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This article describes the reflections of three groups of Canadian social work students who participated in a 10-day cultural immersion study tour in Mexico. An analysis of student reflective papers subsequently provides insight into the value of personal and professional transformational experience. Students embraced a new understanding of the connection between structural inequalities and individual experience; and also reported increased understanding of human diversity relevant to their anti-oppressive practice in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how hockey is used to construct and demarcate the Canadian national community from external others, namely, the USA, Europe and Russia/USSR. The paper suggests popular nationalist narratives around the sport of hockey construct difference from external others in ways that place them in tension with state and corporate interests. Drawing on the concept of everyday nationalism, this article explores how the interplay between international competition, national identity and commercial sport has made hockey an ambiguous and contested national symbol in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a slightly revised version of the author's 'Outstanding Career Award Lecture' presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Sociological Association in Victoria, British Columbia on June 6, 2013. The paper distinguishes between Canadian Sociology and the Sociology of Canada. The former involves the explanatory stance that one takes to understanding Canada. The latter addresses the significant social dimensions that underlie Canadian social organization, culture, and behavior. I make a case for a Canadian Sociology that focuses on the unique features of Canadian society rather than adopting a comparative perspective. I also argue that there is a continuing need within the Sociology of Canada to address the issues of staples development. However, I argue that 'new' staples analysis must have a directional change from that of the past, in that social processes now largely determine the pattern of staples development. Moreover, new staples analysis must include issues that were never part of earlier staples analysis, such as issues of environmental impacts and of staples depletion under conditions, such as climate change. The paper concludes by analyzing four factors that provide the dominant social contexts for analyzing modern staples development: (1) the rise of neoliberal government, (2) the implementation of globalization and its social consequences, (3) the assumption of aboriginal rights and entitlement, and (4) the rise of environmentalism. These factors were generally not considered in earlier staples approaches. They are critical to understanding the role of staples development and its impact on Canada in the present time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses one particular feature of Canada's accommodation of diversity -- the existence of French-language communities outside of Quebec and New Brunswick -- to show how there continues to be conceptual difficulties in reconciling Canada's many diversities. More specifically, we are concerned with conceptual ambiguities associated with the place of these minority communities in Canada's constitutive political sociology, and difficulties in promoting a coherent set of policies for their flourishing. Moreover, this paper will not simply rehash arguments about their forma and conceptual status. We are interested in illuminating a recent initiative that seeks to direct immigrants to these communities in the hope of maintaining their overall percentage of the Canadian population. This is a development that has received little attention to date from the perspective of the scholarship of multiculturalism and minority rights, and political theory more generally. We argue that the strategy to target Francophone minority communities as 'sites' of integration represents a false promise for both these communities and immigrants. This article will show that the federal framework of 'multiculturalism within a bilingual framework' obscures the realities confronting Francophone minority communities and thus their capacity to integrate newcomers, on both empirical and normative grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to re-examine the value of multiculturalism and develop an argument that it is a key policy not only for nation-building, but also for ensuring a more inclusive, equal and democratic society for Canadian citizens. First, the paper introduces the historical development of multiculturalism, emphasizing the evolving meaning of multiculturalism. A meaningful evaluation of multiculturalism requires us to reframe the understanding or interpretation of the policy in the twenty-first century Canadian context where the domestic and international situations have changed tremendously in the last forty years. With this context in mind, the paper explores in what directions multiculturalism should be developed along with other Canadian values such as equality and democracy. Finally, a working argument is put forward with a vision to broadening the scope of multiculturalism, with strong emphasis on ethno-religious diversity, to include all types of cultures, so that every citizen is drawn into an inclusive and collective process in which Canada charts its discourse of national identity and nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allegations of terrorism have caused immigrant populations to be questioned with respect to their political identities and their national loyalties. Even among populations that have been raised primarily in their country of settlement, there is a concern regarding their level of attachment to the homeland. The process by which these second generation populations determine their loyalties and identities is complex and dynamic. This paper examines how Tamil Canadians negotiate both their personal and political identities in a charged environment, particularly following the designation of the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with second-generation Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto, the paper explores how the members of the dias-poric community negotiate their Canadian and Tamil identities, and the process through which they determine their loyalties between Sri Lanka -- their homeland -- and Canada -- their country of settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how citizenship norms of duty to vote and to volunteer in one's community influence political participation, and the role of group identities in producing these norms. By showing how citizenship norms influence an array of political activities, and by drawing on social psychology literature that shows how citizenship norms are shaped by group identifications, the paper offers a more complete picture of the relationship between citizenship norms and political participation beyond traditional civic duty/federal vote models that currently dominate Canadian political research. The central argument forwarded is that not only do citizenship norms matter to political participation, but that group identities matter, too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper illustrates how males of Chinese descent in British Columbia (BC) have historically been victims of overt and subtle forms of discrimination, and describes how racism is and was integrally linked to notions of class, gender and the body. Highlighted in our historical overview are issues around race and masculinity for Chinese males as they existed (and still exist) in the BC educational system, especially in sport-related and physical education (PE) contexts. We examine how some of these issues continue to impact Vancouver's schools through Millington's (2006) study of masculinities in secondary PE which showed how that environment, while offering the potential for various masculinities to flourish, tended to promote hegemonic gender identities as 'normal'. In particular, we show how Chinese-Canadian boys, both Canadian born as well as more recent immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, continue to be subject to subtle racist understandings of Chinese masculinities - understandings that are often camouflaged by the dominant national rhetoric of multiculturalism. We conclude the paper by arguing that if indeed schools' curricula exacerbate problematic understandings of race and masculinity that underlie discriminatory behaviours and attitudes, then physical educators need the tools to develop strategies for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "coolest thing" about hitchhiking in the 1970s was "that total sense of freedom." Hitchhiking emerged in Canada the 1930s and grew in tandem with the use and reliability of cars and with road construction. In 1935, the Globe observed, "One could not go very far along the highway without meeting scores of people standing by the roadside vigorously waving their thumbs to secure lifts." Inspite of adult's warnings against taking rides from strangers, thumbing was always popular with youth, especially in the late-1960s, when the hippies linked hitchhiking on modern new motorways with participation in the youth scene. This paper examines the changing perception of hitchhiking in the twentieth century. For most of the time picking up a hitcher was perceived as an act of charity or paternalism or, in the case of females, of chivalry. A successful hitchhiking exchange is a ritual that required trust, boundary negotiation and control. However, one never knew the true identity of the hitchhiker nor the motives of the motorist, and therefore, in tandem with exciting road stories, a counter-narrative appeared in the press that challenged the commonsense assumption that rituals create social cohesion. By the 1970s, civil society's anxiety about hippies, dropouts and youth unrest, cast a dark shadow over hitchhiking, especially for girls on the road. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we look at the links between social capital and helping neighbours or receiving help from neighbours. Our data are drawn from the 2003 and 2008 Canadian General Social Surveys, both of which looked at linkages across social networks. In particular, we examine the relationship between municipal, neighbourhood and individual level ethnicity social capital formation and the level of helping amongst neighbours. Using a combination of factor analysis and random intercept model regressions, we find a strong link between social capital formation and helping, but do not find strong links between diversity, social capital and helping. This suggests that previous research, which found strong links between diversity and social capital, may be overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to study the hierarchical structure of the Canadian urban system and to determine the growth processes. Zipf’s law is rejected for the whole country for all periods because of a clear size-domination by a few big cities such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. It appears that the dynamics of growth follow a deterministic process related to existing urban size, previous growth and spatial structure. Splitting the Canadian urban system into two—east and west—permits the identification of differences that were not observable when studying the country as a whole. While size and previous growth are still important explanatory variables of growth patterns, these two systems may be distinguished one from the other from the point of view of spatial patterns of distribution of growth rates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Canadian Review of Sociology has been an important venue for scholarship on ethnicity and race. Through an analysis of publications dealing with both terms in the journal, between 1964 and 2010, the paper finds that publications have focused more on ethnicity than race, using a political economy approach, and quantitative methods. Over time, significant changes have occurred, including a move away from ethnicity to race and a move away from quantitative methods. Many of these changes have occurred in conjunction with policy and demographic changes in Canada and as a response to ongoing racial inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research points to a growing gap between immigrant and native-born outcomes in the Canadian labour market at the same time as selection processes emphasize recruiting highly educated newcomers. Drawing on interviews with well-educated men and women who migrated from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, this paper explores the gendered processes that produce weak economic integration in Canada. Three-quarters of research participants experienced downward occupational mobility, with the majority employed in low-skilled, low-wage, insecure forms of 'survival employment'. In a gendered labour market, where common demands for 'Canadian experience', 'Canadian credentials' and 'Canadian accents' were uneven across different sectors of the labour market, women faced particular difficulties finding 'survival employment'; in the long run, however, women's greater investment in additional post-secondary education within Canada placed them in a somewhat better position than men. The policy implications of this study are fourfold: first, we raise questions about the efficacy of Canadian immigration policies that prioritize the recruitment of well-educated immigrants without addressing the multiple barriers that result in deskillling; second, we question government policies and settlement practices that undermine more equitable economic integration of immigrants; third, we address the importance of tackling the 'everyday racism' that immigrants experience in the Canadian labour market; and finally, we suggest the need to re-think narrowly defined notions of economic integration in light of the gendered nature of contemporary labour markets, and immigrants' own definitions of what constitutes meaningful integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher-income neighbourhoods in Canada’s eight largest cities flourished economically during the past quarter-century, while lower-income communities stagnated. This paper identifies some of the underlying processes that led to this outcome. Increasing family income inequality drove much of the rise in neighbourhood inequality. Increased spatial economic segregation, the increasing tendency of ‘like to live nearby like’, also played a role. It is shown that these changes originated in the labour market. Changes in investment, pension income and government transfers played a very minor role. Yet it was not unemployment that differentiated the richer from poorer neighbourhoods. Rather, it was the type of job found, particularly the annual earnings generated. The end result has been little improvement in economic resources in poor neighbourhoods during a period of substantial economic growth, and a rise in neighbourhood income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper has two purposes. First, it documents the historical context of MINCOME, a Canadian guaranteed annual income field experiment (1974 to 1979). Second, it uses routinely collected health administration data and a quasi-experimental design to document an 8.5 percent reduction in the hospitalization rate for participants relative to controls, particularly for accidents and injuries and mental health. We also found that participant contacts with physicians declined, especially for mental health, and that more adolescents continued into grade 12. We found no increase in fertility, family dissolution rates, or improved birth outcomes. We conclude that a relatively modest GAI can improve population health, suggesting significant health system savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine a police summer program for youth from marginalized communities designed to both provide valuable experiences and opportunities as well as improve the problematic relationship between marginalized youth and police. Using the concepts of racialization, governance, and interest-convergence, we consider how such institutionally sponsored programs socialize youth into a value system that fosters self-governance and restraint, particularly in the case of youth who, because of where they live, are considered to be "at risk." Hence, they are subjected to interventions that operate in subtle ways to regulate them into what are deemed appropriate values and beliefs. We found that after six weeks of working with the police, the attitudes of the youth changed from avoidance to enthusiastic endorsements of police practices. In this way, the program worked to advance the institutional interests of the police without the organization having to confront or adjust any of its own practices and assumptions. Ultimately, the program, with its focus on attitudes, behaviour, and opportunity, promotes and achieves the kind of reform that never questions structural and systemic inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Canadian daily newspaper editors' views regarding the status of international news reporting in Canada. It is based on a series of surveys administered in 1988, 1995, 2000, and 2006 that measured editors' assessments of issues such as the quantity and quality of international news in their papers, the importance they attach to international news coverage, the areas of the world they consider important to cover, and the sources they use for international news. The article uses the data from the surveys to determine whether 11 September 2001 affected editors' perceptions of international news reporting. This question has been widely studied in the United States, but less so in Canada. The central conclusion here is that 9/11 has had only a limited impact on editors' perceptions. The data across all four surveys demonstrate a remarkable degree of consistency in editors' assessments of international news reporting in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that a life course perspective on social assistance use in Canada can offer a more nuanced theoretical understanding of both individuals' experiences and the importance of social structure, than more traditional sociological or economic approaches to welfare use. We also propose that examining social assistance use in this way does not require longitudinal quantitative or qualitative data, as is sometimes suggested, but that cross-sectional quantitative and qualitative data can be interpreted through a life course lens. We demonstrate this by examining the covariates of social assistance receipt using crosssectional quantitative data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, and by analyzing qualitative interviews with recipients about the process of beginning and barriers to ending benefit receipt. These analyses show not only how the cross-sectional data can easily be considered from the perspective of the life course, but also how this perspective provides a more satisfactory understanding of how social assistance policies can be thought of as both providing resources that are important in individual decision-making and as shaping lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the mode of entry into adulthood of two cohorts of young Quebecers born between 1942-1951 (lyric generation) and between 1962-1971 (X generation). Examining the net effect of labour market casualization with the help of the General Social Survey 2001's retrospective data, the goal of this paper is to answer this specific question: to what extent do the 1980- 90 economic mutations explain the extension of youth and the desynchronization of life courses? The analysis reveals that the casualization of employment is not highly related to the mutations of life courses. In fact, the desynchronization of life courses can be better explained by noneconomic transformations such as the longer length of education and the easing of certain normative constraints within Quebec society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a fairly large body of empirical research and policy documents exists on immigrant integration in Canada, studies on refugee integration are scarce. This paper attempts to fill this gap. It summarizes what is known about refugees' economic and socio-cultural integration patterns in Canada and what integration services are available to them in order to identify empirical knowledge gaps and service gaps. Whenever salient and possible, the distinction among the Government-Assisted Refugees, Privately Sponsored Refugees, Landed-in-Canada Refugees and refugee claimants is made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the federalism being practised in the Canadian social union based on eleven case studies. The studies ask three questions. What kinds of intergovernmental regimes prevail in the social sector? What is the impact of regime type on the public interest? For individual programs, is there an alternative to the existing regime that might better serve the public interest? Intergovernmental regimes are defined by reference to two sets of variables: the extent to which there is independence or interdependence between orders of government; and the extent to which a hierarchical or non-hierarchical relationship prevails. Four types of regimes are defined: unilateral (hierarchical, interdependent), collaborative (non-hierarchical, interdependent), classical (non-hierarchical, independent), and beggar-thy-partner (hierarchical, independent). Regarding the first question, all four regime types are found in the eleven cases and no one type dominates. More generally, the regimes vary from sector to sector, from program to program, and over time suggesting that there is no single theory of federalism guiding the management of the social union. The effect of regime type on the public interest is analysed on the basis of policy, democratic, and federalism criteria. In most cases, the intergovernmental regime is analysed as appropriate, suggesting that something is right with the social union, at least from its intergovernmental perspective. In cases where the intergovernmental regime is considered inappropriate, the analysis argues for more collaborative federalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where data exist, measures of average happiness in industrialized countries typically show little or no upward trend over time, despite substantial growth in real per capita incomes. This paper examines the existing Canadian data to see if they support this generalization. The Canadian data have some overall positive trend. Some simple regressions suggest that per capita real incomes are positively associated with happiness, while unemployment and inflation appear to be negatively associated with happiness, a result also found in recent studies of Western Europe and the United States. Controlling for these variables, a negative time trend emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to assess the potential of the concept of social citizenship for articulating progressive policy development in Canada. I argue that the revisioning of social citizenship is hampered by a recent notion that it is part of the superseded welfare policy paradigm of the past. Many analysts characterize a shift in the objectives of Canadian social policy as a move away from a 'golden age' policy paradigm, which emphasized the social rights of citizenship, to a neo-liberal paradigm promoting market citizenship. I suggest that there is an overstatement in the current literature of the extent to which social citizenship rights were ever realized, or even pursued, in Canada. There are two tendencies toward over-generalization in the literature that obscure a more complex picture of social policy development in Canada. The first concerns the relationship between social policy and the social rights of citizenship. The blurring of these two concepts underlies some of the overstatement in the literature about the past implementation of social citizenship rights. The second tendency to over-generalization relates to the observation of a paradigm change in social policy orientation. While things may be shifting, there are grounds to believe that this is largely a within-paradigm intensification—from mean and lean, to meaner and leaner. Finally, I suggest that the conceptual foundations of the social rights of citizenship must be re-worked in a way that acknowledges contestation over the terrain and quality of the 'social' and that challenges the distinctness and priority of the 'market'. There is a continuing need to strengthen and promote the social rights of citizenship as a discursive and practical challenge to neo-liberal interpretations of the 'good' society as a 'market' society. This would involve contesting the claim that the market is the arbiter of the quality of life, and claiming the market itself as a social arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often believed that the settlement and integration of skilled immigrants is moderately easy in Canada, and that skilled immigrants do well in Canada after a brief adjustment period. However, numerous barriers prevent the effective integration of skilled immigrants in the mainstream society. Despite being famous for its Federal Skilled Worker Program, which includes the immigration of skilled workers through Express Entry, Canada shows disappointing results in the economic and social outcomes of the integration of skilled immigrants. This has socioeconomic implications for the immigrants and affects their health and wellbeing. Therefore, there is a need for all those who are involved with immigrant integration to explore and be conversant about the contexts and issues faced by skilled newcomers in Canada. In reviewing the academic and grey literature on the settlement and integration of skilled immigrants in Canada, this paper highlights the challenges faced by skilled immigrants in Canada and the needs experienced by them in facing these challenges. It provides an overview of the experiences and expectations of skilled immigrants related to their settlement and integration in Canada. This paper indicates a need to evaluate the availability of immigrant services focused on skilled immigrants and the effectiveness of the existing support offered to them by various government and non-government agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]