Changing Colours: Spatial Assimilation and New Racial Minority Immigrants

Abstract

The social complexion of Canadian cities have been irreversibly altered since the 1960s as new waves of visible minority immigrants have replaced traditional white, European, migrant flows. For Canada and other nations with little prior history of racial diversity, this development raises the prospect of racialized urban ghettoes along American lines. We address this question with locational attainment models estimated with census micro-data for Toronto, the only Canadian city with a large black population. Unlike previous studies, we conclude that residential settlement pat- terns among Blacks and South Asians, like those of recent non-English speaking white immigrants, conform rather well to the immigrant enclave model associated with conventional spatial assimila- tion theory. As anticipated by Logan, Alba and Zhang, however, early success in the housing market among Chinese immigrants is associated with the formation of more enduring ethnic communities. Resume: L'arrivee de nouvelles vagues d'immigrants issus de minorit6s visibles et le d6part d'une immigration traditionnellementeuropeenne et blanche, ont irremediablement modifie la composition sociale des villes canadiennes. Pour le Canada et les autres soci6ets faiblement marqu6es dans leur