Global Migrants and the New Pacific Canada

Abstract

THE NEW CANADAIn the last quarter of a century, a wholesale shift of immigration patterns from transatlantic to trans-Pacific flows has created a Canada. The changes were quiet at first, beginning after the creation of a the points system for immigration in 1967, but rising in volume during the 1980s so that increasingly the voices of the new are spoken in various Asian languages, a powerful blend of multhingual Canadians that has created a globally connected Pacific Canada in the last 25 years. We have become a nation that remains in conversation with the dominant Anglo-French society of the mid-20th century, but our future no longer makes sense as a bilingual dialogue solely between English and French. Our national past, built on the outer edges of British imperial settlement that displaced societies already existing in North America, is at the present moment a complicated global conversation in multiple languages, and if we are to embrace a future that builds upon the strength and diversity of this Canada rather than silencing the great potential we now possess, we must recognize what we have become and reconcile with a colonial past that continues to haunt us.What is the demographic reality of the Canada? The top io places of birth for immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2001 and 2006 included only two European countries: Romania, at number seven, was the origin of just over 28,000 immigrants; the United Kingdom, which was the dominant sending nation for the first century of Canadian history, was even lower on the list at number nine, sending just over 25,000 immigrants. In contrast, six of the top 10 countries were in Asia, and the top four on the list alone - the People's Republic of China, India, the Philippines, and Pakistan, accounted for two-thirds of all migrants to Canada in that period. China sent over 155,000; India over 129,000; the Philippines over 77,000; and Pakistan over 57,00?.1In 2006, 83.9 percent of all immigrants to Canada came from regions outside of Europe, and the very moniker minority to designate nonwhite Canadians had become a questionable descriptor of Canada's urban populations. Over 96 percent of Canada's live in metropolitan regions. Two main groups - south Asians and self-identified ethnic Chinese - accounted for half of all visible minorities in Canada, with each accounting for roughly a quarter of the total. Ethnic Chinese and south Asians account for eight percent of Canada's total population, but because they have settled overwhelmingly in either the metropolitan regions of Toronto or Vancouver, they have transformed those cities. Between 1980 and 2001, for instance, the largest proportion of migrants to Canada were ethnic Chinese who came from various locations in southeast Asia (including Hong Kong), along with migrants born in the People's Republic of China. These various ethnic Chinese migrants went overwhelmingly (87 percent ) to the five largest cities in Canada, with 41 percent going to Toronto and 31 percent to Vancouver alone.2 Chinese Canada is not homogenous, with a range of linguistic and social variation reflecting diverse origins not only in Asia, but from around the globe. The same can be said of south Asians, who, like ethnic Chinese, often come to Canada as part of global diasporas that emanated from home villages decades and even centuries earlier, bringing with them a wide array of family journeys and complicated histories from around the world and over many generations. By 2006, south Asians had slightly surpassed ethnic Chinese as the largest group of in Canada, but both are categories that envelop a complex spectrum of family and personal histories that cannot be reduced to simple ethnocultural or racial categorizations.What is clear, however, is that trans-Pacific migration from Asia has transformed Canada in the last 25 years. Toronto and Vancouver have become the urban capitals of Pacific Canada, and Vancouver in particular has become a city in which the term minority to describe Asians makes no sense. …