1997/98 PCERII Funded Research Abstract

Research Title: The Triple Ghetto: The Spatial Concentration of Poverty Among Prairie Immigrants

Research Team: Dr. Shiva Halli (University of Manitoba) - Principal Investigator

Research Domain(s): Social

The recent rise of poverty in Canada has disproportionately affected certain segments of society: female-headed single parent families, aged, children and disabled. Immigrants, and in particular, those of visible minority origins, are another group which are over-represented among poor. The extent of immigrants’ poverty, surprisingly enough, has not been investigated before. The previous research on immigrants, and their resultant public policies such as ‘Employment Equity’, have heavily focused on the differential incomes of foreign-born and native-born, as well as their representation in certain occupations. The main concern of these studies has been to locate the trace of discrimination against immigrants in the job market. Such programs, however, benefited mostly the middle class immigrants who typically enjoyed higher education and better job skills. The poor immigrants who lacked such qualifications, therefore, were left out and forced into a ‘triple ghetto’ situation. They were ‘ghettoized’ because of their social class, their immigrant status, and their ethnic origin. Also, they are likely to suffer from an additional dimension of poverty, namely, ‘spatially concentrated poverty’, which is not necessarily experienced by all poor. The ‘spatially concentrated poverty’ occurs at the neighbourhood-level and has the potential to turn the immigrants’ temporary poverty into persistent poverty, a poverty which extends across generations. The main thrust of this study is to investigate the magnitude of Canadian immigrants’ Spatial Concentration of Poverty (SCOP). Some initial inquiries point out that extent of SCOP for Prairie immigrants may be significantly higher than that of immigrants in other CMAs. The findings of this study have direct implications for poverty alleviation programs as well as public housing projects.