“Tell Me What I Need to Know”: South Asian Women, Social Capital and Settlement

Abstract

This paper reports on the findings of in-depth interviews with 50 South Asian immigrant women in Toronto regarding their settlement needs and the role of social capital in meeting these needs. The main findings discussed in this paper relate to the emergence of information as the most important settlement need and the ways in which information and orientation were obtained. Participants were found to rely on informal networks of friends and relatives as the most exhaustive and specific source of information and orientation.