The social engagement of Canada's immigrants continues to be the subject of debates. Most studies indicate a lower level of involvement, particularly for recent immigrants. This article investigates the possible causes of this lower participation by analyzing data from the 1998 General Social Survey (GSS), which provides precise measures of two different types of social engagement: volunteering and social participation. Three results stand out. First, formal volunteering and broader social participation do not display the same level of variability across groups. Second, the positive family effect usually observed does not apply to immigrants: the presence of children does not significantly increase their social engagement. Third, there is a strong gender component: whereas Canadian women are more likely to participate, immigrant women are not. Other factors (age, income, education), on the other hand, do seem to apply to both groups. We suggest that these results contribute to a new explanation of immigrant social engagement: Rather than being marked by a general immigration differential, newcomers to Canada seem to be left out of very specific, gender-influenced modes of participation, specifically, those related to the family, children, and schooling.

This paper examines Quebec's management of immigration and diversity in the promotion of cultural and political autonomy from Canada. Quebec has been able to secure some of the prerogatives of a sovereign nation-state in part through its control of immigration and its development of an intercultural integrative policy framework. Instead of diminishing the national distinctiveness of Quebec within the Canadian federation, rising immigration has accentuated it in many ways. The concept of intercultural nationalism is used to define a particular state-building strategy that is responsive to economic and demographic changes brought by increased global integration. We argue that the emergence of Quebec as a strong nation with sporadic, but specifically dominant and legitimate state power is reflective of the adaptations that many nation-states have undergone in response to the challenges of globalisation. By that measure, the Quebec state is, in a sense, more of a national state than it ever was in the past. Increasing diversity both within and outside its borders has contributed to this evolution.

Researchers have long posited that immigrant social structures play an important role in the settlement and adaptation of immigrants in most host countries, including Canada. Recent studies report that immigrant organizations can have divergent effects on the economic outcomes of the communities they serve. However the topic has yet to be addressed adequately for lack of systematic information on immigrant organizations. This article proposes to partially fill this gap by measuring the impact of several new variables drawn from infrequently used, but readily available administrative data collected by the Canadian government on three census labour market variables: income, unemployment, and self‐employment. This addresses a specific part of the labour market impact of immigrant social structures: the role of officially recognized charitable organizations serving specific ethno‐immigrant communities in fostering their labour market integration. The results of descriptive analysis and regression models show that organizational density is positively associated with self‐employment and negatively associated with income and unemployment.

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Traditional perspectives on ethnic institutions tend to consider mainly their role in the preservation of the cultural and social fabric of ethnic communities. Increasing evidence indicates that ethno-institutional effects are often more varied and complex. France's first industrial-era immigrants, massively crossing the border from Belgian Flanders during the second half of the 19 th century, are a case in point. Immigrant Flemish workers introduced a new type of institution to the French working class: socialist cooperatives. These would have a long-term impact not only on the immigrant Flemish community itself, but also on the larger labour movement, on the region, and on the country as a whole. Three elements were important in this process of institutional cross-fertilization: Belgian workers' rich institutional repertoire; the coincidence of their settlement with the rise of the French labour movement; and the fact that their institutional innovation was easily transferable.