1996/97 PCERII Funded Research Abstract
Research Title: Integration/Segregation of Urban Prairie Visible Minority Immigrants
Research Team:
(University of Manitoba) - Principal Investigator
Research Domain(s): Social
Visible minorities have increased from five to ten percent of the Canadian population between 1971 and 1991 because of changes in the Immigration Act in the sixties. Scholars in the three largest urban centres (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver) will do indepth research of immigrant adjustments and integration, and we plan to do the same for middle-sized metropolitan centres in the prairies of Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Regina, in the context of the larger metro Canadian scene.
In this specific research project we plan to focus on 1) immigrant arrivals by generations, 2) examine variations in socio-economic status, 3) use sophisticated concentration and segregation indices to differentiate recent immigrant populations, and 4) use multi-variate analyses to statistically differentiate trends by immigrant types, cities, regions, status, generation, concentration to get some sense of how well urban prairie immigrants can compete with immigrants in other Canadian metropolitan centres.
We will focus first on the spatial residential patterns of recent immigrants who are heavily visible minorities. Using the Duncan's (1957) social class approach, as well as the Shevky and Bell's (1955) social area analysis approach, we shall focus on social class, family and ethnic status dimensions, using the most sophisticated measures developed by Balakrishnan and associates (1955) in Canada. Having plotted residential patterns, we also turn to the degree of acceptance of recent minorities by the Canadian population, including attitudes, prejudices, stereotypes and discrimination especially of visible minorities recently researched but not sufficiently documented by Frances Henry and associates (1984, 1994, 1995).