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Economic Integration of Pre-WWI Immigrants from the British Isles in the Canadian Labour Market

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Abstract

This article provides new evidence on the economic assimilation of immigrants from the British Isles in Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using data from the 1901 and 1911 censuses and a pseudo-cohort methodology, we estimate both entry and assimilation effects. We find a non-negligible decline in entry earnings among successive cohorts of British and Irish immigrants, previously overlooked in the literature. Our estimates also reveal that the economic performance for Irish and older British arrival cohorts was better than previously reported. Overall, slow economic assimilation and sparse occupational mobility of immigrants have been a long-standing issue in the Canadian labour market.

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Notes

  1. The CFP is an interdisciplinary research project based at the University of Victoria, available at http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/cfp/data/index.html.

  2. The CCRI is a national scholarly effort to develop a set of interrelated databases centred on data from the 1911, 1921, 1931, 1941 and 1951 Canadian censuses. See http://ccri.library.ualberta.ca/en1911census/database/index.html.

  3. We follow Green and MacKinnon (2001) by including age to fifth power in the regression analysis for its flexibility over Hatton’s formulation (1997).

  4. Note that in a single cross-section of data, the cohort effects are perfectly collinear with years since migration and thus cannot be identified. See Borjas (1999, pp. 1718–1719) for more detail on modelling the economic assimilation of immigrants.

  5. The number of years it takes for cohort j to achieve earnings equality with the Canadian-born is estimated as \( -\left(\widehat{a}-{\widehat{y}}_j\right)/\left({\widehat{\delta}}_{\mathrm{O}}\right) \).

  6. The regression estimates for each assimilation profile discussed in “Empirical Model” section are reported in Table 4.

  7. The estimated negative entry effect and assimilation effect in this specification are 21 and 1.7 %, respectively. Years to earnings equality is calculated by dividing 21 % by 1.7 %.

  8. Although many immigrants deemed unfit due to diseases or mental illness were immediately deported.

  9. Overall, a round-trip, across-Atlantic ticket in the 1890s cost no more than a moderately priced bicycle (Renella and Walton 2004).

  10. Mainly that migration in response to economic incentives is generally more profitable for those who are more able and motivated, as these individuals’ costs are less likely to exceed their expected economic return from migration.

  11. To assess changes relative to the Canadian-born, we subtract from the absolute change an estimate of the share change of a comparable Canadian-born cohort (i.e. with similar observables as the immigrant cohort). Estimates are obtained by estimating a multinomial logit model on the Canadian-born sample where the six occupation categories are predicted with the covariates in X evaluated at the corresponding immigrant cohort means in 1901 and 1911. Thus, the relative changes in occupation shares hold constant any changes in observable characteristics between immigrants and the Canadian-born over the censuses. Standard errors are obtained using the delta method and adjusted to account for the clustered nature (by household) of the data.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the invaluable advice and support from Mary MacKinnon (1959–2010) and Jennifer Hunt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, McGill University & Sheridan College, 1430 Trafalgar Rd, Oakville, ON, L6H 2 L1, Canada

    Jason Dean

  2. Sobey School of Business, Department of Economics, Saint Mary’s University, 903 Robie Street, Halifax, NS, B3H 3C3, Canada

    Maryam Dilmaghani

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Correspondence to Maryam Dilmaghani.

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Dean, J., Dilmaghani, M. Economic Integration of Pre-WWI Immigrants from the British Isles in the Canadian Labour Market. Int. Migration & Integration 17, 55–76 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-014-0399-4

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