter to eight redress-seeking organizations (Canada, 1994). The letter, which Finestone read subsequently in the House of Commons, announced the new Liberal policy of refusing to offer compensation or apologies to the relevant groups. Finestone explained the policy by claiming that her government faced a choice between whether “to attempt to address the past or to invest in the future.” She pledged the latter: “We believe our only choice lies in using limited government resources to create a more equitable society now and a better future for generations to come.” One news report described the response of head-tax activists upon reading Finestone's letter: “[S]ome shook their heads, some shouted in their disappointment and others had tears in their eyes” (Bolan, 1994: A3).

The activists could certainly find little comfort in Finestone's rationalization for the new policy. The only concrete evidence of the Liberals' allegedly principled choice to focus on fighting racism in the future was the impending establishment of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. However, this item was actually a leftover unimplemented element of the Japanese-Canadian redress settlement of 1988 (Weiner, 1988), which owed its existence not only to a predecessor government, but also to the very focus on past injustices that Finestone was portraying as the discredited alternative to her emphasis on the future. The hollowness of the Liberals' commitment to creating “a more equitable society … for generations to come” became even more apparent just three months later (Canada, 1994). As Stephen McBride and John Shields note, Paul Martin's February 1995 budget “marked the point where erosion of social programs ended and demolition seriously began” (1997: 81).

Ottawa's intransigence prompted head-tax campaigners to adopt a more antagonistic approach. In March 1995, the Chinese Canadian National Council presented the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights with a submission detailing the human-rights abuses committed under the aegis of the head tax and the Exclusion Act. The submission claimed that Canada's refusal to remedy the abuses violated several international human-rights treaties (Wong, 1995a: A3). As one activist explained, the petitioners hoped to embarrass Ottawa with the “spectacle of elderly pioneers … bringing forth their individual cases of human injustice before the world community” (Wong, 1995b: A15). Chinese Canadians took the head-tax issue to the September 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism for the same reason: to see an unsympathetic government “shamed on the international stage” (May Cheng, in Boswell, 2001: A5).

The Mack Case

The movement unveiled its domestic response to Ottawa's hard line in December 2000, when three plaintiffs (Shack Jang Mack, a head-tax payer, and Quen Ying Lee and Yew Lee, the widow and son of a deceased head-tax payer, respectively) launched a class-action lawsuit in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice. Organized by the Chinese Canadian National Council, the suit was initiated on behalf of approximately 4,000 individuals—mostly immediate descendants, but some surviving head-tax payers as well—who had registered with the council to support the action (Thomas, 2000: A3). The Mack plaintiffs sought $1.2 billion in compensation. This figure encompassed the inflation-adjusted return of all head-tax funds to surviving taxpayers and to the descendants of deceased taxpayers, as well as damages for the financial impact of the tax, for the separation of taxpayers from their families and for the stigma that the tax imposed (Mack et al., 2002).

The plaintiffs forwarded three main arguments. First, they claimed that the refusal to redress the head tax, when coupled with Ottawa's decision to redress the Japanese-Canadian internment, violated section 15 of the Charter of Rights. This argument held that the federal government had stigmatized Chinese Canadians by unfairly excluding them from a benefit provided to other similarly situated groups. Second, the plaintiffs argued that the head tax and the Exclusion Act were invalid at their enactment because they violated customary international law. And third, the Mack suit claimed that because the head tax violated customary international law, its collection constituted a case of unjust enrichment which Ottawa had a common-law duty to repair.

In a decision reported on July 9, 2002, Justice Peter Cumming of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled against the Mack plaintiffs (Shack Jang Mack et al., 2002). Justice Cumming held that the proposed application of the Charter of Rights was retrospective and therefore could not succeed; that the doctrine of unjust enrichment did not apply because the impugned action was mandated by a duly enacted government statute; and that the head tax and the Exclusion Act did not violate customary international law during their application. The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld this decision on September 13, 2002. The Mack plaintiffs were denied leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada on April 24, 2003.

The bitter book-end to Ottawa's 1994 refusal to redress the head tax is the controversy surrounding some remarks made by Justice James MacPherson of the Ontario Court of Appeal in the appeal of the Ontario Superior Court ruling. While asking the plaintiffs a series of hypothetical questions that might be posed by a critic, Justice MacPherson suggested that the tax had been willingly paid by people who chose freely to come to Canada, that funds from the tax had helped to meet important public purposes, and that paying it was worthwhile for a man who might now see his “granddaughter playing first-string cello for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra” (in Eng, 2002: A17). The Mack plaintiffs responded with a complaint to the Canadian Judicial Council, which argued that MacPherson's questions indicated racism and bias against the plaintiffs (Poon, 2003). In October 2002 the Judicial Council dismissed the complaint, adding that its failure to appreciate the importance of adversarial questioning by appellate judges made it “both unjustified and unfair” (Makin, 2002: A23).

A legal analysis of the Mack case, which raises complex questions about the application of the Charter and its relationship with the common law, is best left to legal scholars (see Baines, 2002; Webber, forthcoming). Politically, the suit reflects the impact on the movement of the Liberal government's 1994 decision to terminate redress negotiations. Stung by the contrast established by the precedent of Japanese-Canadian success, and frustrated to see a decade of advocacy work and dialogue dismissed with a disingenuous snub, the head-tax campaign turned first to the international arena and then to the domestic legal process in an angry attempt to embarrass Ottawa into resuming negotiations. As an October 1998 Chinese Canadian National Council community newsletter explained: although “legal experts caution against the chance of winning … legal action can have a political impact on the redress campaign, which has been put on hold because of the federal government's refusal in December 1994” (Chinese Canadian National Council, 1998).

The federal government responded to the second, more antagonistic phase of the head-tax campaign by flaunting its apparent imperviousness to the shaming tactic. This much was conveyed by Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan's reaction to the Ontario Superior Court Mack verdict: “The courts have spoken and I think it's time to move on” (“Unfinished business,” 2001: A14). Even the Globe and Mail thought that Ottawa should have offered “something a bit more graceful” (“Unfinished business,” 2001: A14).

Evaluating the Head-Tax Campaign on the Recognition-Redistribution Distinction

To use Fraser's words, the head-tax campaign has prioritized recognition over redistribution “as the remedy for injustice and the goal of political struggle” (1995: 68). Although the Mack plaintiffs certainly sought financial redress, the monetary emphasis is best understood in light of the movement's broader focus on replacing historical stigma with symbols of respect. For example, and in contrast to African-Canadian discussions about how reparations might bring economic opportunities to marginalized communities, the Chinese-Canadian campaign has framed financial redress in symbolic terms, as a means to “just and honourable closure” (Chinese Canadian National Council, 2001; cf. Higgins, 2001). The Mack plaintiffs emphasized honour and symbolism when they argued that Canada's decision to pay cash reparations only to Japanese Canadians but not to their constituency “demeans the dignity of the Chinese Canadian community and belittles its claim to full equality” (Mack et al., 2002).

Pointing out this emphasis on honour and symbolism is not the same as criticizing the head-tax campaign. Campaigns to accumulate honour will inevitably play a crucial role in the recognition struggles of historically stigmatized groups (James, 1999: 266–267). Thus, if one accepts Fraser's argument that recognition is equally important to redistribution as a dimension of justice, the question becomes whether the head-tax movement has pursued recognition in ways that might harm redistribution. And while it is certainly arguable that the $1.2 billion sought in Mack could be better spent on social policy, that figure should also be seen in light of the movement's larger attempt to engage Ottawa in a bargaining process that would culminate in a more modestly symbolic cash settlement. Indeed, recent literature from the campaign suggests that $23 million, the amount originally collected under the head-tax policy with no adjustment for interest or inflation, would be acceptable (Chinese Canadian National Council, 2004).

Assessing the head-tax campaign from the standpoint of redistribution requires noting from the outset that Canada's political climate since the early 1990s has been hostile not only to projects of wealth redistribution but also to the recognition claims of racialized minorities (Abu-Laban and Nieguth, 2000: 486, 489). Perhaps the opening salvo came in 1991, when the Citizen's Forum on Canada's Future criticized the multiculturalism policy for “reminding us of our different origins … [rather] than emphasizing the things we have in common” (in Fleras and Elliott, 1992: 123). Evidence of multiculturalism's mounting disfavour also appeared with the ill-fated 1992 Charlottetown Accord's Canada Clause. Although observers ridiculed its scattered affirmations of various constituencies as “little dollops of constitutional status [to] symbolically gratify all” (Russell, 1995: 100), the clause failed to even mention multiculturalism. The Chrétien Liberals further diminished multiculturalism's status in 1994 by replacing the multiculturalism ministry with the Ministry of Canadian Heritage.

The simultaneous character of the attack on the welfare state and the demotion of multiculturalism may cast doubt on strong versions of the recognition-versus-redistribution thesis because it suggests the shared, and declining—rather than conflicting—fortunes of recognition and redistribution in the contemporary Canadian context. The post-Finestone phase of the head-tax campaign constitutes a specific reaction to this context. As Ottawa implemented a neoliberal agenda while seeking to assuage a resentful populism which associated decades of constitutional wrangling with the machinations of ‘special interests,’ the movement found itself in a difficult position. Although the head tax itself had begun as a sop to racist British Columbians, who blamed “Ottawa's intransigence [as] the reason for continued Asian migration to ‘their’ province” (Chalykoff, 1998: 161), although Canadian business had profited handsomely from exploiting Chinese immigrants and although anti-Asian racism amongst the present-day citizenry remained a serious problem, the redress campaign tended to neglect these more controversial targets in favour of a straightforward antigovernment assault.

The post-Finestone head-tax movement adopted both the rhetoric and the favoured quarry of right-wing opponents of multiculturalism and the welfare state. Participants framed their efforts as a battle against a “gutless” and “callous” government lacking “courage and conviction” (Letts, 2002; Smith, 2001: A4; Chinese Canadian National Council, 2001). The Mack action strengthened this antigovernment stance by focusing the campaign squarely, to use co-counsel Avvy Go's words, on whether “it is okay for our Government to benefit from racist laws” (in “Post-WCAR conference,” 2002). The political valence of this approach was highlighted in an opinion piece written after the conclusion of Mack by Toronto civic politician Susan Eng. Noting that Heritage Canada had recently been forced to withdraw a poster that featured “offensive caricature[s] of Asians,” Eng linked the gaffe to the department's stand against head-tax redress. Denouncing “misspending” and “multicult bureaucrats,” Eng concluded that “Heritage Canada do-gooders should get out of the business of telling us how to celebrate our heritage” (2003: A17).

Thus, the post-1994 head-tax campaign adopted a variety of confrontational tactics, the aim of which was to shame the Canadian government. The turn to the domestic courts, which soon became virtually identical with the campaign itself, conclusively established Ottawa as the movement's official exclusive target. Along the route, frustrated activists articulated their anger in harmony with a prevailing climate of antigovernment sentiment. These actions and decisions invested the movement deeply in the across-the-board antipathy to government that has been undermining the cause of wealth redistribution since the early 1980s.

Recall that Torpey distinguishes between the possibility of a truly “anti-systemic” reparations campaign and merely “commemorative” enterprises, which nurture a “backward-looking … victimhood” uninterested in building a better collective future (2001: 337). The head-tax movement is commemorative in the sense that it has dedicated considerable energy towards exploring the past suffering of its constituency. Mack plaintiff Yew Lee expressed this backward-looking focus when he stated that his family wonders “where we would have been if our families didn't have to go into debt to pay the head tax” (in Letts, 2002). Although this sort of past-regarding introspection is an inevitable accompaniment to the business of living human lives, redress politics may deploy it in troublesome ways. By proposing bargains that appear to trade redemption for the state and majority society in return for acceptable commemoration of past suffering, redress may help to sanitize the present—and thus also to turn attention away from growing economic inequalities. In this sense, redress settlements may be akin to boutique job creation programs, whose architects seek ideological legitimation for neoliberal governance rather than solutions to unemployment and poverty (McBride, 1992: 141–146).

The head-tax movement seemed at times to be attempting to barter redemption and closure. For example, Yew Lee proclaimed that redress would constitute “just and honourable closure to this longstanding national legacy,” while May Cheng of the Chinese Canadian National Council suggested that redress would help Canada to “promote a good human rights record” (in Chinese Canadian National Council, 2001; in Carmichael, 2002: C1). James Moore, Canadian Alliance MP for Port Moody-Coquitlam, highlighted this legitimation potential when he urged “the government to recognize the wrongs of the past so that the Chinese community and all Canadians can have a prosperous and united future together” (Moore, 2002).

However, the tendency to barter redemption and closure should not be allowed to obscure a more positive aspect of the commemorative focus. This aspect derives from the capacity of politicized encounters with the past to raise the profile of members of historically marginalized groups in civic debates. As I have argued elsewhere, when a redress movement wins meaningful redress for past wrongs it acquires a “symbolic capital” (Bourdieu, 1986) that it can deploy in future endeavours (James, 1999). The symbolic capital produced by reparations follows from the tendency of redress settlements to establish potent precedents. As Kenda Gee of the Edmonton-based Head Tax and Exclusion Act Redress Committee put it, redress forces the nation to “confront its past so such things do not happen again” (Thomas, 2000: A3). In turn, the successful redress movement wins recognition for leading its country to a better future.

The movement can then use its stock of symbolic capital to promote progressive social change. For example, after winning redress Japanese-Canadian activists participated in constitutional debates to support Aboriginal self-government, advised the British Columbia Union of Indian Chiefs on the residential-schools campaign, assisted with the preparation of the Mack litigation and helped overseas groups suing the Japanese government for its wartime atrocities (National Association of Japanese Canadians, 1991: 16; Miki, 1996; Letts, 2002; “Canadians,” 2003: A6).

In the absence of success, evaluating the head-tax campaign on this dimension must turn on the movement's apparent intended uses for whatever symbolic capital it might derive from commemoration. The evidence is favourable. For example, the Chinese Canadian National Council has consistently urged that, aside from compensating head-tax payers and their immediate descendants, any redress paid by the federal government should be dedicated to establishing anti-racism chairs in Canadian universities, to enhancing the work of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and to funding community anti-racism projects (“Unfinished business,” 2001: A14; Roman, 2001: D1).

Moreover, participants have used the media attention garnered by their movement to call attention to links between the past treatment of Chinese Canadians and present-day wrongs which might otherwise receive less notice. For example, May Chiu and William Ging Wee Dere of the Chinese Canadian National Council suggested that Ottawa's 1995 immigration policy changes, which imposed “a head tax of $975 on all adult immigrants entering the country,” would facilitate the sort of racist exploitation promoted by the head tax (Roman, 2001: D1).²

Thus, the politicized bid to commemorate the mistreatment of early Chinese migrants has helped to shed critical light on policies that are exposing immigrants to harm today. From the standpoint of redistribution, building awareness of policies that exploit immigrants is vital to advancing the interests of other participants in the wage economy (Grint, 1991: 236–273). Indeed, the head-tax campaign has improved its capacity to do just this, given its recent success in enlisting support from the British Columbia Federation of Labour, the Council of Canadians and prominent federal New Democrats such as Jack Layton and Libby Davies (Chinese Canadian National Council, 2003b; 2003c).

The heightened focus on coalition building may also be an indicator of an attempt on the part of the movement to rethink its approach following the collapse of the Mack litigation in April, 2003. For example, in September, 2003 the Chinese Canadian National Council launched its “Last Spike Campaign.” This campaign involved sending an old railroad spike, which novelist and historian Pierre Berton had found near the site of the CPR's actual “last spike” at Craigellachie, British Columbia, on an 11-city, cross-country media tour (Chinese Society of Nova Scotia, 2003). Sharpening the movement's earlier emphasis on the crucial connections between racialization, discrimination and worker exploitation, the campaign reminded Canadians that this national icon also symbolizes “the struggle of early Chinese immigrants as they battled through economic hardship, discrimination and isolation as a result of legislated racism” (Chinese Canadian National Council, 2003a).

On balance, therefore, the commemorative focus of the head-tax redress campaign did not sanitize the present. On the contrary: at a time of declining voter participation and citizen withdrawal from public life, it has helped Canadians to see contemporary immigration policy in its highly revealing historical and political-economic context.