Abstract
Recently, the media have expressed concern about the apparent concentration and social isolation of immigrants in central and inner suburban neighborhoods in large Canadian cities. This paper compares and contrasts the frequency and nature of neighborhood-based social contacts among three cohorts of immigrants distinguished by their period of arrival in Canada and Canadian-born individuals. We begin by outlining the family, friend, and acquaintance relationships that immigrants build and argue that their networks are culturally diverse and dominated by acquaintances. In this context, intense friendships rarely develop between neighbors, even for recent newcomers. Rather, neighboring consists mainly of casual interactions between individuals that often involve the provision of mundane forms of assistance. Despite their fleeting and routine qualities, social relations with neighbors lead the vast majority of people to express strong levels of belonging to their neighborhoods. As a consequence, we argue that the neighborhood is an underestimated locale for understanding social inclusion.
Résumé
Ces derniers temps, les médias ont révélé des préoccupations quant à la concentration apparente et l’isolation sociale des immigrants dans les quartiers centraux et ceux des banlieues proches des grandes villes canadiennes. Cet article établit une comparaison de la fréquence et la nature des contacts sociaux basés dans le quartier parmi trois cohortes d’immigrants (classées selon la date de leur arrivée au Canada) et celles des personnes nées au Canada. Nous commençons en dressant un portrait des rapports que tissent les immigrants avec leur famille, leurs amis et leurs connaissances, et soutenons que leurs réseaux sont diversifiés sur le plan culturel et que les connaissances y jouent un rôle prépondérant. Dans ce contexte, il est rare que les amitiés intenses se développent entre voisins, même pour les nouveaux arrivants. Les contacts entre voisins consistent principalement en des interactions occasionnelles entre des individus qui, souvent, se rendent un service banal. Malgré la qualité fugace et routinière de ces relations sociales entre voisins, la grande majorité des gens expriment un fort sentiment d’appartenance à leurs quartiers. Ainsi, nous proposons que l’on sous-estime le potentiel du quartier comme lieu pour comprendre l’inclusion sociale.
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Notes
Throughout the paper, we report analyses employing sample weights. The weighted value represents 16,401,649 individuals.
The sample is drawn from all permanent residents of Canada, regardless of citizenship.
Respondents are asked whether the neighbors are helpful and then they are asked if they provided help to a neighbor in the past month or received help from a neighbor in the past month. In all cases, the definition of help is left up to the respondent.
All of the analysis uses weights supplied by Statistics Canada. Each respondent represents about 1,200 people, but the weights vary from approximately 500 to over 2,000. The weights are calculated after the survey to best represent the Canadian population (Statistics Canada 2004).
The weighted value represents 4,498,047 individuals.
The changes in immigration legislation that took effect in 1978 have meant that place of birth, year of arrival, and length of residence are highly correlated in the Canadian context.
The public version of the Cycle 17 GSS Survey only identifies three broad birthplace categories: Canada, North America and Europe, and other countries.
The information about ethnic origin is also aggregated and the small sample of foreign-born individuals precludes disaggregation by ethnic origin.
All cases with valid observations for a variable are included in the bivariate analysis, but only cases with no missing information on all of the relevant dependent and independent variables are included in each of the regression analyses.
Odd ratios are based on a comparison of two probabilities by forming a ratio of the probabilities. If the probabilities are equal, the odds are 1.0. When the probabilities diverge, the odds diverge from 1.0. An odds ratio of 1.0 indicates that two groups, for example recent immigrants and Canadian-born individuals, have the same odds of engaging in some aspect of neighboring. An odds ratio of 0.33 means that the probability of group x (e.g., newcomer immigrants) engaging in neighboring is one third that of the reference group (e.g., the Canadian-born).
The weights create large samples for inferential tests, ensuring that almost all statistical tests are significant. For this reason, we concentrate on describing trends in neighboring rather than highlighting significant differences.
For example, the children of immigrants account for 17.4%, 18.6%, and 8.8%, respectively, of the total populations in the Toronto, Vancouver, and Montréal metropolitan areas.
Given the very small number of respondents who received job search assistance from neighbors, this indicator of neighboring is excluded from the analysis.
Our analysis does not include household or individual income variables due to the large number of nonresponses to these questions. Including income in the analysis reduces the number of cases by over 2,000. We do partially capture social status through other variables such as housing tenure, dwelling type, and labor force activity.
The full set of results is reported in Table 6.
See Table 1 for list of reference categories for dependent and independent variables used in multinomial logistic regression analyses.
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Acknowledgments
An early version of this paper was presented at the International Metropolis meeting, October 18–21, 2005, Toronto, Canada. We are grateful to Yvonne Riano, Eleonore Kofman, and Pila Riano-Alcala who organized the workshop entitled “Social and Cultural Capital of Immigrants in Cities, and Policy Responses”. This research was completed while the second author was a visiting professor at INRS-Urbanisation, Culture et Société. We thank Sara McLafferty, Damaris Rose, two reviewers, and the editor for their helpful comments, Ann Marie Murnaghan for superb research assistance, and York University for funding the research. Any errors remain our responsibility.
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Ray, B., Preston, V. Are Immigrants Socially Isolated? An Assessment of Neighbors and Neighboring in Canadian Cities. Int. Migration & Integration 10, 217–244 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-009-0104-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-009-0104-1