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In a multicultural society such as Canada, it is important to study the extent to which members of immigrant or minority groups perpetuate their disadvantaged status or overcome barriers to having access to unevenly distributed economic opportunities (Porter 1965; Portes and Zhou 1992; Lian and Matthews 1998; Pendakur and Pendakur 1998). This is especially significant in perceiving the long-term consequences of immigration. Job search is one of the strategic sites to explore social processes through which immigrants and minority members attain equality. In job searches, economic inequality along racial/ethnic lines can be produced, reproduced, or overcome using social contacts. This is because particular social contacts within and outside of ethnic communities can expose job seekers to varying structural opportunities. In this chapter, we look at the job search experiences of three generations of five Toronto ethnic groups: English, German, Jewish, Ukrainian, and Italian-Canadian. We address two questions about the social networks of immigrant and minority group members. 1. What factors influenced the use of intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic ties in their job searches? 2. Which ethnic groups attained higher incomes when their members use job contacts within or outside of their own ethnicity? Overall, we show that different types of social contacts exposed minority job-seekers to varying opportunities, and that the existing ethnic stratification in the labor market significantly conditioned the cost and the benefit of the inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic ties. Members of lowstatus ethnic groups tended to achieve higher income when they had ties outside of their own ethnic group. By contrast, members of high-status groups tended to do better when they had ties within their own group. Both gender and generation of immigration played complex roles in the nexus of ethnicity and network heterogeneity. These results suggest that the social processes of job searches both sustained and overcame inequality along racial/ethnic lines through which the often vertical structure of the Canadian mosaic has been sustained and altered.

This study examines the effects of working in ethnic economy on social integration of immigrants. The analysis is based on a recently completed survey of the Chinese ethnic economy in Toronto. Our findings show that working in ethnic economies hampers participation in the social activities of the wider society. Results also suggest that those who gave a favorable evaluation of their own group, those who are independent class and family class immigrants have a higher likelihood of participation in social activities in the wider society. However, if those immigrants participate in an ethnic economy, they have significantly less participation in social activities in the wider society. Although previous research has documented that employment in ethnic economy is an “alternative avenue” for immigrants to achieve economic advancement in a new country, our study suggests that the social cost is substantial.

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This study addresses two questions. First, among the three major perspectives on integration (i.e., zero‐sum, pluralist, and selective integration) suggested in the literature, which is the dominant pattern of the participation level in informal social activities in the ethnic community and in the wider society among new immigrant groups? Second, how well do the factors suggested by these three perspectives explain these patterns? Based on recently collected data about Chinese immigrants in Toronto, Canada, the analyses suggest that nearly half the respondents claim a low level of social participation. Among those who do participate, the pluralist integration pattern is the dominant pattern of participation in informal social activities among today's Chinese immigrants. Though the analysis shows the consistent effect of human capital resources on the pluralist integration patterns, there is no significant effect of either human capital resources or duration in the country on the zero‐sum and selective patterns. Implications of the results are discussed.