Japanese immigrants in Québec: Experience of health information access during the COVID-19 pandemic

Our study seeks to understand the effect of language on the dissemination of critical pandemic public health information in the Japanese immigrant community in Québec. As this group is not the only small community struggling with linguistic barriers on information access, the current study can serve as a model for investigating similar kinds of questions in other small linguistic minority communities. We first explore information access patterns of first generation, Québec-dwelling Japanese immigrants during the pandemic. We will document the community’s perceived limitations in their access and whether they experienced inconsistences and conflicting information between news sources in different languages. Secondly, we test if and how language proficiency prevented Japanese immigrants from accessing local COVID-related information (Canada and Québec), in English and in French. Finally, we will investigate the mental health and behavioural impacts of having limited Canadian COVID-19 information on this community.

Examining Barriers to Mental Health Access for Canadian-born Anglophones and Chinese-born English-favouring Allophones in the Montreal Area

We are interested in examining and comparing two linguistic minority groups: Canadian-born Anglophones (whose first language is English) and Chinese-born English-favouring Allophones (whose first language is Chinese, and whose preferred official language is English). Canadian born Anglophone (AN) communities face substantial linguistic challenges when using mental health services in French, and these challenges have largely been neglected in the literature, perhaps due to their majority status in other provinces. Chinese-born English-favouring allophones (AL) are at a double-disadvantage for healthcare in Quebec, being a linguistic minority (Chinese first language) within a linguistic minority (Anglophone community) in the larger Quebec context. We hope to profile the perceived mental health communication challenges in AN and AL communities when accessing mental health services in French.

We hypothesize that both Canadian-born Anglophones (AN) and Chinese-born English favouring Allophones (AL) will perceive language barriers when accessing mental health services in French, and the extent to which language barriers are perceived will negatively correlate with the individual’s proficiency in French. Additionally, we hypothesize that ALs will perceive significantly more cultural barriers when using mental health services in Quebec compared with ANs.