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This paper reports on one segment of a research project that was funded by the former Prairie Metropolis Centre. The research utilizes a large quantitative data set in Canada, the Ethnic Diversity Survey, to develop a specific index to measure the social, cultural, and civic integration of immigrants in Canada and then selectively applies it for some comparative analyses. The paper begins with a definition of integration and then reviews the literature on measuring immigrant integration in Europe and the United States as well as the relevant Canadian literature that foregrounds the variables that we considered for a Canadian immigrant integration index. We then explain how, using factor analysis, our immigrant integration index is developed for Canada. Finally, the paper applies this social integration index and presents some of the results where this index is applied. More specifically, this last part of the paper presents comparative social integration index scores and analysis for: 1) nativity (comparing immigrants to the Canadian-born); 2) generational status; 3) racialized (visible) minority status; and 3) nativity by generation and racialized (visible) minority status. While there are statistically significant differences in all of these comparisons, one of our major findings is that integration, as measured by our index, is not that different between immigrants and the Canadian-born. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women of many cultures and religions find a means of coping with stress and ill health in faith-based practices, such as meditation and prayer. It is customary for Muslim women to participate in such activities, usually with a special dress code, which often includes a hijab. The headscarf ban in French and formerly in Quebec public schools not only forces Muslim female students to shed theiressentialreligious dress code, but also fails to address the resulting health consequences and to acknowledge the cultural aspects of head-covering. This paper argues that the ban on head coverings in public schools is not only an infringement on religious and cultural freedoms, and violation of human rights, but that it is also an unhealthy policy intervention, as it undermines health by restricting prayers, mindfulness and spirituality. Furthermore, the ban has taken away Muslim women's choice to wear a hijab, thus restricting a sense of self-autonomy and in turn causing additional negative health implications. By synthesising these ideas, this paper holds a novel and critical perspective that the headscarf ban policy in France should be re-examined not only because of its infringement of human rights, but also to assess the negative health impacts on affected groups. For these reasons the paper advocates a reversal of the ban, as has happened in Quebec, Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates wealth disparities among first-generation immigrants using data from the 2012 Survey of Financial Security. We apply logistic and linear regression models to estimate disparities in homeownership and household equivalent net worth by immigrant status, region of origin, and time since arrival. By focusing on immigrant families from different regions who entered Canada at different points in time, this research applies theories related to assimilation, human capital, and structural barriers to wealth. Our findings demonstrate that even though many immigrant families transition into homeownership and grow their wealth over time, certain first-generation immigrant groups continue to experience wealth disparities many years after their arrival to Canada. In particular, immigrant families from African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries experienced the largest wealth gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the lived experiences of Chinese-Canadian youth in Alberta in relation to two multiculturalism debates: multiculturalism as a politics of recognition and multiculturalism as a cohesive force. It focuses on three themes of their lived experiences, which include racial discrimination and stereotypes in school; biased media representation; and the relationship between ethnic language maintenance, sense of belonging and multiculturalism policy within a bilingual framework. Two findings are highlighted in this paper. First, the racism youth experienced at school and the racist discourse against Chinese-Canadian students found in Canadian media indicate that Chinese Canadians as racialized and ethnic minorities have not been recognized and treated as equal partners in social interactions with the White dominant group. The multicultural policy focus and task of addressing racism in the 1980s has yet to be finished despite current multicultural policy having a new focus. Second, multiculturalism within a bilingual framework is more an assimilating force than a divisive one. Given the separation of language rights and cultural rights as well as the strong linguistic and cultural assimilation forces in major Canadian institutions, it is less likely for Chinese-Canadian youth to maintain their ethnic language and culture. The main factor that affects their sense of belonging to Canada is the racism in Canadian society rather than the symbolic recognition of diversity that multiculturalism encourages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian citizenship is a young official category of belonging, and the relationship of Aboriginal people to that category remains contested ground: scholars debate the legal status of First Nations people within the Canadian state while other academics and First Nations leaders note that these nations never ceded their sovereignty to a foreign colonial state. While such debates have deep historic roots, more recent post-1945 government policies and programs reveal the extent to which Aboriginal peoples continued to be seen as outsiders who need to be assimilated to the ‘mainstream.’ As a historical contribution to these ongoing debates, this paper explores efforts to create a distinct and common Canadian citizenship in the years after the Second World War when, as a follow-up to the passage of the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act, the federal government strategically chose to combine its management of immigrant admissions, reception, and citizenship with its Indian Affairs policies under the rubric of one new federal ministry, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (DCI). From 1950 until 1966, the Indian Affairs branch was located in the DCI, where its activities were heavily modelled after the citizenship campaigns being developed for immigrants within the DCI's Canadian Citizenship Branch. This paper reveals the ways in which ministry officials and their network of public and private groups and agencies aimed to create a one-size-fits-all category of societal Canadian citizenship. To do so they deliberately constructed Aboriginal peoples as ‘immigrants too’ and targeted both ‘Canada's original inhabitants’ and newly arrived European refugees and immigrants with similar ‘Canadianization’ programs. The analysis of the programs targeting both groups highlights the similarities (for example, both Natives and newcomers were constructed as outsiders who needed to adopt dominant middle-class Canadian social and moral codes and pro-capitalist values) and the differences (for example, the immigrant campaigns were more tolerant of cultural differences than the Aboriginal campaigns that, despite their seemingly progressive rhetoric, effectively continued earlier assimilationist policies) as well as their gendered and class features. In offering this comparative analysis between these twinned postwar campaigns, the paper brings together two histories, Aboriginal and immigrant, that have usually been studied in isolation from each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a public history project conducted by the author for the Danish Canadians of Montreal in the 1990s. The Danish Canadian community expected that researching their community history would help them recover a more authentic ethnicity and shine a light on their group's unique ethnocultural practices. However, to the community's disappointment, historical research instead revealed a strong trend toward Anglo-conformity, to the point that many Danish Canadians were nearly indistinguishable in Montreal's Anglophone society. In the current climate where the concept of the ethnic mosaic is emphasized in Canada, the history project dealt a blow to their sense of identity and led them to question whether they were ever ethnic at all. In addition to examining the history of a rarely-studied group, this paper explores changing notions of what has constituted immigrant success, and looks at one group's struggle to adapt to the larger society's shifting visions and values surrounding ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public schools have historically been key sites where children learn of and adopt a common national identity. In states where multiculturalism plays a central role in the articulation of a national identity, schools actively recognize and support the diverse cultures of their students in fulfilling this function. Canada is a state where, via federal policy, multiculturalism has been identified as a fundamental element of the national ethos. Formal education has been a key area in which the government has implemented this policy. However, public education in Canada is also committed to secularism, and this has been a cause for resistance by diverse immigrant groups. This paper examines resistance among traditional Muslim groups to Toronto school policies and practices that reflect an avowedly secular orientation. It focuses on the experiences of one Muslim group in particular, Somali immigrants, and their encounters with school policies and practices that both supported and challenged their identities. In doing so, the paper exposes the schools as sites of countervailing policies and practices within which students must nonetheless forge new and meaningful identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper two gaps in North American immigrant homeownership research are addressed. The first concerns the lack of studies (especially in Canada) that identify changes in homeownership rates by skin color over time, and the second relates to the shortage of comparative research between Canada and the United States on this topic. In this paper the homeownership levels and attainment rates of Black, Chinese, Filipino, White, and South Asian immigrants are compared in Canada and the United States for 1970/1971–2000/2001. For the most part, greater similarities than differences are found between the two countries. Both Canadian and U.S. Chinese and White immigrants have the highest adjusted homeownership rates of all groups, at times even exceeding comparably positioned native-born households. Black immigrants, on the other hand, tend to have the lowest ownership rates of all groups, particularly in the United States, with Filipinos and South Asians situated between these extremes. Most of these differences stem from disparities that exist at arrival, however, and not from differential advancement into homeownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed the fertility of women who migrated to Canada before reaching age 19, using the 20 per cent sample of the Canadian censuses from 1991 to 2006. Fertility increases with age at immigration, and is particularly high for those immigrating in late adolescence. This pattern prevails regardless of the country of origin, and of whether the mother tongue of the migrants was an official language in Canada. The fertility of those for whom it was an official language is always lower on average than of those for whom it was not, but there does not seem to be a critical age at which the fertility of the former and the latter starts to diverge. Formal education has an effect: the fertility of immigrants who arrived in Canada at any age before adulthood and who were or became college graduates is similar to that of their native peers. An appendix to this paper is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2013.802007 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immediate post-war period was defined by shifts in capitalism's socioeconomic and institutional underpinnings. Commonly known as Fordism, until the early-1970s models of standardized industrial mass-production and robust state planning and intervention were relatively successful in maintaining secular growth in employment, productivity and demand as well as establishing the national economy and society as unified, governable fields. This paper considers how migration controls in Canada and Australia enhanced and extended such arrangements. In simultaneously boosting production and demand, diversifying and integrating industrial activities and assimilating European migrants into a mass consumer culture while excluding non-Europeans perceived as disruptive of material and sociocultural homogeneity, such policies provided central vectors of economic and cultural nationalism that complemented other monopolistic and redistributive interventions. [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 explores Canada's response, through our Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program, to developments in international refugee policy and will ask how Canada's resettlement program could be used more strategically in the future so as to meaningfully contribute to resolving protracted refugee situations globally while ensuring the successful integration of refugees from these situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Canada as an example, we examine the extent to which immigrants take on the ethnic identity of their host country, thus displaying either an assimilated, integrated, or neither assimilated nor integrated ethnic identity. We pay particular attention to the impact of economic integration, years since migration, ethnic origin and visible minority status on ethnic identity. Surprisingly, our findings reveal that indicators of economic success such as employment status, occupation and prior earnings do not have an impact on whether immigrants will assume the identity of their host society. The statistical analysis for this paper is situated within the existing acculturation literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Otto Hahn, a lawyer and emigration promoter from the German state of Wurttemberg, was an integral part of the German debate about emigration, colonial empire and German identity. This paper suggests that any discussion of nineteenth-century European emigration must consider its location in the context of colonial expansion. Hahn was, in many ways, typical of the emigrationist colonialist. Yet, he had ideas which deviated from what has been recognized as emigrationist colonialism. His growing fascination with Canada sheds light on how this popular ideology could be altered. Any discussion of a transnationally conceived German identity in the late nineteenth century, then, must include intellectual and spiritual communities as sources of such an identity, and must locate them in the general context of the diffusion of modernity. The last part of Otto Hahn's story, finally, allows us to get a rare glimpse of an emigrationist colonialist turned actual emigrant, thereby permitting us to conceive of emigration as a way to contest and negotiate nationalism rather than an exit from the national community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late nineteenth century the rate of ethnic intermarriage has been increasing in Canada. This paper analyzes current levels of ethnic intermarriage in Canada during the 1990s m relation to the historical trends reported in earlier analyses. Differences between husbands and wives and the native-born and foreign-born are examined for Canada as a whole using data from the 1996 Census. Intermarriage data are also presented for husbands and wives residing in five Prairie major CMAs as well as for Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Overall, husbands tend to marry exogamously to a slightly greater extent than wives, the native-born tend to exhibit higher rates of ethnic exogamy than their foreign-born counterparts, and the Prairie CMAs have higher rates of ethnic endogamy compared to Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photographs by First Nations artists Jeffrey Thomas and Greg Staats re-view and re-vision colonial and postcolonial experience and place in Canada. The photographs presented in this paper challenge much colonial photography that depicts aboriginal peoples collectively as part of an ethnographic present engaged in traditional cultural activities or in modes of cultural assimilation. Images by Thomas and Staats are fragmentary depictions of individual aboriginal identity and experience of history in postcolonial contexts. Notably the artists' images lack the stereotypical signs of 'Indianness' that are prevalent in popular understanding of aboriginal identity and that stem from the aforementioned colonial imagery. It is argued that the artists' photographs do not represent a return of the colonial gaze documented in such historical images; rather, their work suggests alternative strategies of vision at play between First Nations artists and their audiences in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]