Immigration

New insights into immigrant employment trajectories

There have been a few interesting articles lately discussing immigrants’ employment success in Canada. Last week, The Globe and Mail published a story about a new project begun by Maytree, a charitable organization that runs all kinds of interesting programs to help employers hire new immigrants, train and mentor newcomers to organize political campaigns or run for office, and share best practices in integration. Maytree’s current project, under its Assisting Local Leaders with Immigrant Employment Strategies (ALLIES) initiative, connects skilled immigrants with small- and medium-sized businesses. Small- and medium-sized employers hire about 64% of private sector employees, but many immigrants don’t know about them. The companies may lack the human resources skills and staff to recruit immigrants.

Immigrants’ paths towards economic success have been linked to many factors, including acceptance of foreign credentials and immigrants’ social networks. A paper recently released by Metropolis BC, using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC), found that immigrants take different paths towards employment depending upon their immigration category. In 2007, 60% of immigrants to Canada were economic, 25% were family immigrants, and 15% were refugees. Immigrant Category, Social Networks, and Ethnic Workplaces over Time: A Longitudinal Analysis of Immigrants’ Economic Integration in Canada (Metropolis BC Working Paper 11-10) summarizes the study conducted by Wendy Roth, Marc-David Seidel, Dennis Ma and Eiston Lo. The authors analyzed LSIC data, collected 6 months, 2 years, and 4 years after immigrants’ arrival in Canada, to determine how the workplace type (ethnic or non-ethnic) influences the ethnic composition of social ties, and how these two factors impact immigrants’ economic success. They found that economic immigrants benefit from non-ethnic workplaces, family immigrants face economic penalties when they enter the open economy, and refugees benefit from entrepreneurship. In short, ”Immigration policies sort immigrants into different labour market trajectories with different financial returns.”

Family immigrants are more likely to remain in the ethnic labour market, leading to co-ethnic friendships. When they move into the open economy, they are less likely to reap its benefits than economic immigrants. They’re also less likely to benefit from entrepreneurship than refugees, who use this as a path to long-term success. Obviously, family immigrants were sponsored by their relatives; 37% of economic immigrants and 65% of refugees had relatives in Canada before immigrating. Economic immigrants are more likely to speak English or French, and have higher levels of education, facilitating non-ethnic social ties and employment in non-ethnic workplaces. Interestingly, the ethnic concentration of the CMA and the presence of friends or family in Canada before immigration had no impact on the odds of working in a non-ethnic workplace or the odds of making non-ethnic friendships. However, people who made friendships through friends and relatives in Canada or through religious activities were more likely to make ethnic friends, while making friends through ESL classes or work more often led to non-ethnic friendships. Those who form mainly non-ethnic friendships early earn higher incomes. While economic immigrants develop diverse social networks and move into the open economy, family immigrants tend to make their contacts and maintain employment in the ethnic market, facing economic barriers to success elsewhere. However, the authors stress that family immigrants often provide support for their families, such as child care, which has economic benefits. Refugees’ relative success from entrepreneurship seems to reflect the support they receive from private sponsors or the government.

This is further fuel for my dissertation, which found that structural changes, such as changes in immigration policy, impacted the housing and transportation choices of Filipino immigrants over several decades. Policy is a remarkable sorting agent, and sub-categories such as the Live-in Caregiver Program or Entrepreneur Class can have major impacts on immigrants’ housing and transportation trajectories. Social networks were crucial factors in finding housing and transportation options, not to mention finding jobs and accessing bridging or training programs.

Why your vote counts

Two weeks ago, after the Conservatives’ budget triggered a non-confidence vote, a federal election was called for May 2, 2011. This is the third election since 2006, the beginning of Stephen Harper’s reign as Prime Minister with a minority government. Like many Canadians, I certainly don’t enjoy the added cost of these elections, but I’ll pay any price I can to have the chance to vote Harper out of power and prevent him from winning a Conservative majority.

I realize this is an unusual stance to take in Canada: voter apathy is said to run rampant here (voter turnout is usually between 70 and 80 percent of registered voters, which represents 40 to 50 percent of the country’s population). Moreover, it’s an unusual stance for someone who supports the NDP. Given the fact that cities never fare well in federal elections due to the distribution of seats across Canada, and the parliamentary first-past-the-post system, I will probably never see an NDP Prime Minister. Like many Canadians supporting the left, I’ve become resigned to the fact that I probably won’t even see an NDP MP elected in my riding. When I lived in Ottawa, it was in Ottawa-Vanier, which has been Liberal since its establishment as a federal riding in 1935. In Vancouver, the two ridings I’ve lived in have also swung Liberal; this year, I’m in Hedy Fry‘s riding (she’s been in power since 1993). So am I just “wasting” my vote?

I was raised by immigrants from a strongly democratic country: Indian citizens (both men and women) have had the vote since 1935. Influenced by British rule, India shares the Canadian experiences of the first-past-the-post system and minority governments. Yet despite acknowledged corruption, years of coalition governments, and parties that have changed their political leanings over the years, voter turnout in India has remained between 55 and 60 percent for half a century, without the declines that most Western countries have experienced. Probably because I have parents from the world’s most populous democracy, I voted in my first federal election when I was 19. I have felt the powerful force of democracy most strongly when voting in federal and provincial elections.

Government, particularly at the federal and provincial levels, plays a major role in making our lives better or worse. I’m going out on a limb here: urban planners have long espoused the values of the local community. Many planners believe that it is only through local initiatives, community-led efforts, and intuitive knowledge of neighbourhoods can our cities become healthier, more environmentally conscious, and more economically robust. But here’s the thing: federal and provincial jurisdictions cover a lot of what happens in cities. We have a direct say in who is elected to federal government, something (lest we forget) citizens of other countries would love to have. And because of our parliamentary system, a vote for our local Member of Parliament contributes to federal leadership.

How does your MP affect what happens in your community? And how does voting in federal elections impact local issues? Let’s look at three issues: affordable housing, public transit, and immigration. All three are issues that cities large and small have struggled with for many years–and there’s only so much they can do on their own.

Affordable housing

Most municipal governments have acknowleged that their cities have high rents and low vacancy rates. They have limited or banned the conversion of rental housing to condominiums. They have started affordable housing funds. They have begun building smaller household types: condos, townhouses, granny flats. They have legalized secondary suites to help create lower-rent apartments. In short, cities have done just about everything they can to encourage the construction of affordable housing and protect what they do have. If you think this is just a big city problem, think again: even the City of Kelowna (with a population just over 100,000) has an affordable housing fund. The problem is so serious that in 2009, the United Nations declared that Canada had a housing crisis. But the federal government developed the National Housing Act, and it was changes to the federal Income Tax Act in 1972 that eliminated tax incentives for developing rental housing. In 1993, the feds (Liberals) delegated their authority over housing to the provinces and municipalities, but did not dedicate any funding. So cities remain in limbo while Bill C-304, An Act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians, makes achingly slow progress through the House and the Senate (it’s been on the books in one form or another since 2004, and been re-introduced after each election and proroguing of Parliament). Bill C-304 could be a major breakthrough, if it ever becomes law: it will enable provinces and municipalities to work with the federal government to develop affordable housing programs that meet local needs. (And the best part, local readers: the bill was introduced by long-time Vancouver East MP Libby Davies (NDP).

Public transit

Municipalities and regions have the responsibility to provide public transportation, which is funded in part by the provincial and federal governments. Cities large and small operate public transit services across Canada, and many of them have experienced increases in ridership throughout the past 15 years. But there is no national transit act. This means that public transit organizations do not have a steady source of support for capital projects or operations. Their operating costs are partly covered by fees, local taxes, and other mechanisms, depending on the municipality. Capital costs require outside help: each time a city wants to build a new LRT line, expand its fleet of buses, or build some new stations along an existing line, it must apply to the provincial and federal governments for funding. Success depends on the identity and priorities of the provincial and federal Ministers of Transportation. In Vancouver, while TransLink strongly supported construction of the Evergreen Line (Coquitlam) and the UBC Line (Vancouver), then-Minister Kevin Falcon preferred the Canada Line (Vancouver-Richmond). Toronto Mayor Rob Ford just convinced Premier Dalton McGuinty to approve one future subway line instead of four LRT lines, after the City had spent years begging for money to fund transit improvements across the inner suburbs. The Regional Municipality of Waterloo just got provincial funding for an LRT line linking Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge. Public transit in Canadian municipalities was identified as a major issue early on in the federal election, and yet not a single federal leader has discussed it at this point. (Note: the Pembina Institute has info on how the parties stand on a variety of environmental issues, including transit). Meanwhile at the provincial level, the BC NDP leadership race has featured several arguments for better public transit (notably from candidates Adrian Dix and Mike Farnworth).

Canadian cities grow substantially from immigration, and most municipalities welcome new immigrants, who contribute to their economic and social development. Immigrants rent housing in local neighbourhoods, find jobs locally, and enroll their children in local schools. In a country with low birth rates, immigration accounts for the majority of population growth. And while today’s immigrants are increasingly drawn to Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, smaller cities like Kelowna and Cambridge accommodate substantial numbers of immigrants each year. But immigration is a federal mandate: the feds decide what types of immigrants enter the country (Skilled Workers, Temporary Workers, Assisted Relatives) and how many. Since the Conservatives have been in power, Temporary Worker permits (for jobs as varied as Starbucks barista and oil sands worker) have risen steadily to the point where there are about a quarter million permits issued each year; on the other hand, the other categories have remained stagnant. Provinces also have a strong say, particularly through the Provincial Nominees program. Several notable partnerships between all three levels of government, such as the Canada-Ontario-Toronto Memorandum of Understanding, have helped fund and operate immigrant settlement programs, which cover a range of settlement issues like finding jobs, getting foreign credentials recognized through bridging programs, and learning English. These programs are operated by local non-profits and community organizations, but could not exist without federal and provincial support. Certain cities, like Fort McMurray, Alberta, have been seriously affected by changes in immigration policy (in their case, a high number of Temporary Workers settling in a city with high rents and a low rental vacancy rate).

Vote locally-federally

So even if you’re an “act local” type who thinks that community and municipal agendas are all that matter, it pays to vote provincially and federally. Cities can’t do everything, and the beauty of our system (one of the few advantages, really) is that you can vote locally for a federal result. Your MP has a local office where you can find out what they’ve done in your community (click here to find out what riding you’re in). Have they voted for or against initiatives that may have benefitted your neighbourhood, like settlement programs for new immigrants? What is your MP’s stance on key issues that you value, like public transit? (Click here to see how the federal parties measure up on major issues) Do you feel they represent the needs of your community (if you live in Fort McMurray, does your MP support more rights for Temporary Workers?) Does your MP go to community events and interact with local people? Who is running against your MP in the federal election? Do the other candidates make good points? With today’s technology, you can follow the candidates on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The Globe and Mail, National Post, CTV, CBC, and your local newspapers all have lots of articles and information on your riding and your candidates (click here for the Georgia Straight‘s view on Vancouver candidates). Elections Canada has voting information in 27 languages and a web feature on youth voting. Don’t complain about lack of time: there’s no need to spend any more time or effort on this than you would spend checking out the latest videos on YouTube…unless you find the issues interesting.

Take a page from Rick Mercer’s book and spend 20 minutes “doing something young people all over the world are dying to do: vote”. All you need is two pieces of identification with your name and address on them: trust me, I’ve moved across the country and had to do this many, many times. Even a piece of mail (like a hydro bill) will do for the second piece of ID. Students, you can vote in the riding where you live by taking in ID to the polling station–it’s that easy. All your friends are doing it! (click here to see vote mobs from campuses across the country).

Don’t feel like your vote is “wasted”, because you never know what can happen. Hey, the first time I voted in a federal election, the Tories suffered a crushing defeat and we ended 9 long years of Mulroney–I mean Conservative rule. The first time I voted provincially, the unthinkable happened: the NDP was elected in Ontario. Even if you live in a federal riding where your party has no hope of winning (like me), your vote matters. In the 2004 federal election, in the Liberal bastion of Ottawa-Vanier, 5 percent of voters supported the Green Party. Although the Greens had no possible chance of winning, their low level of support across the country (4.3 percent) raised the party to federal status, giving it federal funding for future elections. There are always close calls in ridings: when the election was called this year, the Globe and Mail featured a list of 50 ridings to watch across Canada where it’s a tight race (Vancouver Quadra voters, cast your ballots; Liberal Joyce Murray only won by 150 votes back in 2006). Left-thinking young residents are changing traditionally conservative values in suburbs across the country. So regardless of where you live or your political stripe, your vote does matter. (That said, if all you want is to prevent a Harper majority, Project Democracy tells you which party is best positioned to defeat the Conservative in your riding.) If you care about what happens in your city, you need to vote in this year’s federal election.

Filipinos: a growing presence in Canadian cities

Filipino immigrants are a rapidly growing group in many Canadian cities: there are almost half a million Filipinos in the country. In many ways, they are distinct: recent studies have highlighted their increasing dependence upon the Live-in Caregiver Program, their difficulties finding work in their occupations, and the implications of long periods of separation upon their families in Canada and the Philippines. Last year, the Vancouver Sun ran a four-part series on Filipinos in Canada, which they dubbed “The Filipino Factor”. This weekend the Globe and Mail featured a two-page spread, now that the Philippines outpaces China and India as the main source of immigrants to Canada. In my view, the distinctive patterns of Filipino immigrants make them an ideal case study that can teach us about immigrants’ integration, labour market participation and survival strategies.

As many of you know, my dissertation focuses on Filipinos’ housing and transportation choices in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), where over 170,000 Filipinos live. I’m rapidly nearing the end of my four years in the PhD programme at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning, which means I’m finishing my study and getting ready to publish my results. I have found that Filipino immigrants display a remarkable resilience in their housing and transportation choices. It’s the same resilience that is portrayed in the media: Filipinos come from a country with far less economic and political stability than Canada, and they are willing to work hard to succeed here. They do experience significant barriers to their integration, if we’re talking about the labour market. But socially, they must be one of the most integrated groups in Canada: they are very spatially dispersed and do not form ethnic enclaves. They are also experts in community-building: Filipinos have established hundreds of non-profit, community, and advocacy groups in Canadian cities. These groups help new arrivals find jobs, train for new careers, and adjust to life in Canada; they are often staffed by both paid and volunteer Filipinos. Prominent Filipino researchers Dr. Nora Angeles and Dr. Aprodicio Laquian have done research in this area; Nora is currently an Associate Professor at SCARP and Prod is a Professor Emeritus at our school.

In my own research, I have seen that Filipinos’ lower homeownership rate and higher transit commuting rate can partially be explained by their flexibility: they make practical choices depending on access to transit and the location of their workplaces, their children’s schools, shops and services. They move back and forth between owning and renting, driving and transit use, depending on changes in their families and careers. These choices mirror their experiences in the Philippines, where many lived in dense, mixed-use communities with access to transit. Of course, their choices are also shaped by structural changes in housing policy, immigration policy, and the labour market over the years.

We can’t ignore the issues faced by growing number of Filipinos who work far below their education and skill levels, or the policy shifts that have made things more difficult for recent arrivals (Dr. Phil Kelly at York University has written extensively on this subject). In the 1990s and 2000s, immigration from the Philippines increased markedly, and many of these new immigrants entered under the LCP rather than Skilled Worker or Family Class immigration categories. It will take these more recent immigrants longer to find jobs in their professions than earlier immigrants, and during this time they work long hours and have difficulty studying for recertification; many have college diplomas or university degrees from the Philippines that Canadian employers and professional associations do not recognize. However, in the face of these changes in immigration policy and the labour market, Filipinos’ resiliency strategy serves them well. Because they remain flexible and mobile in their housing and transportation decisions, they are able to adapt to changing situations, like divorce, training for a new job, or offering a room to recently-arrived family members when they arrive in Canada.

Why all the fuss about Filipinos? After all, we’re a multicultural society…why focus on one particular group? Because Filipinos have higher than average rates of education and are fluent in English, but are not able to work in their professions, which means they often have lower than average incomes. For example, over the years, Filipinos’ jobs in finance, insurance and real estate have changed to jobs in manufacturing and the service sector. Filipinos seem to be more affected by changes in immigration policy, such as the LCP. Their resiliency strategy towards housing and transportation choice may be unique. For these reasons, a case study of Filipinos may be instructive to researchers studying immigrants’ housing, settlement, and labour market patterns.

This week, I’ll be presenting my work at the National Metropolis Conference here in Vancouver. I’m looking forward to seeing other researchers in urban planning, geography and sociology who are studying how immigrants settle into Canadian cities. Metropolis Canada is part of an international network of researchers on immigration and migration, and there is also an annual conference in Europe each year. The best part is the diversity of academic researchers, community researchers, non-profit housing providers, immigrant service providers, and of course students who come to the conference to share their research and best practices on immigrant integration. I’ll never forget my first Metropolis conference last year in Montréal…let’s hope Vancouver can be as much fun!

Segregated or integrated? American and Canadian ethnic populations

Bill Rankin's map of Chicago

A couple of years ago, when I attended the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference in Chicago, I was stunned to hear that Cleveland and Chicago are the most segregated cities in the US. As I’ve written before, Canadian cities simply don’t have these levels of segregation; obviously not for African American and Hispanic populations, but also not for other groups. Recently, I’ve come across a series of maps illustrating the difference between American cities that are more segregated vs. more integrated, thanks to some enlightened cartographers. It is very interesting to compare these maps to the (albeit simpler) maps of visible minorities in Canadian cities recently published by the Globe and Mail.

Bill Rankin‘s map of Chicago illustrates the sharp divides between white, black, Asian, Hispanic, and other ethnocultural groups. It was originally published in Perspecta, the journal of the Yale School of Architecture; Rankin is a PhD candidate in architecture and the history of science.

After seeing this, Eric Fischer produced similar maps for the 40 largest American cities. He used the same process as Rankin (one dot for every 25 people and same colour code, using the 2000 Census data).

We can see some segregation in New York City, but there are zones of integration.

Eric Fischer's map of New York City

Detroit’s 8-Mile district stands out as an example of entrenched segregation. Many of the maps of smaller cities, like Buffalo, Toledo, and Raleigh, highlight inner city concentrations of African Americans.

: Eric Fischer’s map of Detroit

Eric Fischer's map of Los Angeles

On the other hand, check out Riverside, CA, which looks very integrated. Los Angeles also has a lot of integration, and San Antonio is very integrated.

Eric Fischer's map of Riverside

A couple of weeks ago, the Globe and Mail posted a series of “heat maps” showing the concentration of visible minorities in Canadian cities. They don’t break down the statistics (from the 2006 Census) into specific ethnocultural groups, as is the usual Canadian trend; there are simply too many groups to map. But they are interesting nonetheless. The maps are interactive, allowing you to zoom in, so I can’t reproduce them here. Check them out at www.globeandmail.ca under Multiculturalism.

Vancouver’s map shows that in most census tracts in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey, over 30% of the population are visible minorities. Toronto has a similar pattern: over 30% of the population in Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Richmond, and Ajax are visible minorities. The central Toronto map shows some interesting areas of lower concentration: areas around the subway lines, west Toronto and the Beaches. In Calgary, Winnipeg and Ottawa, the census tracts with over 30% visible minorities are mainly in the suburbs.

Montréal is even more fascinating because it shows a very different pattern. The visible minority population there is almost exclusively concentrated on the island of Montréal, with lower rates of concentration in the suburbs: the older pattern of immigrant settlement that we still see in smaller cities. This is likely due to sheer numbers: Toronto and Vancouver receive tens of thousands more immigrants each year than Montréal.

Obviously, the American maps show that not all cities south of the border are sharply segregated, but even in the smaller cities, like Toledo, Ohio, there are lingering segregated African American populations. This in itself is not an issue; the maps of Canadian cities show lots of neighbourhoods with high concentrations of visible minorities. The real issue is when these concentrations are due to poverty or discrimination (either societal or institutional, such as in the housing market). American housing research seems to indicate that much of the segregation is in fact due to these two factors. Entire programs are devoted to fixing this problem: Housing Choice Vouchers, for example, aim to remove people from entrenched areas of poverty into neighbourhoods where they may have better educational and job opportunities.

I think these maps illustrate again how different Canadian and American cities are in terms of ethnocultural groups: both in terms of their composition and their spatial dispersal. This continues to create policy differences between the US and Canada, not only in my own research areas of housing, transportation, and immigration, but in many other areas affecting municipalities: welfare provision, health care, and education to name a few.

The quiet (data) revolution

The Canadian Census is a major source of data for any researcher in urban planning, sociology, economics, geography, linguistics, and many other fields. While many scholars argue that the Census is prone to error and non-representation (for example, people without a regular address or students living away at college may be underrepresented), it is simply, to quote The Globe and Mail, “Canada’s only complete national database on education, income, employment, ethnicity and language”. It’s also a very costly endeavour undertaken every five years, with the next one scheduled for 2011. Which is probably why Tony Clement, Minister of Industry and Minister Responsible for Statistics Canada, very quietly arranged to scrap the long form next year, although he’s hiding behind alleged privacy concerns. The decision has prompted a quick response from the Canadian Institute of Planners, Metropolis, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, market research companies, and many other organizations who rely upon the data for research and policy work. Provincial governments, non-profit groups and many other bodies dealing with target populations, such as immigrant settlement services or at-risk youth, depend upon the data to develop and deliver their programs effectively.

The Census is a statistically viable data source because it is a mandatory survey administered by government officials, with every fifth household receiving a more in-depth questionnaire, known as the Census long form. Eight basic questions, such as age, sex, marital status, and the relationship of people in a household, are recorded on the short form, and many of these questions date back to 1871. Fifty other questions (that’s right, 50) , such as mode of transportation used to commute to work, commute distance, detailed questions about income and occupation, and detailed questions about ethnicity and immigration are on the long form. Although many of these questions have been on the long form for 35 years, some are relatively new: the two transportation questions, dealing with transportation mode and commute distance, date back to 1996. In the absence of a national transportation survey, this data can tell us which groups travel by transit the most or which cities have the highest cycling rates, just to give a couple of examples. I published a paper in Plan Canada just six months ago that compared youth and young adults’ transportation modes in the ten largest cities in Canada. I’m currently using Census data from 1986 to 2006 to investigate how immigrants’ housing and transportation choices have changed over time.

I fail to see how any of these questions could be considered an invasion of privacy, especially considering the fact that names or any identifying characteristics are never linked to the data. This on top of the fact that Census data in Canada, unlike in the US where data is free and public, is incredibly restricted. Only researchers in government or academia have access to the Census microdata, that 20% sample that contains the long form data. Plenty of other government agencies collect private information: you need to report your height, weight, hair colour and eye colour to get a driver’s license.

The federal government is planning to replace the long form with a voluntary “national household survey” that will be mailed out to approximately 30% of Canadian households, which the Tories argue will reach more households than the long form did. Anyone done a mail-out survey lately? The response rate is usually around 20-40%…what is 30% of 30%? And critics have already noted that the most vulnerable groups, such as immigrants, Aboriginal communities and low-income populations, will be the least likely to respond.

While the opposition parties are marshalling their efforts to reverse the decision, petitions are circled and we all write madly to our MPs, the media has given the issue a fair shake: the issue was covered in all the major papers and online venues, and not just by journalists (see “Canadians must be able to count on Statistics Canada” by academic Richard Shearmur in The Montréal Gazette). In the past week, the Canadian Medical Association, faith groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress, and economists like former TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond have all voiced their objections to the decision to jettison the long form.

Beyond the appalling lack of respect for the vast amount of data generated by the long form and its necessity to researchers, policy makers and community groups, the troubling issue here is that Harper’s “new world order” even extends to the collection of statistics about the people he is supposed to serve.

An update on this story: the head of Statistics Canada, Munir Sheikh, tendered his resignation July 21st over this issue, saying the voluntary “new Census” cannot be considered comparable to the long form.

The Philippines: the new China/India?

It seems that I may no longer have to answer the question, “Why are you doing a case study of Filipinos?” Ever since the 2006 Census showed that Filipinos were the largest immigrant group entering the country, there has been increased interest in the status of the Filipino population in Canada, with a major focus on those who have entered the country under the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). It’s gotten to the point that to say you’re working with the Filipino population is to invite harassment at parties by people wanting to know why nannies aren’t allowed to bring their family members to Canada with them (an excellent question, but one outside of my field of study).

In June, the Vancouver Sun featured a special five-part series on Filipinos in BC, trying to paint a broader picture of the Filipino population than their reputation as “nannies and maids”. However, the articles succeeded only in painting a somewhat grim picture of the challenges new immigrants face, even well-educated Filipinos who are usually fluent in English. Many of the more recent Filipino arrivals came to Canada on temporary worker visas. This program started in 2001 and was intended to fill labour shortages in technology, such as jobs in the burgeoning oil sands in Alberta. It was then extended to all kinds of other areas such as nursing, trucking, construction, fast food industry, and retail. There have been complaints about the program as it is vulnerable to human rights abuses, although some temporary workers may now apply for permanent residency after two years. Still, as I found out during my fieldwork in Toronto, Canada offers a better deal than other countries: it takes ten years to qualify for residency in Germany and in Saudi Arabia, it is impossible to get permanent residency. There are many other challenges for newcomers, which is why many choose to move to the major cities, where substantial Filipino populations, cultural associations, and community groups can provide support.

As many of you know, my dissertation focuses on the housing and transportation choices of Filipino immigrants in Toronto. I am particularly interested in how these choices have changed over time as the city grew and changed. What kinds of jobs did new immigrants find when they entered the country? Where did they live? How did they travel? Structural changes in immigration policy have played a key role in these choices, such as the introduction of family class sponsorship in the 1970s, the creation of the LCP in the 1980s, and the temporary worker category in the 2000s. I will be writing more on my dissertation topic as I finish up my data analysis in the next few months.

Save Transit City

I’m getting pretty tired of writing about great policies and projects that we’ve proposed in Canada, only to have to write later that the government has decided not to fund them. Toronto’s Transit City project, an ambitious attempt to link the suburban parts of the region to reliable rapid transit through the construction of eight LRT lines, is under threat. Despite being approved by the federal and provincial governments, the province is threatening to cut Transit City funding by half, decreasing the viability of the project considerably.

A map showing the proposed LRTs

I’ve written before about how complex governance is when it comes to public transit in our municipalities. Vancouver’s struggles to build the UBC rapid transit line and many Canadian municipalities’ policies to better link transit and housing are detailed in several other posts. Even when projects are approved, it’s no guarantee they will be built because we have no stable source of funding for public transit and no consistent governance structure that enables the transfer of federal or provincial funds to municipalities. Transit City originally proposed eight lines: Sheppard (14 km), Finch West (17 km), Eglington Crosstown (33km), Scarborough, Don Mills, Jane, Scarborough Malvern, and Waterfront West. The province agreed to fund the first four back in 2007: of these, three are new lines (Sheppard, Finch West, and Eglinton) and the fourth is a retrofit of the existing Scarborough RT with four new stations. The province’s proposal to cut funding in half will put the Eglinton LRT, Scarborough RT, and Finch LRT at risk: the Sheppard line is already under construction while Eglington and Finch were to break ground this year and Scarborough in 2012.

As U of T Social Work professor David Hulchanski illustrated a couple of years ago, increased incomes in the areas around the existing two subway lines make it all but impossible for lower- and middle-income people to live close to rapid transit.

Hulchanski's map showing the need for rapid transit

Hulchanski’s most recent map shows the areas which have decreased in income in the past forty years against the proposed lines: the new LRT lines would be making transit much more accessible to the rapidly-growing areas of the region (read his plea for action on ttcriders.ca). My own work with immigrants in Toronto shows that they are willing to travel long distances on infrequent public transit buses only for a short time; eventually they succumb to buying one, two, and three cars. They live further and further out because that’s where affordable housing is…little realizing their transportation costs will eat away considerably at their savings.

Last week mayor David Miller recorded a public service announcement on the subway PA system telling people to call the Premier’s office and their MPPs to oppose the Transit City cuts. Many of the local mayors are also urging their citizens to do the same. All sorts of organizations, from Toronto Environmental Alliance to the Public Transit Coalition have links to the appropriate politicians, and there is a Save Transit City site. I urge you all to call, email, write the MPPs and Premier McGuinty and if you’re in the Toronto area, pack the Council chambers this Wednesday April 21st.

Metropolis 2010

Je viens de retourner de Montréal, où j’avais l’opportunité de practiquer mon français. A brief two and a half days of bilingual workshops and roundtables on immigration issues, mostly in the Canadian context, was enlightening and quite enjoyable. The best part: it was a relatively small conference, with 1200 participants and only four concurrent sessions. This meant it was well organized, there were very few changes to the programme itself, and it was very easy to find your way around the two floors dedicated to our conference: qualities usually missing at the American Association of Geographers annual congress, where I’ve presented a couple of times.

The small size of the conference meant that I was asked to be in a roundtable with some of the top researchers in the field: Bob Murdie who is retired from York University, Carlos Teixeira at UBC Okanagan, Sutama Ghosh at Ryerson, and Damaris Rose of INRS. I have cited all of these authors in my own work, and they proved to be just as thorough, but unassuming, as their writing would suggest. Also included were some housing agency representatives like my old friend Jim Zamprelli from Canada Mortgage and Housing Coporation, and two of us PhD students. The roundtable audience was a good size and included David Ley from UBC Geography and Sandeep Agrawal from Ryerson: David of course is legendary in geography (last year he was named a Distinguished Scholar by the American Association of Geographers); Sandeep is the Director of Ryerson’s Master of Planning program.

David Firang, who is currently doing his PhD in Social Work at U of T, presented his research on the housing choices of Ghanaian immigrants in the next session, where I also presented my preliminary findings. Carlos presented his latest research on immigrants in the Central Okanagan Valley, cementing the idea that immigrants have very few choices due to housing policy that does not support market rental or affordable housing construction. Tom Carter from the University of Winnipeg discussed some of the issues immigrants have in the smaller Manitoba centers, where there is still fairly significant housing market discrimination. Tom also noted, after my presentation, that immigrants to the smaller centers often complain about the lack of public transit, even if they live in towns of 500 residents. Damaris, who was the discussant in our session, gave us all some important insights and comments, and very kindly welcomed David and I into the research arena.

Now, usually I find the plenary sessions less than exciting. But in this case the speakers included Krishna Pendakur, the hilarious and brilliant economics professor from Simon Fraser University, Valerie Preston from York University, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, and UBC’s own Dan Hiebert. Krishna had the audience laughing right from his introduction, even though his research was depressing: Canadian-born visible minorities are just not doing as well as Canadian-born whites, at least in terms of income. His comments about entrenched racism in the workplace (“The good thing is that these people that make the decisions, they’re old, they’re racist, and they’re going to die eventually.”) and the differences in outcomes across cities (“Do you see these lines? Do you get what I’m sayin’? I’m sayin’ I’m glad I live in Vancouver!”) really brought home the importance of how the information is delivered. The participants at our table looked at Krishna with the rapt eyes of devotees: one said, “I love this guy!” and another, “He actually makes stats interesting!” Valerie, who spoke right after Krishna, started by saying, “How do I follow that?” Jason Kenney’s speech wasn’t interesting in the least, but the fact that his presence was delayed by two separate protesters, who disagree with “Canada’s white supremacist immigration policies” definitely livened up the audience. I suppose it is a testament to political will that he still appeared and did his prepared speech, which showed the mark of the current adminstration’s insensitivity towards Canada’s temporary foreign workers, and seemed to reinforce the idea that while the country needs immigrants, it does very little to help newcomers find work, find housing, and settle into their lives in Canada.

Outside of the sessions, there were so many interesting people to talk to: I met Masters and PhD students, housing providers, non-profit agency professionals, and government officials at the federal, regional, and municipal levels. One night I was pleased to sit with Alan Simmons, a professor of sociology at York University, and his wife Jean, who teaches in family counselling at Guelph University; the rest of our table included people in social work, social justice and anthropology. This was a real interdisciplinary mix, and many of the people I spoke to said this was their first time at Metropolis.

Je suis heureuse de vous dire que le prochaine congrès sera à Vancouver! (Je vais améliorer mon français avant que ça, je vous le promets.) À la prochaine tout le monde!

Whitopias

Many researchers are concerned about ethnic concentrations in our cities, particularly in the US. Researcher Rich Benjamin’s latest book Searching for Whitopia: an Improbable Journey into the Heart of White America, examines why the fastest-growing areas in the US are also the whitest. He defines “whitopias” as areas that are over 75% white, and for the book he focused on places with a higher than 6% growth rate since 2000. The idea was also raised by Bill Bishop, who wrote The Big Sort (2008) which documents the trend for Americans to live in increasingly homogenous communities where everyone has the same religious and political values. Both authors agree that this is bad for Americans; Bishop’s book is subtitled “Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” It seems like Richard Sennett was right after all.

Decades ago in The Uses of Disorder (1970) Sennett argued that suburbs were a fascist social control that created a more intolerant society, one that was more individual-based rather than community-based. He wrote that suburbs tended to exacerbate the natural inclination of people to associate with others with similar values, even banding together to exclude people of different cultures and religions.

In the US, Bishop and Booth write that the roots for this type of voluntary segregation can be seen in the 1960s, when the courts demanded integration of African Americans and “white flight” first began. Recently, minorities are increasing in the inner suburbs fairly close to city centers, spurring whites to flee to exurban areas, which can be over an hour from the city. Benjamin says that many of these are older white Americans who fear an increasing role of government and a loss of power in the face of demographic shifts. Older whites traditionally have more political power because they are more likely to vote, but as of 2042 whites will no longer be the majority in the US.

Echoing Sennett, both Bishop and Benjamin argue that segregation into class-based, race-based neighbourhood leads to more clashes between groups, as each becomes entrenched in its own position and values. Bishop writes that this type of stalemate leads to some innovative policy at the metropolitan and state levels, but a lack of transformative change in the US.

The argument is very interesting from a Canadian viewpoint, where many of our suburban areas are very mixed because of our consistently high immigration rates. Unfortunately, no author has taken on a book-length discussion on growth rates and ethnicity in Canadian cities, but there is plenty of statistical evidence that shows Canada moving in a very different direction than the US. In Metro Vancouver, suburban municipality Port Moody had the highest growth rate in the region, followed by Surrey. Richmond and Vancouver had much lower rates but are still around 6%.

Immigration landings confirm that the vast majority of these immigrants have come from Asia, particularly mainland China and Hong Kong. Statistics Canada Community Profiles show that the proportion of immigrants is significant even in traditionally “whiter” mid-sized cities: 20% of Victoria’s population is foreign-born, as is 21% of London’s and 15% of Kelowna’s. However, visible minorities make up only 12% of Victoria’s population, 14% of the population in London and 6% in Kelowna.

Despite the mixture of ethnic groups in Canadian suburbs, the tendency towards locating among people with similar values can clearly be seen in Canadian elections. Cities emerge as islands of Liberal and NDP support in a country that has had a Conservative minority government since 2006. Have a look at southern Ontario or Vancouver in the 2008 federal election. Even Vancouver’s municipal election results show sharp dividing lines between those supporting Gregor Robertson for mayor versus Peter Ladner. Some even argue that the periodic redrawing of census tracts is linked to political agendas, but given the housing affordability crisis in most Canadian cities, it seems that the political and ethnocultural trends is less tied to cultural preferences than the geography of affordable housing.

At any rate, there are some obvious differences between Canadian and American cities, notably in the spatial concentration of ethnic populations and the absence of sharp ethnic divides. While Bishop and Benjamin trace this to civil rights era, the issue clearly goes further back to a history of slavery in the US. Canada, while having its own history of racist legislation, does not have as long of a history of non-white settlement. The Immigration Act of 1952 was the first to allow people from non-European countries to enter the country, and by that time there were fewer legal restrictions to owning land and buying property. By 1967, with another major shift in the Immigration Act, a new wave of non-white immigrants entered the country. However, they were never faced with legal barriers to homeownership or the labour market, two considerable barriers for African Americans in the US that remain entrenched today. Earlier non-white populations in Canada, notably Sikhs and Chinese in British Columbia, faced much harsher restrictions and still have the highest rates of segregation in the country today. These differences in immigration and labour market policy mean that our segregation rates are much lower than those seen in the US, yet another reason to think twice before applying American theory and reality to our own cities.

Benjamin’s and Bishop’s books do make us think about the fractured populace living just south of the border, and urge us to do more to help new immigrants integrate into their lives in Canada. Every time I travel to the US for a conference and listen to researchers documenting entrenched segregation, labour market barriers, and the “racial” biases unearthed during the mortgage crisis, I am reminded how different our countries are. This is particularly significant in my own research with immigrants in Toronto, which has introduced me to the work of many brilliant Canadian researchers and opened my eyes to our lower spatial segregation rates and more mixed neighbourhoods. However, I am also reminded of how much work still lies ahead for Canadians in recognizing immigrants’ foreign credentials, ensuring greater income equity, and promoting more tolerance in the workplace. We also need to recognize that sharp divides in tenure, such as the growth of luxury condominiums in neighbourhoods next to predominantly rental and low-income housing, can foster critical differences in political affiliation. As Sennett argued almost 40 years ago, the more isolated we are the more intolerant we become.

Modern racism in “the most multicultural city in the world”

Most Canadians would deny that theirs is a racist country. Scholars refer to the White Paper (1976) on multiculturalism and the Multiculturalism Act (1988) as proof that Canadians “celebrate diversity.” But there are many sides to this story. While the idea of race has officially been dispelled since geneticists working on The Human Genome Project found as much genetic variation between members of the same ethnic group as between different groups, the idea of difference persists. The Multiculturalism Act encouraged people of every ethnic group to retain their own languages and cultures while integrating into their lives in Canada. Yet there are constant barriers to this in practice.

Structural and institutional racism

Canadian banks may no longer practice mortgage redlining, but there are plenty of other examples of structural and institutional racism in our society. Carlos Teixeira, an Associate Professor at UBC (Okanagan), did a study in 2006 comparing housing trajectories of Portuguese immigrants from Angola, Mozambique and the Azores. He found that black Portuguese immigrants faced significant racism in the housing market compared to white Portuguese immigrants. Robert Murdie, who has now retired from York University, found similar results in his comparison of Portuguese and Somali housing trajectories (2002). There are many studies documenting the difficulties immigrants to Canada face in the labour market: employers will not hire anyone without “Canadian experience.”

While most Canadians with anglo-sounding names would probably urge incoming immigrants to keep their names, in everyday life it is often just easier for Chinese immigrants to go by their English variants, like Josephine for Ji Ling. Indian immigrants often shorten their names to anglo-sounding equivalents: I recently met a Kal who had shortened the considerably lengthier Kalvinder, and a Dee whose full name was Deepali. Indeed, my adolescence and young adulthood was peppered with anglo-ethnic hybrid names. While we were often criticized for “wanting to become white” (by our co-ethnics) or “losing our roots” (by our white friends), in practice it is just annoying to have your name mispronounced and misspelled on a daily basis.

Philip Oreopolous’ study at the University of British Columbia suggests prejudice against ethnic names may be more than just an annoyance. A Professor of Economics at UBC, Oreopolous created 6,000 mock resumés to represent recent immigrants and Canadians with and without non-English names. They were tailored to job requirements and sent to 2,000 online job postings from employers across 20 occupational categories in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s largest and most multicultural city. Applicants with English-sounding names got almost 40% more callbacks from employers than those with Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani sounding names. All applicants had at least a Bachelor’s degree, plus any additional qualifications specified in the job ad, and each applicant listed three previous jobs. Changing only the location of the applicant’s job experience, from Canadian to foreign, lowered callbacks by 5-10%. Employers valued Canadian work experience far more than a Canadian education. Oreopolous concluded that there is considerable employer discrimination against ethnic Canadians and immigrants; even when the person evaluating resumes spoke with an accent or had an ethnic-sounding name, they still preferred English-sounding names by a factor of 1.42. Oreopolous points out that this type of discrimination is illegal under the Ontario Human Rights Act. In this case, both the employer and the potential employee lose; the employer has purposely overlooked a potential employee with the appropriate skills and education. Oreopolous’ results cannot help but highlight institutional racism, which is more than a little surprising in the GTA, which is 46% foreign-born; China, India, and Pakistan are the three top source countries for immigrants. In a city and region so multicultural, that has been an immigrant reception center for over a hundred years, there is no way for employers to tell whether a person is a first-, second-, or third-generation immigrant, solely by looking at their name.

Modern racism

While Oreopolous points out the obvious legal implications of this discrimination, many scholars would call this modern racism rather than institutional or structural racism. Modern racism is a slippery concept: the Ontario Human Rights Commission issued a policy in 2005 stressing the subtler forms of discrimination. Examples of modern racism in the workplace are:

Exclusion from formal or informal networks
Denial of mentoring or developmental opportunities such as secondments and training that was made available to others
Differential management practices such as excessive monitoring and documentation or deviation from written policies or standard practices
Disproportionate blame for an incident
Assignment to less desirable positions or job duties
Treating normal differences of opinion as confrontational or insubordinate
Characterizing normal communication as rude or aggressive
Penalizing a person for failing to get along with someone else, e.g. a co-worker or manager, when one of the reasons for the tension is racially discriminatory attitudes or behaviour of the co-worker or manager

Differences in name, accent or manner of speech, clothing and grooming, diet, beliefs and practices, and leisure preferences can bring out subtle acts of racism. Because of language differences, member of various ethnic groups communicate in different ways. For example, in some cultures it is normal to wait several seconds after a person is finished speaking before responding; in anglo-North American culture the pause time is under one second. Those with the longer pause time would think they were being constantly interrupted by those with the shorter pause time. Underlining, or repeating the last few words of a person’s sentence at the same time as they are speaking, is common in some cultures but considered rude by North Americans.

Another common form of subtle racism is co-opting part of an ethnic culture: it is considered fashionable for a white person to wear a sari or practice yoga, but not an Indian person. I would add that in Canada we have the practice of “celebrating diversity” by having silly cultural festivals, yet we do not tolerate difference on a daily basis. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me his daughter was asked to return one day from school because she had henna tattoos on her hands. My friend, a Canadian of Indian ethnicity who is married to a white Canadian, said the school official told him the school did not allow tattoos at school. A few months later, the same official asked if his daughter could bring some sort of Indian food to a school multicultural festival.

Assuming that members of the same ethnicity are all the same is another example of subtle racism. Most of my Indian friends fend off questions about where the good Indian restaurants are, if we like Bollywood movies, and whether we have been to India; yet in most cases, we would have been teased mercilessly for liking Indian food, movies, or culture during our childhood and adolescence. In Outliers (2008), Malcolm Gladwell addresses the assumption that Asians are better at math. We even find examples of racism in terminology: what groups fall under the heading of “Asian”, and can they be grouped together as if they are all similar?

Joe Darden, a Professor of Geography at Michigan State, argues that denial of subtle and institutional racism allows Canadians to avoid changing legislation or monitor practices that discriminate against non-whites. Along with most other scholars, Darden points out that Canada has a long history of racism in immigration policy (The Significance of White Supremacy in the Canadian Metropolis of Toronto, 2004). He suggests that changes in the economy, and not changes in attitudes among white policy makers, were responsible for the removal of discrimination in immigration policy. In the post-war era, the need for skilled workers opened up immigration to non-European countries, while racist attitudes have remained. Like many African American scholars, Darden believes that there has been a transition from overt and institutional racism to subtle racism. Although significant Aboriginal populations have lived in Canada for thousands of years and British Columbia had small Chinese and Sikh populations around the turn of the century, Canada’s racist immigration policies only began to change in 1952. Most non-Europeans in Canada entered the country after 1967 changes to the Immigration Act. Fifty years is not a lot of time to eliminate racist ideologies.

The idea of racism in Canadian society may seem impossible, but various studies have proven there are subtle forms of racism in the housing market, labour market, and in social interactions. Oreopolous’ study shows that racism is present in the most multicultural city in Canada, therefore it must exist in cities with less cultural diversity. Many believe that cross-cultural education is the key to breaking down preconceptions about other cultures, understanding how different communication styles and values. In a multicultural society, cross-cultural training should be offered for all ages, from kindergarten to university, in schools and in the workplace. But Oreopolous’ study, as well as the earlier studies by Murdie and Teixeira, indicate there is also some legislative work to be done, as well as monitoring of employers, housing agencies, real estate agents, and landlords to ensure discrimination is not a factor in hiring, promotion, renting or buying a home in Canadian cities.

Ren Thomas

M.A., Ph.D. (Planning)