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Upon migrating to a new country, immigrants will often turn to their ethnic communities for support, forming bonding social ties in the process. However, there are also those who form bridging ties by reaching outside of one's immediate ethnic group. The social position occupied by individuals in society is maintained and reproduced by the cultural and human capital they possess, wherein the socialised dispositions, conceptions, and level of education unite and differentiate social groups. As a result, immigrant network formation occurs not only on the lines of ethnicity, but also on cultural and human capital. In this paper, we use the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada to investigate how immigrants use social ties upon arrival to Canada. We find that newcomers with lower levels of human capital will be more likely to bond, whereas higher human capital newcomers will often bridge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between Canada, one of the world's leading immigration countries and a country that often serves as an international 'poster child' for well managed migration, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental organisation that provides migration-related services for Canada and many other countries. Despite growing awareness about the role of the IOM in migration politics, a research gap remains regarding how states cogitate and evaluate their partnership with the IOM. This article draws on publicly available government evaluations, conducted by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, which speak to the strongly inter-dependent, but also highly ambivalent reality of collaboration between Canada and the IOM. In exploring and discussing the nature of this relationship, the article also speaks to the particularities of 'migration management' and the larger transformations in global migration governance reflected in Canada's partnership with the IOM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of social capital has gained popularity in the field of migration studies in recent decades, yet we still know relatively little about how immigrants develop social networks in their host countries – despite the fact that networks constitute the core of social capital. This paper applies a Bourdieuian approach to migration research while examining the network development processes of immigrants from Turkey to Canada, all within the framework of social inequality based upon occupation and class. My findings demonstrate that network development with co-nationals, members of other immigrant groups, and native-born Canadians is a complex process in which such various factors as social class, ethnicity, habitus, and different forms of capital jointly shape the opportunities to access social networks, as well as the nature of such networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on return migration, this paper draws out the tensions between integration and transnationalism, flexibility and rootedness, and citizenship and nationalism. I argue that the recognition of transnationalism necessitates a conceptual re-examination of return migration. Substantively, the paper is based upon my research on the flow of skilled migration between Canada and the People's Republic of China (PRC). Since 1998, China has been the top source country of skilled immigrants to Canada. In recent years, however, a counter-current has emerged with the return movement of PRC immigrants back to China. I examine how the cultural politics of identity play out amongst PRC immigrants in Canada in light of this reverse migration. Drawing on focus groups and interviews, I suggest that not only the act of return, but its very discourse, has influenced the ways in which the politics of identity and belonging are evolving amongst PRC immigrants in Canada. Ultimately, hybridised forms of cultural identification become the norm for migrants whose homes are no longer tied to one place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the limitations of theoretical models of immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurship by observing that the pre- and post-migration experiences of business owners who entered Canada through the business immigration programme in the 1980s and 1990s were not, as these models assume, from the working class but members from the entrepreneur class. The orientation of that programme toward bolstering investments in provincial manufacturing sectors does not, however, coincide with business immigrants' accumulation strategies. Through an examination of two groups of immigrant manufacturers, East Asians and Europeans, the paper concludes that the post-migration accumulation strategies of each group differ because their pre-migration experiences with politico-institutional processes and structural developments in the (newly industrialising) economies of the Asia-Pacific and the (post-industrialising) Euro-American region differ. Although the `new' East Asian and `new' European immigrants face the same immigration selection process and the same opportunity structures in setting up a variety of light manufacturing rms in Canada, they differ substantially in their selection of a business language, in the continuation of their line of business, in their acquisition of production skills, in their reliance on product designs by others, and in their multicultural and co-ethnic employment practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the employment and earnings trajectories of refugee and family reunion category immigrants in Canada and Sweden using two national level sources of data. The Canadian Immigration Database (IMDB) is a file that links the intake record of post-1979 immigrants with annual taxation records. The 2007 Swedish Register Data includes information on all legal permanent residents. Using standard regression methods, we compare labour force outcomes of age–sex–schooling–place of birth cohorts looking specifically at non-economic (family reunion and refugee intake) immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. We find that the employment and earning trajectories of the selected non-economic migrant groups are quite similar in the two host countries, although earnings are higher in Canada than in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent Canada–US ‘Beyond the Border’ negotiations have been accompanied by a highlighting of the issue of unauthorised crossings at the Canada–US border. In this paper, I offer some grounded contextualisation of this current politicisation by drawing upon press reports and interviews to document Canadian border-resident and press constructions of unauthorised crossings in one Canada–US border region in the late 1990s to mid-2000s. The evidence suggests that there is widespread local awareness of these crossings, including the dangers and sometimes death faced by would-be migrants. The analysis explores why this knowledge has not served to challenge still-dominant constructions of a ‘benign’ Canada–US border and/or ongoing projects of border securitisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a generational cohort method, this paper compares the self-employment rates of immigrant parents and their children when they were in the same age range of 25 to 44. The focus is on three questions: (1) Are the children of immigrants more or less likely to be self-employed than their parents? (2) Are the children of immigrants more or less likely to be self-employed than the children of Canadian-born parents? (3) Is the generational change from immigrant parents to their children in the self-employment rate different to that from Canadian-born parents to their children? The results show that Canadian-born male children of immigrants had a lower self-employment rate than their fathers. The decline in the self-employment rate was not unique from immigrant fathers to second-generation men. It was also observed from Canadian-born parents to their children. For both groups, the decline was related to changes in life-course events—longer schooling, fewer marriages and fewer children. Similar to the difference among their fathers, the second-generation men had a higher self-employment rate than the third-and-higher-generation men. Among women, the self-employment rate increased from immigrant mothers to their daughters and from Canadian-born mothers to their daughters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although rates of residential crowding in Canada declined between 1971 and 2001, the drop for immigrants was not nearly as pronounced as it was for the Canadian-born. This paper determines the extent to which the differential trends in residential crowding can be attributed to changes in educational attainment, household composition, economic characteristics (including housing values), Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) of residence, and skin colour (visible minority status). The prospect of changing effects over time for several factors is also assessed. There are two main findings. The first is that basic household characteristics explain a significant portion of the 30-year immigrant/Canadian-born divergence. Secondly, including time interactions reveals that differences in propensities across CMAs emerged post-1971, and that there have been almost no significant changes in the propensity to crowd among visible minority groups since then. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature suggests that the foreign-born, and especially recent arrivals, enjoy better health than their Canadian-born counterparts, as measured by a number of health outcomes including self-assessed health and chronic conditions. Using data drawn from Statistics Canada's longitudinal National Population Health Survey (NPHS), the paper evaluates the so-called ‘healthy immigrant effect’ with respect to chronic conditions. Specifically, it evaluates the presence, number and type of chronic conditions (heart disease, asthma, arthritis, diabetes) within the immigrant population, with comparisons made to the native-born population. Native- and foreign-born prevalence rates for chronic conditions are also age–sex standardised to aid comparison. Evidence from both descriptive and multivariate analysis supports the healthy immigrant effect with respect to chronic conditions. Strong evidence of health disparities across arrival cohorts is also found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital in the form of ethnic networks and family ties is assumed to function critically in the establishment and operation of immigrant-owned businesses. In this paper I argue that, although the formation and expenditure of social capital may typify the experiences of many immigrant entrepreneurs, some enter the host society with sufficient human capital to enable them to forego the utilisation of social capital in the adaptation process. To test this hypothesis, interviews were conducted with 70 immigrant entrepreneurs in the province of Ontario between 1993 and 1995. All interviewees entered Canada under the auspices of the Canadian Business Immigration Program, a federal programme designed to attract immigrants with demonstrable business and managerial skills, a critical form of human capital. All, therefore, had pre-migration intentions of entrepreneurship in the receiving society. What is found among these business immigrants is a minimal reliance on social capital in establishing and operating their firms. It is concluded that immigrants entering the host society with pre-migration intentions of business ownership possess sufficient human capital to enable them to disregard the formation and utilisation of social capital in their economic adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]