Abstract
As Canadian immigration policy increasingly selects ‘flexible’ immigrants based on their human capital, it correspondingly problematises immigrant families. In drawing on interviews, conducted over a 5-year period in two different neighbourhoods in the Greater Vancouver area, we followed the paths of family households that recently immigrated to Canada. We argue that households not only provide fundamental support in the migration process, but also enable immigrants to adopt flexible strategies to deal with precarious circumstances and thereby begin the process of integration. Rather than being a ‘problem’, immigrant households, and particularly women’s support roles within them, may be a critical lynchpin to successful integration.
Résumé
En même temps que la politique canadienne en matière d’immigration vise de plus en plus des immigrants «souples» en fonction de leur capital humain, elle rend problématique la situation des familles immigrantes. Par le biais d’entrevues effectuées au cours d’une période de cinq ans dans deux quartiers différents de la région de Vancouver, nous avons suivi le cheminement de familles récemment immigrées au Canada. Nous alléguons qu’en plus de fournir un appui fondamental pendant le processus d’immigration, les familles permettent aux immigrants d’adopter des stratégies souples leur permettant d’affronter des circonstances précaires et donc d’entamer les démarches de l’intégration. Plutôt que de constituer un «problème», les familles immigrantes, et surtout le rôle d’appui que jouent les femmes, pourraient bien être un élément clé de l’intégration réussie.
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Notes
In recent years, Canada has admitted skilled workers more than any other category of permanent resident. For example, in 2005 almost half of all immigrants came as skilled workers (49.67%). In all, 60% of immigrants came under the economic class, 24% came as family class, and 16% came as protected persons.
The Tri-Cities is composed of three adjacent municipalities: Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody.
In the cases of the households in East Vancouver, the sequence of interviews were conducted by the one author, Creese, and a colleague, Dan Hiebert, in the first 2 years and the final year; in between research assistants conducted some of the interviews. The first year of interviewing of the households in the Tri Cities was carried out by the authors Dyck and McLaren, with subsequent interviews conducted by graduate students or community-based research assistants, with careful consultation and debriefing. Ethical guidelines of the two universities involved were followed, and the study approved by the respective ethical review boards. Not all families participated for the full 5 years; some could not be located at a later date, and others declined to continue to be involved in the project. Of the 14 families recruited in East Vancouver, four families were interviewed once; four were interviewed twice; and six were interviewed four times over 5 years. Of the 11 families recruited in the Tri Cities, one family was interviewed twice; six were interviewed three times; three were interviewed four times; and one was interviewed five times over 5 years.
In 2004, 53.5% of all women worked in these occupations (Statistics Canada 2006:128).
In 2003, women employed full-time all year earned 70.5% of men’s earnings; all employed women (including part-time and part-year) earned only 63.6% of men’s earnings (ibid:152).
Visible Minority is the term used in government statistics to refer to those who are non-Aboriginal in origin and “non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour” (Statistics Canada 2003a:10). The more common term used by academics – drawn from Canadian feminist and anti-racist movements – is people of colour.
British Columbia has a system of publicly funded colleges and universities. Tuition fees at colleges are considerably lower than at universities. Along with providing university-level transfer courses, colleges offer many shorter (usually 1 or 2 year) occupationally specific diploma programs. In addition, many private for-profit educational institutions also offer work-related training.
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Acknowledgements
Our first thanks go to the participants of our study who gave so generously of their time and shared experiences with us over much of the length of this study. We thank the Centre for Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis (RIIM) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding this research. We are indebted to Dan Hiebert’s participation in the East Vancouver study and thank our research assistants for their invaluable help: Natalie Chambers, Michelle Nguyen, Cecily Nicholson, Sylvia Parusel, Kareem Sadiq, Rosa Sevy, Ann Vanderbijl, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Priscilla Wei, Marni Westerman and Marian Wu. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
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Creese, G., Dyck, I. & McLaren, A.T. The ‘Flexible’ Immigrant? Human Capital Discourse, the Family Household and Labour Market Strategies. Int. Migration & Integration 9, 269–288 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-008-0061-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-008-0061-0