I'm anglo, I live in Quebec (although I wasn't born here) and I have to agree with pretty much everything Acajack says.
When we talk in English about someone being "Québécois," it's pretty obvious we are referring to a specific ethnocultural group. But in French it has a dual meaning: it's both the general description for anyone who has made Quebec their permanent home, as well as a more exclusive ethnic descriptor for people of French-Canadian heritage from Quebec. It's worth noting that a francophone from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine is Québécois in the first sense but not the second, since they are ethnically/culturally Acadian.
On a day to day basis this stuff almost never comes up. Maybe it's a bigger issue in more homogenous parts of the province, but in Montreal, everybody speaks French with a different accent based on their own personal background. Nobody is going around deciding who is Québécois or not.
I'd like to share some examples of identity and language based on my real-life friends:
- Parents are Vietnamese, grew up speaking Vietnamese at home, but her main everyday language is a very joualisant French. She also speaks English with a distinct Montreal accent, kind of like an Italian from St-Léonard.
- "Québécois de souche" guy who would vote "yes" in a referendum but feels alienated from Quebec's political and cultural mainstream. Has no affinity for Canada but has no real animosity towards anglos and no desire to exclude them from anything. Hates the culture of bro-ey pickup-driving Kevins that seems to be taking over Quebec. (This could probably describe every Québec solidaire voter.)
- Mom is from France, dad is an old-stock Montreal anglo. Her English has a slight French accent, her French has some noticeable French-from-France intonation.
- Two guys from Quebec City, each with a francophone mother and anglophone father. One went to an English school, the other went to a French school. Both identify as anglophones and yet their French is completely unaccented and they pass as francophones, to the point where most of their francophone friends are probably unaware that they are anglo.
- Two siblings with anglo parents. Grew up in an almost entirely francophone suburb of Montreal, went to school in French. Afterwards, one went to French cégep/university, the other studied in English. The first one married a francophone, speaks English with a slight French accent. The other married an anglo from out of province, works in a very English part of Montreal, says her French isn't as good as it used to be – but is considered a francophone by her unilingual anglo coworkers.
- All the francophone teenagers in my neighbourhood speak with an accent that didn't exist 25 years ago. It sounds kind of transatlantic, because many of them have parents who immigrated from France, the Caribbean, North Africa and West Africa, and they use slang words like "giu" that come from Haitian creole. But this isn't limited to kids with immigrant parents. A lot of the kids with "Québécois" parents speak like this too.
Are all of these people Québécois? Some would say yes, some no. Most would say who cares. The point of all these examples is to show that language and culture in Quebec is complicated, especially in Montreal. It's not the simple insider/outsider equation that some of the people in this thread are making it out to be. Identity and language in this province, or at least this city, is the product of lines that are constantly shifting.
__________________
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
|