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Explaining Variations in Immigrants’ Satisfaction with Their Settlement Experience

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Abstract

The study seeks to determine the extent to which economic integration factors, social integration factors, human capital and area-level factors are associated with immigrants’ satisfaction with their settlement experience in Canada. The Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (Wave 1) and the 2001 Census Profiles are used for multilevel modelling. The study confirmed that factors from all broad groupings are associated with immigrants’ satisfaction with their settlement. Skilled class and highly educated migrants report lower levels of satisfaction, highlighting the contradiction in the Canadian immigration system which targets these migrants at the selection stage but lacks mechanisms that could help unlock their potential at the settlement stage. The study also demonstrates that migrants who have an ethnically diverse circle of friends are more satisfied with their settlement. At the contextual level, immigrant concentration was negatively associated with satisfaction. These findings speak in favour of settlement policies encouraging integration of newcomers into the receiving society.

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Notes

  1. The survey sampled immigrants who arrived in Canada between October 1, 2000, and September 30, 2001 and were at least 15 years old at the time of arrival. The survey excludes immigrants who applied for permanent residency from within Canada. A Citizenship and Immigration Canada administrative database of all landed immigrants was used as a sampling frame. A two-stage stratified sampling method was employed. At the first stage, immigrating households were selected through a probability proportional to size method (size refers to size of family), and then one member of the household (‘longitudinal respondent’) was selected for participation. The month of landing in Canada served as the first stratification variable, thus creating 12 cohorts of immigrants. Then, the intended province of destination as stated by the immigrant and the class of immigrant were used as stratification variables within each month. Data were collected in face-to-face, or telephone interview when a face-to-face interview was not possible, using a computer-assisted interviewing application. Interviews were conducted in one of 15 languages, which cover around 93 % of the new immigrants in Canada. Proxy interviews were not allowed, except for the family income questions, which were answered by the person most knowledgeable (PMK). Statistics Canada conducted interviews with immigrants 6 months, 2 years and 4 years after landing in Canada (Wave 1 between April 2001 and May 2002, Wave 2 between December 2002 and December 2003 and Wave 3 between November 2004 and November 2005, correspondingly). Participation in the survey was voluntary. For Wave 1, immigrants were traced using the Citizenship and Immigration Canada address databases and phone files. The provincial Ministries of Health Address files were considered the best source of tracing since migrants would apply for a health care card within 3 months after landing. Immigrants received consent-to-be-contacted forms when they got landing visa outside of Canada. The forms were collected by immigration officers at the ports of entry to Canada. However, granting consent to contact them did not guarantee migrants’ participation (Dubois and Simard 2002).

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Acknowledgments

I am thankful for their helpful comments and suggestions to the participants of HRM 790 Advanced Analysis of Survey Data at McMaster University and in particular to Dr. Kathy Georgiades and Dr. Michael Boyle, as well as to two anonymous reviewers. I would like to offer a special acknowledgement to the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre at McMaster University.

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  1. Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Kenneth Taylor Hall McMaster University 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4M4, Canada

    Halina Sapeha

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  1. Halina Sapeha
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Sapeha, H. Explaining Variations in Immigrants’ Satisfaction with Their Settlement Experience. Int. Migration & Integration 16, 891–910 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-014-0371-3

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