The purpose of this chapter is to provide demographic and social profiles of the refugees, respondents to the public opinion survey, and settlement service providers. For comparison purposes, refugees have been classified by region of origin. The profile of refugees consists of six sections, each of which contains information regarding the demographic characteristics, education levels, occupation, refugee camp experience, language, and cultural characteristics of the respondents from each region. This description is followed by a discussion of the dominant characteristics of the total refugee sample. Next is a description of the demographic characteristics of the respondents to the public opinion survey. This information is used to compare the characteristics of refugees with those of other people in their host communities. The following section deals with employment, income and housing costs for refugees and respondents to the public opinion survey in order to compare the economic situation of the two groups. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the demographic characteristics of the settlement service providers in each of the seven communities.
Data for refugee respondents are presented by "world region". To ensure anonymity for respondents coming from countries that provide few refugees, six world regions are represented: Africa, Central/South America, East Asia, the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Poland. The countries included in the Africa region are Uganda, Burundi, Zaire (Republic of Congo), Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan. Central/South American respondents are from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Vietnam, China, and Burma are included in the East Asia category, while Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan form the Middle East group. Given the large number of respondents from former Yugoslavia, this country is included as a separate region (n=375). Poland is also a single category, despite the small number of respondents (n=11), since it cannot be logically grouped with other regions.
The refugee profiles are generally compiled from data collected with the adult and youth questionnaires. There are some statistics in the following profiles that use data from the adult survey only. However, these include all information on education and occupation prior to arrival refugee camp experience, and marital status, and city of current residence (Tables 3-1 to 3-7).
English language knowledge is determined using responses to the question "What other languages do you speak?" (no respondent reported English as his/her mother tongue). All "English" responses are presented as percentages of the total youth and adult sample. English language knowledge was self-reported. No attempt was made to determine individuals’ proficiency in the language.