About Jessica Stallone

I am an ethnographer specializing in the politics of race and immigration in Québec. I analyze how nationalist politics are enacted—and contested—in everyday life, and in turn, shape experiences of belonging and exclusion for racialized (immigrant) minorities and aging majorities in a context of rapid diversification and (sub)urban change. My work bridges insights from key fields, including immigration, race, and ethnicity, political sociology, aging, and gender.

My FRQSC-funded dissertation, Growing Old with the Nation: Aging, Belonging, and the Politics of Exclusion, is an ethnographic study of how nationalism functions as an emotional resource and political tool for white Francophone Catholic seniors living in a changing suburb of Québec. Drawing on 400 hours of fieldwork in old-age homes and community spaces, 26 life- history interviews with seniors and their adult kin, and 9 focus groups (N = 42), I introduce the concept of “aging in nationhood” to show how later life becomes a site for the reproduction of exclusionary politics. Everyday cultural practices—choirs, festivals, and social activities—serve as affective anchors offering purpose and dignity at a life stage often marked by isolation and declining mobility, while simultaneously reinforcing racialized boundaries of national belonging. This research shows how nationalist affect is lived through ordinary social life amid the precarity of aging, and how political values are intergenerationally transmitted and evolve within families.

My research on immigration, racialization, and intersectional inequalities is published in The British Journal of Sociology, Gender & Society and Ethnic and Racial Studies. I’ve also written book reviews for the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and International Migration Review. My work has received awards and fellowships from the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et Culture (FRQSC), the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA), the Munk School of Global Affairs, the American Sociological Association, and the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto.

Beyond my research, I have taught both introductory and advanced undergraduate courses, including Intermediate Qualitative Methods (SOC254) and Special Topics: Nation-Making in the West (SOC495) at the University of Toronto, and an Integrative Research Seminar at Dawson College (300-DW) in Montreal, Québec. My teaching praxis is informed by teaching often taken-for-granted core skills in reading and writing, and de- mystifying the hidden curriculum—values I care deeply about as a first-generation scholar.

I was born and raised in Montreal, part of the Italian community that migrated and settled in Québec after the second world war. I am a trilingual scholar in English, French, and Italian, who prioritizes community research in these linguistic settings.