Visible Minorities In Canada Research Articles

The Relative Earnings of Visible Minorities in Canada

This article presents new evidence on the relative earnings of visible minority immigrant and native-born paid workers in Canada using data from the 1996 Census. Our findings show that labour market disadvantages associated with visible minority status are largely confined to immigrant men. The earnings deficits imputed to minority native-born men and immigrant women are fairly modest, and it appears that native-born women are paid a premium. Among immigrant men, labour market disadvantages are apparent primarily among those who were older when they arrived in Canada. There is some evidence that foreign work experience is relatively undervalued, but there is little evidence that immigrants receive lower compensation for foreign-based schooling. Finally, our analysis of individual ethnic minority groups reveals that Black men are most profoundly affected by labour market discrimination: The earnings deficit they must contend with is both significant and inter-generationally persistent.

Neighbourhood Ethnic Transition and Its Socio-Economic Connections

Abstract: The present study designs a new classification scheme of neighbourhood ethnic transition and uses this scheme to examine the residential patterns of visible minorities in Canada's three largest metropolitan areas. Based on 1986 and 1996 census tract profile data, this study finds that the conventional invasion-succession process of neighbourhood ethnic transition is generally not applicable to major visible minority groups in large Canadian cities. However, divergent patterns of ethnic transition have emerged among visible minority groups. Blacks tend both to live in, and move into, neighbourhoods with low socio-economic status (SES). South Asians also tend to live in neighbourhoods with low SES, but they do not become further concentrated in such neighbourhoods. In contrast, the Chinese population increases more rapidly in neighbourhoods with higher SES. Resume: La presente etude propose un nouveau plan de classification des transitions ethniques dans les quartiers, qui sert a examiner les modeles de repartition residentielle des minorites visibles dans les trois regions metropolitaines les plus importantes du Canada. A. partir des donnees des profils de secteurs de recensement pour 1986 et 1996, l'etude a pennis de determiner que le processus conventionnel d'invasion/succession pour ce qui est des transitions ethniques dans les quartiers ne s'applique generalement pas aux principaux groupes de minorities visibles clans les grandes villes canadiennes. Toutefois, des modeles divergents de transitions ethniques so sont manifestes parmi des groupes de minorities visibles. Les personnes de race noire out tendance a vivre et a after s'installer dans des quartiers ou le statut socioeconomique (SSE) est faible. Los Sud-Asiatiques oat aussi tendance a vivre dans des quartiers ou le SSE est faible, mais n'ont pas tendance a s'y concentrer davantage. Par contre, la population chinoise augmente plus rapidement dans les quartiers dont le SSE est eleve. ********** Since the 1970s, the visible minority population has bean dramatically increasing in Canada's three largest metropolitan areas that have accommodated most of Canada's new immigrants. This increase in the visible minority population through immigration is profoundly affecting the racial make-up of urban neighbourhoods. Changes in neighbourhood ethnic composition often transform the physical and social characteristics of neighbourhoods, affect the 'way of life' established by long-term residents, and frequently generate tensions within local space (Ray et al., 1997). It is therefore of important social significance to examine neighbourhood ethnic transition and its relationship with neighbourhood socio-economic status under the condition of rapid increases in visible minority populations. The present study investigates the residential patterns of visible minority populations in Canada's three largest metropolitan areas. Specifically, has the substantial increase in the visible minority population led to increased co-residence of visible and white populations within neighbourhoods or has it created more racially concentrated neighbourhoods? In addition, is transition in neighbourhood racial composition closely related to neighbourhood socioeconomic status? Ethnic Transition Among Neighbourhoods: A Literature Review Many studies on neighbourhood ethnic transition in the US have been centred on the compositional stability of racially mixed neighbourhoods. In their pioneering analysis of neighbourhood racial transition in the city of Chicago in the 1940s, Duncan and Duncan (1957) propose an invasion-succession model of neighbourhood racial transition. This model suggests an inevitability of white-to-black change in racially mixed neighbourhoods. Once blacks penetrate an area inhabited exclusively by whites, the number and proportion of blacks in the neighbourhood would continuously increase, while the white population would continuously decrease until a complete turnover of population from white to black occupancy takes place (Duncan and Duncan, 1957). …

Residential segregation of visible minorities in Canada's gateway cities

Although the influx of visible minority immigrants has created an atmosphere of diversity and multicultural‐ism in Canada's three major gateway cities, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, immigration has also produced metropolitan landscapes of fragmentation and ethnic separation. The objective of this study is to compare the residential patterns of visible minority populations in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, using a rigorous and consistent method that examines the temporal and spatial nature of segregation and its links to local housing characteristics. The paper reviews the literature on models of urban separation, and ethnic and visible minority segregation in Canadian cities, and develops four propositions regarding expected residential patterns and concentrations of visible minorities. It tests these propositions using an analysis of 1986, 1991 and 1996 Census data, in which residential patterns in the three cities are examined and related to the distribution of different types of housing. Our findings confirm previous research results of fragmentation and dispersal, but we uncover decisive differences between cities.Bien que l'afflux d'immigrants appartenant à des minorités visibles ait créé un climat de diversité et de multiculturalisme dans trois des principales portes d'entrée au Canada, à savoir Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver, il n'en reste pas mains que cet afflux a aussi produit des paysages métropolitains de fragmentation et séparation ethniques. L'objectifde cette étude est de comparer les modèles résidentiels des populations minoritaires visibles de Montréal, Toronto et Vancouver; pour ce, nous avons utilisé une méthodologie rigoureuse qui examine la nature de cette ségrégation, du point de vue temporel et spatial ainsi que ses liens avec les caractéristiques des habitats locaux. L'article fait une recension des écrits portant sur les modèles de séparation urbaine, ainsi que sur la ségrégation des minorités ethniques et visibles. II développe quatre propositions concernant les modèles résidentiels et les concentrations de minorités visibles anticipés. L'article vérifie ces propositions à partir de l'analyse des données du recensement des années 1986, 1991 et 1996, dans lesquelles les modèles résidentiels étaient étudiés et mis en rapport avec la distribution des différents types d'habitat. Nos conclusions confirment les résultats de recherches antérieures sur la fragmentation et la dispersion, mais dévoilent en même temps des différences cruciales entre les villes.

The Angry Black Woman Scholar

The “outsider-within” position (Collins 1986) that is currently the norm for scholars of color in social work presents both opportunities and bar-riers to being fully realized, fi rst, as academics, and then, as activists. Because social work scholarship has been dominated by white men and women, the presence of women of color in academia is itself a rupture of usual practice. At present, even in urban centers, there are few university professors from any discipline representing the so-called visible minori-ties in Canada (Rushowy 2000). For women of color, the energy required to pursue and secure academic opportunities requires vigorous commit-ment to political goals of representation and challenge to the status quo. At this point in history, however, this challenge comes from a position of extreme vulnerability. Moreover, the lack of representation of other women and racialized people who do not have access to opportunity and audience is a tremendous burden for the developing scholar. Despite a liberal discourse around increasing the representativeness of academia, scholars of color, often low-status players in university settings, are obliged to fi t in, and are regularly disciplined to suppress the experiences that reveal barriers in place for those outside the mainstream academic culture (Blair, Brown, and Baxter 1994).This article draws on my early experience as a scholar to develop some hypotheses about the meta-experience of academic women of color who attempt activism. The practice of autoethnography (Crawford 1996) is an opportunity to probe human experience by using personal life experience as a source of data. Engaging in autoethnography is a direct challenge to post-positivist assumptions about the nature of knowledge and how it can be advanced (Nicotera 1999). The post-positivist framework has postulated a sharp division between subject and object that is being chal-lenged on several fronts. First, this subject-object division is based on essentialized assumptions about agency and passivity that are no longer accepted without question (Davies 1992; Fine 1994b). Second, it fails to recognize that the subject-object position shifts depending on context and the particular discourse in place (Nicotera 1999). Third, it evokes a modernist hierarchical categorization that would privilege expert knowl-edge over knowledge arising from lived experience or emotional response (Houle 1995). Finally, it does not account for the position of marginalized people who must negotiate the subject-object boundary on a daily basis, especially if they are engaged in anti-oppressive work that evokes issues

Wage Opportunities for Visible Minorities in Canada

The wage opportunities afforded different racial groups vary considerably. We present a new analysis of wage differentials for different visible minority groups in Canada which also accounts for immigration background, using the first wave of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. With the exception of Black men, we find no statistically significant wage disadvantage for visible minorities who are native born. It is primarily among immigrants that wage differentials for visible minority membership exist. Our results suggest that policies to achieve a colour-blind Canadian labour market may have to focus more on immigrant assistance and less on traditional employment equity legislation.

JOB STRESS AND QUALITY OF WORKING LIFE OF SELF-EMPLOYED IMMIGRANTS: A STUDY IN WORKFORCE DIVERSITY

ABSTRACT This study examined the differences between self-employed and salaried employees among members of a visible minority in Canada and USA with regard to job stress and quality of working life (QWL). Data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire using the procedure of mail-back completed questionnaires (n = 325). One-way ANOVA, MANOVA and two-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The self-employed experienced higher job stress and health problems, and participated more actively in voluntary organizations, than salaried employees. The two groups did not differ in job satisfaction. Self-employed spent significantly less leisure time with their families than salaried employees. Limited support for age and education, as moderator of employment type and outcome variables, was found. Results are discussed in light of the previous empirical evidence on self-employment and quality of working life.

Wage discrimination, occupational segregation and visible minorities in Canada

The earnings gap between each of Whites, Asians, and Blacks is decomposed into the effects on earnings of productivity-related characteristics, wage discrimination and occupational segregation. Unlike previous Canadian studies, this paper analyses the relative economic position of both immigrant and native-born visible minorities and explicitly incorporates the effect of discrimination in occupational attainment on the earnings gap. The results indicate that policies aimed at increasing the ethnic representation across occupational categories would be effective only for Black men. Anti-discrimination legislation aimed at decreasing the earnings gap between visible minority and White women should have a dual focus: they should aim at reducing the inter-occupational wage discrimination; they should provide training programs to extend the career ladders confronting ethnic minority women.